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These are answers that madima has provided in Christianity
| Question/Answer | | HANK1 asked on 05/12/11 - THE OLD DAYS AT ANSWERWAY Well, my friends, it looks like this Board is dead. Time for reincarnation, don't you think? Start asking questions, guys and gals. Much going on in the World. I watch FOX news. How about you?
HANK madima answered on 05/15/11:Hi, HANK!
I'm surprised at the dead boards here everywhere! I'm mostly on Facebook now. I read all my news online - NY Times, CNN, Daily Mail, etc! I don't watch TV (unless I'm in hotels out of town). I travel nonstop like before...Good to see you're still here at AW! :) | | Question/Answer | | STONY asked on 11/16/10 - A BIT EARLY. WISHING ALL A MOST BLESSED THANKSGIVING EVER. madima answered on 12/31/10:happy new year, stony! :) | | Question/Answer | | webguy asked on 12/04/10 - Merry Christmas just stopping by to wish everybody a Merry Christmas .
madima answered on 12/31/10:Merry christmas and happy 2011! :) | | Question/Answer | | STONY asked on 04/18/10 - MAGGIE & BOBBYE.... NOW I CAN'T GET IN TOUCH WITH EITHER ONE OF YOU. WHAT'S UP? I KNOW THE STORY ABOUT "A REASON, A SEASON AND A LIFETIME" BUT I NEVER AM PREPARED FOR IT WITH NO NOTICE.
When someone is in your life for a REASON, it is usually to meet a need you have expressed outwardly or inwardly. They have come to assist you through a difficulty, to provide you with guidance and support, to aid you physically, emotionally, or spiritually. They may seem like a godsend, and they are. They are there for the reason you need them to be. Then, without any wrong -doing on your part or at an inconvenient time, this person will say or do something to bring the relationship to an end. Sometimes they die. Sometimes they walk away. Sometimes they act up or out
and force you to take a stand. What we must realize is that our need has been met, our desire fulfilled; their work is done. The prayer you sent up has been answered and it is now time to move on.
When people come into your life for a SEASON, it is because your turn has come to share, grow, or learn. They may bring you an experience of peace or make you laugh. They may teach you something you have never done. They usually give you an unbelievable amount of joy. Believe it! It is real! But only for a season.
LIFETIME relationships teach you lifetime lessons; those things you must build upon in order to have a solid emotional foundation. Your job is to accept the lesson, love the person/people (anyway); and put what you have learned to use in all other relationships and areas of your life. It is said that love is blind but friendship is clairvoyant. Thank you for being a part of my life
madima answered on 05/18/10:How are you Stony? Thanks for the beautiful post! :)
It's been a long time since I was here... Been too busy globe-trotting. I was in Florida from April 21 to May 2 and starting this June 5, I'll be on a 121 day tour of a dozen countries in Europe!
I miss all the experts here!!! | | Question/Answer | | Choux asked on 12/25/09 - HAPPY CHRISTMAS Greetings to all my Answerway pals who are Christians. Hope you are all finding lots of happiness and peace in your lives. :)
I'm residing in a Supportive Living facility in my own apartment with my little darling Nick, the Cat who will be 16 in January. He's pretty rickety these days.
Happiness and fun to all in the coming year, also. :D
Sincerely,
Choux--(Mary Sue) madima answered on 12/29/09:Merry Christmas and a blessed 2010, Mary Sue! I was just thinking about you today... and was wondering about your handsome darling, Nick!
Great to hear you're both ok!
I am now "owned" by a big, beautiful tigress named Dao Ruang! One day, I pray I can take care of her forever... along with my other favorite tigers - Sairung, Hernfa, Techo, Mek, Chomnapa, Fadang, Phayak, Darika, my leopard -Supawan and the whole lot of them... plus my big cats in Nevada - Niki and Det, Nala and Rocky, Teddy and Sunshine! | | Question/Answer | | bal317 asked on 12/21/09 - Merry Christmas Wishing all a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
Remembering, Jesus being born and living among humans, so He could understand,teach,and save us taking all of our sins with Him. He showed us love.
As we ask for forgiveness of our sins. Please accept Jesus as Our Lord and Saviour and spend eternity in God's House, where He has many rooms and one prepared for those who Believe. madima answered on 12/29/09:Merry Christmas and a blessed 2010, Bal!!!! :) | | Question/Answer | | CeeBee2 asked on 11/15/09 - Information about IQGuru Some of you knew or knew of IQGuru, one of the charter members of Answerway. He passed away on the last Monday in May, Memorial Day, 2009. He had gotten pneumonia the previous year and had never shaken it, and meanwhile was slowly getting lost in the fog of Alzheimer's. I have been in phone contact with his wife who has been dealing with her own set of physical problems. She asked me to let his Internet friends/acquaintances know about his death. If you wish more details, please let me know. madima answered on 11/30/09:I am very sorry to hear of his passing. Thanks for letting us know. IQGuru has been very kind to me.
I have wanted to meet him personally the next time I go to the U.S. He gave me good advice in caving - one of his many fields of expertise.
Unfortunately, I've been lying low for a year now after I was injured by a cougar I cared for at the Tiger Touch sanctuary in Fallon, Nevada last year.
I had a an almost lethal experience with Tiger Touch's owners, John and Barbara Williamson, whom I realized too late, were only using their big cat "sanctuary" to get donations for a spurious "university" and to lure women for sex!
I had a great time taking care of tigers, lions, a leopard and a bear at the Tiger Temple in Thailand for a whole month early last year, so I never expected that my U.S. volunteer work for big cats will almost kill me.
Anyway, please extend my condolences to IQ's family. I'll miss his wit and wisdom! I shall include him and his family in my prayers. | | Question/Answer | | STONY asked on 12/25/08 - BEEN A LONG TIME.... BUT WISHING ALL OF YOU A BLESSED CHRISTMAS AND A PROSPEROUS NEW YEAR. madima answered on 12/27/08:Blessed Christmas to you and yours, STONY, and to everyone on the board! | | Question/Answer | | MaggieB asked on 12/25/08 - Merry Christmas Merry Christmas to all who come here to this board.
May the real meaning of Christmas be yours on this blessed day and throughout the coming year.
MaggieB madima answered on 12/27/08:Merry Christmas to you and yours, Maggie, and to everyone on the board! | | Question/Answer | | CeeBee2 asked on 11/26/08 - Do you remember IQGuru?------------------------------ He is one of the charter members of Answerway and, along with voiceguy2000, ScottGem, Choux, and others, helped Vijay and Dathaeus get this site off the ground.
I talked with IQ's wife last Sunday evening and learned that he is very ill. Please keep him in your thoughts and prayers. madima answered on 12/13/08:Please give IQ my best regards. I've wanted to do caving with him on my next visit to the US a few years back but lost touch with him.
I wasn't able to say hello to him the last time I was in the US this October because I was bitten by a cougar, one of 10 big cats I cared for as a volunteer at Tiger Touch sanctuary in Fallon, Nevada. It was a nightmare because the owners refused to bring me to the hospital, saying they have no money and I was bleeding for half a day in the middle of the desert.
Sharlene saved me, even though she was in Ohio. Without her, I don't know what could have happened to me. Loral (purplewings) also helped out in my medical bills after I came home.
I don't think I can go caving or adventuring anytime soon because the bones on my wrist separated when my cougar tried to pull me in the cage with her and I had 16 sutures in my left hand. Am undergoing intensive rehab on my fingers at present and the surgeon wants to operate on my wrist to fix the bones.
Please pray for me too. I need a miracle so that I would no longer need a wrist or hand operation, which I can't afford, and that I would recover completely and fast so I can go back caring for my tigers in Thailand in 2 months, as I promised them.
And please pray for Sharlene's fast and complete recovery as well. She has undergone surgery recently and need all the healing energies that can be directed her way. | | Question/Answer | | bal317 asked on 08/25/08 - Fasting? Do any of you par-take in this practice?
If so when?
Why do you feel the need to?
If done for a cause, how do you feel it helps you reach that cause? madima answered on 08/28/08:Hi Bal,
I usually fast during the Lenten season and during spiritual as well as "creative retreats", as the need arises :-)
I have always found that fasting clears both the mind and the body.
Primarily, it detoxifies my system, of course. We have so many junk foods available now that our bodies become cluttered with too many things we don't need.
It helps me in many ways, especially when I shut myself up in my place or in a retreat when I write and paint or both. I don't feel the hunger pangs at all. However, I cut down on my physical activities when I fast and refrain from strenuous work.
| | Question/Answer | | bal317 asked on 07/26/08 - Charles Manson-group? I heard on the Christian channel. That one of the women who actually helped in the Sharon Tate murder's. Was dying of some sort of brain disease. And she has tried around 17 different times to get out of prison at her Board Hearings, but was denied paroll. This Christian leader, was asking. "Seeings how this woman has shown a change of life in a positive way, and becoming more Godly like. Shouldn't she be forgiving and released now that she is dying and possibly only has 6 months to live?
I feel, even though she has possibly changed. She still has man made laws to abide by and she should stay in Prison for her misconduct she par-took in.
What do you all feel?
How do we as Chrisitians, say we forgive and still allow this woman or other's to stay locked up like we do?
Are we afraid to actually be around those that have done horid crimes. Might of changed to the better?
Do we ask what type of Chrisitanity background, Prison personel have or those on the Boards?
This Christian Leader said,"Jesus told the sinner beside Him on the Cross, You will walk with me in Heaven."
Are we wrong or right forgetting those in Prisons? madima answered on 07/28/08:We can forgive but never forget, that's what I believe. And of course, it's easier said than done when one is not a victim or a family member or friend of a victim.
Too many times the prison systems have paroled and released criminals who should never have been released. And innocent people paid dearly because these criminals raped and killed again as soon as they were set loose on society.
I do not know this woman personally but the web reports I saw stated that as she stabbed Sharon Tate, who was begging for mercy for her unborn child, she said, "I have no mercy for you, woman." She stabbed her at least 17 times.
And she NEVER said sorry for that. Even to this day, she never had, according to Tate's mother, who was one of those strongly opposing her release. I wouldn't know how the Christian leader arrived at the conclusion that she had repented or changed at all.
And if she's dying, it wouldn't make any difference at all if she dies in prison. (Actually, she's not within the prison anymore but in a hospital and her care is costing a lot of American taxpayers' money which should have gone to better causes.)
Here in my country, she would have been given the death penalty right away for such a heinous crime. | | Question/Answer | | Ch.Petrus.82 asked on 07/22/08 - Message from ATON/DOMINO My old buddy is doing just fine and he asked me to pass on this message
"Let my friends know I miss them, and my enemies can kiss my butt."
IMO, he is needed on this board, what do you think?
Pete
madima answered on 07/28/08:Hi, Pete!:-)
Please give Aton my best regards :-)
I've just been to his beloved homeland, Egypt, spent nine days there, three of them sailing the Nile on a felucca. Took a dip in the Blue Nile too, and never imagined it was that cold!
I should have loved to meet him in person, but I toured Egypt as an impulsive afterthought, after my 2- week assignment in Turkey. Perhaps, when I return we can meet, who knows?:-)
I've not been active on this board for the longest time... too busy traveling right now. Oh, but I miss you all! :-) | | Question/Answer | | Peric1es asked on 01/01/08 - Happy New Year To all the Experts on this Board, I wish you a great year ahead.
To all the Experts who have just left this Board, I would like to say: 'My Heart Will Go On'
Every night in my dreams
I see you, I feel you
That is how I know you
Go on
Far across the distance
And spaces between us
You have come to show you go on
Near, far, wherever you are
I believe, that the heart does go on
Once more you open the door
And you're here in my heart
And my heart will go on and on
Love can touch us onetime
And last form the lifetime
And never let go till we're gone
Love was when I loved you
One true time, I hold you
In my life will always go on
Near, far, wherever you are
I believe, that the heart does go on
Once more you open the door
And you're here in my heart
And my heart will go on and on
You're here, there's nothing I fear
And I know, that my heart will go on
We'll stay forever this way
You are safe in my heart
And my heart will go on and on
;) madima answered on 01/02/08:Happy 2008! :-) | | Question/Answer | | arcura asked on 12/31/07 - I want to take this time to......................... Wish all here a very happy and prosperous New Year and that 2008 will be all you hope it will be for you.
Long life and prospers with peace and kindness,
Fred madima answered on 12/31/07:Happy 2008, Fred! :-) | | Question/Answer | | arcura asked on 04/27/07 - DO ELEPHANTS REALLY HAVE GOOD LONG MEMORIES? HERE'S AN INTERESTING STORY!
In 1986, Mkele Mbembe was on holiday in Kenya after graduating from
Northwestern University. On a hike through the bush, he came across a young
bull elephant standing with one leg raised in the air. The elephant seemed distressed, so Mbembe
approached it very carefully.
He got down on one knee and inspected the elephant's foot and found a large
piece of wood deeply embedded in it.
As carefully and as gently as he could, Mbembe worked the wood out with his
hunting knife, after which the elephant gingerly put down its foot.
The elephant turned to face the man, and with a rather curious look on its
face, stared at him for several tense moments. Mbembe stood frozen,
thinking of nothing else but being trampled. Eventually the elephant
trumpeted loudly, turned, and walked away.
Mbembe never forgot that elephant or the events of that day. Twenty years
later, Mbembe was walking through the Chicago Zoo with his teenaged son. As
they approached the elephant enclosure, one of the creatures turned and
walked over to near where Mbembe and his son Tapu were standing. The large
bull elephant stared at Mbembe, lifted its front foot off the ground, then
put it down. The elephant did that several times then trumpeted loudly, all
the while staring at the man. Remembering the encounter in 1986, Mbembe
couldn't help wondering if this was the same elephant.
Mbembe summoned up his courage, climbed over the railing and made his way
into the enclosure. He walked right up to the elephant and stared back in
wonder. The elephant trumpeted again, wrapped its trunk around one of
Mbembe's legs and slammed him against the railing, killing him instantly.
Probably wasn't the same elephant.... madima answered on 04/27/07:Well... elephants have very good memories, they are very intelligent - with their huge brains - and they can be very affectionate, but any exotic animal handler in his right mind will tell you that what this "Mbembe" -and I have every reason to suspect that he's fiction - did is crazy.
No wild elephant will allow you to approach. They flee at the scent of man. I know because I have encountered enough wild elephants in the forests of Asia. If they feel threatened or cornered, they will charge. Injured elephants are the most dangerous.
You can't cozy up even to captive adult elephants at first encounter. I also know because I have volunteered in an elephant sanctuary in Thailand.
Even if you have hand-raised a male elephant, or you had been very good to him, he can kill you when he is in "musht", when he is "in season". Not out of meanness. That's just how they are.
But I have every reason to suspect this tale because Mokele Mbembe is the pygmies' mythical "elephant killer" in the Ndoki forests.
| | Question/Answer | | jjgoss asked on 03/13/07 - ..US couples seek separate bedrooms.. ..(BBC)More and more couples in the US are ordering separate master bedrooms in their new homes to help ensure a more harmonious marriage, research suggests.
A survey by the National Association of Home Builders has predicted that by 2015, 60% of custom-built homes will have two master bedroom suites.
The quest for better rest is behind the trend as experts say the lack of decent sleep can cause marital tension.
The option of having separate rooms has often improved marriages, they say.
Gopal Ahluwalia, of the National Association of Home Builders, said the trend was a "market-driven demand that's going to continue".
Separate bedrooms have often been taken as a sign of a failing relationship, but for many people they appear to be becoming a practical necessity.
Snoring, night-time visits to the bathroom, child-care requirements and shift-working can deprive couples of the recommended seven to eight hours of sleep per night.
The situation has reportedly become more acute as gender roles have changed - with both men and women juggling work and childcare duties.
Families expert, Stephanie Coontz, told the New York Times there were many couples "confident enough that they have a nice marriage, but they don't particularly like sleeping in the same room".
"I don't think it says anything about their sex lives," she said.
Nevertheless, some builders call the extra room a "flex suite" to avoid any embarrassment.
The trend is not restricted to the upper end of the market, the newspaper says.
Lana Pepper of St Louis said she had switched things around in her new apartment to cope with a restless husband.
"My husband is still alive. I would have killed him," she said.
..Do you think that's a good idea???..... madima answered on 03/13/07:I think that's a good idea :=)
Papa's snoring used to drive my ma crazy. She was losing so much sleep and found separate bedrooms necessary to preserve both her mental and physical health :=)
She was lucky. We used to have four bedrooms and papa was very understanding, quite a modern man, too (though they went back to sleeping together in later years when he was often very sick and wanted warmth and company). Here in my country, that's a radical idea, though one that's good news to home builders :=)
In my ma's generation, once the couples sleep apart, the marriage is over. We have no divorce law here but a good many keep up the appearance that all's well to the rest of the world in order to save face.
Many of my young married friends sleep in separate bedrooms now. One says her husband is like a boa constrictor, it's impossible to have a decent sleep with him. Another keeps different hours from her mate and they only disrupt each other's slumber if they climb together in one bed. | | Question/Answer | | purplewings asked on 05/01/06 - Angels: A 'Truth of Faith' This article is for all who wondered if angels are real or only a fantasy created by humans.
'From infancy to death humans are surrounded by their watchful care and intercession,' says the Catechism.
http://www.beliefnet.com/story/93/story_9314_1.html?WT.mc_id=NL24
The existence of angels--a truth of faith
The existence of the spiritual, non-corporeal beings that Sacred Scripture usually calls "angels" is a truth of faith. The witness of Scripture is as clear as the unanimity of Tradition.
Who are they?
St. Augustine says: "'Angel' is the name of their office, not of their nature. If you seek the name of their nature, it is 'spirit' if you seek the name of their office, it is 'angel': from what they are, 'spirit', from what they do, 'angel.'" [188] With their whole beings the angels are servants and messengers of God. Because they "always behold the face of my Father who is in heaven" they are the "mighty ones who do his word, harkening to the voice of his word". [189]
As purely spiritual creatures angels have intelligence and will: they are personal and immortal creatures, surpassing in perfection all visible creatures, as the splendour of their glory bears witness. [190]
Christ "with all his angels"
Christ is the centre of the angelic world. They are his angels: "When the Son of man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him. " [191] They belong to him because they were created through and for him: "for in him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or authorities - all things were created through him and for him." [192] They belong to him still more because he has made them messengers of his saving plan: "Are they not all ministering spirits sent forth to serve, for the sake of those who are to obtain salvation?" [193]
Angels have been present since creation and throughout the history of salvation, announcing this salvation from afar or near and serving the accomplishment of the divine plan: they closed the earthly paradise; protected Lot; saved Hagar and her child; stayed Abraham's hand; communicated the law by their ministry; led the People of God; announced births and callings; and assisted the prophets, just to cite a few examples. [194] Finally, the angel Gabriel announced the birth of the Precursor and that of Jesus himself. [195]
From the Incarnation to the Ascension, the life of the Word incarnate is surrounded by the adoration and service of angels. When God "brings the firstborn into the world, he says: 'Let all God's angels worship him.'" [196] Their song of praise at the birth of Christ has not ceased resounding in the Church's praise: "Glory to God in the highest!" [197] They protect Jesus in his infancy, serve him in the desert, strengthen him in his agony in the garden, when he could have been saved by them from the hands of his enemies as Israel had been.[198] Again, it is the angels who "evangelize" by proclaiming the Good News of Christ's Incarnation and Resurrection.[199] They will be present at Christ's return, which they will announce, to serve at his judgement. [200]
The angels in the life of the Church
[334] In the meantime, the whole life of the Church benefits from the mysterious and powerful help of angels. [201]
In her liturgy, the Church joins with the angels to adore the thrice-holy God. She invokes their assistance (in the Roman Canon's Supplices te rogamus. . .["Almighty God, we pray that your angel..."]; in the funeral liturgy's In Paradisum deducant te angeli. . .["May the angels lead you into Paradise. . ."]). Moreover, in the "Cherubic Hymn" of the Byzantine Liturgy, she celebrates the memory of certain angels more particularly (St. Michael, St. Gabriel, St. Raphael, and the guardian angels).
From infancy to death human life is surrounded by their watchful care and intercession. [202] "Beside each believer stands an angel as protector and shepherd leading him to life."[203] Already here on earth the Christian life shares by faith in the blessed company of angels and men united in God.
madima answered on 05/02/06:Thanks for the post, dear Loral :=)
I thank God everyday for His angels and how they have walked with me and kept me company all my life :=)
| | Question/Answer | | CeeBee2 asked on 04/24/06 - Walking a Labyrinth............................... Hank's question about the spiral reminded me of the labyrinth that combines the imagery of the circle and the spiral into a meandering but purposeful path. One walks through a labyrinth, and each walk is a personal experience. How one walks and what one receives differs with each walk. Some people use the walk for clearing the mind and becoming centered. Others enter with a question or concern. The time walking to the center can be used for reflecting, meditating, or praying. The time walking out can be used to integrate what has been received. The walk can be healing or even a profound experience. Sometimes the walk is just a pleasant walk. Each time is different.
Have you ever walked a labyrinth? madima answered on 04/24/06:I have walked natural labyrinths in the wilderness and inside subterranean caves (and I've even dived through labyrinths in underwater canyons) :=)
Those in the forest are usually animal trails that cross and criss-cross each other. Those in the caves had been carved by the action of water through millions or even billions of years.
I have always felt that each walk is a pilgrimage. Each walk also "empties" me and helps me get centered.
Sometimes, I pray while walking in the forest or in the caves. Sometimes, I just want to listen to the sound of the animals, the wind in the foliage, the dripping of water in the rocks, or to the rhythm of my own breathing.
Actually, you don't need a labyrinth. Among Buddhist forest monks whom I visited in Kanchanaburi, Thailand, they routinely do "walking meditations". They walk back and forth in a straight line in front of their meditation cottages in the midst of the wilderness.
However, I favor labyrinths because I've always believed that life is never a straight line. It has its twists and turns, its blind alleys and secret passageways where you can confront your personal Minotaur - the very essence of your Shadow self, the authentic soul that your waking consciousness sometimes deny.
And THAT is what makes life so exciting :=) | | Question/Answer | | purplewings asked on 04/06/06 - Is water God? A little long, but well worth it. http://www.beliefnet.com/story/181/story_18181_1.html
Masaru Emoto’s water-crystal photos first appeared in his book “Messages From Water” in 1999 and have stirred huge interest ever since. Dr. Emoto, a doctor of alternative medicine in Japan, has done experiments that he believes prove that water is responsive to the vibration (in Japanese, hado) of human thoughts—whether in words or writing—as well as to music and prayer. His work was featured in the New Age hit “What the Bleep Do We Know?” Beliefnet’s Wendy Schuman spoke to Dr. Emoto through a translator about his new book "The Secret Life of Water" and what his theories imply for the well-being of our planet. For more on his work, visit www.hado.net.
When people see the photos of water crystals in your books, it has a strong effect on them. Why do you think it’s caught on?
One [reason] is that everybody has that memory of the mysteriousness of water. And the second, human beings all have the same idea or description of what beauty is, so they all understand this is beautiful.
With the tsunami and the hurricanes and flooding that occurred recently, what do you think is going on with water?
I personally think the water is angry at us.
Because of our treatment of water?
Even though we can’t live without water, water has given us so much. Water has given us life. But we never tried to learn anything about water, or understand about water. So obviously water was unhappy about it, water had complaints about it. I do believe that water and human beings can be understood in the same way. If we were water and were doing so much for people, and more and more they’re not caring about us…
So you think the strength of the hurricanes could be from lack of respect and gratitude to water?
The whole imbalance of energy begins on the surface of earth. Think how much the population has grown--to 6.3 billion people. Before when there were not as many people, these natural disasters did not happen as often. But now that we have these imbalances of energy on the surface of the earth, this makes more imbalance within the distribution of water too. So in one place you have droughts, whereas in the other place it’s flooded with water. And this I think has a direct connection with our own cultural imbalance, and that resonates with the natural imbalance, and creates this whole catastrophe [tsunamis, hurricanes] as well. All the information is stored within water.
How did you get the idea that sending thoughts or emotions to water can affect it?
I started out as a businessman [in Japan], importing a medical device from the U.S. to alleviate pain. My contact in the States was a biochemist, Dr. Lee Lorenzen, who was studying and developing a kind of water that could be used for healing. This water, called "microcluster" water, could be measured by a device which analyzes and transfers hado [vibrations]. I became a healer in my personal way. I was able to use water to help people get better, and I was very good at it. I had these firsthand experiences that made me believe that water has the ability to retain information [through hado]. This kind of information can actually be taken [into water] through pictures, photographs, written words, spoken words, music—all those things can affect water. And, of course, that includes prayers.
Could you explain how prayer affects water and give an example?
Yes, there are so many. One of the first ones that was very surprising was our experiment with Fujiwara Dam in 1997. A Buddhist monk said he would go down to the water to pray for the water so we can purify the water. The reason why we were there was to get the sample of water before and after the prayer ceremony and see any difference in crystals. But even before we did [the experiment on] the crystals, right in front of our eyes the water started becoming clear. It was becoming different. Later on, a week later, we found out that a woman’s body was found in the water; a day after that the killer was caught. When we came back to look at the crystals, the crystals before the prayer came up with an image that looked like a woman in agony. So we believe this is the woman’s spirit that was actually projected. We looked at the water after the prayer and the crystal changed drastically. It was one of the most beautiful crystals we’ve ever seen. Can we talk about another example?
Does it involve a dead body?
(Laughs) It’ll be a little happier this time. I’d like to talk about an experiment we did in 1999 in Lake Biwa, the largest lake in Japan. Dr. Nobuo Shioya, who was 97 at the time—he just turned 103 this year—he led 350 people for a prayer ceremony at this lake. At 4:30 that morning, 350 people from all over Japan came together and said the following words...
The Grand Declaration
The infinite power of the universe has been crystallized to create a world of truth and great harmony.
They all said that phrase 10 times. This was done July 25, but on Aug. 27 there was an article in the Kyoto newspaper, which reported that there was something odd about the lake this year. Usually because the lake is so polluted by mid-August it creates a really bad odor, and about 300 people will call to complain. But oddly that year nobody called. This was because of the foreign algae that grew too much and caused the death of other algae. It was the dead, decomposing algae that smelled so much. But because that year there was not an outbreak of “kokadanamo” [the foreign algae], other algae were able to survive, and they were able to harmoniously live together. The grand declaration that we all chanted was all about harmonious living, so it really made sense.
Had the water crystals changed?
We [had] seen the crystals as well, and they were different. We didn’t know how that really worked until the next April. There was a report in another newspaper about scientists being successful in clearing water using ultrasonic waves. They were able to put in 200 hz of frequency, and that cleared up the pond. That gives us the reason why this worked.
This ultrasonic wave within water creates tiny vibrations, and that creates tiny bubbles not visible to the naked eye. The toxins in water like dioxin and PCB enter the bubbles, and they burst. That energy actually causes these harmful chemicals to break down into each different element. I think this explains what happened in Lake Biwa experiment. Because our chant was about taking that energy from the ultimate universe, and we said this with our pure hearts, we all believed in this. So when we said the words—they were about 300 hz—it reached to ultimate space, it reached that existence that has maybe 200,000 hz and echoes back onto earth into the water of Lake Biwa. And [it] did a similar thing that the ultrasonic wave had done.
Why is it significant that human beings are 70% water?
The message from water is: Be aware of giving love and thanks. If you can do that, the water will be happy and it will shine within. And that will help bring happiness into your own life. Don’t be selfish, because if human beings are selfish, water will be selfish. And that will create an imbalance of energy. That imbalance will pile up and finally burst into destruction. But I understand that it’s difficult to have that idea of love and thanks all the time. So just being conscious about it makes a difference.
Many people in the West learned about your work in the movie “What the Bleep Do We Know,” and have embraced it as a hopeful sign, maybe even a message from God. Where does God fit into your ideas about water?
Until I was about 40 years old, I had no thought about God. But when I started researching water, I couldn’t deny the existence of God anymore. Everything is created by vibration within the water, this I know through my own personal experience. Then I had to start thinking about what had made that happen, and I thought that nothing in this world is really a coincidence. Everything made sense, everything was perfectly planned. I couldn’t deny the fact of the existence of something great out there. Because without that greatness there won’t be any life, there won’t be an earth, there won’t be a universe. So I do believe that vibration is what created everything.
When you look at the phrase in the Bible, “In the beginning was the Word”—I personally understand it as “In the beginning there was the vibration.” God created water as a messenger to spread the vibration [hado in Japanese] that will create everything throughout the world. Water was the medium to spread this vibration throughout the world and to actually create something concrete out of the vibration. I was lucky enough to find these vibrations visually in the water crystals, and by doing so it was like finding my third eye. And I was able to learn more and look deeper within. I realized that God exists within, just like many other people have said.
What can we do in our everyday lives to improve the conditions of water?
First thing, I recommend everyone ignore all the negative information out there, be it television, newspaper, radio, magazine, anything. Don’t even look at it. Second, when you do encounter water anytime, you should say, or at least feel, thank you to water, love for water. Third, you should always be conscious of creating that positive vibration, either via positive information through the Internet, or maybe before you go to sleep and say out loud positive words with the intention of creating peace in the world.
madima answered on 04/07/06:Thanks for posting this, dear loral. I don't really regard water as a God, but more of as an essence of what I am and the world that I live in.
From my own range of human experience, I feel that I am water just as I am fire and earth and air :=)
Personally, I don't think that the tsunami and the floods are manifestations of water's anger at humanity. For me, they are just manifestations of water's great power and part of the natural cycle of creation and destruction.
The fire cycles - volcanic eruption, the forest blazes, the wind storms and the dust storms are the same...
I have known water in many of its forms and moods... as over 20-footer waves that played with my boat, as sweet mountain spring that I drink, as rain that I bathe in, as an eternal blue world that harbors the coral gardens I dive in, the sharks and whales and dolphins that I pursue... Water heals me and speaks to me. | | Question/Answer | | CeeBee2 asked on 03/29/06 - Christian funeral................................. Do you think this is a worthy poem to have read at my funeral?
Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there,
I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight
On the ripened grain.
I am the gentle Autumn's rain.
When you awaken in the morning hush,
I am the swift uplifting rush
of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry.
I am not there.
I did not die. madima answered on 03/30/06:It is worthy, dear Carol :=)
I wouldn't want my own death to be a time for grieving. It should be a celebration of my life, one that is well-lived.
The Hopis live very close to Mother Nature and it shows in their attitude towards life and death. And I can understand the meaning of the poem very well from the way I felt when papa died.
On that night, I was trekking alone in the heart of the jungle in Thailand and I felt that the whole forest, every living creature therein, is embracing me. A wild tiger showed itself to me, wild elephants and fierce Asian bears... But I never felt so protected, so loved in all my life. It was a very strange, yet very exhilerating experience...as if angels walked with me every step of the way...
I did not know at the time that the only man I ever really loved has died in mama's arms. (Well... I think I knew deep in my heart long before, I had all the premonitions, etc. but refused to entertain the thought.) There was no way that mama or anyone can reach me in the jungle. But papa did.
He is in everything that I love. He is love. Somehow, he saw to it that I will get the message. His job as a father is done and done well. He even lived almost half a century more than he expected to. I should not shed tears for him.
I wouldn't want those who love me to grieve for me too when I die :=) | | Question/Answer | | ladybugca asked on 03/20/06 - in need of prayer my dad is in need of prayer for he is dieing,the doctors say they dont know how he is still living.he can no longer see he cant walk no more and he cant talk.he has brain cancer and of the lungs, i guess what i am asking for is that he is not surffing.i dont know if he is saved or not so please say a prayer that someone can get through to him before it is to late.i thank everyone for your prayers and may the lord bless you all. madima answered on 03/22/06:Dear Mary, you and your family are in my prayers. | | Question/Answer | | HANK1 asked on 02/10/06 - JUST WONDERING ... ... if a person can go through life being highly intelligent while being dumb as a rock? (I know about street smarts)
HANK madima answered on 02/12/06:Sure, dear Hank :=)
If you equate "high intelligence" with high Intelligence Quotient (I.Q.)- the number used to express the apparent relative intelligence of a person that is the ratio multiplied by 100 of the mental age as reported on a standardized test to the chronological age, then I would say "yes".
Having a high I.Q. or even a genius level I.Q. does not guarantee that a person will have common sense or even an adequate E.Q. (Emotional Quotient), to make him/her tolerable to live with or enjoy a measure of success in his/her life.
Some of the world's most notorious criminals and serial killers showed above average IQ when tested. Their exceptional I.Q. did not enable them to control their destructive nature and even helped them in stalking their prey.
Likewise, idiot savants rate very high on IQ tests and they are geniuses with numbers/music, although they are classified as mentally retarded or autistic. They can never live normal lives.
I have known a good number of people who are members of MENSA, the organization for those with high IQ - the top 2 per cent of the population. Some of them are self-made millionaires, brilliant in business but dumb when it comes to their choices of a mate and utter failures in their domestic lives, among other things.
I believe that being "intelligent" - having a high I.Q. - does not make one an intellectual, nor does it give one common sense :=) | | Question/Answer | | HANK1 asked on 02/08/06 - PEER PRESSURE - SOLUTIONS: Great article about PEER PRESSURE:
"There is much you can do to help your teen resist negative peer pressure. The following are some of the best ways to help. • First, teach your teen by your own good example. Don't smoke, drink too much or drive too fast. Say no to friends when you need to. The teen can see that it's possible to say no and still have friends, to be sober and still have fun. • Second, practice assertiveness skills. Rehearse for the times when your teen will have to say no in a difficult situation when you can't be there to help. • Third, explore your teen's fears of being different. Saying no can make one feel different, and it's scary to face possible ridicule and rejection. Discuss what makes a true friend and how daring to be different can be mature and courageous. • Finally, help your teen find positive ways to feel good. Saying yes to self-esteem, enhancing hobbies, interests and activities can help him say no to harmful quick fixes. Standing up to peer pressure is one of life's greatest challenges. Your teen needs your loving help."
Source: "Helping Your Teen Resist Peer Pressure" - by Kathy McCoy, Ph.D.
Some parents need to copy this article and 'magnate' this advice to your refrigerator! Do you agree?
HANK
madima answered on 02/08/06:Dear Hank,
When I was a teen, I never really felt peer pressure. I set my own standards and abided by them without as much as a thought about my peers :=)
In truth, I never thought much about my peers because I can always get my way with people my age and was held in esteem even by those younger and those older than me, as early as I can remember.
To my parents' credit, they never smoked, never drank alcohol, or took drugs, never swore, and by doing so made themselves the best role model for me.
Furthermore, they encouraged me in everything that I did and reinforced my belief that I SHOULD be different because I am unique as an individual. Nobody else should be like me :=) | | Question/Answer | | purplewings asked on 02/06/06 - Two newish experts about to tangle? Jackreade & HerrAirhorn... HerrAirhorn - Jack, don't make fun of HerrAirhorn, for you vill regret it zumday.
Is the weather affecting everyone here? Anyone want to tangle with me? madima answered on 02/07/06:I'll bring you Mek, to tangle with! :=)
He's the Royal Bengal tiger from the Temple of the Tigers at Karnchanaburi, Thailand. I will tangle with him when I visit his home next week, dearest Loral :=)
Now, that's a handful of fur to tangle with! All 500 pounds of him! He's been brought up by Buddhist monks in the monastery, along with over 15 other tigers rescued from poachers, and is supposed to be gentle. Nevertheless,he's still a tiger! :=)
| | Question/Answer | | purplewings asked on 02/05/06 - Meditation and prayer-What's it all about Alfie? Why is it such a big deal for people? Is it because it's all neccessary to maintain the structure we desperately need?
Since God already knows what we've done, why, and even sees our hearts....why does prayer seem so important to us?
...and why meditate at all? madima answered on 02/06/06:Dear Loral,
It's no big deal to me, really :=)
And my life is anything but structured :=)
Prayer is as natural to me as conversation. It IS a conversation, as normal as one I would have with my parents, or my best friends. It is one-way, most of the time, inasmuch as I don't get to "hear" an answer the way I would in an ordinary dialogue... But sometimes, you just love to talk and the other party does not have to answer. It's just enough that he listens, or you get to believe he's genuinely listening.
I pray as soon as I wake up. But then, since I was a child, whenever I'm at home, the first thing that papa and mama would do when they wake up is to check if I'm up, kiss me and talk to me... They do the same thing before I sleep... I guess that's the same way I relate to my God, whom I regard the same way as my parents, anyway :=)
Meditation... I don't need it, I don't deliberately allocate a time for it... it just comes to me like prayers, naturally...
When I'm walking alone, riding in a bus on my way to my beat, or anywhere, when I'm writing, painting or doing anything relaxing, even just plain "looking at something", I just fall into a hypnotic rhythm. I can actually feel my heartbeat slowing down, making me conscious of nothing but my breathing until everything seems to stop, my mind is emptied, my brain ceases its endless chatter and I'm enveloped in that indescribably sweet inner stillness :=) | | Question/Answer | | excon asked on 02/04/06 - A Professional right NOT to deliver service
Hello Christians:
Let's say I was a cab driver, and I picked up a passenger who wanted to go to a bar. If I didn't believe in drinking, could I refuse to take him?
Let's say I was a waiter, and I had a very fat customer order a rich dessert. If I didn't believe in overeating, could I refuse his order?
Let's say I was a garbage collector, and I had some customers who were throwing out some very good stuff. Could I refuse to pick it up if I believed in using stuff till it wears out?
Let's say I worked at McDonalds, and I observed a lady abuse her children. Could I refuse to serve her because I don't believe in hitting children?
Let's say I don't smoke............
excon
madima answered on 02/05/06:
Definitely, you can :=)
I'm a journalist, but I can refuse to write about things that do not interest me or things I judge to be not worth my time. I refuse to kowtow to the sacred cows of my newspaper and nobody, not even my section editor, my editor-in-chief, my publisher or the owner of the paper can force me.
Of course, I don't own my newspaper and if I refuse to do an assignment or if I hit hard at the paper's sacred cows, or expose the wrongdoings of companies that are major advertisers or "secret stockholders" of my paper, I can get in BIG trouble. And I have been in trouble, many times :=)
Definitely, if my editor catches me, he can always kill my controversial story - and I have had many of my stories killed since I started my career...
But then, I can always put them out in other publications (and I have) or I can "bury" the "expose" either in the middle or in the tail-end of my story for my dear newspaper, which happens to be the biggest English broadsheet here... That ploy got my editor in VERY hot waters more than once... You see, there are a million ways of exercising your free will even if you do not own the world... :=)
If they force me to "sing praises" to corrupt officials and no-good companies who are huge advertisers, I can always say no (and I have) or delay the submission till kingdom come. The editor will have no choice but to toss the assignment to another reporter or write it himself.
Well, I can afford to say "no" because I have already established a good track record, I know I am very good at what I do. And I have no vested interests to protect.
I am not afraid of losing my job either because I know, I'll never be out of job... And my employers know that too! :=)
| | Question/Answer | | FormerJesusHelper76 asked on 01/28/06 - Fasting? Fasting? What are the different reasons why people fast. What is taught spiritually about fasting? Have any of you have had any experiance with fasting? Your thoughts greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance!
Joe madima answered on 01/29/06:I fast to detoxify my system.
In today's society, we are exposed to so much high-fat food and junk that our bodies do not really need. I feel my body periodically needs a "break" from all these. And I listen to what my body tells me.
I'm usually in fasting mode when I'm painting or writing "intensively", mostly during week-ends when I'm not traveling.
Actually, in these circumstances, "fasting" is quite practical. I don't know how to cook and I live alone, so it's easier to just take bread/crackers or water/milk/juice three times a day, when my stomach rumbles. It saves a lot of time and I don't lose my momentum working.
In a "creative mode", when all I do is either sit and paint on a canvas, or sit and type on a keyboard, my body requires little by way of fuel. And it's easier to be creative when your body feels "light" and your system does not have to allocate so much energy to digest and convert bulkloads of material.
However, when I am trekking, mountaineering or scuba diving in cold weather, I force myself to consume complex carbohydrates to fortify my physical defenses and boost my stamina. I actually bulk up several days before a strenuous activity.
As for the spiritual aspect... When you fast, you take away your attention from food for the physical body, so at a certain point, you get a temporary "high".
In the practice of mysticism, it is also quite known that food and sleep deprivation forces "open" the psychic centers of the body.
The "third eye", being an individual's last line of defense, opens automatically when both body and mind are weakened or debilitated, to see to it that the person survives.
| | Question/Answer | | hOPE12 asked on 01/25/06 - Love, and Peace between all! Hello Everyone,
What does Love mean to you personally?
Should we love those only who love us?
Shoule we love all people even if they think differently then we do?
Do you feel that love can be extended to all people? If so, why? If not, Why?
What is peace to you?
Should we extend peace to all people?
Can we offer our peace without giving into preasure from others and without standing up for what is right?
What if another does not wish to be peaceable with you, what can you do?
Take care,
Hope12 Think about this board when answering the
above questions. :) madima answered on 01/25/06:Love is just goodwill, the desire for the good of another, though of course, people have countless styles of loving.
My own primary personal love style is Eros -a passionate, highly idealistic love which burns high and burns fast, the love of an artist for a Muse, for what is beautiful and uplifting.
My secondary love style, according to the tests I took, is ludic-eros, a combination of idealistic love and playful love. My tertiary love style is ludus.
Unfortunately, I don't recall if I have even the slightest trace of Agape, which is the love of saints, the kind of love that Christians value.
Well, there are people and creatures whom I love but whom, I'm sure, do not love me. How can they, when they don't even know I exist? I love the creatures of the forests, the mountains and the seas. I still love some teachers who have long died and who could never love me back. But I don't care. When you love, you just love because you want to. That's all there is to it.
Sure, I love people who have faiths and beliefs different than mine. The difference, for me, just makes it all the more exciting. Besides, I look beyond the mirror and love not only those who approximate my reflection :=)
The fact that I can do that is evidence that you can extend love to everyone and everything - if you want to.
Peace is just inner stillness. If I'm at the state of perfect peace, which I sometimes achieve, I find that I can make people around me calm down too - without even trying.
When you are at peace, nobody and nothing can pressure you. You don't care about internal or external pressure because you are completely insulated from everything.
If another does not wish to be peaceable with me, there's nothing I can do about it, dear Hope. That's his/her problem, not mine. I'm at peace with myself and with the world, what more can I want? :=)
| | Question/Answer | | Erewhon asked on 01/22/06 - To smack or not to smack - that is the question!
Total smacking ban demand
Jan 22 2006
Britain's four child commissioners have called for a total ban on the smacking of children in the UK.
In a joint statement, the commissioners for England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales said there was "no room for compromise" on the issue.
An amendment to the Children Bill outlawing the "hitting" of youngsters was rejected in the House of Commons in November 2004.
The Bill instead allowed mild smacking, while barring any physical punishment which caused visible bruising.
But the commissioners criticised the attempt to define "acceptable" smacking and said that the UK was still falling foul of European human rights standards.
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The statement said: "Children have the same right as adults to respect for their human dignity and physical integrity and to equal protection under the law, in the home and everywhere else.
"There is no room for compromise, for attempting to define 'acceptable' smacking."
It added: "We call upon Government to allow further debate and free votes in the relevant parliamentary assemblies to introduce legislation that will ban the defence of reasonable chastisement throughout the UK."
Peter Clarke, children's commissioner for Wales, said a free Parliamentary vote was needed because it was an "issue of conscience".
Mr Clarke said: "(The 2004 vote) was not a free vote and we would like a free vote because we think it is an issue of conscience. We think that a free vote would be different. We want to remove the law of reasonable chastisement so that the common law of assault applies to children as it does to adults."
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My personal view is that smacking is a result of parental failure to cope with and teach the child in other ways.
Nanny 911 has demonstrated that physical violence towards children, even in the smallest degree, is not only unnecessary also counter-productive.
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Agree?
madima answered on 01/22/06:Totally agree, dear Ronnie :=)
My parents never smacked me. But then I was never that unruly. I never had to be.
Funny, I have observed that smacking is not effective, even with hand-raised baby animals, domestic or wild. Saying "No" firmly, silence, stopping play and other non-reinforcement of a negative behavior is much more effective.
If that's true with animals, what more with humans? | | Question/Answer | | Erewhon asked on 01/21/06 - "A rosebush by any other name .... "
Nepal's shrewd, smooth operator
By Rabindra Mishra
BBC Nepali Service
The lifting of the state of emergency by King Gyanendra three months after his meticulously planned royal coup may have come as a welcome move for many both inside and outside the country.
However, the king's move has to be seen in the wider context of his political and diplomatic manoeuvring in which he appears to be moving towards the outcome he has carved out for himself.
Immediately after taking over state power on 1 February, he silenced any possible backlash within the country by declaring a state of emergency and severely curtailing fundamental rights.
At the same time he tried to impress upon the general public that his move was genuinely aimed at restoring peace and re-starting the democratic process, which, ironically, he derailed after he sacked the elected government in October 2002.
And many ordinary Nepalis, fed up with the infighting among politicians and their inability to deal with the country's civil war, still seem to be prepared to give the king the benefit of the doubt.
The king knew he could not control international reaction but he has made it clear that "they will have to say what they have to say, and I will have to do what I have to do".
This attitude has been well reflected in many of the king's moves.
Despite domestic and international pressure to restore basic rights, he has appointed two of the country's most staunch royalists as senior aides in the cabinet, named regional administrators to consolidate his power and has taken several political leaders into custody under various pretexts.
He has also snubbed India, Nepal's strongest international critic.
For nearly two months the king refused to grant an audience to the Indian ambassador, who wanted to convey his government's concern about the king's move.
After the royal takeover, India, along with the United States (LOL) and Britain, froze all military aid to the Himalayan kingdom.
India's non-cooperation would have been of particular concern for Kathmandu as Delhi is the key provider of military assistance to the Royal Nepalese Army.
But the king did not want to be seen as worried by Delhi's reaction.
Instead, he tried to play off China against India - something his father, King Mahendra, had done in the 1960s. And he knows his father won that diplomatic tussle.
After King Mahendra sacked the elected government and took control of state power in 1960, the then Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, told the Indian parliament that the king's move was "a complete reversal of democratic process" in Nepal.
However, within six months of the dismissal of the government, India had signed four aid agreements with Nepal and normal friendship had been re-established.
The present king is probably hoping for a similar about-turn.
There are indications, especially after the king's meeting with the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, on the sidelines of the Afro-Asian summit in Indonesia, that Delhi is indeed changing its mind, slowly but surely.
Nevertheless, Delhi has made it clear that the pace of change will be quicker if the king speedily restores fundamental rights.
And this is exactly the impression the king wants to give to the world community, especially India, by lifting the state of emergency.
It may be little more than shrewd manoeuvring given the fact that the lifting of the emergency will not affect press censorship, imposed through separate legislation introduced after the royal takeover.
Similarly, those currently in detention will not be released if they were arrested under the Public Security Act.
Immediately after the lifting of the emergency the government also announced that no demonstrations, public meetings and picketing would be allowed in several places within the Kathmandu valley.
At the same time, the king has made it clear that the all-powerful Royal Commission for Corruption Control is there to stay. Yet he seems to be in complete control of the situation.
His morale must have also been boosted further by setbacks the Maoist rebels have suffered at the hands of the government army in two major battles since his 1 February takeover.
The king has been repeatedly emphasising that the people and the international community must choose either him or the rebels, whom he always refers to as criminals.
And, it seems, many are ready to choose him - despite the conditions attached.
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Are they a pair of brothers, or what?
madima answered on 01/21/06:Dear Ronnie,
If you are an ant between two elephants, the king of a tiny kingdom sandwiched between the two most populous nations on earth, and you can't even trust your own blood - remember Gyanendra's nephew murdered his own family and then killed himself, I guess you'll have to be a very smooth operator, if you want to hold on to your crown :=)
I am particularly interested in his kingdom because I am considering a solo three week trek to the base of Mt. Everest via Nepal this year. They have more established routes than Tibet. But many people are trying to dissuade me, however.
Some women - all Westerners - do trek there alone to this day. But the Maoist rebels reportedly waylay tourists and trekkers, asking for money and goods, although I have yet to hear of murders and kidnappings being committed.
So, the king is not totally in control, you might say. The rebels still rule the foothpaths - which are the only way in and out of Kathmandu. The air service is said to be still unreliable most times. | | Question/Answer | | Erewhon asked on 01/20/06 - Can you prove that you are alive?
Chilly welcome for Indian 'ghost'
By Faisal Mohammad Ali
BBC News, Bhopal
Raju Raghuvanshi's house in Mandla, Madhya Pradesh
Relatives say they were surprised to see Mr Raghuvanshi
An Indian man is being refused entry to his house - because his family say he is a spirit come back to haunt them.
Raju Raghuvanshi was greeted with cries of "ghost" and neighbours locking doors when he returned from a short spell in jail to his village in Madhya Pradesh.
He had fallen ill in prison and was taken to hospital. Relatives heard he had died and performed his last rites.
Now, unable to convince them he is alive and well, he is staying nearby and has asked the police for help.
I have now to prove that I am alive - but I will have them punished
Raju Raghuvanshi
Mr Raghuvanshi told the BBC his cousins had denied him entry to his house in the village of Katra, in Mandla district about 300km (200 miles) from state capital Bhopal, despite his protests.
They even dismissed his pleas that he could not be a spirit because his feet were properly attached to his body and not turned backwards, a characteristic which locals ascribe to ghosts.
The 45-year-old said his cousins insisted they had performed his last rites as required and so he should not come back to haunt them.
Exaggerated rumour
Mr Raghuvanshi, who is unmarried with no living parents or brothers, has had to move to the nearby village of Bamni while he struggles to convince his cousins to let him come home.
Map showing Mandla district in India's Madhya Pradesh state
"I have now to prove that I am alive," he said. "But I will have them punished."
Mr Raghuvanshi has turned to the police for help has now filed a case for defamation against his family.
His lawyer, Maonhar Soni, said the refusal of relatives to accept that his client is alive could also be because of Mr Raghuvanshi's property and the few acres of land that he owns.
The rumour that he had died and been cremated started when he fell ill and was transferred from prison to a hospital in another town for treatment, police chief NV Vayangankar said.
Ganeshi, the wife one of Mr Raghuvanshi's cousins, said that when they heard of his death they had informed the village elders, who had told them to carry out the rituals immediately.
"Later on he turned up and we were surprised to see him," she said.
Rural India remains deeply traditional and many believe that a dead man's spirit will not rest until the last rites are performed.
In this case, the last rites have happened and it is not clear what proof the villagers need to accept that Mr Raghuvanshi is alive.
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If you know how to prove that you are alive, how would you advise this gentleman to prove that he is alive?
madima answered on 01/20/06:Dear Ronnie,
For this poor guy, I don't think it's a matter of proving himself alive.
I think it's a matter of his kins wanting him to stay dead. I'd say, it's an issue of greed.
They have, after all, given him all the proper rites, "buried" him and most importantly, they must have already apportioned, if not sold, his property. He has no right to ruin their plans of living the rest of their lives without the burden of his company.
| | Question/Answer | | excon asked on 01/20/06 - The "ear" of God
Hello Christians:
A noted evangelical summed up his views of pre-war sermons by the church, and wrote about them in the NY Times. This is what he thinks they said: "Our president is a real brother in Christ, and because he has discerned that God's will is for our nation to be at war against Iraq, we shall gloriously comply."
Do you agree with his summation? Did you agree with the viewpoint? Do you agree with the viewpoint now?
Yes bucker, I know you do.
In a similar vein, and I might as well ask it here, I saw a report on the news last night about a woman who had sex with some well known evangelical, Bishop Paulk, for 14 years, all the while believing that, because he had the "ear" of God, it was God telling her to screw him. She didn’t look like a slut.
Does God SPEAK to anyone? Who? Bucker?
excon
madima answered on 01/20/06:I believe that God speaks to anyone and everyone through the voice of conscience.
But of course, as in every network, corporeal or ethereal, the message gets lost - if not in the "translation" then in the "deciphering".
Most often, we hear only what we want to hear, especially when we already have a definite mindset, or in the case of heads of state, a political agenda :=)
If I were a head of state who has commissions on a multi-billion dollar arms deal, thoughts of repaying weapons manufacturers to whom I am beholden, and dollar signs in my eyes, even if I "hear" God's voice telling me, "Make peace with all men," I will "discern" it with my particular self-interest in mind.
"Why, dear God! Before we can make peace, we must first kill all the enemies! How else can my compadres sell all their bombs and their war planes? I shall obey you most promptly and declare war right now. That way, we shall have peace!" | | Question/Answer | revdauphinee asked on 01/20/06 - Bloopers from Sunday School Students
The greatest miracle in the Bible is when Joshua told his son to stand still and he obeyed him.
Solomon, one of David's sons, has 300 wives and 700 porcupines.
Jesus enunciated the Golden Rule, which says to do one to others before they do one to you. He also explained, "Man doth not live by sweat alone."
It was a miracle when Jesus rose from the dead and managed to get the tombstone off the entrance.
madima answered on 01/20/06:I loved that! Especially the last one!!!! Jeez! It must be heavy! Several tons of solid rock!!!! :=) | | Question/Answer | | HANK1 asked on 01/17/06 - JUST WONDERING ... ... how HUMILIATION can be instilled in a person.
HANK madima answered on 01/17/06:Dear Hank,
Do you mean how can one feel humiliated?
Humiliation is very derogatory in connotation. It can be an act you deliberately bring on yourself when you have a low self-esteem or just being masochistic or it can be something that others bring on you with the sadistic intent of taking you down by a notch or making you feel bad because they have the illusion that they are superior or feel insecure about themselves that they need to trample on other's egos to feel good.
Humility, the quality of being humble, is a virtue that should be instilled from youth. People who are truly confident about themselves, their inner strengths and their place in the world are usually humble because they know they do not need to flaunt what they have.
But humiliation is a despicable act that one should not bring on others or on one's self.
Humiliation being an act, not a quality can never be instilled in an individual or in the self. You can only bring on a sense of humiliation in yourself or others. But ethically, you shouldn't.
| | Question/Answer | | Choux asked on 01/15/06 - Miracle Pill Updated: 07:15 PM EST
'Trauma Pill' Could Make Memories Less Painful
By MARILYNN MARCHIONE, AP
Researchers say the pill would reduce the effect of stress hormones that etch unpleasant events into memory.
(Jan. 14) - ""Suppose you could erase bad memories from your mind. Suppose, as in a recent movie, your brain could be wiped clean of sad and traumatic thoughts.
That is science fiction. But real-world scientists are working on the next best thing. They have been testing a pill that, when given after a traumatic event like rape, may make the resulting memories less painful and intense.
Will it work? It is too soon to say. Still, it is not far-fetched to think that this drug someday might be passed out along with blankets and food at emergency shelters after disasters like the tsunami or Hurricane Katrina.""
What do you think of a pill to reduce the intensity of terrible events, traumatic events that can ruin a person's life???? madima answered on 01/15/06:Dear Mary Sue,
Unfortunately, if you will believe some psychologists, the problem is not just with the memory of our own life events that we store and sublimate. We are not really "alone" inside our heads.
Each of us also holds the memory of the "collective". Our consciousness, especially in the altered state, can access the collective unconscious - and in some instances, the superconscious.
We can access the memories of humankind, other people, other races, even the generations that have lived before us.
This, they say, is the reason why some people who do not even have any prior history of trauma, can be prone to depression, violence, etc.
The "collective consciousness" holds much wisdom of the ages. But it also holds much darkness.
So, even if scientists can find a pill to "wipe out" an individual's immediate past life history, there's no way they can prevent the individual from dreaming and accessing other-consciousness in the altered states.
Since time immemorial, our own ego already found its own way to "erase" trauma. That's why we have the so called "sublimation" of memories as a psychological defense mechanism. But the repressed memories always find a way to sneak back, especially in dreams and during hypnosis.
Man can always manipulate his conscious mind. The pills can work there. But he can never fathom and tame his subconscious.
The best way to deal with trauma is still to uproot it, no matter how painful it is, no matter how long it takes, and learn to deal with it on the conscious level. | | Question/Answer | | ROLCAM asked on 01/14/06 - What do you want? If Jesus asked you :- What do you want ?
What will your answer be ? madima answered on 01/14/06:I'd say, if He so wills it, can He please bring the rains to Kenya now and the rest of Africa to end the suffering there?
Can He please stop the wanton killing of endangered creatures and the destruction of nature... and end the wars that plague mankind?
But it's just wishing on my part and of course, if He does not answer, I'll understand. | | Question/Answer | | arcura asked on 01/13/06 - An odd ball, or should I say “tossed”, religion >< >< >< Frisbeetarianism…………………
Do you feel that you are being tossed from on thing to another during life?
Are you being tossed back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, from one day to the next?
Is your life mainly Back and forth from home to work to home to work?
And at work going from one thing to another then back again?
Maybe even at play or pleasure you go back and for from one activity to another such as from the table to the bar and back again, or while playing tennis back and forth goes the ball while you are going from the far court to the net and back again?
If so then perhaps you need to believe in Frisbeetarianism.
In that you believe then when you die your soul goes up….
Up in the roof that is, and it gets stuck there. madima answered on 01/13/06:No way. My life does not have the pattern of a frisbee being tossed back and forth. Never did :=)
My life has never been routine, even from the beginning. It follows a rhythm of its own, though never predictable, like the tides of the oceans that I love.
Sometimes it takes me up on tsunami-sized waves, sometimes it lets me rest on a serene, glassy surface, sometimes it takes me to the greatest depths or sets me adrift on the shallows... But I'm always on the move, always in different places, constantly learning and hungering for more. | | Question/Answer | | arcura asked on 01/13/06 - Are your cell phone call records secure? No! No way! I see on the news today that anyone can buy other people’s cell phone records even if the caller has a password for his cell phone calls.
Where is the ACLU when you need them?
Answer: Out harassing Christianity and troubling traditional Americana.
Peace and kindness,
Fred. madima answered on 01/13/06:From what I know, the cellular companies in my country "erase" their records every few months or so. Or else it will clog their networks.
We only have over 30 million cellular subscribers but the volume of calls, SMS and MMS are great - millions by the day. It will be extremely expensive for the cellular service providers to "store" all the data even if their network capacity is into the petabytes or even by the yottabytes (which is not the case at present).
I know you can have a password for locking the keypad of your cellphone so other people can't just dial or use it. But I haven't heard of a password for cellphone calls and I've been using cellphones for ten years now.
While those manning the networks of a cellular service provider can indeed "tap" into calls, it is not that easy to retrieve entire cellphone records of ordinary citizens past a given period, nor is it that cheap or hassle-free for the party who will order it.
I know of people who tried :=)
But of course, in America, there might be other ways! :=) | | Question/Answer | | paraclete asked on 01/13/06 - Just a simple request? Friends. I'm beginning a journey to central China tomorrow and I would appreciate your prayers. I have heard there might have been an earthquake somewhere near my destination, so I would appreciate an uninterrupted journey. When I get back I'll tell you what this is about but in the meantime, please keep my son and myself in your prayers please.
This might be a sample of what I will have to put up with
Should Someone Ask For Your Father
By: asianjoke.com
A man who was going away for some time enjoined his son: "If anyone asks for me, you can tell him that your father has been called away to attend to a minor matter and be sure to ask him in for a cup of tea."
Afraid that his idiotic son might forget his instructions, he wrote them down upon a slip of paper and gave it to his son, who tucked it into his sleeve and took it out to look at every now and then.
Three days passed without anyone coming to see his father. Thinking that he had no more use for that slip of paper, the boy committed it to the flames. On the fourth day, however, an unexpected visitor dropped in.
"Where is your father?" asked the visitor.
The boy immediately put his hand into his sleeve and fished around for the slip of paper. As he could not find it, he ejaculated:"No More."
Taken aback, the visitor asked:
"No more? When did it happen?"
"Burnt last night." madima answered on 01/13/06:Have a great trip, Brian. You're in our prayers... If this is your first time there... Don't worry about the earthquake but be careful about the water.
I've been in China four times last year. Keep your ears open...The food is heavenly but bear in mind that their English is not that great. I nearly fell from my seat when my hostess offered me "Flied lice" at dinner... It turned out she meant "fried rice"! :=) | | Question/Answer | | CeeBee2 asked on 01/11/06 - Beauty or Truth John Keats (1795-1821) wrote at the end of "Ode on a Grecian Urn,"
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st, 'Beauty is truth, truth beauty-—that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'
Is beauty truth and truth beauty? If not, why not? If you had to choose one or the other to rule your life, which would you choose and why? madima answered on 01/12/06:Truth is not necessarily beautiful, in my opinion, and what is beautiful is not necessarily true.
Suffering is a truth of human existence. It has never been beautiful for most of us, not when we see how it devours others, most especially the people and creatures we love.
Physical beauty is most often an illusion. In a woman, it can be a function of skillful make-up, good clothes and accessories - or it can be the skill of a great plastic surgeon. Just as the beauty that you see onstage is a trick of lights and paints. I should know, because I grew up in the theatre :=)
But both truth and beauty rules my life. It cannot be otherwise. Truth is inescapable, whether you choose to live by it or not.
Beauty, on the other hand, is something you choose to find... I find it everywhere in the most ordinary people, things and places precisely for that reason :=)
Keats has always been my favorite poet but what I really favor are his lines in Endymion: "A thing of beauty is a joy forever, its loveliness increases, it will never, pass into nothingness but still will keep, a bower quiet for us and a sleep."
| | Question/Answer | | arcura asked on 01/07/06 - Got a Cell Phone? Court order - Dubya's guys may be listening. Posted 1:00 AM Eastern
by David Bresnahan
January 3, 2006
NewsWithViews.com
Summary: Despite three court rulings that cell phone tracking by government agencies without a court order is illegal, a fourth court ruling has now authorized blanket spying. The government can now use cell phone data to track physical location, without a search warrant or probable cause.
NEW YORK -- A federal court issued an opinion permitting government agencies to use cell phone data to track a cell phone's physical location, without a search warrant based on probable cause.
The ruling seems to be in line with recent revelations about President Bush authorizing secret, warrantless wiretaps. The court opinion on Dec. 20, 2005 went largely unnoticed by the media or the public, but may have major ramifications on privacy rights and issues.
Magistrate Judge Gabriel W. Gorenstein of the United States District Court, Southern District of New York issued the opinion, despite three previous rulings to the contrary by other judges. There is no party to appeal, so the ruling paves the way for government agencies in all states to begin cell phone tracking without legal difficulty.
There was only one party in each case that was rejected by other courts, the same party in the case that was given approval -- the Department of Justice. The DOJ did not appeal the cases it lost, and there is no party to appeal the case it won.
"What other new surveillance powers has the government been creating out of whole cloth and how long have they been getting away with it?" commented the non-profit Electronic Frontier Foundation on it's web site.
The DOJ revealed an attitude that a court order is not needed in the brief submitted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Brown: "A cell phone user voluntarily transmits a signal to the cell phone company, and thereby 'assumes the risk' that the cell phone provider will reveal to law enforcement the cell-site information."
When the issue comes up in other courts there will be no case of appeal for judges to review for guidance, creating the more likely situation that each subsequent case will be easier and easier for the DOJ and other government agencies to win, say legal analysts commenting in various blogs.
Legitimate needs for tracking have been used by commercial vendors and government agencies to justify monitoring of all consumers with a cell phone. The checks and balances put in place to protect individual privacy, such as court orders, are in jeopardy by blanket use of tracking systems that have no accountability, according to government watchdog groups and privacy advocates. madima answered on 01/08/06:Here in my country, they managed to tap the cellphone call of no less than our very own President when she was trying to manipulate the election results :=)
You must have heard of the "Hello, Garci" tapes... It made the rounds nationwide and was even sold as a ringtone.
Well, I'm a telecom reporter and I cover the cellphone duopoly here. The husband of a good friend heads the network division of one carrier and we found out he tracked his wife (before they got married recently - he's quite a jealous man) when she refused to see him and disclose her whereabouts after a big spat.
You can track the physical location of a person only for as long as that person's cellphone is on and for as long as that person is within the range of a cellsite. But the location is not that specific. The range of a cellsite spans many kilometers, so it's still like looking for a needle in a haystack, the subject's specific location can't really be pinpointed.
Everybody taps into everybody else - the government, the networks, everyone who has access to somebody in either of them or both.
Unfortunately, I don't think anyone can do anything about it. If you do not want to be "tracked", don't turn your cellphone on, or just don't use cellphones.
| | Question/Answer | | ATON2 asked on 12/20/05 - That time again! Family:
Will be heading South for the Holidays tomorrow. May be incommunicado for a short while. In the meantime I want to wish you all, a Happy, Healty...Kwansannukamas!!!!
Or as Tiny Tim was heard to mutter under his breath:
"God help us, everyone...here comes that damn Plumb pudding again". madima answered on 12/21/05:Merry Christmas!!! Have a great holiday!!! :=) | | Question/Answer | | ROLCAM asked on 12/18/05 - Have you ever been touched by an angel ? Touched By An Angel?
The popular perception that Angels are whimsical, social do-gooders, childish cherubs or simple go-for’s, is completely false. The Bible makes clear that righteous angels are sent forth from the throne of God as powerful ministering spirits to assure that God's plan for mankind is accomplished. madima answered on 12/19/05:I've been embraced by my angels, warmed by them when I got cold, lulled to sleep when I had a bout with insomnia... among countless other things they have done for me.
I feel they sit with me when I'm painting, they walk with me when I go out alone in the wilderness or even in the streets of every city I visit... they dive with me to the blue waters when I go chasing after sharks and whales...
Whenever I feel tired or unwell - which is rare - I just ask them to tuck me under their great wings, where I feel safest :=)
| | Question/Answer | | HANK1 asked on 12/18/05 - A GIFT FOR YOURSELF AT CHRISTMAS: "It is difficult to watch couples in love when your relationship is not working well, or if you are single and don’t want to be. It is difficult to see others spend money if you have none or are struggling. Making peace with unfulfilled desires is not the same as giving up on your dream or surrendering to never having it fulfilled. It is simply a way of having peace now, one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself. This is not the same as denial. Peace is acceptance, a fundamental way of embracing reality as it is right now. Peace frees you up to take action to cause different results in the future."
Source: Third Age Blog
Are you going to give yourself this Christmas present?
HANK madima answered on 12/18/05:I honestly can't think of anything more to wish for this Christmas, dear Hank! :=)
Well... I have no money, for one. No disposable cash, really... But nobody believes it and no one can tell from the way I live :=)
All my friends tell me I'm extraordinarily lucky! A few days ago, I just won a Nokia 9500 communicator worth close to $1K in a Christmas raffle! I also won a new TV set, a DVD player and the EXACT amount of cash I need to tide me over my amortization for December, plus an overnight stay for two in a 5-star hotel! I was given gift checks worth half a grand, US dollar equivalent, that will take care of all my grocery requirements! :=)
My passport is almost stamped full though it has another year before expiry! I had at least four international trips this year, all expenses paid, five-star accommodations, over half a hundred local trips to the top destinations here. I've been to my fave 5-star resort islands TWICE in one year - that's phenomenal!
When I looked at the pages of one of my competitor top dailies on my birthday last Friday (December 16), I found my picture staring back at me! I was in scuba gear, moving an almost 100 pound block, building an artificial reef for the corals I love! (It was during my dives for EcoRescue this month.)
I have complete happiness, peace of mind, perfect health, unconditional love, zest for life, adventure when I want it... What more can I ask?
:=)
| | Question/Answer | | Erewhon asked on 12/11/05 - ¡El discurso en español es un crimen y será castigado!
A junior high school student was suspended for speaking Spanish at lunch time and again later in the day.
A le invitan que comente. Gracias.
madima answered on 12/12/05:Dear Ronnie,
For my first ten years of schooling - elementary and high school at Sacred Heart College, we were fined for every non-English word we uttered during class hours and in the periods we were inside the confines of the school. Indeed, it was “expensive” for us not to speak English, though no one has been suspended – that’s too much. Detained, yes.
Ironically, the school administrators forbade us to speak Tagalog (it is now known as Pilipino), our native language, in our own country even though we were no longer a colony of the US!
I guess the motive of my school was to enforce English speaking so we will be fluent in the language. True enough, English became the language of our thoughts and most students who received their education in private schools were actually MORE fluent in English than in Pilipino!
The only reason I became a balanced bilingual – fluent in both English and Pilipino – was because my father read poetry and literary works to me in BOTH languages from the time I was in the cradle! Add to that, I went to the state university for my AB and graduate studies and honed both my Pilipino writing and translation skills there.
Unfortunately, many of my countrymen are trapped in the two languages, understanding/speaking/writing enough to go by but not gaining true proficiency in either.
Some say school administrators should have enforced Spanish speaking to us in the same way, so we would have learned our Spanish well. After all, the Spaniards colonized us longer - for over 300 years; the Americans, for less than a century :=)
But they did not.
Por que?
No lo se! :=) | | Question/Answer | | Choux asked on 12/03/05 - Pleasure Do you allow yourself to have pleasure?
"Contrary to what some people might believe, there is nothing wrong with having pleasures and enjoyments. What is wrong is the confused way we gasp onto these pleasures, turning them from a source of happiness into a source of pain and dissatisfaction."
How do these words fit into the Christian beliefs?
What are your comments? madima answered on 12/04/05:I've always felt I have a right to my pleasure. That's the whole point of living. Choosing to be happy, choosing to please yourself.
I think that is the essence of the Christian precept: Love yourself.
You cannot love others unless you love yourself. You cannot give pleasure and make life pleasurable for your fellowmen unless you know what pleasure is :=) | | Question/Answer | | Choux asked on 12/03/05 - Who are You? Matthew Flickstein said, "How much of your life do you spend looking forward to being somewhere else?"
When I was much younger, I was always looking toward the future, what I would be doing then would "make me happy/contented/fulfilled".
Over the years, I learned that I must live and be honestly present in my life each day, live each day...no matter my life's circumstances.
What are your thoughts about Mr. Flickstein's observation??? madima answered on 12/04/05:I've always lived in the present, dear Mary Sue, because that's all I have and that's exciting enough! :=)
All of my life is spent living in the moment.
The past is dead. I can never get back to it, no matter how beautiful or glorious - or erroneous it was.
I feel that the future is too far away for me to look forward to - though to a great degree, I've always been precognitive. I could "see" the major events that will happen in my life years in advance.
But I've always thought, tomorrow may never come. Tomorrow, I may be dead, so why not live today, this very second, to the hilt? :=) | | Question/Answer | | Erewhon asked on 11/27/05 - Will you put your hand to ..... ..... the killing of witches?
When is a good time for you to spend a week or so rounding them up and slitting their throats? madima answered on 11/27/05:Nope, dear Ronnie.
I don't really find anything wrong with Wicca or paganism, especially in the way they honor Mother Nature. Add to that, every human being has the right to his own belief.
If Wiccans and Pagans will fortify environmentalists in fighting against the global deterioration of the earth, sea and sky, for me that's great! I believe the earth we live in sure needs it!
Some of the ethnic tribes I came in contact with in the mountains and along the coasts are pagans and pantheists. I believe that their practices in preserving nature, in not engaging in wasteful killing and hunting, are to be emulated.
As I've said before in an earlier posting... I'd rather kill the poachers, anytime, anywhere. | | Question/Answer | | Choux asked on 11/26/05 - Down Memory Lane Remember we just answerd what we thought were the most important things in life? All good answers. Very enjoyable to read.
How about this. What did you think were the most important things in life at the following ages::
Twelve
Sixteen
Twenty-One
Forty
Fifty-five
YES, WE ALL WERE YOUNG ONCE!!! madima answered on 11/26/05:The most important things in my life at the following ages:
1. Twelve - I never thought I'd live to be twelve, anyway. Remember, the doctor told me I'll be dead before my twelfth birthday? :=)
But when I did see my twelfth birthday, I made a bet with papa that I'll get to join the national beauty pageant and I vowed I'll see the whole world! Get to see places, people and things my parents never even imagined!
The most important thing in my life then was just living to the hilt.
At twelve, I was highschool muse, valedictorian and the most awarded student in my school... but my first love died. He was 15.
2-Sixteen - I've made it to the national scene, was a contestant at the Miss Philippines beauty pageant and won the bet with papa. I was also in college, landing lead roles in professional theater, publishing poetry, short stories and painting to my heart's content.
There were too many men around. But the most important thing in my life was the stage.
3.Twenty-One - I was taking my M.A., at the same time, I've established myself as a lead actress in the country's professional theater company. I also tried my hand as a playwright, stage director and translator. On top of everything, I had commercial modeling stints.
I had my first really serious romantic relationship but the most important thing in my life was still the theater - the fame and the ecstasy. Men had never been a priority :=)
4. Forty - Sorry, I'm not there yet, dear Mary Sue! Actually, when I got to be twelve, I thought, for sure, I'll be dead before I reach forty! They all say life begins at the fourth decade, but I don't know... Perhaps I'll never know? :=)
| | Question/Answer | | Choux asked on 11/25/05 - Priorities """ Some people have lost track of the important priorities in life but ... that's their problem.""" quote from Hank on previous question.
Just wondering what everyone thinks are the most important priorities in life.
Comments... madima answered on 11/26/05:Mine has always been my freedom and happiness :=)
Everything else comes after :=) | | Question/Answer | | HANK1 asked on 11/26/05 - JUST WONDERING
... what you would take with you if you had to leave your home in five minutes.
HANK
madima answered on 11/26/05:My IBM thinkpad and my pocket PC. Everything's there. My rosary's always in my pocket :=) | | Question/Answer | | paraclete asked on 11/23/05 - So! it's come to this? Buy your way to immortality
From:
November 24, 2005
A CATHEDRAL is offering people the opportunity to have their face immortalised in stone on its spires.
St Paul's Cathedral in Melbourne has come up with a novel fundraising plan for people to have their likeness carved on one of about 170 stone figures - for an estimated $50,000 each.
Anglican Dean of Melbourne David Richardson hoped people would jump at the chance to have their likeness on earth forever as a "kind of immortality".
"People aged 60 would like to say to their grandchildren, 'Up there is your grandfather carved in stone'," he said.
Buyers have three options: a realistic sculpture, a caricature, or a grotesque - a bizarre gargoyle-like sculpture.
Now which do you think would be the way you want to be remembered? madima answered on 11/25/05:Certainly not in a sculpture in a spire :=)
Cathedrals crumble under earthquakes and are buried under lava flows. Whole continents sink beneath the sea.
I don't really like to be remembered because I don't live in memories myself. I exist for the present, not for the past. I just love living my life to the hilt and mounting the spirit of the given moment.
I'm happy in the here and now, so, I don't really care if I'll be dead tomorrow. For me, dying and being forgotten doesn't matter at all :=) | | Question/Answer | | hOPE12 asked on 11/21/05 - Homeless People, Who are they really? Hello Everyone,
Maony people sterotype homeless individuals thinking they are smelly, grimy wino's. But in reality are the homeless truly these kinds of individuals?
In some countries where there are homeless street children there are gangs that are made up of the meda and police, and society in general feel that street children or homeless children present a threat to what they call a civilised society and so they set up death squads and self proclaimed vigilantes to kill these children, about three every day in places like Rio de Janeriro and other countries.
The United state is suppose to be the richest country in the world and yet we have homeless people. I am thinking about that these days because I and my family are looking for a new home and this issue crossed my mind. How can we live in the richest country ever and have homeless adults and children? Are we headed in the same direction as other countries such as Rio de Janeriro where these homeless ones are killed because of lack of knowledge of how a person can become homeless? What is the real causes of homelessness?
1- Because of the inability of the government to give significant resources towards the right of the homeless to adeuate housing.
2- Very bad regulations and inefficient plans cause confusion and no housing for the homeless.
3- Homelessness is a sign of poor money management on the part of housing programs in the community.
4- Lack of knowledge and training of those in charge of dealing with homeless people. Children and adults should receive respectful and be regarded as potential assets to the comunity rather then a burden or looked down on.
As a caring person either Christian or not, do you feel there is hope for the homeless?
I you were in position to help the homeless, what would be your solution?
What do you think you can do personally to help adults and children who are homeless here in the United States, starting in your own community?
Take care,
Hope12 madima answered on 11/21/05:In my country, it is not just utter poverty that causes homelessness.
Many people who are rightful owners of their lands are displaced because of government corruption and greed.
Poor people who rightfully occupy lands can still be driven out with little or no compensation (even if they have titles to such lands) if some big multinational companies take interest in their property for development, mining and the like.
Ethnic groups can be driven out of their ancestral lands by huge mining and lumber firms, as well as real estate developers.
Of course, this is done in collusion with corrupt government officials. One of our most corrupt agencies is the Bureau of Lands. Officials there can issue "new" land titles for lands with existing titles.
They can even issue private titles for government or public lands and sell off the many "unclaimed" islands, hills and mountainsides as well as protected areas and parts of national parks and forest sanctuaries in our archipelago!
| | Question/Answer | | Laura asked on 11/21/05 - Major life changes ahead for us.. After 27 years working for GM the plant here in OKC is closing down.
30,000 people across the nation will lose their jobs with GM by the end of 2007. My husbands plant will be one of the first to close in early 2006.. With so many people losing their jobs it is unlikely that we could go to another plant in another state.
This was very unexpected for this plant as they had recently done alot of upgrades in the plant and installed a state of the art paint shop investing alot of money into it. We are hoping that they will offer an early retirement plan. I would hate to see hubby work somewhere for so long and walk away with nothing. But we are just a few of many who will be in the same boat..
Oh the things life throws at you.. For those who have been there and done that..You are still here..Life did not end..Ewww I'll have to get a job :-O I have no real skills because i've always been a stay at home mom/wife. I can type well, and I like to help people so maybe i'm not too old to get my feet wet in the job world.. Please keep all of these people who are going to lose their jobs in your thoughts. It won't be easy for alot of them. Thanks. Laura madima answered on 11/21/05:Hi, Laura,
Don't worry, everything will be ok.
Perhaps you and your husband can invest the money he gets from his early retirement in a high-yield fund or other financial instruments? And he has years of experience that will be of value to him as a consultant elsewhere.
Perhaps you can also try working for a BPO or a call center from the comfort of your own home? It's a good paying job and studies have found that housewives working from home are the most efficient in the call center industry. All you need is a month or two of training.
God be with you and your family. | | Question/Answer | | Choux asked on 11/18/05 - What is Moral; What is Immoral "" ***Nobody is immoral just because someone else says they are.*** Keeping this in mind is important. It comes in handy when self-righteous moralists take the stage and try to denigrate and punish those who disagree with them. ......
...... morality is personal conscience. That's why hiding a runaway slave before the Civil War, though totally immoral and illegal by Southern standards and Supreme Court dictate, was moral. That's why hiding a dissident from the state police was moral under Stalin, and harboring persecuted Jews under Hitler. It's moral to oppose unjust laws, as Rosa Parks and Gandhi did. One of the key ways that society advances is by having enough "immoral" people who follow their conscience.
This all seems so basic, but we face a generation that is being pounded by reactionary belief to the contrary. It would be all too easy to grow up in present-day America to believe that
--Hurricane victims, being poor and uneducated, are better off having their lives ruined so that they can collect government aid.
--Any Muslim-American should be regarded as a potential terrorist.
--Whatever deception it takes to get into a war is morally justified.
--Atheists are bad people. So is anyone who won't let a child pray in school.
--Abortions defy the command of God (even though the Bible is totally silent on the matter).
--Patriotism is more important than individual conscience. Likewise, the need for law and order is absolute.
--Free speech should be squelched in dissidents because they are troublemakers.
--Liberalism is the same as laissez-faire sexual behavior and tolerance for social losers. (Liberals also smoke pot.)
The list could go on ad infinitum, for once the moralists are in the saddle, their critique of everyone unlike themselves knows no limits. They ignore the fact that the majority of the public doesn't believe the Bible literally, backs the right to choose an abortion, and opposes the current war. What moralists want to do isn't convince anyone, however; they want to intimidate and crush them. How moral is that?"" Cut and Paste
Any comments? madima answered on 11/19/05:Indeed, morality for me is personal conscience. It has nothing to do with what a church, a society or an institution says is right.
In my code of morality, it is not wrong to have abortion, especially if the girl is a victim of rape, if she is an unfit mother duped into unwanted pregnancy or if the pregnancy endangers her life. It is not wrong to have euthanasia when the patient himself wants it for a dignified death. It is not wrong to kill in defense of your own life or that of someone or something you love. | | Question/Answer | | Choux asked on 11/18/05 - The Sin Box The Sin Box
Why have Catholics stopped lining up at the confessional?
By Andrew Santella
Posted Thursday, Nov. 17, 2005, at 2:13 PM ET
A Catholic friend of mine recently went to confession at her parish church for the first time in years. She had personal reasons for wanting to seek absolution, but there was this, too: She said she'd long felt a little sorry for the priests sitting alone in their confessional boxes, waiting for sinners to arrive.
A generation ago, you'd see a lot of us lined up inside Catholic churches on Saturday afternoons, waiting to take our turn in one of the confessionals. We'd recite the familiar phrases ("Bless me Father, for I have sinned"), list our transgressions and the number of times we'd committed them, maybe endure a priestly lecture, and emerge to recite a few Hail Marys as an act of penance. In some parishes, the machinery of forgiveness was so well-oiled you could see the line move. Confession was essential to Catholic faith and a badge of Catholic identity. It also carried with it the promise of personal renewal. Yet in most parishes, the lines for the confessionals have pretty much disappeared. Confession—or the sacrament of reconciliation, as it's officially known—has become the one sacrament casual Catholics feel free to skip. We'll get married in church, we'll be buried from church, and we'll take Communion at Mass. But regularly confessing one's sins to God and the parish priest seems to be a part of fewer and fewer Catholic lives. Where have all the sinners gone?
On the surface, the drop-off in confessors might seem like no surprise.
To congregations scarred by the recent sex-abuse scandal, the thought of turning to a priest for forgiveness might not hold the attraction that it once did. And regular penance is not the only Catholic sacrament that has declined in practice recently: The scant number of young Catholic men training for the sacrament of holy orders, or ordination, for example, has left the church with a serious shortage of priests.
But it's strange that so many lay Catholics should have abandoned the confessional even while secular culture is increasingly awash in confession, apology, and acts of contrition of every sort. Parents own up to pedophilia on Jerry Springer. Authors reveal their fetishes and infidelities in self-lacerating memoirs. On Web sites like Daily Confession and Not Proud, the anonymous poster can unburden his conscience electronically. The confessions on these sites are displayed in categories borrowed from Sunday school lessons: the Ten Commandments or the seven deadly sins. At least one posting I read was framed in the language of the Catholic confessional. "Bless me, Father, for I have sinned," it began before going on to catalog a series of mostly mundane misdeeds. (Others are simply odd: "I eat ants but only the little red ones. They're sweet as hell and I just can't get enough.")
All this public confessing testifies to the impulse to share our deepest shame. So, why isn't that impulse manifesting itself in Catholics practicing the ritual that was created expressly for that purpose? Of course, Catholic penance—whether it's done in a confessional booth or in a face-to-face meeting with a priest, an innovation introduced in 1973—is supposed to be private and confidential. It may be that in an age of media-fueled exhibitionism, some people want more attention for our misdeeds than can be had from whispering a list of sins in a box in a church. But those Internet confessions won't count toward absolution in the eyes of the church any time soon. "There are no sacraments on the Internet," declared the Pontifical Council for Social Communication unequivocally in 2002.
The Catholic tradition of listing the number and kinds of one's sins in regular, private confessions became standard practice after the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215. Penance took root in Catholic ritual and established itself as, in the words of religion writer Peter Steinfels, "the linchpin of the Catholic sacramental economy." The Eucharist and the other sacraments, Steinfels points out, provided access to God's grace. But expressing contrition in confession could mean the difference between going to heaven or hell: Dying with unconfessed mortal sin on your soul meant eternal torment. Early 20th-century Catholics might have taken Communion only once a year—some referred to it as their Easter duty—but they generally confessed their sins far more regularly. As recently as 40 years ago, many Catholics would not have thought of accepting the Eucharist until after they'd cleansed their souls.
Today the situation is almost exactly the reverse: Entire congregations receive Communion, while the confessionals remain mostly empty. Between 1965 and 1975, according to the National Opinion Research Council, the proportion of Catholics who confessed monthly fell from 38 percent to 17 percent. A University of Notre Dame study in the 1980s showed the decline continuing. In a 1997 poll by the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research at the University of Connecticut, only 10 percent of Catholics surveyed said that they confessed at least once a month; another 10 percent said they never went to confession at all.
Like most of the recent changes in the church, the shift occurred in the wake of the Vatican II reforms. The program of renewal for the church that emerged from the Vatican II council said almost nothing about penance and reconciliation. The church's emphasis after Vatican II seemed to be less on guilt and damnation and more on love and forgiveness. The sacrament was given its current kinder, gentler name—reconciliation. Which seemed to reduce the stakes: If priests rarely talked about going to hell anymore, why bother confessing to them? To the extent that confession seemed necessary, the church's post-Vatican II efforts to empower the people in the pews left some Catholics figuring that they could confess their sins directly to God in prayer. At the same time, baby boomers who had been educated in the arcane legalisms of Catholic transgression—is eating meat on Friday a mortal or venial sin?—found themselves as adults thinking less about whether they were breaking the rules and more about their attitudes, intentions, and ideas about how to live a Christian life.
Last but surely not least, there was the growing gap between church teachings and the daily practices of American Catholics, especially when it came to sex and contraception. If you practiced birth control or had sex outside marriage, and you were scrupulous about confession, you might end up spending a lot of time in the confessional sharing every detail of your personal life with the (celibate and male) parish priest. That prospect is particularly bothersome to some Catholic women. I know one who says she'll go back to confession when she can confide in a female priest.
The biggest barrier between Catholics and the confessional, however, may be the real effort it requires. Unloading your transgressions on the Internet takes a few computer clicks—you can do it on your coffee break. But done right, Catholic confession demands a rigorous examination of conscience and real contrition, to say nothing of the prayers you may be assigned for penance and the thinking a priest may ask you to do about the ways you've let yourself and God down. No wonder we are more comfortable with the Eucharist service, which demands only that we line up like consumers and accept something for free. Dorothy Day wrote of having to "rack your brain for even the beginnings of sin." That's work." Cut and Paste from Slate On-line Magazine.
Comments..... madima answered on 11/19/05:Personally, I think it's just that the concept of "sin" has changed. I don't regard most things that the church preaches as really "sinful" and so, I feel guiltless... Hence, there's no need for confession.
I remembered that teachers of religion used to tell us when we were kids that if we receive communion without going to confession first, we'll be struck down by lightning from the heavens or get some terrible punishment from above.
But we found that even if we confide in God directly and do our private contrition privately then receive the host, nothing bad happens anyway...
Then again, we found that we really have no "sins" to confess regularly. The church used to regard dark thoughts and dreamings as sinful too, but modern psychology taught us that is part of the human personality that should be honored and reconciled with the rest of us. That is natural. So, how can it be sinful?
In today's extremely competitive career environment, as in war, all is fair. So, if you fight back tooth for tooth and claw for claw when someone is trying to pull you down or get ahead of you, the things you do can't really be considered "sinful" :=)
If you live in a very violent world where terrorists abound, where bombs can explode anywhere, from your bus to your office, to the malls and the theaters, the things you do to protect yourself can't be considered sinful, either.
Anyway, ifever there's a need for confession, you have friends to confide in, you have blogs that you can put out to the world, messages, online journals and diaries... There you can examine your soul with much more thoroughness and openness without being judged by others. | | Question/Answer | | arcura asked on 11/18/05 - I got these from a gal who said they are funny.... Do you think any are funny?
If so what ones.
ASIAN PROVERBS
Man who run in front of car get tired.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Man who run behind car get exhausted.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Man with one chopstick go hungry.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Man who scratch ass should not bite fingernails.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Man who eat many prunes get good run for money.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
War does not determine who is right;
war determine who is left.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Wife who put husband in doghouse soon find him in cat
house.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Man who fight with wife all day get no piece at night.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Man who drive like hell, bound to get there.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Man who stand on toilet is high on pot.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Man who live in glass house should change clothes in
basement.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Man who fart in church sit in own pew.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Crowded elevator smell different to midget.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* madima answered on 11/19/05:Man with one chopstick go hungry?
Nope, he can still skewer the food with one chopstick or eat with his bare hands. I've done that myself when the waiters (who don't understand English) would not give me spoon and fork in the Asian countries I travel in! Somehow, I have not learned to eat deftly with chopsticks up to now! :=)
War does not determine who is right;
war determine who is left.
Now, this is one that I really agree with! :=)
Wife who put husband in doghouse soon find him in cat house.
Aaah! That's true! :=)
I like these, too! :=)
Man who drive like hell, bound to get there.
Man who live in glass house should change clothes in basement.
| | Question/Answer | | paraclete asked on 11/18/05 - will you use SMS speak or english? John Milton, Paradise Lost:
"devl kikd outa hevn coz jelus of jesus&strts war.pd'off wiv god so corupts man(md by god) wiv apel.devl stays serpnt 4hole life&man ruind. Woe un2mnkind.''
Translation
"The devil is kicked out of heaven because he is jealous of Jesus and starts a war.
"He is angry with God and so corrupts man (who is made by God) with an apple. The devil remains as a serpent for the whole of his life and man is ruined. Woe unto mankind." madima answered on 11/19/05:I've always used SMS when texting over my cellphones. It's so much easier and faster -unless you use a PDA phone! But it does wreak havoc on your spelling! :=)
I c notin rong w/ it. I reciv bout 20 SMS/day n txt som 20 myslf. D Plipins s d SMS captal f d world! | | Question/Answer | | HANK1 asked on 11/18/05 - A CHRISTIAN THOUGHT ABOUT SELF-ESTEEM:
Well-being virtually depends on the illusions of overly positive self-evaluations, exaggerated perceptions of control and unrealistic optimism. These illusions are not only characteristic of normal human thoughts, but also necessary for the usual criteria of mental health ... the ability to care about others, the ability to be contented and the ability to work productively. Since I have a positive view of the world, it is better to maintain illusions at all costs since they protect my self-esteem.
Does this descriptive prose fit your personality?
HANK
madima answered on 11/18/05:Illusions? :=)
I grew up in the theater, a world where reality is an illusion and illusion is the reality :=)
However, when a man decides he has control over his life and his destiny, that he likes himself well enough not to be dependent on others, I don't think that is an illusion.
That's a decision.
It's also a self-perception based on what man thinks he is and should be.
We alone make the ultimate choice whether we want to be happy or we want to be miserable.
Strangely...In the culture of the dreaming, people believe that we ARE only a dream in the mind of the creator :=)
| | Question/Answer | | CeeBee2 asked on 11/12/05 - Priest/ministers/rabbis as celibate? Which would be better - that a man of the cloth marry and have a family or remain single and celibate?
My mother once told me that, before they were married, my father said to her that once he became a minister, the church would always come first, even before her and any children they had. She agreed, and was our mainstay at home. My father was always the last one out of the church and the one to lock up after Sunday morning service/Sunday School and after weekday evening meetings. He attended every parish meeting, even those for the youth - he was very visible and involved. He spent his days visiting the sick and tending to other ministerial duties. When he was working on a sermon at his home office, we kids had to play quietly. Yet, some of my best memories are the times he spent with us kids playing board games, making popcorn, playing word games during meals, and our family devotions after supper each evening (except for Sunday). Holidays were special because he found ways to make them special for our family. He devoted his life to the church, to God, and was still able to find time and energy for his family. I suspect though, from knowing other ministers' families, that my father was somewhat of a rare man.
Is that spreading a man of the cloth too thin? Maybe ministers and rabbis shouldn't marry. Maybe the Catholic Church is right in not allowing its priests to marry. Yet, being married with a family would give a priest/minister/rabbi a very important point of view about life and would allow him to better understand his parishioners' joys and sorrows in their marriages and with their children.
What do you think? madima answered on 11/12/05:You're lucky with your father, but I think yours was an exception rather than the rule.
I know of a minister here. He was good with his flock, but his vocation took all of his time. He was able to lead many youths who had gone astray back into the right path. But unknown to him, one of his own children became a drug addict and later, committed suicide. His wife left him. The minister blamed himself. He said he was so absorbed in saving others he failed to see the devil take his own child.
I still think a man of the cloth should remain single and celibate. A family will be a great encumbrance to him. And it will be unjust to his wife and kids if he will only regard them as a second fiddle. The point of view of a family man, he could easily get from his experience with his own parents and his own family.
In this aspect, I believe I'm very conservative. I believe one can only serve one great master at a time :=) | | Question/Answer | | Erewhon asked on 11/11/05 - Turkey bans the Hijab ... Turkey has just passed a ban on young girls wearing the hijab, or head scarf, at school.
1. Do you think they ought to have done so?
2. Do you think it will make Muslims feel any less persecuted?
3. Are you as eager to have this ban overturned as you are to have the ban on Bibles, crosses, Christian prayer, and the Ten Commandments in public schools overturned? madima answered on 11/12/05:1. Do you think they ought to have done so?
No, dear Ronnie. I don't think any government should meddle with its citizens' private and very personal choice of clothing :=)
2. Do you think it will make Muslims feel any less persecuted?
No, a Muslim is a Muslim, no matter what he or she wears. Same goes true for a Hindu, a Christian, a Buddhist, a Taoist, etc.
You will know a person's faith by what he believes in - and that's the cause of the prejudice. The externals are only a minor part of it. It's just the surface. Persecution goes much, much deeper.
3. Are you as eager to have this ban overturned as you are to have the ban on Bibles, crosses, Christian prayer, and the Ten Commandments in public schools overturned?
I just hate the idea of governments telling people what to do and interfering with ALL kinds of personal freedom.
I see nothing wrong with the hijab. My ex-future-mother-in-law made me try on a chador - which reached from head to foot -when my ex-boyfriend introduced me to his family in Dubai. If it weren't too hot, I think I'll love to wear it too - to protect me from all that dust and desert sand!
In fact, although I'm Catholic, I took to covering my whole head and face with a big scarf while going about in the streets of Manila when Mt. Pinatubo erupted and the ashfall reached us here.
The lahar dust, which rained on us for days (although the volcano was 100-200 kilometers away), was abrasive and itchy and I was glad the scarf protected me. Also, I didn't have to shampoo my hair twice a day. The pollution is terrible here in the metropolis.
So, you see, dear Ronnie, veils, face coverings, etc. are no big deal for me :=)
| | Question/Answer | | HANK1 asked on 11/06/05 - JUST WONDERING ...
Cognitive therapists ask people to examine their perceptions of the world and the evidence for their beliefs. A depressed person observing a bed of roses might see only the litter and none of the beauty ... and might conclude that the whole world is ugly and always will be.
Tell me what you see when you view a bed of roses!
HANK
madima answered on 11/07/05:Whenever I see a bed of roses, I always think of lions. They love to lie on rose beds and eat the roses, you know. So sweet for so fierce a predator :=)
As a child, I've watched a spectacular parade. The queen was on a float covered with roses with a full-grown lion secured at the head of the float (his keeper was well- hidden underneath).
I never looked at the queen. I just stared and stared at the magnificent lion sprawled among those blood red roses, the sun gilding his 400 pound body and the wind blowing his black mane so that his face looked like a huge sunflower. He was thoughtfully eating all of the roses on his side of the float :=)
When I was a bit older, I befriended the son of a big cat trainer so I can sneak up on a lion yearling and play with him all day long.
I've always wanted to bring home a full grown lion to mama's rose bed - though I find it easier to handle Siberian tigers :=) | | Question/Answer | | Choux asked on 11/05/05 - Shocking!! Unrelated to Religion!!
Cruise Ship Escapes Pirate Hijack Attempt
By RODRIQUE NGOWI
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) - Pirates armed with grenade launchers and machine guns tried to hijack a luxury cruise liner off the east African coast Saturday, but the ship outran them, officials said.
Two boats full of pirates approached the Seabourn Spirit about 100 miles off the Somali coast and opened fire while the heavily armed bandits tried to get onboard, said Bruce Good, spokesman for the Miami-based Seabourn Cruise Line, a subsidiary of Carnival Corp.
The ship escaped by shifting to high speed and changing course.
``These are very well-organized pirates,'' said Andrew Mwangura, head of the Kenyan chapter of the Seafarers Assistance Program. ``Somalia's coastline is the most dangerous place in the region in terms of maritime security."
HUH? Pirates???? madima answered on 11/05/05:Dear Mary Sue,
That does not surprise me. Pirates abound here in the Philippines, in the high seas of the South, mostly. And they live well in the forests, the oceans and the mountains of Asia.
Pirates are the reason why I cannot dive in the beautiful Turtle Islands, which is close to our boundary with Sabah, Malaysia. The international researchers who went there once for a study of the marine ecology had to be escorted by a fleet of Coast Guards!
But even the Coast Guards cannot overtake the small but very fleet vessels that the pirates use here. They are called "kampit".
There are also "bandidos" making their headquarters in our remote and inaccessible mountains facing the ocean. In one of my solo climbs in a mountain in Santa Ana, the place where the Pacific Ocean meets with the South China Sea, I nearly had an encounter with some - but my angels are with me. I managed to flee in time! :=) | | Question/Answer | | revdauphinee asked on 11/04/05 - Are there any Jews in China?? Chinese Jews
Sid and Al were sitting in a Chinese restaurant.
"Sid," asked Al, "Are there any Jews in China?"
"I don't know," Sid replied. "Why don't we ask the waiter?"When the waiter came by, Al said, "Are there any Chinese Jews?"
"I don't know sir, let me ask," the waiter replied and he went into the kitchen.
He quickly returned and said, "No, sir. No Chinese Jews."
"Are you sure?" Al asked.
"I will check again, sir." the waiter replied and went back to the kitchen.
While he was still gone, Sid said, "I cannot believe there are no Jews in China. Our people are scattered everywhere."
When the waiter returned he said, "Sir, no Chinese Jews."
"Are you really sure?" Al asked again. "I cannot believe there are no Chinese Jews."
"Sir, I ask everyone," the waiter replied exasperated. "We have orange jews, prune jews, tomato jews and grape jews, but no one ever hear of Chinese jews!"
madima answered on 11/04/05:Nice one! By the way, I'll be in China next Sunday, will spend a week there. Let me ask... :=) | | Question/Answer | | HANK1 asked on 11/03/05 - JUST WONDERING ... ... if anyone is interested in Transpersonal Psychology? What is it? "It's a branch of psychology that is concerned with the study of those states and processes in which people experience a DEEPER or WIDER SENSE of WHO they are, or a SENSE of greater connectedness with others, nature, or the "spiritual" dimension. The term TRANSPERSONAL means "BEYOND THE PERSONAL" and a common assumption in TRANSPERSONAL PSYCHOLOGY is that transpersonal experiences involve a HIGHER mode of CONSCIOUSNESS in which the ordinary mental-egoic self is transcended."
Do you think this is a Christian approach to self-improvement and a possible study of what it takes to REALLY make us tick? (I might add that TP is NOT what some of us know about the New Age)
HANK madima answered on 11/04/05:Before I go into that, I have to finish my study on my own personal psychology first :=)
I've been the foremost student of my own mind. I believe I can only go beyond myself after I've fully established the groundwork on my core psyche :=)
You have to learn how to walk before you learn how to run.
But once you get to know yourself, even just a little, everything else comes after -the deeper consciousness, etc.
Yet...I can spend a whole lifetime with myself and not know everything I feel I need to know about me :=) | | Question/Answer | | HANK1 asked on 11/03/05 - TAKING INVENTORY OF ONESELF: Do you think people should attempt the following at least once a year? I like to ...
... reappraise my life and dreams by questioning my basic values.
... accept all gaps that I have made for myself between my dreams and my achievements.
I also like to ASK myself ...
... Am I overcoming a sense of being 'stuck' or 'trapped?'
... Am I facing the facts of aging and death?
... Do I lament my lost youth and unfulfilled dreams?
These 'issues' are important to me since I'm in my middle years. They tell me what my life has been so far. Only I can change my thinking and my future if my 'performance' hasn't been satisfactory!
HANK
madima answered on 11/04/05:I do that every year, every 16th of December, on my birthday :=)
I have kept journals and diaries since I was a child and sometimes, I like to scan them to see how far have I gone and speculate how much further can I go :=)
But I have no fear of aging or death. The Future is too remote for me. Nor am I bound by the Past - that's why I can look back without regrets at all my foibles and follies.
I only live for the moment. That's why I live my life to the hilt and love it! :=) | | Question/Answer | | excon asked on 11/04/05 - Your government in action
Hello Christians:
Condoleezza Rice just had her annual Ramadan dinner. Why???
After all, she doesn’t break the fast with Jews on Yom Kippur, sup with Hindus on Diwali, or cavort with Druids on the Winter Solstice. And she certainly isn’t spreading official Christendom on Christmas Day. No, the children's Easter Egg roll doesn't compare.
I'm thinking of the Muslim suicide bombing in Tel Aviv that killed five, and the promise of Iran's Shiite president that "the stain of disgrace"—Israel—will be "purged from the center of the Islamic world." I'm thinking of the week of Muslim rioting in Paris, and the news that a London suicide bomber was buried in Pakistan (his exploded remains, anyway) at the shrine of an Islamic saint. In New Delhi, Muslims are suspected of killing 60, while actor Omar Sharif has received Internet death threats, for playing St. Peter. And I can't stop thinking about the three Christian girls who were beheaded in Indonesia en route to their Christian high school. The killers carried off one of the severed heads to a new church, where they left it.
Do we need to “reach out” to the Muslim community, or should they be “reaching out” to us?
excon
madima answered on 11/04/05:Perhaps the food was too good to pass up? :=)
You know that I'm not an American, but when you mentioned she does not sup with the Jews, the Hindus,the Druids and even the Christians, I couldn't resist...
I remembered how sumptuous the feasts are at the end of the Ramadan. I've partaken in such a feast myself in Dubai in the home of my Muslim friends.
Muslims fast for one month and when they finally break it, the best food flows... as if to make up for all that hunger repressed.
By the way, the end of the Ramadan has also been declared a national holiday in the Philippines by our President for the FIRST time this year!
I have nothing against it, but everyone else was buzzing here. T'was an amazing move for a head of state in the only Christian nation in the Far East!
But with bombs flying all over the place, I guess she needs to "reach out" to the Muslim community as well, like your Condoleezza Rice :=) | | Question/Answer | | HANK1 asked on 11/04/05 - HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME:
Yep! It's my Birthday. I plan to live until I'm at least 99.
"Happy Birthday to You, the four-line ditty, was written as a classroom greeting in 1893 by two Louisville teachers, Mildred J. Hill, an authority on Negro spirituals, and Dr. Patty Smith Hill, professor emeritus of education at Columbia University.
The MELODY of the song Happy Birthday to You was composed by Mildred J. Hill, a schoolteacher born in Louisville, KY, on June 27, 1859. The song was first published in 1893, with the lyrics WRITTEN by her sister, Patty Smith Hill, as "Good Morning To All."
Happy Birthday to HANK, Happy Birthday to Hank ...
Age is a matter of attitude, health, perspective and all bodily functions. I'm happy to report that my functions are doing just fine.
HANK
madima answered on 11/04/05:Happy birthday, dear Hank!!!! :=)
I'll keep greeting you yearly till you're 100 - at least! :=) | | Question/Answer | | tomder55 asked on 11/03/05 - The French Islamic Republic of Eurasia welcome to the dhimmitude :
French Rioters Shoot at Police, Fire Crews
AP ^ | November 3, 2005 | JAMEY KEATEN
Rioting youths shot at police and firefighters Thursday after burning car dealerships and public buses and hurling rocks at commuter trains. France's government faced growing pressure to curb the violence, fueled by anger over poor conditions in suburban Paris housing projects.
Rampaging for an eighth day, youths ignored an appeal for calm from French President Jacques Chirac, whose government worked feverishly to fend off a political crisis amid criticism that it has ignored problems in suburbs heavily populated by first- and second-generation North African and Muslim immigrants.
Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin called a string of emergency meetings with Cabinet ministers throughout the day. He told the Senate the government "will not give in" to violence in the troubled suburbs.
"Order and justice will be the final word in our country," Villepin said. "The return to calm and the restoration of public order are the priority _ our absolute priority."
The riots started last Thursday after the electrocution deaths of two teenagers hiding in a power station from police they believed were chasing them in the northeastern suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois.
By Wednesday night, violence had spread to at least 20 Paris-region towns, said Jean-Francois Cordet, the top government official for the Seine-Saint-Denis region north of Paris where the violence has been concentrated. He said youths in the region fired four shots at riot police and firefighters but caused no injuries.
Nine people were injured in Seine-Saint-Denis and 315 cars burned across the Paris area, officials said. In the tough northeastern suburb of Aulnay-sous-Bois, youth gangs set fire to a Renault car dealership and burned at least a dozen cars, a supermarket and a local gymnasium.
Traffic was halted Thursday morning on a suburban commuter line linking Paris to Charles de Gaulle airport after stone-throwing rioters attacked two trains overnight at the Le Blanc-Mesnil station. They forced a conductor from one train and broke windows, the SNCF rail authority said. A passenger was lightly injured by broken glass.
The unrest has highlighted the division between France's big cities and their poor suburbs, with frustration simmering in the housing projects in areas marked by high unemployment, crime and poverty.
The violence also cast doubt on the success of France's model of seeking to integrate its large immigrant community _ its Muslim population, at an estimated 5 million, is Western Europe's largest _ by playing down differences between ethnic groups. Rather than feeling embraced as full and equal citizens, immigrants and their French-born children complain of police harassment and of being refused jobs, housing and opportunities.
Opposition groups accused the government of letting the situation spiral out of control, either by failing to act quickly enough or letting in too many immigrants over the years.
"We see that the situation in certain neighborhoods is not getting better at all but degenerating," Socialist Party President Jean-Marc Ayrault told LCI television, who said Chirac's conservatives "did not know how to take control."
Right-wing French lawmaker Philippe de Villiers, who has said he wants to "stop the Islamization of France," told RTL radio that the problem stemmed from the "failure of a policy of massive and uncontrolled immigration."
Minister of Social Cohesion Jean-Louis Borloo said the government had to react "firmly" but added that France must also acknowledge its failure to have dealt with anger simmering in poor suburbs for decades.
"We cannot hide the truth: that for 30 years we have not done enough," he told France-2 television.
.......................................................
comments ?
*I bet this is in response for the French support for the war in Iraq !
*The French never did institude gun control did they ?
*They have a 'Minister of Social Cohesion ...socialism at it's best ! I think the French should raise taxes and provide more social services for these down trodden . No wonder they have become insurgents ...sheesh .... I call them freedom fighters ! If only the French would end their occupation of Paris .
madima answered on 11/03/05:I'm not really familiar with the plight of first- and second-generation North African and Muslim immigrants in Paris.
We do have a restive Muslim minority here in the Philippines and our government has always allied itself with the US.
I've gotten quite used to public buses being burned in the streets of Manila and in other major cities, taxis being overturned, stoned, burned, etc. That's quite a regular occurrence here. But these acts are being done mostly by the Christian poor, not the Muslims.
In our case, it often happens during transportation strikes, as the urban poor feel that they are being squeezed to death by rising prices and the government is not doing anything about it.
I believe that for as long as there's a great disparity between the rich and the poor, the kind of unrest that Paris is seeing now will happen anywhere, regardless of religion. | | Question/Answer | | Choux asked on 11/02/05 - Pet Lovers... "Remember, be kind to your mailman," said Jane Harris, a disc jockey. Then she softened her voice until it was a little insinuating: "He only wants to deliver the mail."
It is a message that many of her listeners need to hear. Ms. Harris is a D.J. on DogCatRadio.com, a new Internet radio station for pets. Now dogs, cats, hamsters and parrots can keep the anxiety, the loneliness, the restlessness at bay while their owners are out. It is radio just for them, live 17 hours a day, 4 a.m. to 9 p.m. Pacific time, and podcast for the rest of the 24 hours."
God loves all living creatures the same. Human biengs are not special, in fact, they are worse! madima answered on 11/02/05:Dear Mary Sue,
Somehow, your last sentence reminded me of the observation made by one animal lover and conservationist: "The more I learn about people…the more I like my cat."
It will be interesting to listen to what the program offers. Animals have been shown to respond very well to sounds. My fave cat relaxes with classical music and perks up with hip-hop! :=)
Even deer calms down with soothing music. I've even read about an Indian elephant (he lived in the house with his family until he got too big to get through the door) who favored rock-and-roll and would turn off the TV remote with his trunk when any other type of music comes on air! :=) | | Question/Answer | | Choux asked on 11/02/05 - Newest Kind of Marital Infidelity
The Newest Kind of Marital Infidelity
"Hold the sex! With emotional infidelity, all it takes to cheat is a close friendship. If you're married and you share secrets with a close friend of the opposite sex or go out for drinks after work, you are guilty of emotional infidelity. That's the controversial verdict from M. Gary Neuman, a Miami Beach, Fla., therapist and author of the new book, "Emotional Infidelity: How to Affair-Proof Your Marriage and 10 Other Secrets to a Great Relationship."
His words are blunt: You can't have an intimate relationship at work and still have a great relationship at home. Even if there is no sex, he claims that any sort of male-female friendship outside of marriage is adultery. Period. Those are frightening words. With the long and intense work hours so many regularly endure, close friendships at work with people of both genders are typically the norm. Neuman's advice is simple and direct: Back off. He told The Baltimore Sun, "My message is that if you want to infuse passion and have a buddy for the rest of your life, you have to keep that emotional content in your marriage. Otherwise, it's not going to happen."
His views may be extreme, but even his critics--and there are many--acknowledge that his central premise that friendships between members of the opposite sex can harm marriages is probably valid. Author and infidelity researcher Shirley Glass, told the Sun that office friendships are a big concern. "Many love affairs begin just that way."
What do you think of Neuman's assessment of different sex friendships? madima answered on 11/02/05:That makes sense.
As they say, if you don’t want to get burned, don’t get too close to the fire :=)
I have many platonic relationships with men, the longest being 19 years old todate and still going strong. I tend to have them on top of my erotic romances because I like having brother surrogates. I never had a brother and am an only child.
And yet, I know that if I tell my best friend that I’ll marry him, I’m sure he will drag me up the aisle in the next second. In fact, his family had been nagging me and saying I’m his “ideal partner” for ages. Yet to me, that will be like committing incest.
In my countless platonic relationships with men, I’ve always known it will be easy to cross the line, though I don’t, by choice (except twice). Of course, my best friends’ girl friends, lovers and wives will never believe me :=)
Come to think of it, perhaps the reason why I was never demanding or possessive with any of my boyfriends in my romances was the fact that I ALWAYS had strong platonic relationships with men alongside! My erotic and my platonic relationships always co-exist. But then, that could also be the reason why marriage never tempted me. I found all my boyfriends are… dispensable :=)
Imagine how dangerous that will be if I tie the knot! :=)
So far, almost 90 per cent of my women friends who married engaged in extra-marital sex. They all have deep friendships with the opposite sex and most of their affairs started with a “friends-only” premise with men. But after committing emotional infidelity, the rest is easy.
As for me, I guess that’s the reason why I don’t like to get married. It will limit me in so many ways and I can’t afford that. I’m still too hungry for life! :=)
| | Question/Answer | | kindj asked on 11/01/05 - Culture comparison I am NOT bashing America, OK? Let's just get that straight right out of the box.
I have, however, noticed a distinct difference in various cultures, specifically in regard to manners.
I lived in Japan for almost a year, where I found the people so polite I could hardly stand it. In Saudi Arabia, most everyone I met was kind and social, and kept to a pretty high standard of manners. The Phillipines holds very fond memories for me, largely due to the gently, gracious attitude of nearly all the citizens I met there. Ditto for some other places I've visited. Sure, there were some that were no more than overdeveloped cesspools, but a majority of places had more than their share of well-mannered, polite folks.
I think the epitome of manners, though, may have to be the United Kingdom. I've never had the pleasure of travelling there (though I desparately want to), but everything I've seen and everyone I've met from there has been possessed of a personal dignity that stands out. Even the rural dwellers, those that are not from the bigger cities, carry and conduct themselves with a measure of grace that simply is not found in most places.
Then I look at America, my home. It's gotten to the point that when one is treated courteously by a stranger (aside from those whom we expect it from, such as wait staff and such) it is a remarkable experience, rather than being the norm.
I could cite examples in everything from "icebreaker" conversation to personal attire to respect for elders, but I think that most know what I mean. I'm not talking about the pompous ass that has to maintain an artificial air of superiority--all cultures suffer those fools. I'm talking about class without pretension, which is exceedingly rare in the US these days.
Are we Americans afraid that if we act with dignity and class, we will be regarded as "elitists?" Are we afraid of appearing to shoot holes in the "we're just normal folks" aura that so many are proud of?
My British friends still dress for dinner. Not in suits and ties, mind you, but at least with decent pants and a tucked-in shirt. And dinner is still an event, something to be savored and lingered over, not grabbed from a sack and eaten on the go. When I ate with them, I could count on dinner running from around 6 or 7 until 9 or 10, easily. Relaxed, unhurried, and enjoyed. While most Americans (myself included) tend to make dinner a 30 minute ordeal at best, and often not altogether as a family.
We have kids and young adults today going to class in their pajamas, for crying out loud. And respect for elders? Forget it! Good luck getting a child or teenager to call you Mr. or Ms. anymore, now it's a first-name basis all around. Perhaps familiarity really does breed contempt?
I'm really just wondering WHY the difference? Is it a more densely populated society that breeds politeness out of necessity, such as in Japan? Is it a traditional cultural thing? Or am I totally off the mark here?
And please, don't take this as an invitation to begin another litany of the terrible faults of America and her citizens. Believe me, we are painfully aware of most of them, and NO society is without it's upright apes.
As for me, I'd like to see Americans (including me) a bit better schooled in etiquette and manners.
I'll start now:
Cordially,
DK madima answered on 11/02/05:Dear DK,
As a Filipina who had been well-exposed to American culture, who had been to America twice and who has a lot of American friends, I guess America is just too liberal - which is both her advantage and allure, but is also her setback.
Also, its pace, standard of living and ultra-consumerist, rat-race lifestyle favor the young set - perhaps to the detriment of the old.
If you ask me, I believe polite manners is equated with traditional values and formality, much of which we try to set aside in modern times.
So far, I have never met any ill-mannered American yet :=) But it did strike me that the Filipinos who were raised in America do not have as much respect for their elders than what we will consider “normal” in our domestic setting. They tend to talk back to their parents and older folks in a manner which will be considered very rude here, among other things. In fact many of my friends who are now in the US maintain that if they decide to have kids, they will ship them back here, just long enough to assimilate respect for their elders and other values.
Here in the Philippines, we address older people with respect, punctuating each sentence with "po" and "opo" when we speak to them, we kiss the hands of our elders, etc. In a way, we share Japan and China’s culture that gives great respect to senior citizens (although we are not a welfare state and our laws are not favorable to our own seniors in terms of health care, nursing homes and other provisioning.)
But I guess the senior-citizen friendly culture is the reason why despite our country’s political instability, many Westerners like to retire here. Also, Filipinos are in demand as care givers abroad, especially for the elderly.
Furthermore, we are said to have developed “longer” patience than Westerners. You have to, if you need to brave two-hour long traffic everyday, stand in long queues for inefficient Third World country type of services, or get stranded in floods, political rallies, and the like.
Westerners are so much used to fast and efficient service, a good many would tend to snap at service providers when they cannot deliver outright :=)
| | Question/Answer | | Erewhon asked on 11/01/05 - Bush Unveils Bird Flu Strategy ... The Bush administration, battered by criticism over its hurricane response, its nominees to the SC, its Iraq Attack, and numerous other fudgements, is attempting to divert the nation's attention away from White House failures by getting the nation prepared for a pandemic of bird influenza.
A 'senior White House official' today revealed that Bush's personal favourite was the building of a ten foot high wall around the whole of the USA, because, the President is reported as having said,
"That will keep out the birds and the illegals."
Do you think ten feet is high enough, or should it be even higher? madima answered on 11/01/05:His wall should be at least 40,000 feet high, well into the stratosphere, that way not even the migratory birds can get in! :=)
I wonder how many trillions of dollars he has to spend on that... and how engineers could come up with even a mile of such a wall and say it has structural integrity.
Even the highest buildings in the world can only go a little over a thousand feet high todate.
But then, smugglers of exotic birds with the avian flu can easily go underground :=)
Instead of wasting dollars walling in the entire American continent, however, he is better off financing the development of the vaccine to prevent the pandemic and making sure that everyone of his citizens get it. | | Question/Answer | | Choux asked on 10/31/05 - Slavery in Qatar From Wired on line Magazine
Robot camel jockeys. "
That's about half of what you need to know. Robots, designed in Switzerland, riding camels in the Arabian desert. Camel jockey robots, about 2 feet high, with a right hand to bear the whip and a left hand to pull the reins. Thirty-five pounds of aluminum and plastic, a 400-MHz processor running Linux and communicating at 2.4 GHz; GPS-enabled, heart rate-monitoring (the camel's heart, that is) robots. Mounted on tall, gangly blond animals, bouncing along in the sandy wastelands outside Doha, Qatar, in the 112-degree heat, with dozens of follow-cars behind them. I have seen them with my own eyes. And the other half of the story: Every robot camel jockey bopping along on its improbable mount means ****one Sudanese boy freed from slavery and sent home****.
Are you in favor of Islamic slavery?? madima answered on 10/31/05:No, dear Mary Sue. But I believe slavery has more to do with poverty in terms of the slave, greed and power in terms of the master - rather than religion. Poverty is the greatest enslaver of humankind.
We are a Christian nation but with over half of the 85 million populace living below poverty line, many are "enslaved" - literally and figuratively - you have rampant child labor, white slavery and all the atrocities connected with "traditional" slavery of the olden times.
Robots for camel races may reduce the "demand" for young Sudanese jockeys, but if the Sudanese continue to starve in their home country, their "slavery" will continue in other forms, maybe worse. | | Question/Answer | | Erewhon asked on 10/30/05 - Columbine, and similar incidents ... Have you noticed that the perpetrators of the massacres at Columbine, et al, were all alienated individuals?
I have a theory that alienation is always at the heart of such incidents.
What is your theory? madima answered on 10/31/05:I would presume alienation is at the root of such incidents.
To me, this sense of alienation seems to be a very "American" thing. We do have a lot of violence here and cases of suicide, but no serial killings or massacres perpetrated by the youth.
However, the rebel and the terrorist groups here get most of their recruits from the youths in the lowest socio-economic levels of our society.
The children of the poor make up the bulk of the recruits of our New People's Army. They carry and fire guns as soon as they are big enough to be able to wield one - sometimes as young as ten years old. | | Question/Answer | | paraclete asked on 10/30/05 - Do you share Prince Charles' concerns? Prince Charles: Climate change is 'terrifying'
Monday, October 31, 2005 Posted: 0314 GMT (1114 HKT)
Prince Charles: "I find myself born into this particular position. I am determined to make the most of it."
LONDON, England (AP) -- Prince Charles says he believes the pace of climate change is terrifying and people are becoming too dependent on technology.
In a rare TV interview ahead of his official tour of the United States next week, Charles expressed concern that economic progress is "upsetting the whole balance of nature."
"You know, if you look at the latest figures on climate change and global warming ... they're terrifying, terrifying," Charles told CBS's Minutes" in the interview aired Sunday.
The prince is a keen environmentalist, but his office declined to say whether Charles will raise the issue of climate change when he dines with President Bush at the White House this week. Clarence House, the prince's office, said it would not be appropriate to comment on a private dinner.
In the past, Bush has questioned the existence of global warming. The United States has refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol designed to limit greenhouse gas emissions, saying it would harm the economy.
Charles, who will be visiting with his wife, Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, also said he was worried about the importance of technology in modern life.
"If you make everything over efficient, you suck out, it seems to me, every last drop of what, up to now, has been known as culture," Charles said in the interview, which was recorded last month in Poundbury, England.
"We are not the technology. It should be our ... slave, the technology. But it's rapidly becoming our master in many areas, I think," he said.
Charles will travel to the United States on Tuesday for his first official tour of the country since 1994, although he has made a number of private visits since then.
He last visited the United States on June 11, 2004, for the funeral of former President Ronald Reagan.
During the tour, Charles and Camilla will inaugurate a new memorial garden in New York for the British victims of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center.
They will also travel to Washington for their lunch and dinner with President Bush and Mrs. Bush. During the final leg of the tour, Charles and Camilla will meet homeless people in San Francisco.
In previously released excerpts of the CBS interview, Charles said he was concerned about being seen as irrelevant.
"The most important thing is to be relevant ... It isn't easy, as you can imagine ... because if you say anything, people will say, 'It's all right for you to say that.' It's very easy to just dismiss anything I say. ... It's difficult," the heir to the British throne said.
Charles says his duty is "worrying about this country and its inhabitants."
He adds: "I find myself born into this particular position. I am determined to make the most of it."
Charles has won respect for the time he devotes to The Prince's Trust, which has helped more than 35,000 disadvantaged young people start their own businesses and provided job training to thousands more each year.
He hopes efforts like these are valued, telling interviewer Steve Kroft lightheartedly: "I only hope that when I'm dead and gone, they might appreciate it a little bit more."
Copyright 2005 The Associated Press.
I was only remarking recently that we have become so dependent on the easy life we could not survive if someone turned the power off. do you feel the same way? madima answered on 10/31/05:Power outages are still common here in my country.
I have two computers at home - a desktop and a subnotebook, three cellular phones - PDAs/pocket PCs, broadband connection - DSL and Wi-Fi, plus a wireline phone. That's on top of the TV, the DVD players, etc.
I surely miss the convenience of my gadgets when we have brown-outs and blackouts, but I can still write letters and notes by hand, though it's slower. I'm not a TV addict, so I can get by without the audio and the visuals. The most vivid programs are in my brain :=)
Though I'm IT-dependent, I can say I can still survive if they turn the power off - and here, they often do! :=) | | Question/Answer | | hOPE12 asked on 10/31/05 - Back finally! Hello Everyone,
It sure has been rough here in Fort Lauderdale area in Florida. Wilma really got us good. I just got electric back. Many are still without and the only reason we got back after only one week is because we live next to the police station and the hospital is right up the block.
My family and I lived on MRE's for a week. If this is what the army guys eat, I feel sorry for them.
We had lots of damage here and the roof of our apartment building caved in. My apartment is fine because I am on the third floor and the roof caved in on the fourth floor. Fema is relocating the ones whose apartments were really bad. This buildings roof is being repaired by the disaster crew but some that are worse then this one is beyond repair. I certainly count my blessings at this time.
I missed you guys and just wanted to let you know what is happening here. Some of the lights have been repaired still a lot are out as of this time. We can now drink the water here but we are scarce still on food because many of the supermarkets do not have lights as of yet. We have been all very grateful and realize things could have been worse. It is good to be back and have some normala activity back.
Take care,
Hope12 madima answered on 10/31/05:I'm glad to hear you're safe :=)
We are also being battered by a prolonged typhoon season, with a lot of floods, landslides and mudslides on this side of the globe.
Take care! :=) | | Question/Answer | | hOPE12 asked on 10/31/05 - Here is what some people act like in an emergency! Hello Everyone,
HERE ARE SOME OF THE NEGATIVE REACTIONS.
Recently due to Wilma we all were in need of gas for our cars. Here are some of the scams people were pulling.
One guy was approached by a man carring a 5 gallon can full of what he said was gas. The man paid him over 30 dollars only to find out what he poured in his car was water. A brand new truck. Sad!
One mam sat for 8 hours in line for gas at the pump and when he finally got to the pump to get his gas another car cut him off, so the man orginally at the pump first honked his horn so as not to get hit by the guy who cut him off. Well the guy who cut him off didn't like having the horn honked at him so he go out of his car, drew his gun and shot the man.The man did not get gas nor did he live another day. There goes that new gun law for you!
One woman needed to extend her payment of rent because of the huricane and her situation where her house was damaged badly. She was told that if she was late she would be charged a late fee for every day she was late.
Wow, talk about not caring.
Another women feel and busted her lip and told the owner of the drugstore that she needed some water or ice for her lip. They lady thought if she could find ice or water she could control the bleeding. She asked the owner did he have one of those instand ice packs that you break and it gets cold, he told her no and that she just needs to watch were she walks and asked her to leave his store.
" Loving wasn't he? Not only was there no lights but the lady was there to try and get needed medication for her family. As the owner of the drugstore he could have been more helpful."
NOW FOR THE POSITIVE THINGS I SAW:
One of the families I know went to bed when the storm was just about to hit and was dosing when all of a sudden the wind picked up and for some odd reason her and her husband got up- out of bed and ran to the living room to check the glass doors and just as they left their bedroom their whole ceiling in the bedroom fell on the bed. Now that was scary, they still get nervous when they relate the story.
One couple got their lights on before anyone else did and went and stood in the Fema lines to collect ice and water and food to take it to those without lights and to shut ins who were stranded on upper floors, and older ones.
Another family with lights got together with others and prepared noodles, and soup and tried to put hot food together for those who did not have home or lights.
One man with his wife and two children had their home totally damaged and yet they had their grill and generater in the shed in the back yard that was not damaged. This man and his wife began by getting gas for his generator and finding can soups and cofee and taking it to others who had less damage then he did.
One family where the wife was about to give birth had her home completely damaged and when they asked what they were going to do now that they lost most of what they had, the man said, "I will be thankful that my wife and my soon to be baby and I are alive and able to continue on together."
My question is this, we here in Broward County and Palm beach County and parts of Miami Dade County suffered the same disaster. Yet why so many different reactions? Why do some react in a negative way and others in such a positive and loving way? Do any of you guys have an answer to this one?
Take care,
Hope12 madima answered on 10/31/05:We get hit by an average of 25-30 typhoons per year, so typhoons are nothing new to us on my side of the globe.
But if you ask me why people's reactions vary in the face of an emergency, I'll say it all depends on their perception of how safe and secure they feel they are.
A person who thinks he can survive and believes he has enough resources to do so will tend to be more generous - whether or not he has the real strength and resources to do so.
A person who has enough resources but who thinks he does not have enough and fears for his survival, will focus only on his own interests, tend to hoard and grab everything he can grab.
Of course, those who don't have any resources who think they cannot survive are the most desperate.
You also have natural opportunists and unscrupulous parties who will use any emergency or disaster to make a killing.
And there can be no predators without the prey - the gullible ones and the confused, whose sense of judgment had been weakened by such crisis situations. | | Question/Answer | | HANK1 asked on 10/30/05 - JUST WONDERING ...
What's your favorite thing about yourself? Your smile? Your sense of humor? Your approach to your religion? What is it?
HANK
madima answered on 10/30/05:My devil-may-care, to-hell-with-the-world attitude, I guess! :=)
In a world where peers, friends, family, bosses, etc. try to impose on you what they think you should be, how you should behave, feel and think, I can simply slam the door of my consciousness, make myself inaccessible when I want to, do as I please and be happy with the results :=) | | Question/Answer | | Erewhon asked on 10/29/05 - "All Hallo''s Eve" comes with nary a shiver Does anything about "All Hallows' Eve" make you shiver?
( © 1995-2002 by Jerry Wilson)
Halloween is an annual celebration, but just what is it actually a celebration of? And how did this peculiar custom originate? Is it, as some claim, a kind of demon worship? Or is it just a harmless vestige of some ancient pagan ritual?
The word itself, "Halloween," actually has its origins in the Catholic Church. It comes from a contracted corruption of All Hallows Eve. November 1, "All Hollows Day" (or "All Saints Day"), is a Catholic day of observance in honor of saints. But, in the 5th century BC, in Celtic Ireland, summer officially ended on October 31. The holiday was called Samhain (sow-en), the Celtic New year.
One story says that, on that day, the disembodied spirits of all those who had died throughout the preceding year would come back in search of living bodies to possess for the next year. It was believed to be their only hope for the afterlife. The Celts believed all laws of space and time were suspended during this time, allowing the spirit world to intermingle with the living.
Naturally, the still-living did not want to be possessed. So on the night of October 31, villagers would extinguish the fires in their homes, to make them cold and undesirable. They would then dress up in all manner of ghoulish costumes and noisily paraded around the neighborhood, being as destructive as possible in order to frighten away spirits looking for bodies to possess.
Probably a better explanation of why the Celts extinguished their fires was not to discourage spirit possession, but so that all the Celtic tribes could relight their fires from a common source, the Druidic fire that was kept burning in the Middle of Ireland, at Usinach.
Some accounts tell of how the Celts would burn someone at the stake who was thought to have already been possessed, as sort of a lesson to the spirits. Other accounts of Celtic history debunk these stories as myth.
The Romans adopted the Celtic practices as their own. But in the first century AD, Samhain was assimilated into celebrations of some of the other Roman traditions that took place in October, such as their day to honor Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit and trees. The symbol of Pomona is the apple, which might explain the origin of our modern tradition of bobbing for apples on Halloween.
The thrust of the practices also changed over time to become more ritualized. As belief in spirit possession waned, the practice of dressing up like hobgoblins, ghosts, and witches took on a more ceremonial role.
The custom of Halloween was brought to America in the 1840's by Irish immigrants fleeing their country's potato famine. At that time, the favorite pranks in New England included tipping over outhouses and unhinging fence gates.
The custom of trick-or-treating is thought to have originated not with the Irish Celts, but with a ninth-century European custom called souling. On November 2, All Souls Day, early Christians would walk from village to village begging for "soul cakes," made out of square pieces of bread with currants. The more soul cakes the beggars would receive, the more prayers they would promise to say on behalf of the dead relatives of the donors. At the time, it was believed that the dead remained in limbo for a time after death, and that prayer, even by strangers, could expedite a soul's passage to heaven.
The Jack-o-lantern custom probably comes from Irish folklore. As the tale is told, a man named Jack, who was notorious as a drunkard and trickster, tricked Satan into climbing a tree. Jack then carved an image of a cross in the tree's trunk, trapping the devil up the tree. Jack made a deal with the devil that, if he would never tempt him again, he would promise to let him down the tree.
According to the folk tale, after Jack died, he was denied entrance to Heaven because of his evil ways, but he was also denied access to Hell because he had tricked the devil. Instead, the devil gave him a single ember to light his way through the frigid darkness. The ember was placed inside a hollowed-out turnip to keep it glowing longer.
The Irish used turnips as their "Jack's lanterns" originally. But when the immigrants came to America, they found that pumpkins were far more plentiful than turnips. So the Jack-O-Lantern in America was a hollowed-out pumpkin, lit with an ember.
So, although some cults may have adopted Halloween as their favorite "holiday," the day itself did not grow out of evil practices. It grew out of the rituals of Celts celebrating a new year, and out of Medieval prayer rituals of Europeans. And today, even many churches have Halloween parties or pumpkin carving events for the kids. After all, the day itself is only as evil as one cares to make it.
© 1995-2002 by Jerry Wilson; Get Permission to Reprint this article.
References: Charles Panati, Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things, 1987; and Dr. Joseph Gahagan, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Personal letter, 1997 madima answered on 10/29/05:Not really, dear Ronnie :=)
But I keep my door locked on Halloween eve, which is just a few hours away where I am now.
It also happens to be a great night for robbers. Many break-ins happen here on this eve as most people are in the cemeteries celebrating the feast of the dead :=)
Many shoot-outs happen too, with so many drunks on the loose. Coconut wine flows freely and passions run high.
So, you see, if one is not careful here, one is very LIKELY to join the dead before this day is over! :-) | | Question/Answer | | excon asked on 10/29/05 - Iranians - I don't like 'em
Hello Christians:
I'm a Jew. I think Iran ought to be wiped out. It's a blot on the map. This time, Israel should drop the big one. Screw those Arabs, or Persians or whatever the fk they call themselves.
excon
madima answered on 10/29/05:I adore Persian cats! :=) | | Question/Answer | | revdauphinee asked on 10/28/05 - MORE IDIOCY Animal Rights Activist: 'Kill the Researchers'
Senate committee shocked by testimony of ALF spokesman
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=47096
WASHINGTON – A radical animal rights activist shocked members of the U.S. Senate this week by advocating the murder of those conducting medical research.
Jerry Vlasak, spokesman for the Animal Liberation Front, told the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works that killing medical researchers was "morally justified" to save laboratory animals.
Vlasak compared the life of lab animals to African American slaves and the Jewish victims of Nazi concentration camps.
He made his comments while defending a similar statement, made to the news media last year: "I don't think you'd have to kill – assassinate – too many vivisectors before you would see a marked decrease in the amount of vivisection going on. And I think for five lives, 10 lives, 15 human lives, we could save a million, 2 million, 10 million non-human lives."
"It is so revolting to hear what you say about murder – these aren't extermination camps," said Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-NJ. "What's being done, whether you like it or not, is to try and improve the quality of life for human beings. I believe that laboratory tests involving animals can be necessary and important for the advancement of science and medicine and the protection of public health."
The hearing was called to investigate the animal rights group SHAC, whose mission is to force the closure of one of America's largest independent contract research organizations, Huntongton Life Sciences. Recently, the New York Stock Exchange abruptly postponed its long-planned listing of HLS's holding company, Life Sciences Research Inc. following threats against the exchange made by SHAC.
Sen. James Inhofe, R-OK, told the FBI's counterterrorism Deputy Assistant Director John E. Lewis, who also testified, that he plans to introduce legislation that will grant law enforcement greater flexibility in tracking and prosecuting those who break the law.
"That's not a maybe," he vowed after hearing Vlasak. "That's a definite."
Another witness, Mark Bibi, general counsel for LSRI, recounted how his private property was vandalized by SHAC.
"The car was covered with animal rights graffiti," he said. "Warning messages were spray painted all over my house."
Witness Skip Boruchin of NASDAQ, who was targeted by SHAC for having a business relationship with HLS, reported the group slandered him as a sex offender and harassed his elderly mother while she was residing in an assisted living home.
LSRI reportedly lost millions of dollars in business and spent over $1 million on legal costs. Its share price was battered.
Vlasak described himself as a "former vivisector" and the press officer of the North American Liberation Front.
"The actions of underground activists who care enough about animals to speak out in no uncertain terms, and at times to risk their own lives and freedom, have a message that is most urgent and one that deserves to be heard and understood," he said. "Often underground animal liberation speech and actions either go unreported in the media or are uncritically vilified as 'violent' or 'terrorist,' with no attention paid to the needless and senseless suffering that industries and individuals gratuitously inflict on animals."
He claimed HLS kills 500 animals a day and "will test anything for anybody. They carry out experiments which involve poisoning animals with household products, pesticides, drugs, herbicides, food colorings and additives, sweeteners and genetically modified organisms, oven cleaner and make up."
Vlasak said the company was infiltrated in 1997 by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and found information that forced HLS to plead guilty to animal cruelty violations and pay a $50,000 fine.
He said it was important to realize "SHAC is not one group, or hierarchical entity, but an ideologically aligned group consisting on thousands of people who gather in various groups to protest the atrocities perpetrated by HLS."
Vlasak celebrated the fact that HLS has been brought to the brink of financial ruin.
madima answered on 10/29/05:Of course, you have a right to your own opinion, I respect that.
But have you SEEN what med research does to animal test subjects? And did you or your kids ever have any pet that loves you or any animal that you love like your own child or family?
Since I don't know your answers to these Qs, I wouldn't know what you will do if someone grabs your beloved animal and slowly tear out its eye sockets to see how much pain it can stand, electrocute it and cannibalize its internal organs while it's alive and screaming... You see, researchers have to establish pain thresholds for meds they test, etc.
In China, some raise black bears to tap them for their bile. You tear a permanent hole in their abdomen and implant catherers in their gall bladders to collect their bile which traditional Chinese medicine holds can cure fever, liver illness and sore eyes.
It's a very cruel, extremely painful practice,which is absolutely unnecessary.
This month, one of the farmers was attacked and eaten by his bears. I didn't feel sorry for him one bit.
If you ask me, in all honesty, I'll say I admire Vlasak and completely agree with him.
He should add more to his list too. Kill the poachers, the trappers and the bounty hunters as well as the traders and middlemen... although a bullet in the head will be letting them off too easily.
It will be an act of justice if they are made to EXPERIENCE the SAME things they do to animals.
It will be sweet justice if they are forced to step into their own steel traps and hang upside down in their own gore for days and days to die with agonizing slowness.
They should have all their internal organs taken out, tampered with, replaced and taken out again without anesthesia countless times to give them a dose of their own medicine.
See if they don't cry out they are being treated WORSE than African American slaves or Nazi concentration camp victims.
But of course, animals can't cry out like their human killers can. Under such circumstances, animals can only scream in pain or die in silence. | | Question/Answer | | Choux asked on 10/27/05 - Greatest Problem ? Cut and paste from BBC on line website(BBC dot com dot UK):: Prince Charles at Home Farm
"Prince Charles says climate change should be seen as the "greatest challenge to face man" and treated as a much bigger priority in the UK.
The prince unveiled his vision for the future of the environment, farming and food in an exclusive BBC interview.
He said climate change was "what really worries me", and he did not want his future grandchildren to ask why he had not acted over the issue.
He also encouraged consumers to buy regional produce to help UK farming."
Do you think that global warming is the greatest problem facing Great Britian and the rest of us??? madima answered on 10/28/05:I like Prince Charles. Before Princess Di died, he came here alone and donated a sum of money for the conservation of the highly endangered Philippine tarsiers. He even came to Bohol, the home of the tarsiers, to pet some of the captive population there :=)
Yes, I think that global warming is one of the greatest challenge that faces man today. But it is a problem that man has brought upon himself - with his use of fossil fuels and his destruction of the "lungs of the earth" - the rainforests aboveground and the coral forests beneath the seas.
But the Prince should also know that "unenlightened" farming is one of the factors that wreaks havoc on the earth.
When people denude forests to create more farms, they hasten the extinction of countless flora and fauna, contribute to erosion, desertification and siltation which kills even the corals under the seas. | | Question/Answer | | Choux asked on 10/27/05 - Europeans Not Fans of Halloween Cut and Paste from Yahoo News
By WILLIAM J. KOLE, Associated Press Writer Wed Oct 26, 4:20 PM ET
VIENNA, Austria - "It's almost Halloween — and all those ghosts, goblins, tricks and treats are giving Hans Kohler the creeps. So the mayor of Rankweil, a town near the border with Switzerland, has launched a one-man campaign disparaging Halloween as a "bad American habit" and urging families to skip it this year.
"It's an American custom that's got nothing to do with our culture," Kohler wrote in letters sent out to households. By midweek, the mayors of eight neighboring villages had thrown their support behind the boycott. So had local police, annoyed with the annual Oct. 31 uptick in vandalism and mischief.
Although Halloween has become increasingly popular across Europe — complete with carved pumpkins, witches on broomsticks, makeshift houses of horror and costumed children rushing door to door for candy — it's begun to breed a backlash.
Critics see it as the epitome of crass, U.S.-style commercialism. Clerics and conservatives contend it clashes with the spirit of traditional Nov. 1 All Saints' Day remembrances.
And it's got purists in countries struggling to retain a sense of uniqueness in Europe's ever-enlarging melting pot grimacing like Jack o' Lanterns.
Halloween "undermines our cultural identity," complained the Rev. Giordano Frosini, a Roman Catholic theologian who serves as vicar-general in the Diocese of Pistoia near Florence, Italy.
Frosini denounced the holiday as a "manifestation of neo-paganism" and an expression of American cultural supremacy. "Pumpkins show their emptiness," he said.
To be sure, Halloween is big business in Europe.
Germans alone spend nearly $170 million, on Halloween costumes, sweets, decorations and parties. The holiday has become increasingly popular in Romania, home to the Dracula myth, where discotheques throw parties with bat and vampire themes.
In Britain, where Halloween celebrations rival those in the United States, it's the most lucrative day of the year for costume and party retailers.
"Without Halloween, I don't think we could exist, to be honest," said Pendra Maisuria, owner of Escapade, a London costume shop that rakes in 30 percent of its annual sales in the run-up to Oct. 31. Metropolitan Police, meanwhile, haven't logged any significant increase in crime.
But not everyone takes such a carefree approach toward the surge in trick-or-treating — "giving something sweet or getting something sour," as it's called in German.
In Austria, where many families get a government child allowance, "parents who abuse it to buy Halloween plunder for their kids should be forced to pay back the aid," grumbled Othmar Berbig, an Austrian who backs the small but strident boycott movement.
In Sweden, even as Halloween's popularity has increased, so have views of the holiday as an "unnecessary, bad American custom," said Bodil Nildin-Wall, an expert at the Language and Folklore Institute in Uppsala.
Italy's Papaboys, a group of pope devotees who include some of the young Catholics who cheer wildly at
Vatican events, have urged Christians not to take part in what they consider "a party in honor of Satan and hell," and plan to stage prayer vigils nationwide that night.
Don't take it all so seriously, counters Gerald Faschingeder, who heads a Roman Catholic youth alliance in Austria. He sees nothing particularly evil about glow-in-the-dark skeletons, plastic fangs, fake blood, rubber tarantulas or latex scars.
"It's a chance for girls and boys to disguise themselves and have some fun away from loud and demanding adults," Faschingeder said. "For one evening, at least, kids can feel more powerful than grown-ups."
___
I'm lazy, make up your own question and answer it.
That is, if you wish. :):):)
madima answered on 10/28/05:Dear Mary Sue,
We don't celebrate Halloween like Westerners do, although we are quite "Americanized".
The over three centuries of Spanish rule has more hold on our culture than the less than one century of Uncle Sam's reign :=)
The malls in the biggest cities are spruced up with lighted plastic pumpkins, spider webs, bats, vampires and ghoul mannequins, but Filipino kids don't go for "trick or treat" here. Many go from house to house in groups, singing the standard "serenade of the dead" although they don't wear costumes.
Roughly translated, the song identifies the child serenaders as "lost souls from purgatory who did not make it in time when the gates of heaven closed". So they are begging for alms, waiting for the next time the gates will open. For their pains, the old folks give them coins for their pains :=)
But our real celebration focuses on the cemeteries, where feasting that lasts for two days is held. The tombs are cleaned, laden with flowers and candles, lights are put up, people picnic, sing and dance and tell stories beside the graves. Some even have rock bands in there! It's an official non-working holiday and a real feast of the dead! :=)
If it's a business here, it's mostly for the underground economy - the small vendors of flowers, candles and food and the entertainers :=) | | Question/Answer | | paraclete asked on 10/26/05 - Wisdom Just thought I would share this
25 Phrases Of Wisdom
1. If you're too open minded, your brains will fall out.
2. Age is a very high price to pay for maturity.
3. Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than going to a garage makes you a mechanic.
4. Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.
5. If you must choose between two evils, pick the one you've never tried before.
6. My idea of housework is to sweep the room with a glance.
7. Not one shred of evidence supports the notion that life is serious.
8. It is easier to get forgiveness than permission.
9. For every action, there is an equal and opposite government program.
10. If you look like your passport picture, you probably need the trip.
11. Bills travel through the mail at twice the speed of checks.
12. A conscience is what hurts when all your other parts feel so good.
13. Eat well, stay fit, die anyway.
14. Men are from earth. Women are from earth. Deal with it.
15. No husband has ever been shot while doing the dishes.
16. A balanced diet is a cookie in each hand.
17. Middle age is when broadness of the mind and narrowness of the waist change places.
18. Opportunities always look bigger going than coming.
19. Junk is something you've kept for years and throw away three weeks before you need it.
20. There is always one more imbecile than you counted on.
21. Experience is a wonderful thing. It enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again.
22. By the time you can make ends meet, they move the ends.
23. Thou shalt not weigh more than thy refrigerator.
24. Someone who thinks logically provides a nice contrast to the real world.
AND . . . (drum roll please?)
25. Blessed are they who can laugh at themselves for they shall never cease to be amused.
now I think I can relate to everyone of these, how about you? madima answered on 10/27/05:I love numbers 1, 4 and 25.
But most of all, I love number 5: If you must choose between two evils, pick the one you've never tried before.
Now, that's a rule to live by! :=)
Thanks, Brian! :=)
| | Question/Answer | | paraclete asked on 10/26/05 - and just to test your perspective Matter of Perspective
Three preachers sat discussing the best positions for prayer while a telephone repairman worked nearby. "Kneeling is definitely best," claimed one.
"No," another contended. "I get the best results standing with my hands outstretched to Heaven."
"You're both wrong," the third insisted. "The most effective prayer position is lying prostrate, face down on the floor."
The repairman could contain himself no longer. "Hey, fellas, " he interrupted, "the best prayin' I ever did was hangin' upside down from a telephone pole." madima answered on 10/27/05:If I remember it right, the best praying I've done was trapped alone in a building, in a blackout, in the middle of the night, with an over 6 magnitude earthquake making my cot slide from one wall to the other :=)
Good the earthquake lasted only for a few seconds :=)
Perhaps God heard :=)
I wasn't praying for myself though, but for the helpless little cat who sleeps under the stairs.
| | Question/Answer | | sapphire630 asked on 10/24/05 - A C&P brought to u by sapph Squirrels on crack
Oct 7, 2005
NATURE lovers fear that squirrels could become hooked on crack cocaine plundered from addicts' hidden stashes.
The furry animals are thought to be behind a new drugs turf war in Brixton - stealing rocks of crack hidden in front gardens.
Tough police action to rid the town centre of dealers and addicts has seen crackheads abandon their usual drug stash hideouts.
But the blitz has displaced some dealing into nearby residential streets.
Drug addicts are known to be hiding small stashes of crack rocks in people's front lawns late at night.
Squirrels have been spotted in the same front gardens, seemingly hunting out the buried narcotics.
The discovery has led some residents to speculate that the squirrels are already in the grips of addiction. One resident, who asked for his name to be withheld, told the South London Press.
"I was chatting with my neighbour who told me that crack users and dealers sometimes use my front garden to hide bits of their stash.
"An hour earlier I'd seen a squirrel wandering round the garden, digging in the flowerbeds.
"It looked like it knew what it was looking for.
"It was ill-looking and its eyes looked bloodshot but it kept on desperately digging.
"It was almost as if it was trying to find hidden crack rocks."
Crack squirrels are a recognised phenomena in the US.
They are known to live in parks frequented by addicts in New York and Washington DC.
The squirrels have attacked park visitors in their frenzied search for their next fix.
An RSPCA spokesman said he was unaware of the squirrels taking crack in Brixton.
----------------------------------
Maybe they (the police) should team these squirrels up with the drug sniffing police dogs.
madima answered on 10/25/05:The poor squirrels! But no, I don't think they will be addicted. They will die.
Many of the "forbidden" substances that humans like to consume are toxic to animals -both domestic and wild.
One tiger owner had his adolescent kids' buddies hanging around in their home. When he was away, one of them must have fed the drugs they were using on the tiger. They did not mean to kill him. Perhaps they just thought: "Let's see how a tiger trips." The innocent cat died as a result.
That happens to be a 500 pound cat. So, what happens to a less than ten pound squirrel or other smaller mammals who would stumble on a cache? | | Question/Answer | | HANK1 asked on 10/24/05 - ATTACHMENT:
Attachment involves a person's behavior that is independent of his/her direct needs. It assumes that humans are social beings who do NOT just use other people to satisfy their drives. I believe this applies to a poor or lower middle-class person but not the upper middle-class, the rich and the wealthy. Those who come into money can go one of two ways: Be greedy and keep it for him/herself OR spread it around and make friends. I have found over the years that many of my poor friends did the latter and the former became outcasts. If a working class became a ruling class, I readily believe that a Democracy would remain except for the 'self-dealing' turkeys who are running the show now. Most poor people have a tendency to appreciate what they come by. As we know, the ruling class doesn't. Wouldn't it be great to see those in Congress digging ditches 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year without medical insurance? Putting on a new pair of shoes is great ... if you're a poor person. Others take it foregranted. Do you?
HANK
madima answered on 10/25/05:Dear Hank,
I find it quite strange that the West puts so much emphasis on "attachment" when so many Eastern faiths put more value on non-attachment.
Attachment to people, to material things, to thoughts and ideas could easily be a man's undoing :=)
Every year, Buddhist monks in Nepal create a very elaborate mandala of colored sand. They spend most of the year creating it. When it is finished, they allow people to view it and appreciate it for some days. Then, they blow it away and start all over.
Nothing of this earth ever lasts. Making that a premise of our existence could help in any ways. It seems that not too many realize how non-attachment could in itself be of great value.
Non-attachment liberates you. | | Question/Answer | | Erewhon asked on 10/24/05 - Alexander Solzhenitsyn unmasks the weakness of secular humanism Perhaps the most graphic illustration of godlessness versus belief as it impinged, not only directly on the lives of men, but also on their political machinery, was that brief moment at Harvard, in 1978, when Alexander Solzhenitsyn spoke so soberly in the rain to its graduates.
"Yet there is a disaster which is already very much with us," he explained to them, apparently uncomprehending and unprepared that his words would apply to them.
" I am referring to the calamity of an autonomous irreligious humanistic consciousness. It has made man the measure of all things on earth -- imperfect man, who is never free of pride, self-interest, vanity, and dozens of other defects. ....
"On the way from the Renaissance to our day we have enriched our experience, but we have lost the concept of a Supreme Complete Entity which used to restrain our passions and irresponsibility.
"We have placed too much hope in politics and social reforms, only to find out that we were being deprived of our most precious possession, our spiritual life. ...
"If, as claimed by humanism, man were born only to be happy, he would not be born to die."
Comments? madima answered on 10/24/05:Dear Ronnie,
I know Solzhenitsyn is a great man, but I don't favor his concept of what "religious consciousness" should be, as I glean from this excerpt.
While I don't subscribe to putting too much hope in politics and social reforms, I don't subscribe in being too religion-dependent either.
I'll only comment on two of his lines you quoted :=)
"...we have lost the concept of a Supreme Complete Entity which used to restrain our passions and irresponsibility."
If you ask me, I find that false. Man has free will. So why would he need a Supreme Entity to keep him from doing what he wants to do - good or bad? Why should he pass the buck to his God?
And why would a Supreme Entity bother about monitoring the actions of His creations when they should learn the purpose of their own lives by themselves, by trial and error? Otherwise, He should have just created robots with a perfect programming and wind them up when He pleases.
And I see no sense in this either:
"If, as claimed by humanism, man were born only to be happy, he would not be born to die."
I think life is precious because we know we live on borrowed time. The moment we are born, our cells begin to age, and we slowly begin to die.
But that's precisely the reason why we try to live life to the hilt!
How boring it must be if one can live forever!
| | Question/Answer | | Choux asked on 10/23/05 - Unkindest Cut of All For clete, the Australian who bad mouths American media::
"TALK show host Rove McManus's plan to show a vasectomy live on TV has sparked outrage.
Australian Medical Association state president Dr Mark Yates said the show was trivialising a serious decision.
"If the decision is made in flippant circumstances and there is a requirement later for a reversal, that represents an awful waste of valuable resources," he said.
Family Association national vice-president Bill Muehlenberg said Channel 10 was "scraping the bottom of the barrel".
McManus said: "I'm very excited at the prospect of speaking live to someone undergoing something that would make the toughest Aussie bloke's eyes water."
The program on Tuesday will cross live to a Sydney clinic."
Comments??? madima answered on 10/24/05:I don't really know what the ruckus is all about :=)
What's wrong with showing vasectomy live on TV? It's just a simple outpatient procedure. It's not even a major operation.
The networks and other media companies have long been showing footages and films of child births, CS, brain surgeries and other medical procedures onscreen. I think the National Geographic episode on face lifts and liposuction was actually more gory than a vasectomy or a tubal ligation.
Papa had vasectomy when I was a child. He thinks men should have a more active role in family planning, more responsibility. They should not just leave the burden on the women.
He had the trauma of his life when he saw how mama suffered when she gave birth to me. He was on her bedside. And he swore he doesn't want to have her go through that anymore.
I agree with him. | | Question/Answer | | Choux asked on 10/23/05 - Famous Convert Newsweek, Oct 31, 2005 issue::By David Gates
Newsweek
"Sometimes Anne Rice won't leave her bedroom for days on end—and neither would you. Glass doors open onto a terrace that looks over the red-tiled roofs of La Jolla, Calif., to the Pacific Ocean. A live-in staffer brings meals to the table at the foot of her ornately carved wooden bed, which faces an ornately carved stone fireplace. She exercises in a huge bike-in closet. She's got two computers and enough books to last her a year. Splendid isolation? Splendid, sure. But she's often got family visiting in a downstairs guest suite, she reads The New York Times every morning—"Nicholas Kristof is a hero to me"—watches news "till I can't stand it anymore," and spends up to an hour and a half a day e-mailing with her extraordinarily faithful readers.
They've been worried about her. After 25 novels in 25 years, Rice, 64, hasn't published a book since 2003's "Blood Chronicle," the tenth volume of her best-selling vampire series. They may have heard she came close to death last year, when she had surgery for an intestinal blockage, and also back in 1998, when she went into a sudden diabetic coma; that same year she returned to the Roman Catholic Church, which she'd left at 18. They surely knew that Stan Rice, her husband of 41 years, died of a brain tumor in 2002. And though she'd moved out of their longtime home in New Orleans more than a year before Hurricane Katrina, she still has property there—and the deep emotional connection that led her to make the city the setting for such novels as "Interview With the Vampire." What's up with her? "For the last six months," she says, "people have been sending e-mails saying, 'What are you doing next?' And I've told them, 'You may not want what I'm doing next'." We'll know soon. In two weeks, Anne Rice, the chronicler of vampires, witches and—under the pseudonym A. N. Roquelaure—of soft-core S&M encounters, will publish "Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt," a novel about the 7-year-old Jesus, narrated by Christ himself. "I promised," she says, "that from now on I would write only for the Lord." It's the most startling public turnaround since Bob Dylan's "Slow Train Coming" announced that he'd been born again.
Meeting the still youthful-looking Rice, you'd never suspect she'd been ill—except that on a warm October afternoon she's chilly enough to have a fire blazing. And if you were expecting Morticia Addams with a strange new light in her eyes, forget it. "We make good coffee," she says, beckoning you to where a silver pot sits on the white tablecloth. "We're from New Orleans." Rice knows "Out of Egypt" and its projected sequels—three, she thinks—could alienate her following; as she writes in the afterword, "I was ready to do violence to my career." But she sees a continuity with her old books, whose compulsive, conscience-stricken evildoers reflect her long spiritual unease. "I mean, I was in despair." In that afterword she calls Christ "the ultimate supernatural hero ... the ultimate immortal of them all."
To render such a hero and his world believable, she immersed herself not only in Scripture, but in first-century histories and New Testament scholarship—some of which she found disturbingly skeptical. "Even Hitler scholarship usually allows Hitler a certain amount of power and mystery." She also watched every Biblical movie she could find, from "The Robe" to "The Passion of the Christ" ("I loved it"). And she dipped into previous novels, from "Quo Vadis" to Norman Mailer's "The Gospel According to the Son" to Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins's apocalyptic Left Behind series. ("I was intrigued. But their vision is not my vision.") She can cite scholarly authority for giving her Christ a birth date of 11 B.C., and for making James, his disciple, the son of Joseph by a previous marriage. But she's also taken liberties where they don't explicitly conflict with Scripture. No one reports that the young Jesus studied with the historian Philo of Alexandria, as the novel has it—or that Jesus' family was in Alexandria at all. And she's used legends of the boy Messiah's miracles from the noncanonical Apocrypha: bringing clay birds to life, striking a bully dead and resurrecting him.
Rice's most daring move, though, is to try to get inside the head of a 7-year-old kid who's intermittently aware that he's also God Almighty. "There were times when I thought I couldn't do it," she admits. The advance notices say she's pulled it off: Kirkus Reviews' starred rave pronounces her Jesus "fully believable." But it's hard to imagine all readers will be convinced when he delivers such lines as "And there came in a flash to me a feeling of understanding everything, everything!" The attempt to render a child's point of view can read like a Sunday-school text crossed with Hemingway: "It was time for the blessing. The first prayer we all said together in Jerusalem ... The words were a little different to me. But it was still very good." Yet in the novel's best scene, a dream in which Jesus meets a bewitchingly handsome Satan—smiling, then weeping, then raging—Rice shows she still has her great gift: to imbue Gothic chills with moral complexity and heartfelt sorrow.
Rice already has much of the next volume written. ("Of course I've been advised not to talk about it.") But what's she going to do with herself once her hero ascends to Heaven? "If I really complete the life of Christ the way I want to do it," she says, "then I might go on and write a new type of fiction. It won't be like the other. It'll be in a world that includes redemption." Still, you can bet the Devil's going to get the best lines.
© 2005 Newsweek, Inc.
Do you want Anne Rice writting for the Lord?
madima answered on 10/24/05:Hmmm... I don't think she's writing for Him, dear Mary Sue :=)
I should know because I write a lot of fiction, aside from the everyday non-fiction, potboiler, journalistic stuff. And it's the fiction I've always enjoyed most.
Anne Rice is writing about Him. Or rather, she is writing about what she thinks He thinks when He was a kid. That's different.
In the creative act of fiction writing, Anne Rice will put much of herself in her concept of Christ, as He should have been, or rather, as she thinks He should be and should have been in her mind :=)
She puts herself in His position, as every writer does, when she creates a fictional character. She becomes Him and He becomes her.
But inasmuch as it is her hand on the keyboard, she is the ultimate creator and He is only her subject :=)
A writer does not really write for Him or for anybody. She does it for herself because the "impersonation" pleases her.
It is a very intriguing, very challenging process for a writer. And of course, in the case of authors who already have best-selling track records like her, it makes very good money! :=)
| | Question/Answer | | HANK1 asked on 10/23/05 - BELIEVERS:
How do believers combat boredom, loneliness and helplessness?
HANK
madima answered on 10/23/05:Honestly, I've never been bored or lonely!
I live my life to the hilt, every millisecond of it. I can't even find enough time to do all that I wish to do! I don't think my whole lifetime will be enough! :=) | | Question/Answer | | HANK1 asked on 10/23/05 - NON-BELIEVERS:
How do non-believers combat boredom, loneliness and helplessness?
HANK
madima answered on 10/23/05:Probably by ranting at themselves, their friends, family, their kins and their pets.
I'd guess at least, believers can rant at God and curse Him for not giving them mates, lovers, promotions, sexy bodies and lottery winnings.
But I wouldn't really know. I've never been bored or lonely in my life! :=) | | Question/Answer | | Erewhon asked on 10/23/05 - Well, that stopped the clock, but, now for a serious question ... As a Christian or any kind of believer, "Do you believe that your first duty is to your God or to the President/ruler of your nation, and what do you do if you truly believe that your President/ruler is not doing God's will in something? Who do you choose - God or the President/ruler"
Please - no lists of names!
The witch hunt is temporarily on hold. madima answered on 10/23/05:Actually, dear Ronnie, I believe that my first duty is to myself :=)
That's what any Christian President of any country will tell you, if he is honest enough - which he isn't, otherwise, he won't be president :=)
I can hear God's voice well enough in my conscience.
And I wanna bet that's what your President and mine will tell you, too! :=)
You must be aware that here in the Philippines, we have overthrown two of our Presidents already and we are close to overthrowing our third.
But it's not because they did not do God's will. That's not their job, we believe. They are not priests of the church. The president's job is to do the will of the people because he is supposed to take care of their welfare - in peace or in war.
But that is of course, being idealistic.
Presidents always think they are God, though they won't say it aloud.
| | Question/Answer | | paraclete asked on 10/23/05 - will you oppose the new Nazi threat? Nazi racoons on the march
From correspondents in Berlin
October 24, 2005
GERMANY is battling a new threat - "Nazi" raccoons that are ruining the country's wine harvest half a century after Hermann Goering introduced them, saying they would "enrich" the local wildlife.
Goering ordered the creatures released into the German countryside in 1934.
Since then, they have spread through central Europe because they have no natural predators there. They are now destroying Germany's grape harvest.
"Raccoons wiped out almost the entire harvest in a matter of days," said Werner Kothe, who operates a vineyard in the Brandenburg region.
The situation has become so serious in Brandenburg that officials have hired bounty hunters to cull raccoons.
Scientists estimate there may be more than a million in Germany, and say they are spreading to neighbouring countries at an alarming rate. madima answered on 10/23/05:Well, that is Germany - and the rest of Europe's price for eradicating their big predators that can cull the coons naturally.
The European lynx is almost gone, thanks to humans denuding the forests, putting out traps and poisons. Same is true for the European wolves and the jackals, which farmers had been persecuting nonstop for raiding their livestock.
While even the lynx, the jackal and the wolf (unless they are in packs) are really no match for a healthy adult coon (which can both swim and climb), these predators can at least control the coon's population growth.
But in all honesty, I cannot sympathize with the German grape growers. I don't drink wine and I love racoons. They are very intelligent, very agile and extremely adorable, just as they are extremely mischievous, beautiful masked-face bandits that they are.
| | Question/Answer | | HANK1 asked on 10/22/05 - ANOTHER ROLE MODEL QUESTION:
Chou made a comment in her answer to my last ROLE MODEL question. She said that she couldn't think of any regular member on this Board who's a role model. That got me thinkin' which led me to asking myself, "What are the characteristics of a role model?" Here's what I came up with:
Communication skills, positive attitudes, knowledge, organizational abilities, enthusiasm, fairness, flexibility, able to encourage and good speaking and writing skills.
Taking those characteristics into consideration, are there any ROLE MODELS that participate on this Board?
HANK
madima answered on 10/22/05:I can't say there is one for sure, until I get to know them well in the real world.
This is virtual reality. Anyone can be anything here :=)
I beg to disagree about the qualities of a role model too, dear Hank. I have known of people who are illiterates, with no organizational skills, who make good role models in terms of compassion and self-sacrifice :=) | | Question/Answer | revdauphinee asked on 10/22/05 - Britain’s War on Pigs
Britain’s War on Pigs
October 16th, 2005
By Robert Spencer
www.frontpagemagazine.com
Pigs are disappearing all over England, but not because of some porcine variant of Mad Cow Disease: rather, the most implacable foe of the swine is turning out to be multiculturalism.
The latest assault came in the benefits department at Dudley Council, West Midlands, where employees were told that they were no longer allowed to have any representations of pigs at their desks. Some had little porcine porcelain figurines. Others had toys or calendars of cute little pigs. One had a tissue box depicting Winnie the Pooh and Piglet. All of this had to go, not because of new some new anti-kitsch ordinance, but because Muslims might be offended — particularly now, what with Ramadan beginning. How could a pious Muslim in the Dudley Council, West Midlands benefits department redouble his efforts to conform his life to the will of Allah with all these…pigs staring him in the face? It was an insult!
This was not the first anti-pig initiative in Britain. In Derby, Muslims took offense at plans to restore the statue of the Florentine Boar, which had stood in the Derby Park for over a hundred years before it was decapitated by a German bomb in 1942. Recent plans to rebuild the Boar’s head ran into resistance from local Muslims. Suman Gupta, a local Council member, warned: “If the statue of the boar is put back at the Arboretum I have been told that it will not be there the next day, or at least it won’t be in the same condition the next day at least. We should not have the boar because it is offensive to some of the groups in the immediate area.” However, after more than 2,000 locals signed petitions in favor of the Boar, local authorities decided to bend to public opinion and go ahead with their original plans to restore the statue.
Elsewhere in England pigs did not fare so well. In March 2003, Barbara Harris, head teacher at Park Road Junior Infant and Nursery School in Batley, West Yorkshire, banned stories mentioning pigs. “Recently,” Harris explained, “I have been aware of an occasion where young Muslim children in class were read stories about pigs. We try to be sensitive to the fact that for Muslims talk of pigs is offensive.” Harris didn’t mention whether or not she intended to allow Muslim students to possess copies of the Qur’an at the school, despite its repeated mention of how Allah cursed Jews and turned them into apes and pigs (2:62-65; 5:59-60; 7:166).
Why have pigs become so unpopular in Britain? Mahbubur Rahman, a Muslim Councillor in West Midlands, summed it up in explaining why the toy pigs had to go: “It’s a tolerance,” he said, “of people’s beliefs.”
How’s that again? It’s “a tolerance of people’s beliefs” to deny to others the right to display harmless pictures and figurines? Mahbubur Rahman seems unacquainted with the dictum, widely attributed to Voltaire, that “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” Yet this is what tolerance really is: the acceptance of the fact that in a free society, some will do and say things of which one may disapprove, and that one has no consequent right to command or force them to stop. If this is not recognized in any given society, that society is not in fact free at all — any more than Henry Ford’s offer that “You can have a car in any color you want, as long as it’s black” represented a genuine choice.
madima answered on 10/22/05:That's quite sad.
Pork is always much healthier to eat than beef, as some nutritionists will tell you. Between the Mad Cow disease and the Avian Flu, I wonder what alternatives Briton carnivores will have... Of course, there's mutton and venison, which we don't like here in Asia. We are predominantly pork eaters :=)
Even pig images are popular here and are normally given as gifts to attract good luck and prosperity.
For some people, pigs also make good pets - if they can cope with its size in the future, when it matures. They are very intelligent and affectionate.
Pigs/boars are so honored in Eastern culture that they had been placed in the Chinese zodiac.
It is said that people born in the Year of the Pig are chivalrous and gallant. Whatever they do, they do with all their strength. For Boar Year people, there is no left or right and there is no retreat. They have tremendous fortitude and great honesty. They don’t make many friends but they make them for life, and anyone having a Boar Year friend is fortunate for they are extremely loyal. They don’t talk much but have a great thirst for knowledge. They study a great deal and are generally well informed. Boar people are quick tempered; yet they hate arguments and quarreling. They are kind to their loved ones. No matter how bad problems seem to be, Boar people try to work them out, honestly if sometimes impulsively. They are most compatible with Rabbits and Sheep.
I do wonder what Brits will do in 2007. It's the Year of the Pig. Will they ban it? :=) | | Question/Answer | | hOPE12 asked on 10/21/05 - Why do people do what they do? Hello Everyone,
How are you all doing? I am really sad because I saw this on the news about a women named Lashaun Harris, who is 23 years old, in San Francisco, who took off her children’s clothing and tossed their naked bodies in the San Francisco bay. They were three boys, were Taronta 2, Treshaun 6 and Josha 16 monthes old. They were able to recover the bodies of the older two but the 16 month old Joshua was not recovered as of yet. The mother of these children was to protect them and love them. How could a mother do such a terrible thing so as to fling them into a cold, dark waters of the bay and –still live herself? Those poor babies. I am not a person who seeks to find revenge but I certainly am fighting what my heart feels.
What could make anyone do such a horrific thing, especially a mother who gives birth to such a precious gift of life?
Take care,
Hope12
madima answered on 10/21/05:It does not surprise me in the least. Some psychologists call it the "Medea complex", after the mythical Medea of Colchis.
Though Medea is most known in the tragedy written by Euripides, as a witch-queen betrayed by the husband she loved and who committed filicide as an act of vengeance, the term "Medea complex" has been applied to both men and women who kill their offspring.
In essence, Medea is a psychological archetype. In the Greek legend, she is the grand daughter of Helios, the Sun, although she is also a priestess of Hecate – the goddess who rules the moon and the underworld. Hence, she represents both darkness and light, life and death.
The premise is: If one can love, one can hate. If one can give life, one can also kill. If one can create, one can destroy. Everyone has a bright and a dark side. But in others, the duality can be carried to both extremes, depending on the mitigating circumstances and the true psychological make-up of the individual.
Parents view kids as extensions of themselves. So, if they can love their kids passionately, they can hate them just as passionately. If they can sacrifice their lives that their kids may live, they can also kill them, if they become desperate enough, or if they feel they are betrayed by either their mates or the kids themselves. Of course, the reason could be pathological, but in some cases, it's not.
I don't know the true circumstances of Lashaun, so I can't say for sure. But she is painfully young to bear the full responsibility of motherhood by herself and is apparently either not in her right mind or very desperate, though when it came to the final act of killing herself, she obviously lost her nerve.
The children who die in the hands of their parents are too many to count. But usually, they don't make it to the front pages of newspapers. Most people just don't like to speak of it. | | Question/Answer | | HANK1 asked on 10/21/05 - ROLE MODELS:
"Children need models rather than critics." - Joseph Joubert
That's ROLE models, folks. Are you a role model? (Tell the truth)
HANK
madima answered on 10/21/05:Definitely, I don't think I'll make a good role model for girls who want to be either a mother or a wife, or both. I'm too self-absorbed and extremely self-centered to share my life with another human being (though I will be more willing to share my life with wild creatures).
I may make a good role model for someone who likes to think that life is an adventure, though, someone who likes to compete in my particular field, do what she pleases, enjoy my personal brand of freedom and say to hell with the world! :=) | | Question/Answer | | Choux asked on 10/21/05 - I Was Tortured Unbelieve-able, isn't it. I was tortured by the medical establishment because my paperwork was "not in order" even though they admitted it was through no fault of my own!
Wednesday night I had a Sleep Study-I slept overnight in the hospital sleep center so they could monitor my vitals while asleep. Blood oxygen level, EKG, EEG, respiration rate, and most importantly, how much pressure I needed on my ventilator to keep me breathing while asleep.
I have been sleeping on a vetilator for ten years and have had five sleep studies. I went in to have myself monitored and have my ventilator pressure raised.
They said that due to the paperwork mix-up(will leave out a long story), they had to do the sleep study as if I was just starting out being diagnosed. That meant that I had to sleep without any assistance at all. I have not even laid down in ten years without breathing assistance. I argued my case to no avail, and finally decided to go through with the study.
I lay on my back in the dark, trying to "sleep" for over two hours, I would guess, trying to concentrate and *force my lungs to go in and out* and in terrible pain.
Living f*cking hell. As I was laying there on the bed I though of torture. I wondered how long I could last; the test was at least 6 hours; how long my heart would last....he said that if I "coded", they could get assistance right away! Pathetic consolation!!
Finally she came in and hooked me up to their ventilator. Relief. I just concentrated on in and then out sucking in blessed air.
I slept much of the next 24 hours, and today, I am recovering from the ordeal. I will never go back there. Phew!!
Choux
really happy to be alive and by myself with my cat! madima answered on 10/21/05:Dear Mary Sue,
I can empathize with you very well. You can imagine what a torture it was for my parents when the hospital staff exchanged my x-ray plates with that of a terminally-ill girl my age and then the doctor told all of us that I will not live to see my twelfth birthday.
However, going on thin air is something I have yet to face when I go for my dream of climbing the 8K meter mountains.
When I go beyond the death zone - 26,000 feet, then I think I will know what it's really like to suck in every blessed molecule of oxygen that could be sucked in very thin air...
I'm thinking of going without bottled oxygen when the time comes, but I don't know yet if my body can tolerate it. Oxygen deprivation kills brain cells fast, induces hallucinations and make you lose your judgment.
In the meantime, like you, I'm trying to enjoy sea-level oxygen in polluted Manila and playing with my frequent visitor, a stray tuxedo cat! :=) | | Question/Answer | | Choux asked on 10/21/05 - Scared Straight Last week, my physician gave me a copy of the Gospel of John suring our visit in my apartment. My blood pressure was in stroke out range, my blood sugar sky high as usual, and other alarming symptoms. I took it as that I was in "God's Hands".
Well, I have gained control of my blood sugar, and now instead of posting here with my blood sugar in the 300-400 range, it is in the 90-150 range.
I'm thinking my posts and answers may exhibit a little more sense going forward. Having blood sugar that high is kinda like being drunk.
But then, hey, maybe not! :=D
Dudes, have a series of great days till the day you die, that's what I'm going to do. madima answered on 10/21/05:Glad to hear you're ok, dear Mary Sue. Please take care! :=) | | Question/Answer | | Choux asked on 10/18/05 - Just for Fun Ananova(UK on line tabloid):
**David Copperfield to 'magic' girl pregnant**
"David Copperfield says he plans to impregnate a girl on stage - without even touching her.
Speaking to German magazine Galore, the illusionist rejected the theory that there were only seven different kinds of magic tricks.
He said: "Bull S/! There is a great deal of new territory to conquer. In my next show I'm going to make a girl pregnant on stage."
He added: "Naturally it will be without sex. Everyone will be happy about it, but I'm not telling you any more."
The magician is currently on tour in Germany with his show, An Intimate Evening of Grand Illusion.
Comments... madima answered on 10/19/05:I have a DVD of David Copperfield vanishing an entire airplane... I guess that in terms of scale, that's more challenging! :=)
I'll bet that on this "impregnation" act, he will employ a set of twins, one is pregnant and the other is not.
All he has to do is create an imperceptible diversion for the audience so he could seamlessly switch the non-pregnant twin with the pregnant one at the culmination of his act.
Perhaps he will even summon a doctor in the audience to examine the belly of the girl before and after she became "pregnant"! :=) | | Question/Answer | | CeeBee2 asked on 10/19/05 - Posting the Ten Commandments......................... Please help me understand this. Why would the Commandments be posted in a U.S. government building? What is the message? What is the intent? madima answered on 10/19/05:I'm not an American, but if you ask me, I see absolutely NO sense in it! For me, it even comes across as a gesture of hypocrisy.
America is a Christian nation, sure, but she is also the Land of the Free. So why alienate the others of other faiths who come to her shores? Besides, the 10 commandments' righteous place is in a religious building, if it is to be displayed at all, which is not really necessary. Why put it in a state-owned building, which effectively is financed, not just by the Christian citizenry but by the non-Christian constituents as well?
I'm in a predominantly Christian country myself. In fact, mine is the only Christian nation in the Far East. We have lots of churches even in the poorest and in the remotest towns. Many of our government officials (the President included) have the images of saints, crucifixes or both, and usually altars INSIDE their private offices in the public buildings... But even that is usually frowned upon by the people... Like, you know this is a very corrupt politician and yet he has the nerve to surround himself with religious icons, like he honors anything sacred. It's nothing short of sacrilege!
Oh, the Church meddles a lot in our national and local politics... But I have NEVER seen ANY of our government buildings posting the ten commandments! (I'd reckon a guess that if they do that, they'll attract bombers, especially if they do it in our Muslim South.)
I believe if you are a real Christian, if in your heart and soul you want to keep the commandments, you just live it.
You don't need to post it.
| | Question/Answer | | ROLCAM asked on 10/18/05 - The Negative Side !! On the negative side, two elements catch our eye, elements which do not belong to other epochs in the same way: terrorism and drugs.
Please may I have your views on these two topics. madima answered on 10/18/05:I guess terrorism has always been there, though it has never been played up to the grand scale like it is now.
Modern technology - like the way information can be transmitted across the globe in seconds, like the way terrorists can recruit and spread propaganda in websites without being traced or apprehended- has something to do with that.
Drugs have always been with humankind. Ancient people and shamans of ages gone have long learned the use of hallucinogens to alter their minds and gain access to other or supposedly "higher" levels of consciousness. Hallucinogens and their equivalents have long been used in rites of initiation, not just of the youth, but of leaders of men. In many cases,they have also been used for both bodily purification and healing.
As with anything, the problem is not with the drugs, not with the plants or chemicals with hallucinogenic properties, but in the way people use and abuse them.
You know, there's plenty of marijuana and other hallucinogens here where I am? They grow wild in our mountains (although many of our rebel groups "farm" them in the forests to support their cause). I can easily take drugs if I want to, simply because they are there and nobody can prevent me. But the thing is, I don't want to.
I can be a terrorist if I want to. The terrorists behind 9/11, Bali, and heaven knows where else, trained here in my country. I'm already quite desensitized to violence, with bombings regarded as ordinary happenings here. And you'll be surprised that many of the terrorists we knew do it, not for idealism, but for the money...
Sometimes, I consider the merits of environmental terrorism - to destroy the corrupt powers who bribe our government so they can wantonly destroy mother nature... Still, I prefer not to do it...
The "negative" always exist with the positive. They are two sides of the same coin. If man has a bright side, then he has a dark side. It is up to him how he wants to honor both and effect a balance. | | Question/Answer | | paraclete asked on 10/16/05 - Could this be true? * JESUS REBUKED THE FIG AS AN EVIL ABOMINATION.
"Now in the morning as he returned into the city, he was hungry.
"And when he saw a fig tree by the road, he came to it, and found nothing on it, but leaves only, and said to it, Let no fruit grow on you henceforward for ever. And presently the fig tree withered away.
"And when the disciples saw it, they marvelled, saying, How soon has the fig tree withered away!"
--Matthew 21:18-20
* JESUS COMMANDED US NOT TO EAT OF THE CURSED FIG.
"The next day, when they came from Bethany, he was hungry:
"And seeing a fig tree afar off having leaves, he came, if perhaps he might find any thing on it: and when he came to it, he found nothing but leaves; for the time of figs was not yet.
"And Jesus answered and said to it, No man eat fruit of you hereafter forever. And his disciples heard it.
--Mark 11:12-14
* EAT A FIG, GO TO HELL.
"He destroyed their vines with hail and their sycamore-figs with sleet."
--Psalm 78:47
* GOD PROMISES TERRIBLE VENGEANCE FOR FIG-EATERS.
"Yes, this is what the LORD Almighty says: "I will send the sword, famine and plague against them and I will make them like poor figs that are so bad they cannot be eaten."
--Jeremiah 29:17
In summary, figs are the source of all the world's evils. They are a plague upon humanity and an abomination in the sight of the Lord.
What is your opinion, is the fig cursed. madima answered on 10/17/05:Nope. I like to eat figs, when I can have them - and I can rightfully say my life is blessed.
Wild figs nourish so many animals in our forests, from the mouse deer to the fowls. Some creatures eat nothing but wild figs and yet, they flourish.
I find it strange, that Jesus, who blesses all creatures, will be capable of begrudging a poor fig tree, simply because it was not its fruiting time when he came to it hungry.
I find it all the more odd because the fig in Buddhist religion and in other Oriental faiths is regarded as a sacred tree. Its fruit is the fruit of wisdom. | | Question/Answer | | ROLCAM asked on 10/16/05 - Are you stressed ?? "I am too blessed to be stressed!"
The shortest distance between a problem and a solution is the distance between your knees and the floor.
The one who kneels to the Lord can stand up to anything.
Love and peace be with you forever.
AMEN.
rolcam. madima answered on 10/16/05:Dear Roland,
I don't feel that stressed, though I should be, under the kind of circumstances I'm in right now :=)
But from my experience, the shortest distance between a problem and its solution is not just the distance between my knees and the floor. It has to do with the distance between my finger and the PC keyboard, between my finger and the phone, between my heart and my brain as well.
I always begin and end each day with a prayer, but not always on my knees. And when I'm confronted with a problem, I pray AND act at the same time :=) | | Question/Answer | | STONY asked on 10/15/05 - IS GLUTTONY A SIN?? AND DOES SIN ULTIMATELY LEAD TO DEATH? LAST WEEK HERE IN FLA. A 13 FOOT LONG PYTHON CAPTURED AND ATE A 6 AND A HALF FOOT LONG ALIGATOR. THE SNAKE HAVING STRETCHED IT'S SKIN AS FAR AS POSSIBLE TO INGEST THE GATOR FOUND IT COULD NOT DIGEST THE ANIMAL AND EXPLODED. BOTH SNAKE AND GATOR WERE DESTROYED. DON'T KNOW IF THIS HIT THE NAT'L NEWS BUT IT WAS A "BIG" STORY DOWN HERE. SEEMS LIKE IF THE LAWS OF SIN AND DEATH CAN WORK ON ANIMALS THEN WE SHOULD BE EXTRA-WEARY THAT THEY APPLY TO US ALSO.
QUESTIONS, COMMENTS AND/OR OBSERVATIONS... madima answered on 10/16/05:Dear Tony,
I don't see the python and alligator case as one of gluttony, knowing the nature of both animals in particular and animals in general.
If you ask an animal lover like me, who has handled both pythons and gators, it was just a case of lethal miscalculation on the part of the python.
Predators do miscalculate the size of their prey species. Snakes do not have very keen eyesight. Constrictors do misjudge the size of their food, though it's not very often.
Anacondas can swallow small antelopes whole - horns and all - and they don't need to feed for many months, sometimes, even a whole year. But then, they are the biggest snakes in the world, reaching up to 80 feet in length, according to unverified reports.
On the other hand, this python is only 13 feet long.
Even raptors miscalculate. The osprey sometimes latches on to fish much bigger than it can carry, cannot free its inward-curving talons, gets dragged down in the water and drowns.
Beneath the sea, the giant moray eel, which also has poor eyesight, can misjudge and grab prey bigger than it can swallow.
Even sea turtles can misjudge, that's why so many of them get killed by human trash. When people throw transparent plastic bags and wrappers in the sea, turtles often mistake them for their favorite food - jellyfish. So they consume the plastic, get congested and die.
Man is a predator, he is an apex predator. But I don't think one can apply the human concept of sin to other predators in the animal kingdom.
Predators have to kill in order to live. Usually, they kill the weakest of their prey species - those either too young or too old or too sick to flee or defend themselves. Predators render a great service in that they only allow the strongest to live -that is until the predator himself grows too old or too sick and becomes prey, of his own kind or another.
That's just the way things work in nature.
| | Question/Answer | | excon asked on 10/12/05 - To whom is allegiance owed???
Hello Christians:
Tell me the truth, as if a Christian would do otherwise. Who does your church look out for, you the member, or itself and its employees? Who is it SUPPOSED to look out for? Why?
Who does/did the Catholic church look out for? Does your government look out for you, or itself? Whatever you answer to any of my questions, is that the way you want it?
excon
madima answered on 10/12/05:Hi excon,
If you ask me, I believe my church looks out for its own interests, not mine. The church here is a huge money machine, it owns a LOT of businesses, meddles in politics, and takes care of its coffers.
Same thing with my government. The politicos' main concern is their vested interests and their own pockets - and to hell with everyone else.
Of course, in an ideal world, both the church and the state should look out for me. After all, that's what they always say. That's what they always promise. Everything they do, they do with my interest and that of the people at heart. All lip service.
Well, on second thought...they did some things for me. My Catholic school gave me full scholarship from elementary to highschool. My government gave me full scholarship in our state university for my A.B and M.A. I never had to spend a single cent for my education... But then I deserved it. I maintained my grades :=)
Oh well, I'm used to taking care of myself. That's the way it was, the way it is and the way it will be :=)
Life's too short to be complaining :=) | | Question/Answer | | arcura asked on 10/11/05 - I know these are personal questions, but…..... It’s a way we learn from each other and get to know each other better.
If you think they are to personal, please don’t bother to answer.
The questions are:
1. Personally what or who is God to you?
2. From your personal perspective what is your relationship with God
3. How or by what criteria do you personally arrive at the morals you choose to abide by?
4. What brought you to your personal belief and the way you believe in God?
Peace and kindness,
Fred madima answered on 10/12/05:Hi Fred! :=)
1. Personally what or who is God to you?
My heavenly Father who happens to be in spirit form.
2. From your personal perspective what is your relationship with God?
It's just like my relationship with my papa on earth, except that I don't see Him all of the time... He anticipates all my needs, keeps me company, never rebukes me when I do foolish things, inspires me and loves me unconditionally! :=)
3. How or by what criteria do you personally arrive at the morals you choose to abide by?
By my own personal ethics, from what I think, feel and intuit. I don't see any need to model it on anybody or anything. I don't follow the crowd. Never did. Of course, I know very well that what is right for me may not be for another, but I don't really give a damn.
What is right by me is what I live by. After all, I am accountable to myself, first and foremost... and after all is said and done, I have to live with myself ALL of the time, from birth till death :=)
4. What brought you to your personal belief and the way you believe in God?
My parents are devout Catholics and brought me up as one. I don't agree with all of the dogma. In fact, I don't agree with much of it, but the religious affiliation was quite convenient while I was growing up.
Still, my God is my own and not the God of the books. My God concept is colored with all my personal experiences, my exposure to Mother Nature and other Eastern religions.
| | Question/Answer | | ATON2 asked on 10/10/05 - Strike up the band..Big Daddy is back!!!! Still a bit jet lagged, but could not resist checking up on what you've done in my absence. What I find is pretty much what I left....still bashing Muslims, still posting Bible trivia, still arguing whether homosexuals can be Christians, still sticking the knives in each other over silly doctrinal differences...and still cutting and pasteing instead of offering thoughtful, personal responses!!! Nothing new except for some apallingly racist nonsense...and the mind-boggling assertion that God wiped out New Orleans because of gambling :) :) :) I was disappointed that the obscenities from our resident red necks were not more firmly censured...but not enough to break in on the game-playing...:) :) :)
No way I can catch up on all the questions posted in my absence; fortunately most were not worth answering anyway. However I will respond to some of the more interesting posts.
For those who missed me...Thanks!!! For those who did not...Live with it!!! :) :) :) I missed all of you..and that surprised me...a bit!
Sorry I did not get a chance to thank you for your good 'bon voyage' wishes. You all get five stars...as soon as I can dig up the posts.
To those NEW family members...welcome: I'll be either your worst nightmare or you your new best friend...Time alone will tell :) :) :)
madima answered on 10/10/05:Welcome home, big daddy!!!!! :=)
Really missed you!!!!
If you had been anywhere physically nearer, I would have put jasmine leis round your neck... aside from the band and the red carpet.
Here in Manila, that's how we welcome loved ones back! :=) | | Question/Answer | | HANK1 asked on 10/10/05 - COLUMBUS DAY:
Did Columbus discover America?
madima answered on 10/10/05:I guess he "re-discovered" America for Europe, among the many who thought they did :=)
He sighted the Carribean islands off southeastern North America in 1492. But another Italian navigator, Amerigo Vespucci, was credited with discovering America in 1501.
Anyway, long, long before they came, the native American Indians have discovered the continent and inhabited it.
Between 890 - 980 AD, a Viking became the first European to set foot in North America - Eirík the Red's son Leifur-"Leif the Lucky". He named it Vinland.
And way before...sometime in 200 A.D. or so, the Chinese have discovered America, if you will believe some archeologists and historians.
| | Question/Answer | | HANK1 asked on 10/09/05 - EVE:
Was Eve the originator or SIN?
madima answered on 10/09/05:I believe not :=)
Personally, the concept of sin originated from whoever created the concept of right and wrong.
There can be no wrong unless there is no right. So whoever created right, created wrong. Whoever originated good, originated evil... One can never BE without the other... Although of course, most Christians will never acknowledge that :=) | | Question/Answer | | paraclete asked on 10/09/05 - innovative or foolish? Bible group spreads word by SMS
Thursday, October 6, 2005 Posted: 0840 GMT (1640 HKT)
ADELAIDE, Australia (AP) -- "In da Bginnin God cre8d da heavens & da earth," according to a new version of the Bible translated into the text message language of cell phone users.
The Bible Society in Australia launched on Thursday its translation of all 31,173 verses of the Bible in the modern, abbreviated language of text messages, or SMS.
The verses can be accessed over the Internet for free so that the word of God can be spread by cell phone to family and friends, said society spokesman Michael Chant.
"The old days when the Bible was only available within a somber black cover with a cross on it are long gone," Chant said.
"We want to open it up for people of all ages, backgrounds and interests, and the SMS version is a logical extension of that," he added.
The society used the International Contemporary English Version of the Bible and remained faithful to the grammar, changing just the spelling of words, Chant said.
Sending the entire Bible by SMS would take more than 30,000 messages, he said. madima answered on 10/09/05:Gud 2 no dat coz m n d SMS captal f d world! :=)
Actually, the Philippines has been dubbed as the world's texting capital for several years now.
I find that SMS is very convenient but it wreaks havoc on one's spelling! You should see the postings of avid texters on forums and elsewhere. They tend to use SMS for ALL their written communication and they're every editor's nightmare!
Fortunately, my cellular phones are both PDAs/Pocket PCs now, so I have handwriting recognition/transcriber applications and don't have to bother with SMS.
If I like to have the entire Bible in my cell phone, in its full text, all I have to do is to sync my phone with my PC and copy the file to my phone's 1 Gig SD card. | | Question/Answer | | godot asked on 10/09/05 - transsexual Do you consider a transsexual (1)a homosexual, (2) a bisexual or (3)a heterosexual (a)before and (b)after the sex change operation? madima answered on 10/09/05:I consider transsexuals in a class of their own - as do psychologists.
Transsexuals are people who feel they are born into the wrong body, so they change their genders with the help of modern medicine. | | Question/Answer | | godot asked on 10/09/05 - disappointment Were you disappointed with God when you lost a loved one? Maybe just a little bit? madima answered on 10/09/05:No. I accept death is a natural part of life. In a way, it is a respite and a reward. | | Question/Answer | | Erewhon asked on 10/08/05 - Is China "Godless" or is it not? Destination Facts
Full country name: People's Republic of China
Area: 9,596,960 sq km (mainland)
Population: 1.25 billion (mainland) Yikes!
Capital city: Beijing (pop 13.8 million)
People: Han Chinese (93%), plus 55 ethnic minorities
Languages:Putonghua (Beijing Mandarin dialect), Cantonese
Religion:
Confucianism:
http://www.teachingreligion.com/confucianism/god.html
"While God exists in Confucianism, the philosophy details more on how to live your life rather than the nature of God."
Buddhism:
http://www.buddhistinformation.com/buddhism_and_god.htm
"I hope you're able to see that God is not what Buddhism is all about... Suffering is... And if you want to believe in God, as some Buddhists do, I suppose it's OK.
The Buddha never said there wasn’t a God.
He never said anything at all about God... Because the Buddha never met a Jew".
Taoism:
http://www.thetao.info/tao/gods.htm
"Taoism has a large number of male & female gods."
Muslims (14 million)
Christians (7 million)
Although officially an atheistic state, it is not "Godless."
If it were, there would be not one Chinese living in PRC who believed in God.
Comments? madima answered on 10/08/05:Dear Ronnie,
China could call itself atheist but its people is not godless. For one thing, they traditionally worship the spirits of their ancestors.
I've been to PROC more frequently than any other destinations in the Far East. Hongkong is just one and a half hours flight from us and I've been to Shenzhen, Shanghai and some other places in Guangdong, Xiamen and other provinces.
Actually, I don't even have to go that far because too many Mainland Chinese have come here as illegal aliens. In fact, our Chinese minority population in the Philippines control more than half of the local economy.
First thing I notice when I go to the homes of my Chinese friends - something which I also notice when I go to atheist PROC, is that they have the pictures of their ancestors on the altar, in a special place in their home. And they burn incense and offer food on that altar everyday.
That is aside from the many images and pictures of deities in their homes, offices or places of business. | | Question/Answer | | godot asked on 10/08/05 - traits of homosexuals What are the likely traits of homosexuals? Do you think effeminate males are likely to have a gay relationship, and masculine females are likely to become lesbians? For instance, Elton John, Boy George, Liberace and Martina Narvatilova, Amelie Mauresmo respectively. Of course their homosexual partners would not be effeminate or masculine respectively. madima answered on 10/08/05:You can only distinguish homosexuals by their sexual preference for the same gender.
A man's being effeminate or a woman's being butch is no indication. Even transvestites are not necessarily homosexuals. I've known of many cross-dressers who fathered kids and had wives. | | Question/Answer | | Choux asked on 10/08/05 - Honor/Shame vs. Guilt/Redemption Salman Rushdie in recent intervies about his new book:
"The most essential characteristic of the person who commits terror of this kind is the idea of dishonored manhood. I try to show this in my novel. The character Shalimar picks up the gun not just because his heart gets broken, but because his pride and honor get broken by losing the woman he loves to a worldly man of greater consequence and power. Somehow he has to rebuild his sense of manliness. That is what leads him down the path to slashing an American ambassador's throat.
Living in the West, where there is no "honor culture," it is easy to underestimate its power.
Judeo-Christian culture has to do with guilt and redemption. In Eastern cultures, with no concept of original sin, the idea of redemption from it doesn't make sense. Instead, the moral poles of the culture have to do with honor and shame.
Do you have any comments about Mr. Rushdie's remarks? madima answered on 10/08/05:Dear Mary Sue,
Sorry to say I haven't read Rushdie but being an Asian in a relatively Westernized country, I could say that one of the traditional Eastern values is the concept of "keeping face", so yes, to a great degree, it is about honor and shame.
For example: In order to "keep their faces" people who are trapped in destructive marriages do not let on about their problems. Getting officially separated, for many traditional guys who are successful in their business, shows that they have "failed" as men.
Seeing shrinks and getting outside help for private problems, is also seen by many as a cause for "loss of face".
However, the Eastern concept of what is "private" or "personal" differs much from the West.
For example, here, it is usual to ask: "Where have you been?" as an ice breaker or upon seeing a friend, a casual acquaintance, or even a stranger. To most Westerners, that would be very intrusive.
But you have to live in Asia for sometime to fully understand what I mean :=) | | Question/Answer | | bucker asked on 10/08/05 - Faith, or tempting God If you are falling from a high cliff, you say, “save me Lord!” Is that tempting God, or having faith. It depends on what............................?
If you are standing in the middle of a railroad track, and you see a train coming, you say, “save me Lord!” Is that tempting God, or having faith. It depends on what............................? madima answered on 10/08/05:I fell off a bridge a little less than a hundred feet and I said, "God, I love this!"
But that's because I jumped and I like the feeling of flying, even for awhile, and then falling into the whitewaters below :=)
When I'm teetering over the knife ridges of mountains that I climb and am looking over drops on both sides thousands of feet below, I say, "God, this is beautiful!"
But that is because I love climbing mountains and living on the edge :=)
I don't like tempting God, but I love my adrenalin highs :=)
The railroad track is close to my elementary school and I used to play over it. Whenever I see the train coming, I just get off its way - fast! :=) | | Question/Answer | | Erewhon asked on 10/07/05 - I saw in the night, Visions ... 1. Does God sometimes communicate with us through dreams?
2. If something happens to us that we are certain we have been shown in a dream, must we then react as we presume was intended?
3. Would such an experience unduly influence us and tread upon our free agency?
Answers?
Clarifications posing as answers will be ignored. madima answered on 10/07/05:Dear Ronnie,
If you ask me... :=)
1.Does God sometimes communicate with us through dreams?
I believe we can access both our highest and lowest consciousness through the dreaming. In that context, I would say we can access God or our God-consciousness in our dreams.
2. If something happens to us that we are certain we have been shown in a dream, must we then react as we presume was intended?
From my personal experience as someone who had monitored and journalled my dreaming since I was eight, I observed that I can't do that.
I have much pre-cognitive content in my dreaming. However, many of those come in symbols that you may not interpret in time before the actual event happens. You will only realize that you have known it will happen all along AFTER it has happened.
In some cases I have "seen" the actual events as they will happen days, months or years before. But in the event of disasters and deaths, there was no way I could have prevented them from happening, although I felt that seeing them in my dreams in advance helped a lot in preparing me mentally and emotionally for the inevitable.
3. Would such an experience unduly influence us and tread upon our free agency?
Not in my case. As I mentioned above, even when the dream content is precognitive and 100 per cent accurate, there is nothing much you can do to change them before they happen.
Add to that, the conscious/rational mind is normally at odds with the subconscious/irrational or the dreaming mind.
So, more often than not, the conscious mind will NOT listen to the warnings of the subconscious.
| | Question/Answer | | Choux asked on 10/07/05 - How Oregon Assisted Suicide Works Click Here!
From Slate Magazine Article.
How Does Assisted Suicide Work?
A guide to "Death With Dignity" in Oregon.
By Daniel Engber
Posted Thursday, Oct. 6, 2005, at 3:20 PM PT
The U.S. Supreme Court took up the issue of assisted suicide on Wednesday as it heard arguments in the case of Gonzales v. Oregon. The Bush administration has challenged an Oregon law that lets physicians prescribe lethal medication to terminally ill patients. How does assisted suicide work?
The patient has to ask for it three times. According to Oregon's "Death With Dignity" law, only certain people can ask for lethal medication from their doctors. You must be at least 18 years old, an Oregon resident, and the victim of a terminal disease that will kill you within the next six months. You also have to be able to make and communicate a clearheaded decision to your doctor.
The first step is to make a "formal oral request." Advocacy groups that work with terminal patients suggest something like, "Doctor, will you assist me in using Oregon's Death With Dignity law?" At least 15 days later, you need to make another oral request. The doctor still won't be able to prescribe lethal drugs until you file a written request form signed by two witnesses.
Continue Article
Many people who are considering assisted suicide contact a patient-advocacy group for help with the procedure and paperwork. Such a group can help to screen out people who are ineligible for assisted suicide, but a doctor makes the final decisions. If she thinks the patient may have a psychiatric or psychological disorder, she can refer him for evaluation and treatment. The doctor also must tell him about alternatives like hospice care, advise him to confer with his family or next of kin, and remind him that it's OK to change his mind at any time. By law, a second physician must review the case and sign off on the first doctor's diagnosis.
A doctor can prescribe lethal drugs two days after receiving a written request, but under no circumstances can she administer them herself. That would be euthanasia, which is illegal in Oregon. The state's assisted-suicide laws mandate that the patient take the drugs himself. Almost all assisted suicides take place in the home, with at least one health-care worker present. The patient takes one of two kinds of barbiturates. Seconal costs about $125 for a lethal 10 gram dose, which comes in the form of 100 individual caplets that must be broken apart to produce about three tablespoons of powder. Nembutal comes in a more convenient liquid form. It costs more than $1,000 for a dose, though, and insurance almost never covers lethal drugs.
If the patient is using Seconal, it's either mixed in water to create a bitter drink or stirred into pudding or applesauce to hide the taste. The patient will slip into a coma about five minutes after taking the drug, with death coming within about half an hour. If you're in pretty good shape, or if you're especially fat, death can be delayed for up to 48 hours. In most cases, the time of death is determined by a health-care provider who checks your pulse every few minutes until you pass away."
Comments??? madima answered on 10/07/05:Dear Mary Sue,
I think that the Oregon law is fair and hope more countries will be open to the death with dignity option.
However, I'm not so sure about using barbiturates for euthanasia, though I've never taken them (or any drugs for that matter) myself even to induce sleep or as pain killers.
I recalled reading somewhere that an overdose of barbiturates will cause bouts of nausea as the body tries to get rid of the chemicals. If that's the case, it will not be an easy or a sureproof end.
I remembered at the time I considered euthanasia, my drug of choice was cyanide. Cyanide occurs naturally in cassava roots, which we commonly consume here in my country as a carbohydrate source. On the other hand, Potassium Cyanide, which looks like sugar crystals and is soluble in water, is also readily available as it is used in the jewelry sector. | | Question/Answer | | godot asked on 10/07/05 - the salt of the earth Do you consider yourself the salt of the earth, and why? madima answered on 10/07/05:Definitely yes. I believe I make life exciting for myself and for others whose lives I want to touch ... when I want to...
It's the same way that salt flavors what we eat, nourishes and energizes the body and heals.
| | Question/Answer | | kindj asked on 10/07/05 - What would you do? My wife and I, along with a few other parents, are distressed at something going on at our kids' elementary school.
It seems that the Spanish teacher has assigned a mandatory project, in which the student must create a Dia de Muertos (Day of the Dead) diarama. It must be realistic, complete with a shrine, a photo of the deceased loved one of their choosing and miniature food "offerings" to the deceased.
As parents, we feel that this is inappropriate as a mandatory assignment, as it conflicts with a tenet of our faith concerning communication and offerings to the dead. We believe that the project crosses the line between learning about something and taking an active part in something.
If you would like to learn more about this holiday, go here: http://www.dayofthedead.com/TraditionAltars.html
Even though the site says it is a "mixture" of Christianity and pre-Hispanic beliefs, I believe it to be more of a perversion of Christian beliefs, such as there are in voodoo and the like.
Just curious about your thoughts.
DK madima answered on 10/07/05:That's quite a dilemma. I feel it will be difficult, if not impossible, to change the mind of that teacher, with her own cultural beliefs, or make her understand your apprehensions and that of the other parents.
But in a way, I also understand the teacher. You know that my country has been colonized by Catholic Spain for more than three hundred years and the celebration of Dia de Muertos, which is November 1, is deeply ingrained in our culture.
Here, the American equivalent of Halloween, the day of the dead, is known as "All Saints' Day". It is actually an institutional two-day holiday here and people flock to the cemeteries, cleaning them up days beforehand. They bring offerings of flowers to their dead, stay overnight near the tombs, singing, dancing and feasting. It's a way of honoring both life and death that is more hedonistic and pagan than voodoo in its spirit, if you ask me.
And yet, to me it seems more of a cultural than a religious thing. I'm of the impression that Eastern cultures like ours that honor ancestral spirits in their home -despite our Christian orientation, would be more apt to identify with it. | | Question/Answer | | Erewhon asked on 10/06/05 - Can you shelve your prejudices? In Katrina I Didn't See Racism, I Saw Brotherhood
By Rabbi Aryeh Spero
Posted Sept 7, 2005
In New Orleans, beginning Tuesday morning, August 30, I saw men in helicopters risking their lives to save stranded flood victims from rooftops. The rescuers were White, the stranded Black. I saw Caucasians navigating their small, private boats in violent, swirling, toxic floodwaters to find fellow citizens trapped in their houses. Those they saved were Black.
I saw Brotherhood. New York Congressman Charlie Rangel saw Racism.
Yes, there are Two Americas. One is the real America, where virtually every White person I know sends money, food or clothes to those in need -- now and in other crises -- regardless of color. This America is colorblind.
The other is the America fantasized and manufactured by Charlie Rangel, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, who constantly cry "racism!" even in situations where it does not exist, even when undeniable images illustrate love, compassion and concern. These three men, together with
today's NAACP, want to continue the notion of Racist America. It is their Mantra, their calling card. Their power, money, and continued media appearances depend on it.
Often, people caught up in accusing others of sin neglect to undergo their own personal introspection. They begin to think they alone inhabit the moral high ground. It is high time these men peered into their own
hearts at the dark chamber that causes this unceasing labeling of their fellow Americans as "racist." They may find in that chamber their own racism -- against Whites.
There is only one real America. Beginning Friday morning in Houston, thousands of regular citizens poured into the Astrodome offering water, food, clean clothes, personal items, baby diapers and toys, love and even their homes to the evacuees who had been bused in from New Orleans.
Most of the givers were White, most of those being helped were Black.
But there was Jesse Jackson, busy on TV, accusing the country of not putting Blacks -- i.e., him -- on some type of Commission he is demanding.
Where was he early in the week? Not sweating with others from around the country who had scraped their last dollar to come help. With Jesse, it's always about Jesse.
After decades of hearing accusations from Jesse, Al, Charlie, the NAACP and certain elitists about how racist America is, it would have been refreshing to hear them for once give thanks to those they for years have been maligning. These self-anointed spokesmen for the Black
community lead only when it comes to foisting guilt and condemnation, and not when it comes to acknowledging the good in those they have made a career in castigating.
As a Rabbi I have a message I wish to offer to my fellow members of the cloth, Reverends Jackson and Sharpton:
"It is time to do some soul searching. Your continued efforts to tear this country apart, even in light of the monumental goodness shown by your White brothers, is a
sin."
There are no churches in the world like the American churches. And there are no better parishioners and members of churches anywhere in the world. These churches are saving the day. Their members -- infused by
the special and singular teachings of our unique American
Judeo-Christian understanding of the Bible -- are, at this moment, writing an historic chapter in giving, initiative, and selflessness.
They are opening their homes to strangers. They are doing what government is incapable of doing.
America works because of its faith-based institutions. It always has. That is what makes it America.
So next time the ACLU tries to diminish and marginalize the churches, saying there is no role for religion in American public life, that an impenetrable wall must be erected separating the citizens from their faith, cry out "Katrina."
Next time the ACLU goes to court asking that U.S. soldiers not be allowed to say Grace in the Mess Hall and that communities be forbidden from setting up a nativity scene, ask yourself:
Without the motivation of Goodness sourced in Faith, would people offer such sacrifice?
Where else does this Brotherhood come from but the Bible
which teaches "Thou Shall Love Thy Neighbor as Yourself."
I saw brotherhood on Fox News, where 24/7 reporters used their perch as a clearinghouse for search-and-rescue missions and communication between the stranded and those in position to save. In contrast, the Old-line networks continued with their usual foolish, brain-numbing programming.
Those who always preach "compassion" chose profit over
people.
The New York Times has utterly failed America. Its columnists could have used their talents and word skills to inspire and unite a nation. Columnists such as Frank Rich and Paul Krugman, however, revealed their true colors by evading their once-in-a-lifetime chance to help and instead chose to divide, condemn, and fuel the fires and poison the waters of Louisiana.
In them, I saw no Brotherhood. The newspaper always
preaching "compassion" verifies Shakespeare's "They protest too much."
Similar elitists here in the northeast and on the West coast have over the years expressed their view of the South as "unsophisticated" and Texans as "cowboys."
Well, the South has come through, especially Houston and other parts of Texas, whereas, as I write this on Labor Day,
the limousine moralizers are lying on east and west coast beaches thinking they're doing their part by reading Times' editorials and calling George Bush "racist." How sanctimonious life becomes when proving you are not a racist depends not on living in a truly integrated neighborhood, but by simply calling others racist.
Like so often in history, facts trump platitudes. Reality reigns. Those who always preach brotherhood, thus far have acted devoid of it. Those who for decades have been accused by elitists of not having compassion are the ones living it. They are: the churches, the military, and the sons and daughters of the South.
==========================
Is the Rabbi correct? madima answered on 10/06/05:Yes, dear Ronnie, I think the rabbi is correct.
In times of disaster, even the lion lays down with the lamb - literally. In floods, rescue workers evacuating residents of sanctuaries have reported that they can take huge wild predators in a boat full of prey animals and the former will not attack the latter in transit to safety.
In times of great danger, differences are forgotten. That is true even with animals. So it is true with men. | | Question/Answer | | HANK1 asked on 10/06/05 - DEVILISH QUESTION:
Is the Devil a homosexual?
madima answered on 10/06/05:Homosexuality is a preference of physical entities endowed with sexual capabilities and capacities (although psychologists still classify homosexuality as a sexual deviation.)
Angels, both the fallen and those in their righteous state, are spirits. Spirits have no sex.
Devils are fallen angels and do not have genders.
Therefore, devils cannot be homosexuals :=) | | Question/Answer | | Carlita asked on 10/05/05 - Back Again It's very hard because I do stuggle with this. I don't know how this happened. I have accepted christ as my Lord and Saviour. I pray about this all the time but Why did this happen to me I get so angry.Why do I have to be alone, I have no attraction for men! This is so hard! madima answered on 10/06/05:I love being alone. Why don't you?
I look for solitude and I can't bear the idea of not being able to get away from the world and all its people regularly! For me, aloneness is a great privilege as well as a great need... And I cannot tolerate any man who do not know how to respect my need for solitude.
Why do you have to measure your personal worth with the ability to "attract men"? If you love yourself enough, then you are your own best company. And if you are to be loved by another, you have to love yourself first and foremost.
Even if you have a boyfriend or a husband, it is still with yourself that you will live with most of the time to the end of your days.
| | Question/Answer | | excon asked on 10/05/05 - The Right to Die
Hello Christians:
If I were terminally ill, headed for a painful death within six months, should I be allowed to end my life? Should a doctor be allowed to prescribe medicines (drugs) that will end my life? If a doctor does that, should he be prosecuted by the DEA as an illegal drug dealer? Should a state decide what medical procedures it allows or should the feds? How will Roberts vote? Will the Oregon "Death with Dignity Act" be affirmed? Is there a Christian position on the matter?
excon
madima answered on 10/05/05:Hi, excon,
Personally, I don't think a Christian position will be relevant because what is at issue is the choice of the patient, his/her family and the one who will perform the euthanasia. After all, they are the ones who will be directly affected.
I can say that because I came to that choice myself at age 11 when my doctor told me I will not see my next birthday. (My X-ray plate was exchanged with that of a terminally-ill girl of the same age.)
Even at that age, I had NO doubt what I wanted done. I wanted to die with dignity - and fast. So, I told my parents and even resolved that if NOBODY will have the courage to help me terminate my life, I will do it myself if I have to, just to spare myself the pain and the degradation of a slow death and to spare my parents of the agony and the medical bills.
However, I cannot say how US citizens should decide on their laws. I'm not an American. I'm in the Philippines, a predominantly Catholic country where heads of state kowtow to the Church.
Euthanasia is illegal here but nobody can really prevent it when it is the wish of the person concerned. Everyday, it is done silently, in our hospitals and outside, with the agreement of the doctors, the patients and the families. It is something very personal, very private. So, it is not something that you broadcast. It is just something that you do.
| | Question/Answer | | kindj asked on 10/05/05 - Which are you? Sandcastles
By Max Lucado
"Hot sun. Salty air. Rhythmic waves.A little boy is on the beach.
On his knees he scoops and packs the sand with plastic shovels into a bright red bucket. Then he upends the bucket on the surface and lifts it. And, to the
delight of the little architect, a castle tower is created.
All afternoon he will work. Spooning out the moat. Packing the walls. Bottle tops will be sentries. Popsicle sticks will be bridges. A sandcastle will be
built.
Big city. Busy streets. Rumbling traffic. A man is in his office.
At his desk he shuffles papers into stacks and delegates assignments. He cradles the phone on his shoulder and punches the keyboard with his fingers. Numbers are juggled and contracts are signed and much to the delight of the man, a profit is made.
All his life he will work. Formulating the plans. Forecasting the future. Annuities will be sentries. Capital gains will be bridges. An empire will be
built.
Two builders of two castles. They have much in common. They shape granules into grandeurs. They see nothing and make something. They are diligent and
determined. And for both the tide will rise and the end will come.
Yet, that is where the similarities cease. For the boy sees the end while the man ignores it.
So, one is prepared and one isn't. One is peaceful while the other panics.
As the waves near, the wise child jumps to his feet and begins to clap. There is no sorrow. No fear. No regret. He knew this would happen. He is not surprised.
And when the great breaker crashes into his castle and his masterpiece is sucked into the sea, he smiles. He smiles, picks up his tools, takes his father's hand,
and goes home."
I choose to live as the little boy. You? madima answered on 10/05/05:But I don't build my castles on sand! :=)
I build them on PC, paper and pen, paint and canvas. That way, the waves don't wash them away :=)
On hindsight, literally, I have never built a sand castle as a child. My parents were afraid of the sea and I was forbidden to play with earth or sand or anything that will make me dirty.
My father will have a heart attack if I give him the complete details of what I regularly do in the sea and out of it right now :=)
I do not labor for nought, though like the little boy, I have no fear of the waves. In real life, I love to ride the waves. And the bigger they are, the better.
But what I build, I keep out of the way :=)
It might interest you that in psychology, they have true cases of what is called "the sandcastle syndrome". It is the inclination of some to build on grandiose schemes and then deliberately bring down what they have built in a flurry of self-destructiveness.
That, I do not have :=) | | Question/Answer | | godot asked on 10/05/05 - modern lifestyle Did God intend the modern lifestyle which has a fast pace and is a rat race? madima answered on 10/05/05:Man dictates the pace of his own life, not God, or anybody, for that matter. Man has the free will to do with his life as he wants to.
If man opts to compete, amass money, gain recognition for himself and outdo his colleagues, it's a decision that he alone makes.
And if you make a choice in life, you must be willing to pay the price.
I live in the city and am competitive in my own turf, but I can accelerate and decelerate the pace of my life, according to my needs and wants.
It's all a matter of choice. | | Question/Answer | | revdauphinee asked on 10/05/05 - some may not care for this joke But i think its funny! “Rub-A-dub-dub, Thanks for the grub…”
A new minister at his first service was so nervous he could hardly speak. After the service, he asked the senior pastor how he had done. The elder minister replied, "When I am worried about getting nervous on the pulpit, I put a glass of vodka next to the water glass. If I start to get nervous, I take a sip."
So the next Sunday he took the minister’s advice. At the beginning of the sermon, he got nervous and took a drink. He proceeded to talk up a storm. Upon returning to his office after mass he found the following note on his door:Sip the vodka, don't gulp.
There are 10 commandments, not 12.
There are 12 disciples, not 10.
Jesus was consecrated, not constipated.
Jacob wagered his donkey, he did not bet his ass.
The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are not referred to
as Daddy, Junior, and Spook.
David slew Goliath, he did not kick the **** out of him.
When David was hit by a rock and knocked off his donkey, don't say he was stoned off his ass.
We do not refer to the cross as the big T!
The recommended grace before a meal is not: "Rub-A-dub-dub, thanks for the grub, yeah God."
madima answered on 10/05/05:Thanks for making me laugh so early in the morning! :=D | | Question/Answer | | arcura asked on 10/03/05 - This Just In. Amazing.............................. A Montana couple were out riding on the range, he with his rifle and she (fortunately) with her camera. Their dogs always followed them, but on this occasion a Mountain Lion decided that he wanted to stalk the dogs (you'll see the dogs in the background watching). Very, very bad decision...
The hunter got off the mule with his rifle and decided to shoot in the air to scare away the lion, but before he could get off a shot the lion charged in and decided he wanted a piece of those dogs. With that, the mule took off and decided he wanted a piece of that lion. That's when all hell broke loose... for the lion.
As the lion approached the dogs the mule snatched him up by the tail and started whirling him around. Banging its head on the ground on every pass. Then he dropped it, stomped on it and held it to the ground by the throat. The mule then got down on his knees and bit the thing all over a couple of dozen times to make sure it was dead, then whipped it into the air again, walked back over to the couple (that were stunned in silence) and stood there ready to continue his ride... as if nothing had just happened.
Fortunately even though the hunter didn't get off a shot, his wife got off these 4 pictures...
I wished that I could show the pictures to you.
They are amazing.
That was one mean mule!!!
Fred madima answered on 10/03/05:The pictures are quite real but the description is grossly inaccurate. Fact is, the mountain lion being “mauled” by the mule is actually very, very dead.
Unfortunately, this is another urban legend, one of the 25 hottest urban legends at www.snopes.com.
You can find the full details at: http://www.snopes.com/photos/animals/mulelion.asp.
“According to Steve Richards, who wrote a couple of articles about them for Western Mule Magazine, these pictures date from 2002 or 2003 and show Berry, a now 11-year-old mule, owned by a 25-year-old hunter named Jody Anglin.
The incident depicted took place in southwestern New Mexico, and came about as Berry the mule grew more aggressive over time in his pursuit of mountain lions with Jody:
When Jody first got the mule and after Jody shot the first lion out, Berry casually came over to the lion and just nuzzled the lion and casually nibbled it. With each lion Berry just got more aggressive. Jody said it didn't take more than two lions and Berry got really aggressive to the lion and couldn't wait to get the cat.
However, the text description accompanying these photographs is somewhat inaccurate, as Berry didn't actually kill the mountain lion — the mule picked it up and tossed it around only after it was already dead:
The lion was dead before the mule Berry took and shook the lion. A lion is a powerful and lethal predator and can easily kill a mule — however a mule can be quite an adversary.”
| | Question/Answer | | godot asked on 10/01/05 - Depression The WHO has projected that depression will be a major cause of death by 2020. Do you share that view?
Why do some Christians suffer from stress and depression if they believe in Christ? madima answered on 10/01/05:I don't exactly share that view.
One does not die from depression, although deep depression can indeed lead to suicide.
Also, the physical body can be vulnerable to many illnesses indirectly due to depression and the accompanying "death-wish" syndrome. So, we have psycho-somatic ailments. Depression can likewise increase the stress on an already weak heart.
You'll be surprised that clinical depression is not prevalent in my country, the Philippines, which happens to be the only Christian nation in the Far East.
Although this is the 3rd world and more than half of the 85 million population live below the poverty line, very few are treated for depression (and ironically, these are the members of the middle and upper socio-economic classes).
Shrinks complain they can't really make a decent living here, except when they work for the big corporations and have rich clients suffering from mental illnesses.
However, Eastern culture is very different from Western culture. We have very strong support groups and family bonds. In fact, we don't have an exact equivalent of the English words "loneliness" and "depression" in our native tongue.
I do know of Christians who are stressed and depressed, but then, I don't think their faith has anything to do with it.
Stress is part of the rat race and the competition, even if you know that the Lord is with you. It's still you who go out there to live your life and fight to survive :=)
| | Question/Answer | | HANK1 asked on 10/01/05 - EDGAR CAYCE:
What do you know about Edgar Cayce and his Spirit Realms concept?
HANK
madima answered on 10/01/05:Dear Hank,
Some years before, I have read a number of books about Edgar Cayce because I was interested in the Akashic records.
First thing I knew was that he believed in reincarnation. In fact, he believed that he had been a healer in Egypt in his past life - that's why he tried to help people as a healer in his lifetime.
However, he always did readings,diagnosis and healings in a state of trance. He was a medium and spirits came through to him. One time, he channeled an angelic presence who identified himself as the Lord of the Way. He was presumed to be St. Michael, the Archangel.
Cayce followed a set routine to gain access to the spirit realm and his wife, who also took down the information he channeled in his trances, aided him in the process. This starts off with relaxation until he enters an altered state of consciousness, and a "voice" speaks through him.
From what I recall, he believes that human consciousness is like a funnel. Its starting off point, the tiniest dot where everything begins, is the cerebral consciousness - rational thinking. The second layer, which is broader but irrational, is the subconscious - the dreaming mind, which can in turn access the two broadest ranges of the "funnel" - the collective subconscious and the superconscious.
The last is the broadest of all and gives access to the Akasha, where the thoughts, memories and wisdom of all creatures who had ever lived in the universe are supposed to be recorded.
Cayce is said to be one of the greatest psychics of his age and the greatest American psychic of his time. I would have loved to interview him :=)
Unfortunately, he died in 1945, many decades before I was even born. | | Question/Answer | | arcura asked on 09/29/05 - Please pray for me.................................. I have double pneumonia and with my diabetes it’s very difficult to heal up.
I’m very sick and in pain.
So I ask all my friends here to please keep me in your prayers.
Thanks,
May God bless you all!
Fred madima answered on 09/29/05:Dear Fred,
I'm keeping you in my prayers.
God be with you always. | | Question/Answer | | CeeBee2 asked on 09/27/05 - Healing that takes place is unsupportable? That seems to be what experts are telling Bradd in a question below. I say there should be evidence of healing. Wouldn't there be a tumor or blindness or paralysis or a short leg that had been documented by physicians, and if a healing has taken place, this also can be documented by physicians? madima answered on 09/27/05:I remember that in my church-affiliated healing group, they keep a logbook. People seeking treatment sign up there and other details are recorded - illness, history, etc. Even so, it is a very low-profile group and people hear of it only through word of mouth.It is not something you normally speak of.
In my country, there are actually professional medical practitioners, doctors and nurses, who incorporate pranic healing in their hospital treatment routines. And I personally know some doctors and nurses who are members of traditional healing groups, but they are not a majority.
So why the lack of documentation? As I mentioned before, you cannot rationally document a healing by faith via any scientific method. You cannot measure a spiritual, non-scientific process via scientific parameters. It makes no sense.
Healers and healing groups themselves don't like "advertising" their abilities and achievements - even those who are genuine and who have already vowed to devote the rest of their lives to healing full-time.
Here, the belief is that if you are blessed with the healing ability - a gift that is given for free - then you must use it to help people for free.
That is an awful lot of responsibility, given the percentage of the population who are usually suffering from one ailment to another who cannot afford medical treatment. Where I am, if word goes around that you can heal, you will be inundated.
| | Question/Answer | | Erewhon asked on 09/27/05 - Healings are blessings for Believers, not signs for Sceptics
Miracles by Matthew Cowley
[Matthew Cowley was born in 1897. His father, Matthias Cowley, was a member of the Quorum of the Twelve.
Matthew was called to serve a mission in New Zealand in 1914, while only 17 years of age. He became fluent in the Maori language and developed a great closeness to the people.
In 1945, Elder Cowley followed his father in becoming a member of the Quorum of Twelve. He passed away in 1953.]
Address at Brigham Young University
February 18, 1953
I feel very humble this morning, and sometimes when I'm introduced, I get the idea that others feel that I'm untouchable, but I want you to know that I'm neither untouchable nor unteachable. And since I've been in this position in the Church, I have learned some very fine things from some of the members of the Church, generally in anonymous letters. I don't know why they don't sign those letters because almost invariably what they say is true, especially when I look it up in the books.
When I was invited to come here, President Wilkinson (then president of BYU) suggested that I might talk a little bit about miracles. Well, it will be a miracle if I do. I had a particular assignment or instruction from President George Albert Smith when I was called to this position. He called me into his office one day and took hold of my hand, and while he was holding my hand and looking at me he said, "I want to say something to you Brother Cowley."
I said, "Well, I'm willing to listen."
"This is just a particular suggestion to you, not to all the brethren but to you," He said, "Never write a sermon. Never write down what you are going to say."
I said, "What on earth will I do?"
He said, "You tell the people what the Lord wants you to tell them while you are standing on your feet."
I said, "That certainly is putting some responsibility on the Lord."
But I've tried to live up to that instruction. And I've had some great experiences. There have been times when the Lord has forsaken me. But when he hasn't, I've had some miraculous -- well, I shouldn't say miraculous -- it is the normal experience of the priesthood, of having the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. I can bear witness to you, my fellow students, here this morning that God can work through his priesthood and that he does work through it.
I know that without any question of doubt. I've had too many experiences. I'm an expert witness about these things.
A few weeks ago I was called to the County Hospital in Salt lake City by a mother. I didn't know her. She said her boy was dying from polio and asked if I would come down and give that boy a blessing.
So I picked up a young bishop [Glen Rudd] whom I generally take with me, for I think his faith is greater than mine, and I always like him along. We went down there, and here was this young lad in an iron lung, unconscious, his face rather a blackish color, with a tube in his throat, and they said he had a tube lower down in his abdomen.
He had been flown in from an outlying community. The mother said to me, "This is an unusual boy. Not because he's my child, but he is an unusual boy." I think he was eight or nine years of age. After they put the usual coverings on us, we went in, and we blessed that boy.
It was one of those occasions when I knew as I laid my hands upon that lad that he was unusual boy, and he had faith. Having faith in his faith, I blessed him to get well and promised him he would. I never heard any more about him until last Sunday.
I was on my way to Murray to conference; I dropped in the County Hospital, and I asked if I might see the lad. The nurse said, "Certainly. Walk right down the hall." as I walked down the hall, out came the boy running to meet me. He ran up and asked, "Are you Brother Cowley?"
And I said, "Yes."
He said, "I want to thank you for that prayer." He added, "I was unconscious then wasn't I?"
I replied, "You certainly were."
He said, "That's the reason I don't recognize you." Then he asked, "Come in my room; I want to talk to you." He was an unusual boy.
Well, we went in the room. He still had a tube in his throat. I said, "How long are you going to have that tube there?"
He said, "Oh, two weeks, two more weeks, and then I'm all well. How about another blessing?"
So I said, "Certainly." I blessed him again. I was in a hurry. I wanted to get out to my conference. But he stopped me and asked, "Hey, how about my partner in the next bed?"
There was a young fellow about sixteen or seventeen.
I said, "What do you mean?"
He said, "Don't go without blessing him. He's my partner."
I said, "Sure." Then I asked the boy, "Would you like a blessing?"
He said, "Yes, sir. I'm a teacher in the Aaronic Priesthood in my ward." I blessed him, and then my little friend went and brought another fellow in. Here was another partner. And I blessed him.
Now, except ye believe as a child, you can't receive these blessings. We have to have the faith of a child in order to believe in these things, especially when you reach college age, and your minds are so full of skepticism and doubt. I guess there are some things you should doubt.
But you can become as little children in these things. Miracles are commonplace, brothers and sisters.
In 1851 or 52, Parley P. Pratt wrote a book called The Key to Theology. In that book he said the day would come (these were not his exact words), when man would not be satisfied with going along the surface of the earth at the rate of sixty, seventy, eighty or ninety miles an hour, but we would use the air and go at the rate of a thousand miles an hour.
Now in 1852 when he wrote that the was "crazy," wasn't he? He was "mad" -- but he was a prophet.
Today it is commonplace. Since the first time I flew from San Francisco to Australia the flying time has been decreased twelve hours. I see in the paper where they are going to have a jet plane from Vancouver to Tokyo, Japan, which will require only eight hours for that long journey.
Now, are they miracles? No, they are just commonplace -- just commonplace!
The boy prophet went into the grove and prayed -- a young lad with simple faith. He opened up his heart to God. He apparently reached out and by prayer got under his control the proper channels, and God and the Son came down and appeared to him.
A few weeks ago I sat in my front room and had Dwight Eisenhower come right into my front room. I saw him sworn in as President of the United States. I saw the parade over other people's shoulders -- all of this right in my own front room, and the same thing in millions of homes!
Now there was no wire connecting me or my home with Washington D.C., just these channels, or whatever Brother [Harvey] Fletcher and others call them out there, air waves, or whatever they are. But through those channels I brought into my home the President of the United States and the inaugural ceremonies. If I'd have told you twenty-five years ago that this would be done in this year 1953, I know what you'd have told me.
Well, no man invented those elements out there. Man has invented instruments whereby he harnesses those elements, but he never invented the elements; they are eternal; they've been there all the time, and if I can turn a little gadget and bring the President of the United States and into my front room, God can bring himself down within the vision of man.
The Master can come down within the range of man's vision because he has more control over those elements out there than man does himself.
The Prophet Joseph said that Moroni appeared to him in his bedroom. I've been back there to that house. I've stood there and wondered how he got through those walls, how he came in.
Now I don't doubt any more about the Angel Moroni coming into the prophet's home. Man hasn't yet harnessed all of these elements. He's working at it and meeting with great success.
I was on an island down in French Oceania one Sunday afternoon. I started fooling with the radio; I don't know whether you're supposed to play radios on Sunday afternoon or not, but I started turning the dials, and all of a sudden I heard the voice of Richard L. Evans from the Tabernacle in Salt Lake City.
The strange thing about it was that I wasn't in contact with Salt Lake city, I was in tune with a station in Houston, Texas. that station was getting the program from Salt Lake City, and I was picking it up from Houston. I can't explain these things. Some of you fellows can. But I had an instrument there which man had invented so that he could bring under his control and direction these elements out there.
I was over in Samoa. I couldn't sleep, worrying about the centipedes, and so forth. So I got up. It was three o'clock in the morning. I went in the room where they had the radio. I started turning the dials, and all of a sudden I heard a voice say,"Station KSL, Salt Lade City. Songs of Harry Clarke." I sat there and listened to Harry Clarke sing for fifteen minutes. Then I had to get up the next morning at three o'clock because I'd sent him a cable and I wanted to see if he got it. He had. He mentioned it over the air. So I listened to him sing for another fifteen minutes.
You know, the strange thing about it was I was hearing him sing four hours before he actually sang. And you talk about miracles.
I got on a plane one day in Tonga. It was Saturday morning, the Sabbath of the Seventh-day Adventists. The head of the Seventh-day Adventists' mission in the Pacific got on the plane with me. Down at the airport were his Sunday School children, giving him a send-off, singing hymns, and so on.
Well, we got on that plane Saturday morning, and we went to Samoa. When we arrived at Samoa, it was Friday, the day before we left Tonga. I just wondered how he was going to straighten out that "seventh day" business.
He's already had one Saturday, one Sabbath, an there he was again in Samoa on a Friday, the day before he'd had the Sabbath. The next day he had another. Now I tried to find him to ask him form which Saturday he was going to start counting the seven days. Well, these things happen. This is going on all over the world.
The missionaries down in Samoa didn't have a president for a few months. I was the president but by remote control. I used to go to a Chinaman's home in Honolulu and tell him to tune in one of our natives down in Samoa, then tell that native to round up all the missionaries and have them come there, as I wanted to give them some instruction.
So he'd tune in down there and get this young Samoan with his ham radio. and I'd sit there in that Chinese home and talk to these missionaries down in Samoa and give whatever instructions I wanted to give them. But being the usual missionaries, I don't think they paid any attention. I telephoned one day from Honolulu to my home, and I asked the engineer there at the radio-phone place, "How can I talk confidentially to my wife? I send this message out into the air and anybody with a ham radio can reach out and pick it up."
He said, "Yes, that's right, but they won't understand it."
I said, "Well, why not?"
He said, "Well, when your words go out of this transmitter we jumble them up; there is no meaning to them. But when they go into the receiver on the mainland they are all straightened out again, and your wife will understand them just as you spoke them."
My, I'm glad of that. I'll tell you why. I get my prayers so jumbled up sometimes that I'm glad there's a receiving set over on the other side that will straighten out the things I'm trying to say. And I believe that, I'm just simple enough to believe that. I'm simple enough to believe that if man can talk to man across the ocean and across the world with these instruments, that man can talk to God, that God has as much power as man, as much control over the elements.
And so, brothers and sisters of the Church, God has his priesthood here upon the earth, his power, and with that power we can be used by God for the accomplishment of his purpose. Don't ever forget that. I've had these experiences. I know.
I've learned a lot from these islanders that I see scattered around here. I see Albert Whaanga from New Zealand in the audience; I wish he'd teach you people how to rub noses. That's what we do down in New Zealand, you know.
We don't really rub. You just press your forehead and your nose against the nose and forehead of the other person.
It's a wonderful thing. You can always tell when they're keeping the Word of Wisdom down there. All you have to do is walk up and greet them and sniff a little bit, and you've got 'em! It would be a good practice to have over here, maybe even with some of our BYU students. So if I ever come up to one of you some day and say I'd like to rub noses with you, you'll know I'm suspecting something.
These Natives live close to God. They have some kind of power. I guess it's just because they accept miracles as a matter of course. They never doubt anything. They used to scare me. Someone would come up and say, "Brother Cowley, I've had a dream about you."
I'd say, "Don't tell me. I don't want to hear about it."
"Oh, it was a good one."
"All right. Tell me."
And they'd tell me something. Now I remember when President Rufus K. Hardy of the First Council of the Seventy passed away. I was walking along the street of one of the cities in New Zealand, and one of our native members came up -- a lady.
She said to me, "President Hardy is dead."
I said, "Is that so? Have you received a wire?"
She said, "No. I received a message, but I haven't received any wire." She repeated, "He's dead. I know."
Well, I always believed them when they told me those things. When I got back to headquarters, I wasn't there long when here came a cablegram which said that President Hardy had passed away the night before. But she knew that without any cablegram. She told me about it.
I got out of my car once in the city. I got out to do some window-shopping to get a little rest from driving. I walked around, and finally I went around a corner, and there stood a native woman and her daughter. The mother said to the daughter, "What did I tell you?"
I said, "What's going on here?"
The daughter said, "Mother said if we'd stand here for fifteen minutes you'd come around the corner." Now she didn't have any radio set with her, just one in her heart where she received the impression.
After President Hardy died, we had a memorial service for him. I'll never forget the native who was up speaking, saying What a calamity it was to the mission to lose this great New Zealand missionary who could do so much for them as one of the Authorities of the Church.
He was talking along that line, and all of a sudden he stopped and looked around at me and said, "Wait a minute. There's nothing to worry about. When President Cowley gets home, he'll fill the vacancy in the Council of the Twelve Apostles, and we'll still have a representative among the Authorities of the Church."
Then he went on talking about President Hardy. When I arrived home the following September, I filled the first vacancy in the Quorum of the Twelve.
Now did that just happen by chance? Oh, I might have thought so if it had been one of you white Gentiles that had prophesied that, but not from the blood of Israel. Oh, no, I could not deny, I couldn't doubt it.
And so, remember we have great opportunities. Great opportunities to bless. Sometimes I wonder if we do enough in our administration of the sick. You know when the Apostles tried to cast out an evil spirit, they couldn't do it or they didn't do it.
The Master came along, and he immediately cast out the dumb spirit. Then the Apostles said, "Why could not we cast him out?"
And what did Christ say? "This kind goeth not out but by prayer and by fasting." (Matt. 17:21)
Sometimes we rush in, administer to a person, rush out, and say, "Well, he won't make it. I know he won't." Of course, we have to, in case of an emergency, go immediately. Sometimes I wonder, if we have a little time, if we shouldn't do a little fasting. "This kind cometh not out save by prayer and by fasting."
A little over a year ago a couple came into my office carrying a little boy. The father said to me, "My wife and I have been fasting for two days, and we've brought our little boy up for a blessing. You are the one we've been sent to."
I said, "What's the matter with him?"
They said he was born blind, deaf, and dumb, had not co-ordination of his muscles, couldn't even crawl at the age of five years. I said to myself, this is it. I had implicit faith in the fasting and the prayers of those parents. I blessed that child, and a few weeks later I received a letter: "Brother Cowley, we wish you could see our little boy now. He's crawling. When we throw a ball across the floor, he races after it on his hands and knees. He can see. When we clap our hands over his head, he jumps. He can hear."
Medical science had laid the burden down. God had taken over. The little boy was rapidly recovering or really getting what he'd never had.
I went into a hospital one day in New Zealand to bless a woman who didn't belong to the Church. She was dying. We all knew she was dying Even the doctor said so. She was having her farewell party. Ah, that's one thing I like about the natives. When you go, they give you a farewell party. They all gather around. They send messages over to the other side. "When you get over there, tell my mother I'm trying to do my best; I'm not so good but I'm trying. Tell her to have a good room fixed for me when I get over there--plenty of fish, good meals."
My, it's wonderful how they send you off. Well, there they were, all gathered around this poor sister. She was about to be confined, and the doctor told her it would kill her.
She was tubercular from head to foot. I had with me an old native, almost ninety. She was his niece. He stood up at the head of the bed, and he said, "Vera, you're dead. You're dead because the doctor says you're dead. You're on your way out. I've been to you, your home, your people, my relatives. I'm the only one that has joined the Church. None of you has ever listened to me. You're dead now; but you're going to live."
He turned to me and said, "Is it all right if we kneel down and pray?"
I said, "Yes." So we knelt down. Everybody around there knelt down. And after the prayer we blessed her.
The last time I was in New Zealand she had her fifth child and she's physically well from head to foot. She has not joined the Church yet. That's the next miracle I'm waiting for.
Well, now, this is just psychological effect, isn't it?
There nothing to this priesthood business. it's only psychological effect.
But where was the psychological effect on that little boy in the County Hospital who was so unconscious he didn't even know we were praying over him? He wasn't even conscious of what we were doing.
I was called to a home in a little village in New Zealand one day. There the Relief Society sisters were preparing the body of one of our Saints. They had placed his body in front of the Big House as they call it, the house where the people came to wail and weep and mourn over the dead, when in rushed the dead man's brother.
He said, "Administer to him"
And the young natives said, "Why, you shouldn't do that; he's dead."
"You do it!"
This same old man that I had with me when his niece was so ill was there. The younger native got down on his knees, and he anointed the dead man. Then this great old sage got down and blessed him and commanded him to rise.
You should have seen the Relief Society sisters scatter. And he sat up, and he said, "Send for the elders; I don't feel very well."
Now, of course, all of that was just psychological effect on that dead man.
Wonderful, isn't it--this psychological effect business?
Well, we told him he had just been administered to, and he said: "Oh, that was it."
He said, "I was dead. I could feel life coming back into me just like a blanket unrolling."
Now, he outlived the brother that came in and told us to administer to him.
I've told the story about the little baby nine months old who was born blind. The father came up with him one Sunday and said, "Brother Cowley, our baby hasn't been blessed yet; we'd like you to bless him."
I said, "Why have you waited so long?"
"Oh, we just didn't get around to it."
Now, that's the native way; I like that. Just don't get around to doing thing! Why not live and enjoy it?
I said, "All right, what's the name?" So he told me the name and I was just going to start when he said, "By the way, give him his vision when you give him a name. He was born blind."
Well, it shocked me, but then I said to myself, why not?
Christ told his disciples when he left them they could work miracles. And I had faith in that father's faith.
After I gave that child its name, I finally got around to giving it its vision. That boy's about twelve years old now.
The last time I was back there I was afraid to inquire about him. I was sure he had gone blind again. That's the way my faith works sometimes.
So I asked the branch president about him. And he said, "Brother Cowley, the worst thing you ever did was to bless that child to receive his vision. He's the meanest kid in the neighborhood, always getting into mischief."
Boy, I was thrilled about that kid getting into mischief!
God does have control of all of these elements. You and I can reach out, and if it's his will, we can bring those elements under our control for his purposes. I know that God lives. I know that Jesus is the Christ. I know that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God. And if there ever was a miracle in the history of mankind that miracle is this Church which has grown to its present greatness in the earth.
And your institution here (BYU) stems from the prayer of a boy who was persecuted, who was driven from pillar to post, whose life was taken, who has been branded as the greatest fraud that ever lived on the American continent.
This Church from that kind of fraud is the greatest miracle of modern history. And it's a miracle of God our Father.
May you all have an inward witness that Joseph Smith was a prophet, that God used him to bring about his purposes in this Dispensation of the Fulness of Times.
May we always be loyal devoted, and simple in our faith, I pray in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
====
And I say, "AMEN!madima answered on 09/27/05:Dear Ronnie,
This is a loooooong piece! But it's great reading! Thanks for sharing it with us! :=) | | Question/Answer | | CeeBee2 asked on 09/27/05 - Healing and prayer................................ If a Christian prays for healing and is not healed, what does that say about that person's faith? madima answered on 09/27/05:I don't think that his not being healed shows that the person's faith is weak, that he is out of favor with God, or anything like it.
I believe that there are ailments that we do need - to teach us about life and ourselves. Many healers I have known have to go through great traumas and life-threatening diseases before they can tap and harness their powers of healing. In short, they have to learn to heal themselves before they can heal others.
On the other extreme, I observe that many of the dis-eases that befall us are actually wished for - consciously or subconsciously. Our body "obeys" our wishes beyond our imaginings, for good or bad.
Sadly, I have seen others who lose their faith and even curse God when their loved ones, for whose healing they prayed for so hard, dies.
But then, we will all die anyway. That is our natural course. And sometimes, when the pain is too great and the human body is damaged or broken beyond repair, death is in itself a healing. | | Question/Answer | | Bradd asked on 09/26/05 - Some Evidence Please Several of you have claimed that healing is a "regular" occurrence (paraclete), everyone has healing powers (madima), yes, more than I can count (liz22), and my favorite "Yes, I have had the honor or raising a person from death"!!!!!!! (bucker - who else?).
Please, can any of you provide ANY evidence of such miraculous claims? Are we supposed to just take your word for it?
madima answered on 09/27/05:Hi, Bradd,
I already made a clarification on Ronnie's Q about healing. Anyway, I'll repeat it here with some more elaborations.
In all honesty, my journalistic instinct says it's not scientific at all (and that's why it is also referred to as 'spiritual healing' or 'psychic healing'), although off-the bat, I recall reading up some studies done about it in the west, though none were conclusive, I think :=)
I presume a real "scientific" study will be difficult because no one has found a foolproof way to measure subtle psychic energies and their effects on human cells - at least none that I know of.
There were some scientific studies done on Filipino psychic healers here, though I have not witnessed this kind of healing personally. There were some which were reputedly authentic, but 90 per cent were fakes.
However, the kind of healing by touch I referred to in my answer - pranic healing - is already being done by professional medical practitioners here - in combination with the usual hospital routines. Many nurses and even doctors - licensed ones - do them.
As for evidence on the healing I did... I don't really care about proving it to the world and I don't think I ever will, anyway :=)
But if you want an account of it... I studied pranic healing (informally via the healing group I joined - the Knights of the Holy Cross of Jesus) because my father refused to be operated on when his doctors suggested it. He sought a second and a third opinion. They all said he needs an operation.
After I administered a combination of pranic and crystal healing on him for a period of close to a month, his malignant tumor was gone. When he went back to his doctors, he was given a clean bill of health and they never had to operate on him.
I did healing on my mother and a number of friends as well because they requested me to and several times during the healing sessions of my group - all with good results.
You can say there must also be a good deal of auto-suggestion that could have transpired - especially with my parents and friends. I love them. They love me. They want to be healed. They want me to heal them. It's mind over matter.
But I also felt and "saw" the energies from the healing centers in my body. During the sessions, I automatically entered an altered state of consciousness. My "patients" also "saw" some of what I saw - the very bright light in my hands, in particular.
But then again, there were no third party scientific observers during the sessions, no auric photographs and no documentation. As I said, I don't care about that. My sole objective was to try to heal the people I love and I fulfilled the objective.
I have used healing on myself, on animals, a select number of people but I must also clarify that I try to heal out of love and I don't go around trying to heal people without their asking.
First of all, I believe a person has to WANT to be healed in order to be healed. Not all do. You cannot attempt to cure someone who NEEDs his illness and clings to it.
In my turn, I had been healed by other people, by Mother Nature, even by my own pets. My fave treatment for PMS since I first had it was to put my favorite cat over my belly like a living hot water bottle. As a child, whenever I get sick, the family cats would instinctively go to me and lie over where I hurt without any prompting and I'll feel instant relief...But again, there's no scientific evidence to that :=)
Oh, one last thing - I want to stress that the ability to heal does not make me a saint and it does not make me invincible to sin and temptation :=)
From what I've experienced, when you tap your ability to heal, you may also unwittingly come face to face with the darkest side of yourself. The ability to heal/create is the other side of the ability to destroy. They are two faces of the same coin. You will be tried and tempted.
History has also shown that the ability to heal can be lethal to those who abuse/misuse it and sponge off negative/diseased energies they can't handle.
You just have to look around to see biographies and autobiographies of famous healers who succumbed to cancer, heart attack and other dreaded diseases. Edgar Cayce, the most famous American psychic healer, died of pulmonary edema. After doing remote psychic healing and diagnosis for thousands all over the world (his healing cases were meticulously documented, by the way), he was unable to heal himself.
Please don't take my word for it, though. Try it, Bradd. Like everyone else, you are possessed of a great power within. But to harness it, you have to believe in that power :=) | | Question/Answer | | excon asked on 09/26/05 - Moral Question
Hello Christians:
Can an artist make beautiful art even if he happens to be a pedophile? If you think that a pedophile artist can make good art, would YOU pay to see it?
Would you buy a refrigerator from GE if you found out that the president of GE was a wife beater?
Inquiring minds want to know.
excon
PS> Oh, by the way, I'm talking about Roman Polanski. He has a new movie coming out that is being widely advertised. Lots of people say it's good.
madima answered on 09/26/05:Hi, excon,
I have no doubt that an artist can make beautiful art even if he is a pedophile - or even if he is totally insane,for that matter.
There seems to be a hairbreadth line between insanity/psycho-sexual deviation in art and literature.
I like Van Gogh - though he made some of his good pieces in the height of his psychotic attacks and eventually killed himself.
There was a European psychopath serial killer whose books were best-sellers. People read him.
I know that some of my fave authors had bouts of insanity and a good number committed suicide.
However, when I look at art, I appreciate it for its execution and how it specifically resonates with my own inner being. I would normally not "research" about the personality of the artist beforehand. I would only care about the quality of the work, how I can learn from it, being an artist myself.
Of course, the artist's inner turmoil often comes through in his imagery, choice of colors, style, etc. The opus will tell you a LOT about its creator.
But as a student of art, if I go to an art exhibition, my foremost concern will be the artwork, not the artist. I will pay to see ANY good art, regardless of what its artist is/was like :=)
| | Question/Answer | | Choux asked on 09/26/05 - Reporters Exaggerated Today on Fox News, an official gave some facts about what went on at the Super Dome during the Katrina disaster. It turns out that media stories were **grossly exaggerated**.
Sad day for journalism. Very sad. And, political hatemongers using the lies to further their agendas. :( madima answered on 09/26/05:Dear Mary Sue,
Please remember the reporters are not the only ones responsible. A report will NEVER be aired or published without the go-ahead of the editors and the owners of the station/publication concerned.
And for as long as the audience/readers are eager for such news, they will go on.
Remember that TV stations, radio networks, newspapers and magazines are beholden to advertisers. Furthermore, the members of their board of directors consist of interest groups affiliated with business and politics, people who put their money in media precisely to have their own specific "angle"/version of the issue publicized. | | Question/Answer | | Erewhon asked on 09/26/05 - Jesus the healer Matthew 9:18-26
While [Jesus] spake these things unto them, behold, there came a certain ruler, and worshipped him, saying, My daughter is even now dead: but come and lay thy hand upon her, and she shall live.
And Jesus arose, and followed him, and [so did] his disciples.
And, behold, a woman, which was diseased with an issue of blood twelve years, came behind [him], and touched the hem of his garment:
For she said within herself, If I may but touch his garment, I shall be whole.
But Jesus turned him about, and when he saw her, he said, Daughter, be of good comfort; thy faith hath made thee whole. And the woman was made whole from that hour.
And when Jesus came into the ruler's house, and saw the minstrels and the people making a noise,
He said unto them, Give place: for the maid is not dead, but sleepeth. And they laughed him to scorn.
But when the people were put forth, he went in, and took her by the hand, and the maid arose.
And the fame hereof went abroad into all that land.
Jesus healed by word and by touch. Have you witnessed similar healing in your church life? madima answered on 09/26/05:Yes, dear Ronnie. Everyone has healing powers he/she can tap - within the church and beyond it.
Even animals, plants and inanimate things (sea water, rocks, crystals) that exude subtle energies have the power to heal.
I was a member of a church-affiliated healing group myself. I personally experienced what it was like to activate the energies in my psychic centers and channel it to heal in the "pranic healing" style.
But I did healing only with people I love. Many of the practicing healers I knew tended to "sponge up" too much negative/diseased energies that proved to be harmful to them in the long run. | | Question/Answer | | Choux asked on 09/23/05 - Pay for Children AP) PARIS Cut and Paste
"France announced financial incentives Thursday for parents to have a third child, hoping to boost its fertility rate by helping people to better juggle the demands of work and family life.
A new measure will award $916 a month to parents who take one year's unpaid leave from work after the birth of a third child, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin announced at the close of a national conference on families.
It will take effect in July 2006. De Villepin said he believed the measure will appeal to "numerous parents" and allow for a "better reconciliation of professional and family rhythms."
"We must do more to allow French families to have as many children as they want," the prime minister said.
France's fertility rate, at an average of 1.9 children per woman, is the second highest in Europe after Ireland's, around 2. But it is still below the 2.07 level needed to prevent population decline.
The European Union average is around 1.5, dropping to less than 1.3 in some countries, including Greece, Spain, Italy and the new EU member nations in Eastern Europe where fertility rates dropped precipitously after the collapse of communism. Some experts fear that the decline in fertility rates across the continent could have far-reaching economic and social consequences."
Should America offer third child benefits? The American birth rate is 2.1 according to the last information I read about. madima answered on 09/23/05:Dear Mary Sue,
I don't know if any study has been done on Mother Earth's full "carrying capacity". But if you ask me, I believe our world is already carrying more than it should, judging by the rate that species of animals and plants are getting extinct, the rate natural resources are being depleted and the rate of mortality in the Third World.
Now, the US is a First World Country, aside from being the richest and the most powerful on earth... Those classified as "poor" in the US still make $7,500 per annum, compared to my country's $400-600 per capita per year. Heaven knows how much is the per capita income in the poorest regions of India and Africa.
If a nation encourages more kids, it should be willing to take care of every new child born under its "program" from birth till death.
But even before a government considers doing that, it should prove itself fully capable of taking care of its EXISTING population.
Ideally, that means there should be NO poor, no destitute, no marginalized member of its society.
America - and every nation for that matter, is responsible for its current population, first and foremost. If it cannot take care of ALL its living people at present, it has no right to goad couples to bring more new life into a world of misery. | | Question/Answer | | Erewhon asked on 09/22/05 - Pope Benedict set to ban homosexuals from entering the RCC ministry. My question is,
"How is a person's gender preference discovered?"
Is there a fool-proof test that will identify homosexuals from heterosexuals? If so, what is it? madima answered on 09/22/05:I don't think the church can find ANY fool-proof way to test the sexual preference of its priests and seminarians.
I grew up in the theater, which attracts a huge number of gay artists. Many of the gays I knew are not the loud, finger-swishing feminine types, whom you can spot at a glance.
In fact, many of the gays I knew do not like to appear "feminine" because that's a big turn-off for both gay and heterosexual prospective partners. Also, they don't like to arouse the ire of their parents and kill their chances for career advancement. And you'll NEVER know from looking at them or talking to them that they are gays.
And there are also those who realize they are gays only in the company of other gays and come out of the closet late in life.
So, I wonder... Will the church search for "witnesses" to their priests/seminarians' gay activities? You cannot really prove one is gay unless you can prove he had sex with another man. So, are they going to search for the "lovers" of those who are "suspected"? Will the "lovers" testify before the church even though such a testimony will be potentially damaging to the witnesses as well (that's like declaring they are either gays themselves or providers of sexual services to gays)?
And what will constitute a "credible witness"? Someone can be paid to bear false witness to another or do it out of spite. How can the witness prove that the suspect had sex with him? What constitutes "homosexual sex" in the church definition?
Also...Even heterosexuals may try sex with same gender partners, for the hell of it - for experimentation and fun. In that case, some heteros may be "ocassional bisexuals". Will the church attempt to uncover past activities of the sort as well?
Personally, I think establishing one's homosexual preference 100 per cent is impossible - unless the "suspect" himself admits he is homosexual.
| | Question/Answer | | MaggieB asked on 09/21/05 - Pray for Bobbye Please pray for those along the Gulf Coast and Texas Panhandle as Rita roars toward them as a category 5 hurricane. Pray that they will have the means to leave and will respond to evacuating plans. Bobbye, an expert that many of us have known for 4-5 years lives in Houston and her last e-mail to me today between 3-4 pm said she was getting ready to leave for another town in TX for safety, keep her in your prayers as well as her family for safe traveling.
Thank you,
MaggieB madima answered on 09/22/05:She's in my prayers. | | Question/Answer | | HANK1 asked on 09/18/05 - NEGLECT:
What is it about human consciousness and life that causes us to live barely conscious of God?
madima answered on 09/18/05:Well, when man believes he has so much power over his environment, he believes he is God.
Consciousness of God is also often lost when man is obsessed by so much attachment to the material.
Most of those who felt they have lost their way to God and found it again had been subjected to great ordeals that humbled them and made them re-think their direction.
Suffering, war, sickness, death of a loved one, loss of love, loss of wealth... these often take back human consciousness to God.
Actually, it's either of two things. When you are subjected to these life-changing experiences, you either lose your faith entirely or you regain/strengthen it. | | Question/Answer | | HANK1 asked on 09/18/05 - THE BIBLE:
Except for the Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer and the Golden Rule, what other advice do you get from reading the Bible?
madima answered on 09/18/05:I'm intrigued by the Revelations... The passage about the seven churches... and of course, my favorite is the Lord's Prayer.
Actually, in the practice of kundalini yoga, the seven churches are said to correspond to each of the seven subtle psychic centers of the body - the "chakras". Edgar Cayce was also of the same opinion :=)
I find it odd that in the Catholic healing group that I joined, they use the Lord's prayer to activate the chakras - for healing purposes.
Even the Catholic nuns who serve as our retreat masters teach about the chakras and use them for healing.
So many mysteries in a book :=) | | Question/Answer | | ROLCAM asked on 09/18/05 - Seek the LORD Seek the LORD
"Ask, and it will be given to you;
seek, and you will find;
knock, and it will be opened to you.
"For everyone who asks receives,
and he who seeks finds,
and to him who knocks it will be opened.
Matthew 7:7,8 NASB
Do you get comfort from these words ? madima answered on 09/18/05:I don't really ask... He knows what I need and He gives them to me, willingly, just like my father on earth... My parents have always anticipated my needs...
But there are things that I do seek and I always find them. Well, not always. But if I don't find what I'm looking for, I always find something better, so I can't complain :=)
I don't go around knocking really... I like climbing walls and slipping through windows or breaking in through the backdoors, if I can. It's more exciting that way.
Oh, but I think when He really thinks I need to get in, He leaves the back doors unlatched, the windows partly open... and the walls don't have rolls of barbed wires and shards of glass planted over them :=)
| | Question/Answer | | bucker asked on 09/17/05 - half full, or half empty? If two people. each holding up a glass, with water half way to the top, and also half way to the bottom.
Are they half full, or half empty? Now, if one says mine is holf full, and the other says his is half empty, which is right. Does that mean that the one is not half full, just because the man said the word wrong. Would you try to decide if the galsses were half full, or half empth, or would you all jump on the mispronounced word, and miss the real meaning of the question? madima answered on 09/17/05:How anyone sees it depends on how they perceive their own lives. In this case, you cannot say that one's answer is right - or wrong.
A discontented and unhappy man or a perfectionist/completionist will always see his glass as half empty.
A happy, contented man will always see his glass as half full.
That's true for everything else in the world...
Once, I was surprised to learn that my old teacher feels depressed seeing the mist and the rain, that my father is afraid of the darkness and has a phobia of spiders, that my mom is terrified of snakes.
Perhaps because I'm happy, I delight in the mist and the rain. My first instinct is always to go out and let the mist embrace me... to run and play in the rain. The darkness holds no terror for me and so I can go into its depths and find peace. Creatures like spiders and snakes are beautiful for me... I see them like living jewels and touch them without fear or loathing.
Actually, others may see my glass as empty but I always see it as full... Overflowing to the brim, in fact :=) | | Question/Answer | | CeeBee2 asked on 09/16/05 - Man's designs vs. God's designs........................ A couple of years ago I had posted an essay here about man's geometric patterns vs. Nature's randomness - for instance, the designs on/in the Alhambra vs. God's designs. I searched for it, couldn't find it - but now as fall approaches, that essay has come to mind. Because of the recent Midwestern drought, leaves are falling early and exposing tree branches - God's random designs.
A garden spider had spun a large web in the thick of the bushes near my front door. All summer she has feasted on luckless flying things that got caught in her very beautiful web. That web is one of God's somewhat geometric but mostly random (every one is different) designs.
My thoughts then went to zebras. Wikipedia tells us that there are three kinds of zebras and "all have vividly contrasting black and white vertical stripes [that act] as a camouflage mechanism or play a role in social interactions (with slight variations of the pattern allowing the animals to distinguish between individuals) or is an effective means of confusing the visual system of the blood-sucking tsetse fly" - another one of God's designs.
On the other hand is the Alhambra, with its filigree walls and colorful Moorish tiles - one of man's designs, beautiful but almost tiring in its demand on one's senses.
Look around you. Do you see man's designs? - the rigid geometrics of smokestacks, skyscrapers faced with columns and rows of glass, the monotony of a freight train passing by, a bird's eye view of a Midwestern city with streets in a grid pattern. Beautiful but perhaps "too much for the eyes" after a while? Then take a look at Nature all around you - flowers, leaves, grasses, tree bark, the branching out of all kinds of trees, ant hills, birds' nests... aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!! Restful and joyful and a feast for the eyes. God's designs. madima answered on 09/17/05:I think God has a great sense of humor, too, when he designed the platypus and the camel... the seahorse and hermaphrodite insects, among many creatures :=)
The platypus looks like patchwork - tail and body of a beaver, bill and webbed feet of a duck, venomous spur on the males, egg-laying AND suckling ability on the females...
The camel can go without food and water for days in the eternal dunes, literally living off the fat on his back - both for the bactrian and the two-humped dromedaries. He can munch on anything from the thatch of his master's hut to wires and desert thorns...
The male seahorse gets pregnant and gives birth to offspring. In some species of fish, the female can transform herself into a male while in the insect world, some are created as viable hermaphrodites...
But I like the creations of men as well... especially those inside the Sistine Chapel, the Louvre and other great museums of the world - the paintings of Raphael, Michaelangelo, Titian, Reubens, etc... the sculptures of Bernini, the great works of art and literature :=) | | Question/Answer | | Choux asked on 09/14/05 - Exorcists Comvention VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Orthodontists have national conventions, as do lawyers and computer salespeople. So why not exorcists? At the end of his weekly general audience Wednesday Pope Benedict greeted Italian exorcists who, he disclosed, are currently holding their national convention.
The Pope encouraged them to "carry on their important work in the service of the Church."
Problem was that until the Pope spoke few people outside the inner circle knew that a convention of Beelzebub-busters was going on, presumably in Rome.
And where were they holding it? In a church, a hotel, a graveyard?
"They try to keep these things quiet," said a Catholic professor who has dealings with exorcists.
The Roman Catholic Church has shown growing interest in exorcism in Italy.
In 1999, the Vatican issued its first updated ritual for exorcism since 1614 and warned that the devil is still at work.
The official Roman Catholic exorcism starts with prayers, a blessing and sprinkling of holy water, the laying on of hands on the possessed, and the making of the sign of the cross.
It ends with an "imperative formula" in which the devil is ordered to leave the possessed.
The formula begins: "I order you, Satan..." It goes on to denounce Satan as "prince of the world" and "enemy of human salvation." It ends: "Go back, Satan."
What say you? madima answered on 09/15/05:Dear Mary Sue,
I find that intriguing :=)
Though we are a predominantly Catholic country, I know of only one Catholic priest in Manila who officially "specializes" in exorcism .
There are only very few priests who can and are allowed to do it here, though many ex-seminarian friends aspired to learn exorcism and were very intrigued by it when they first entered priesthood.
From what I know, aside from "specializing" in this specific area, priests go through a great deal of preparation before they even begin a ritual of exorcism.
They have to establish that the person to be exorcised is really "possessed" by the devil, not just a mental case. The church has a detailed guideline for this - which is classified information.
Once the "possession" case is established, they have to get permission from their superiors to do exorcism. Then they have to purify themselves, fasting, eating nothing but black bread for at least three days, and praying.
The exorcism rite itself takes place in the church and could be a very long procedure that takes days and even months. The person being exorcised usually stays in the church for a long time. Some suffer "relapses".
Church-sanctioned official exorcisms are quite rare, too. And they don't get publicized.
We had one case when the psychiatrist himself told his patient to go to the priest to be exorcised because there's no medical explanation to the physical "manifestations" that accompany her "attacks". Also, the girl was from the rural areas and uneducated, but when the priest talked to her "devil", she replied fluently in many languages, including Latin!
She even knew the most personal/intimate details of the lives of the people who assisted in the exorcism though they were complete strangers to her.
I bet that Italian exorcist convention would be very interesting to listen to! :=) | | Question/Answer | | sarnian asked on 09/13/05 - What if ? ........................................................ What if one of these days we receive here on earth a first indication of other life in the universe (whatever that life may be).
Let's say we receive radio signals from an alien source.
How would that effect you in your religious belief?
madima answered on 09/13/05:It won't affect my religious beliefs at all. I've always been liberal minded anyway - to say the least.
And if I can, I'll be the first to join the earth's welcoming committee for aliens. I'll ask my editor-in-chief for the assignment :=) | | Question/Answer | | HANK1 asked on 09/13/05 - GOOD ADVICE:
"Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly." - Langston Hughes
What are a couple of your dreams?
HANK
madima answered on 09/13/05:One of my favorite dreams took me beneath the sea. I just found myself diving without any scuba gear, exploring a submerged limestone city in waters like molten emeralds.
Dolphins and sharks escorted me peacefully. They just swam beside me, a friendly entourage, never snapping at each other.
I've been exploring the undersea city for quite a long time before I realized that I was breathing underwater like a fish. One huge dolphin swam playfully in my arms, snuggling.
And then I heard the voice of the sea waters in my ears: "Don't ever be afraid. We will never hurt you."
I felt so happy, so at peace :=)
Not too long afterwards, I saw in reality what I saw in my dreams. It was a group of islands with limestone cliffs over 300 million years old. Once it was submerged under the ocean.
I have never seen a single picture of it until then. I never even knew it existed. For me, it is one of the most beautiful places on earth. I will visit it again soon, middle of next month. The islands of El Nido :=) | | Question/Answer | | sissypants asked on 09/12/05 - prayer request please keep itgolf in your prayers in the next few days. he is in the hospital madima answered on 09/13/05:He's in my prayers. I'm praying for his complete recovery. | | Question/Answer | | Lazlow asked on 09/11/05 - Anger Management and Love for Powderpuff My apologies Lately I have found out that I have a anger problem a dilemma that I had when I figured out that I was in love with a member on this board, and I never wanted to share her with you intellectuals that is the only incentive I have on here besides working with the CIA is I am madly in love with Powderpuff? My Dear Powderpuff, with eyes that sparkle and such ruby red lips that I myself can only dream about . Please my little one, run away with me my beauty my love, this is Lazlow, and I am very rich I can care for you, I even own my own home---313 area code????? I will sing to you.
“You are so pretty oh so very pretty, I feel sorry for any girl whom is not you”
Now that I have this little problem, whom on here besides Hank can take my love away from me? This is Lazlow and I send all of you my love.
My momma taught me that I should love all of you, so I also want to say I am greatly remorseful for using fowl language, but I no longer want to share with you my powderpuff. madima answered on 09/11/05:Well, Lazlow, I don't blame you. I happen to love Sharlene too. Very much! :=)
She is my cybersister for five years straight now. But I feel she is my soul sister. And I'm sure I'll love her to the end of my life :=) | | Question/Answer | | paraclete asked on 09/11/05 - The home of the free and the brave but not brave enough to be allowed to see the truth?
Challenged in court by CNN, the US Government has agreed not to prevent the news media from following the effort to recover the bodies of Hurricane Katrina victims.
The Government won't, however, permit photographers to join them in boats or helicopters during the mission to recover bodies from flooded homes.
CNN filed suit against the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in US District Court in Houston yesterday, concerned about two statements made by Government officials that day. The officials said they didn't believe it was right for the news media to show pictures of Katrina victims.
Terry Ebbert, New Orleans' homeland security director, said the recovery effort would be done with dignity, "meaning that there would be no press allowed".
Army Lieutenant-General Russel Honore later said there would be zero access to the recovery operation.
In a hearing today before US District Judge Keith Ellison, army Lieutenant-Colonel Christian DeGraff promised that recovery teams would not bar the media from watching. Satisfied, CNN agreed to put its case on hold.
"We believe very strongly in the free flow of information and felt it was necessary to have access to tell the full story," said Jim Walton, CNN Newsgroup president.
He said CNN has proven in this story and others that it doesn't put gratuitous images on the air.
Army Lieutenant-Colonel Richard Steele said that DeGraff's statement didn't represent a change in policy. Reporters can watch recovery efforts they come upon, but they won't be embedded with search teams.
"We're not going to bar, impede or prevent" the media from telling the story, he said. "We're just not going to give the media a ride."
Images of Katrina's victims have frequently been part of the story, and The Associated Press offered such pictures to its members today. The picture of a dead body in a wheelchair, wrapped in blankets and resting near a wall, is one of most-remembered images of the tragedy.
Some Bush administration opponents are suspicious that there would be efforts to limit pictures of bodies so the public wouldn't be reminded of the government's response to the storm. They likened it to restrictions against taking pictures of bodies returning from the war in Iraq.
But Walton said he didn't think the "zero access" plans in New Orleans had anything to do with politics.
AP madima answered on 09/11/05:To journalists like me, "zero access" is all a matter of politics - wherever you maybe, as a member of the working press. As they say, a picture speaks a thousand words.
Nothing is more moving than a good shot splashed across the front pages of a broadsheet or in the visuals of a live TV broadcast.
If you want to rouse the blood of people drowsing in their armchairs, if you want to raise the fury of the populace, if you want to call attention to cruelty and political booboos, you show them pictures of gore, suffering and death. | | Question/Answer | | Choux asked on 09/10/05 - Christian Morality??? What do you think of the following cut and paste?
Britain, France, Spain, Italy and Sweden are going to sell bonds and use the money to pay for vaccinating children in what is called the developing world. The World Health Organization says that the immunizations will save the lives of millions of African kids.
Bad idea. President Bush has put the kibosh on it.
America is not going to have anything to do with a morally objectionable program. This is the Terri Schiavo case writ large, an unnatural intervention in the will of the You Know Who.
If the You Know Who wants African children to live, the You Know Who will take care of it without the Europeans. Keeping those kids alive will lead to demands to spend more money which we do not have without taxing the rich and that ain’t gonna happen.
The children you save today will starve tomorrow, anyway. There is a new wheat rust blight with the charming moniker of UG99 that is threatening to cut food production first in Africa and then everywhere, as it spreads, around the globe. UG99 is You Know Who’s way of saying stay out of it. Don’t mess with providence, although you do have his permission to drop a copper or two in the kettle when the flies begin crawling on the babies’ faces again and the older kids are all bone and bloat.
The Africans can do what we did in Louisiana and Mississippi after Katrina. Send in cabinet secretaries. Like kings of old who could cure scrofula simply by touching the afflicted, President Bush’s cabinet members can do the same. That is why they visit the New Orleans’ site one after another. Candy Rice is a sure fire cure for warts. A glance at a mental patient by Michael Chernoff cures delusions of grandeur.
They cannot cure everything. President Bush is the panacea man. Had he been in Florida and touched Terri she would have awoken from her coma and raised up from the bed. He often comes to New Orleans to cure the sick. Those who say he’s doing it for the photo ops or strong leadership ops or the vision thing ops, they lie. They lie like rugs, they are dissing our President and the You Know Who is going to turn them into African children.
What say you? madima answered on 09/11/05:Dear Mary Sue,
I only hope that something good comes out of it and that usable medicines make it to their intended beneficiaries.
In many cases, unscrupulous individuals and public officials have transformed even the most organized and best intentioned charitable programs into profiteering ventures. It takes great political will and superhuman vigilance to keep that from happening.
It is also a known fact that the Third World is the dumping ground, not just for expired medicines but for substances that had been found dangerous and banned from the First World. The contraceptives and medicines for dangerous illnesses that had been "donated" to the Third World in the past were cases in point.
The road to hell is sometimes paved with the best intentions... | | Question/Answer | | Choux asked on 09/09/05 - Murderous Cruelty, the OT and Rome I have been watching a week's long special on the Roman Empire...generally speaking from 500BC to 500AD, a thousand year Empire. It has been wonderful, educational, but I have had enough!
All the hacking people to bits, the love of gore and disembowling, cutting throats; also, the violence and hacking to bits of women and children in the Old Testament.
Were there any civilizations that were not bloodthursty and gory?? Even today, men cut off political prisoner's heads in Iraq for "religious" reasons.
I say thank heavens for democratic republics and democratic monarchies like Britain...The greatest advance in civilization. Do you agree?? madima answered on 09/11/05:Dear Mary Sue,
I'll beg to disagree this once :=)
Britain had been quite famous for the "rack", (among other horrid instruments of medieval torture like the Scavenger's Daughter, the Manacles, the Iron Maiden, etc.) which was used in the Tower of London.
Until supposedly "civilized" times, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, they use the rack to stretch the victim's body until the limbs are dislocated and finally torn from their sockets.
Britain, the rest of Europe and America burned a lot of witches and their cats alive too, on the stake... American Indians scalped their victims alive and made prisoners run between rows of "beaters", etc.
Unfortunately, advances in civilization do nothing to quell the beast in every man, especially during times of war and other atrocities.
Just look at what the Nazi did in the last World War. That's just over 50 years ago.. and they're not just physical torture but mental and emotional torture as well... Look at the experiments they did in the camps, like the one forcing the child to give her mother stronger and stronger electric shocks until she died.
And today... it's not only Iraqis who cut off the heads of political prisoners. They still cut the heads off criminals - local and foreign - in the Middle East. A good number of my countrymen who worked there were decapitated as well.
Just a couple of thousand kilometers away from Manila, our Muslim brothers in the South still cut off the heads of criminals -and enemies alike.
Here in the capital city, offenders and radicals don't usually get separated from their heads. But the torture from the police and the military makes them wish it would be so. All you have to do is to ask those who had either escaped or survived...
| | Question/Answer | | Erewhon asked on 09/09/05 - A few words from Tertullian ... (PM) .
"All who formerly hated because they did not know the true nature of the thing they hated, ceased to hate as soon as they cease to be ignorant. "
Do you think the Cartaginian attorney is correct in this premise? madima answered on 09/09/05:That could be true for those whose hatred are caused by ignorance.
But hatred could also arise from love :=) In a perverse but true fashion, there's no one and nothing that you can hate more than the one you love most. That, of course, is from the viewpoint of erotic love.
Hatred, as an emotion is the extreme opposite of love. But psychologists will tell you that both love AND hatred are very mutable emotions. One can so easily become the other and vice versa :=)
Just as there can be no light without darkness, there can never be love without hatred, if you will look at it from that point of view.
In the duality of human nature, one cannot exist without the other. The two always co-exist. They are always two sides of one and the same coin. | | Question/Answer | | paraclete asked on 09/06/05 - Some people don't know when to keep their mouth shut! I ask you are these attitudes Christian?
Barbara Bush comments on survivors spark outrage
September 7, 2005 - 12:31PM
"They're underprivileged anyway, so this working very well for them" ... former first lady Barbara Bush and former president George Bush visit hurricane evacuees in Houston on Monday.
Photo: AP
Comments about Hurricane Katrina victims by the mother of President George Bush have fuelled the ire of some Americans, who see the Bush family as out-of-touch patricians.
The refugees in Houston, Texas, were "underprivileged anyway" and life in the Astrodome sports arena is "working very well for them", former first lady Barbara Bush said in a radio interview.
"Almost everyone I've talked to says: 'We're going to move to Houston,' " Mrs Bush said late on Monday after visiting evacuees at the Astrodome with her husband, former president George Bush.
"What I'm hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality," she said.
"And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this - this is working very well for them."
Her comments were aired on Marketplace, an American Public Radio show broadcast nationwide.
They triggered a flood of negative messages on the Huffington Post, a popular left-leaning blog.
"Cold hearted witch," read one of the more polite comments, signed by IowaDem.
"No wonder her son remained on vacation, playing guitar and eating cake instead of seeing that aid and rescue operations were well-managed."
Another writer found the comments hard to believe. "Did she really say that?" wrote 'Stephen.' "My God! What or who have we become?"
Meanwhile, "Katrinagate" fury has spread to US media.
"For God's sake, are you blind?" a woman shouted at Michael Brown, the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). "You're patting each other on the back, while people here are dying."
The woman was not a victim of Hurricane Katrina. She was a reporter with US television network MSNBC who was so affected by the misery she had witnessed she could hold back no longer.
"Katrinagate" is the term being used by the media to describe the biggest challenge facing the political establishment in the US since the Watergate affair in the 1970s toppled Richard Nixon.
Not for decades has there been such merciless questioning of the President and his Administration by the US media.
Even now, as the rescue operation gets under way in earnest and the flood waters in New Orleans are starting to subside, the Federal Government's inadequate reaction - in the run-up to the hurricane and directly afterwards - is still being criticised by the media in reports that are anything but detached.
Never before, say some observers, have US reporters been so emotionally involved in a story to the point of being enraged. They are not just telling a story, they have become part of it.
"Has Katrina saved the US media?" asked BBC reporter Matt Wells, who sees the shift in tone as a potentially historic development.
A number of US journalists who cover federal politics, especially television presenters, had become part of the political establishment, said Wells.
"They live in the same suburbs, go to the same parties. Their television companies are owned by large conglomerates who contribute to election campaigns."
It's a "perfect recipe" for fearful, self-censoring reportage, he said, but added: "Since last week, that's all over."
But if the Bush Administration's reaction to Hurricane Katrina was slow, so too was the media's.
On Friday, reporters at the scene were still having difficulties establishing the scale of the disaster and the number of dead.
Used to reporting on comparatively harmless storms, heroically riding out the storms with windblown hairdos, they were then confronted with the "Big One".
The television reporters, particularly, were left scrambling in the first few hours of coverage as they tried to comprehend the scale of the disaster.
Then came the emotion. A CNN reporter broke down as she described the cries of help of people stuck on rooftops in Louisiana. Other journalists also related what they saw in broken voices.
Then the federal officials rolled into town and the press conferences started, with politicians thanking one another for their tireless efforts.
Next came anger. "This isn't Iraq, this isn't Somalia, this is our home," one NBC television reporter shouted.
The usually stoic ABC television presenter Ted Koeppel lashed out at the FEMA head in a interview, when he could not give any details on the number of refugees waiting to be rescued from the Convention Centre.
"Don't you people ever look at television?" the veteran presenter raged. "Don't you ever hear the radio? We've been reporting on the crisis at the Convention Centre for a lot longer than just today."
A CNN journalist also attacked Brown. "How it is possible that we have better information than you? Why aren't supplies being dropped in [by plane]? In Banda Aceh, in Indonesia, they did it two days after the tsunami."
Another CNN reporter interrupted Senator Mary Landrieu during an interview in which she was praising Congress for passing an emergency aid package.
"Excuse me Senator, I'm sorry for interrupting. I haven't heard anything about that, because I was busy these past four days seeing dead people on the street. And when I hear how one politician congratulating the others ... Yesterday there was a corpse on the street which had been eaten by rats because it had been there for 48 hours."
If the alarm bells are not already going off in the Oval Office, they should be, because the previously staunchly pro-Bush Fox News is also starting to show signs of disaffection.
As one of their reporters was being directed to another area because of the danger caused by looting, he spoke quickly into his microphone, saying: "These people are desperate. Why shouldn't they try to steal water and food from us?"
AFP, DPA madima answered on 09/08/05:Well, I don't know Barbara Bush personally, but given the situation, perhaps it would have been much much better if she had just kept her mouth shut.
I'm not sure if she would say the same thing if she herself had ever experienced getting stranded and swimming in dirty floodwaters for days and days. Or if she had the home she had been living in most of her life blown away to a pile of sticks before her eyes.
That portion about American journalists getting "enlightened" is notable, too. People find it hard to "feel" until they see misery and death up close. But after a time, when they've seen too much pain, they will grow to be numb too, and desensitized. That holds true for both spectator and inhabitants.
Oh, but when someone lives in a perennial disaster area, as I do, one gets "used" to it. As I've mentioned before, my country is in the typhoon belt and we get hit by an average of 30 typhoons per year. I guess, we are used to thousands dying in the super typhoons, the floods, the tidal waves, mudslides and avalanches. We're actually flooded here in Manila as I speak.
Of course, I didn't expect the government of the US will have such a slow reaction to a disaster like Katrina. They're supposed to have all the money and the best logistics. At least, here in a Third World country like mine, we have learned not to expect anything from our eternally corrupt government. | | Question/Answer | | Laura asked on 09/07/05 - A hypothetical question!! Well actually not. My husband and I have sent money to the Red Cross. We thought that we would have a spare room in our home for a couple or a person who was a victim of the recent hurricane. But our daughter couldn't move out after all as she had planned so that has been nixed.. But that's okay.. After all, we do have to tend to the needs of family as well right?
We all have these good intentions, but sometimes life just doesn't work the way that we would want or like. The Bible does remind us to focus on today rather than tomorrow because we really don't know what tomorrow will bring. Today has enough trouble of it's own.
Another delemna.. Our dog Tawny who has been a member of our family for 11 years has been moping and whining for the last few days. I couldn't see anything obviously wrong with her but one the the grandkids said that when they went to hug her neck she snapped at him! She NEVER does that!! So I took a look and was horrified. She had a gaping oozing wound between the folds of her neck..She is a Lab and so she had alot of loose skin there.. I took her to the vet and they had to do surgery. Between that and the meds that she will have to take for weeks to come it cost over $600. And depending on the outcome, she may have to have more surgery.
When do you say enough as far as a pet is concerned..After all, this money could be used to help hurrican victims.. That is what I had originally intended.. But I also took on the responsibility of caring for an animal 11 years ago. She is old but otherwise healthy..Do I discard her because my money might better be spent elsewhere???
What say you!!! madima answered on 09/08/05:Dear Laura,
I believe charity starts at home. Before you help others, you are duty-bound to help your family first. Tawny IS family. She had been loyal to you and yours for 11 years.
A lot of people are helping Katrina's victims. And the one who should help them is the US government to whom the people of New Orleans had been paying taxes for precisely THAT purpose, to be aided in time of need.
If I had been in your place, I will do the same. I'll save my dog first. My duty lies with her, first and foremost. If I send money elsewhere, even though it's for a legitimate cause and she dies, I'll never be able to forgive myself. | | Question/Answer | | Laura asked on 09/04/05 - Watching the news this morning Rescue workers are frustrated at the number of people that they are coming across in the flooded areas of NO that just don't want to leave their homes.. They've gone days without food and fresh water and there are alot of little kids as well.. Yet they just don't understand that it will be a long time before the water recedes and that they are exposing themselves to great harm from the stagnent diseased water all around them.
Can the government FORCE them to leave for their own good? madima answered on 09/04/05:Yes, I guess the government can force them to leave if the authorities can round them up and bodily load them in buses or choppers.
But if the government cannot give them enough food and shelter and security where they will be relocated, they will just troop back to their homes, unless the government enforces and mans a regular blockade of the area.
Well, I expect that being the richest country in the world, the US can tend to its needy, unlike here in Asia.
We have more or less the same experiences here in the Third World. Poor people set up homes near waterways and are forcefully evacuated during typhoons and floods. But they just keep returning back to the same place almost as soon as they are evacuated, even when the area is still unsafe.
When the government cannot provide them permanent homes and livelihood in relocation sites, they just turn back and rebuild from the ruins of their former homes.
They have nowhere else to go. | | Question/Answer | | Choux asked on 09/04/05 - NIck the Cat This morning, I opened the screen door to get my Sunday newspaper, and when I closed the door, I heard a cat meowing outside. I looked back outside and it was Nick!
I never saw him run out. He must have had a kitty-plan and executed it lickety-split. He escaped ten feet to the evergreen shrubs and his little nose was busy taking in the glory of it all! I called to him, and he disappeared under the hedge! Soon, he came out and tried the steps to the second floor which are in front of my apartment door. I went and got a chair and set it in the door so I could sit and call to Nick, hoping to hell noone would come by and see me in my house dress with hair akimbo!
I continued calling him, but he just wasn't interested in coming home. He was exploring the world ten feet from the door. Idea! Get the cat treats and crackle the package to tempt him to come home.
By the time I got back to the door and opened it, Nick was poised there and hurredly ran in.
I have been thinking. How far from my comfort zone am I willing to roam while exploring the world. How far in the past have I roamed in search of ?.
How far have you gone from your ocmfort zone???
What is your comfort zone?
All comments welcome... madima answered on 09/04/05:Dear Mary Sue,
I've always gone waaaay beyond my comfort zone :=) If I haven't, I will never have the kind of adventures I had and am having right now! :=)
My ambling up to a strange, 500 pound tiger when his keeper is away or hitchhiking on the dorsal of a wild 30-foot whaleshark in the open sea is not in any normal person's comfort zone, I guess :=)
Nor is jumping off an over 60 foot bridge into the raging rapids below, bivouacking at the peak of a mountain alone, or riding over 20-foot waves in gale-force winds in a flimsy wooden boat with no lifevest.
For somebody who grew up in the megapolis, who had been protected since childhood, who never really experienced the great outdoors until I got out of college...I guess I can extend my comfort zone indefinitely, depending on how much I relish the adrenaline rush that comes with it.
My ultimate dream, to summit Everest, K2 and Kangchenjunga, to explore even parts of the Amazon, the Sunderbans and Africa, to free dive with great white sharks in Gansbaii and perhaps kayak in the Aleutian chain, will really overshoot my comfort zone, especially where glacial environments are concerned because I don't have ANY experience with winter ice just yet.
Ohhhh, but I'll push my luck and my physical limits just to get what I want! It will be such a great thrill! :=) | | Question/Answer | | Choux asked on 09/04/05 - Is This Device Ethical/Moral?? Cut and Paste follows:
"A South African inventor has unveiled a new anti-rape female condom that hooks onto an attacker's penis and aims to cut one of the highest rates of sexual assault in the world.
"Nothing has ever been done to help a woman so that she does not get raped and I thought it was high time," Sonette Ehlers, 57, said of the "rapex", a device worn like a tampon that has sparked controversy in a country used to daily reports of violent crime.
Police statistics show more than 50,000 rapes are reported every year, while experts say the real figure could be four times that as they say most rapes of acquaintances or children are never reported.
Ehlers said the "rapex" hooks onto the rapist's skin, allowing the victim time to escape and helping to identify perpetrators.
"He will obviously be too pre-occupied at this stage," she told reporters in Kleinmond, a small holiday village about 100km east of Cape Town. "I promise you he is going to be too sore. He will go straight to hospital."
The device, made of latex and held firm by shafts of sharp barbs, can only be removed from the man through surgery which will alert hospital staff, and ultimately, the police, she said.
It also reduces the chances of a woman falling pregnant or contracting Aids and other sexually transmitted diseases from the attacker by acting in the same way as a female condom.
South Africa has more people with HIV/Aids than any other country, with one in nine of its 45 million population infected.
Ehlers, who showed off a prototype yesterday, said women had tried it for comfort and it had been tested on a plastic male model but not yet on a live man. Production was planned to start next year.
But the "rapex" has raised fears amongst anti-rape activists that it could escalate violence against women. madima answered on 09/04/05:Dear Mary Sue,
Rapex sounds ok but what if the woman is unconscious and the rapist knows how to remove the rapex before he assaults his victim?
Here, many rape victims are drugged beforehand. The drug is slipped in their food or drinks, when they are not looking. When they're unconscious, the men can do anything with them.
Also, forced vaginal entry is not the only kind of rape a woman is subjected to, although here in my country, that is the legal definition of rape.
The best weapon I'll recommend is still the .45, with a jungle knife in reserve.
Of course, even if you're a good shot, the .45 has a bad habit of jamming and if it does, you have to be quick enough to pull out the knife and use it. That is, if you will have the time to access both weapons.
Even a humble bunch of keys can come in handy, to guoge out eyes, etc. One's knees and elbows, applied with enough force in the right places, can have debilitating effects on an attacker.
| | Question/Answer | | revdauphinee asked on 09/03/05 - Im Baaaaack! Hi folks i finaly got back in here am real buisy so wont be on as much for a while thanks for all the kindness relayed to me by ronnie.your comments make it a little easier.when all this is over im going to sleep for a week ,threw my back out throwing ice off the back of a copter but got to keep going folks are in dire straights down here your prayers are needed and if you have a little cash to spare please give it to the red cross we need all the help we can get.thanks folks !
Dorothy madima answered on 09/03/05:I'm glad you're back. Do give yourself some rest and take care! :=) | | Question/Answer | | HANK1 asked on 09/03/05 - MY BACK HURTS:
On days when my back hurts, when I have to hear about the continuing violence in the world, and when I wonder what my own degraded efforts will ever do to change things, I wish that I could just step back and view my life through a dream. Do you feel this way?
HANK
madima answered on 09/03/05:Dear Hank,
Please don't bear the burden of the world. You don't have to.
When I was seven years old, I thought that when I grow up, I can change the world. But now I know how hard it is, even to change the parts of myself that I don't like very much.
When things become too much even for me, I go off alone into the forest, the mountains or the sea. They always heal me.
You'd better put some hot compresses on your back. There's a lot of exercises too that can help ease the pain.
You can try "the cobra" position in yoga - lie on your belly, palms on the floor, level with your shoulders, feet around one foot apart. Then try to raise your head and torso from the ground, supporting yourself with your arms and roll back your shoulders. | | Question/Answer | | Choux asked on 09/03/05 - FYI Management has reactivated my name, Choux. Just so there is no confusion, Choux is Mary Sue again. :)
Thanks Management. :) madima answered on 09/03/05:I'm happy to hear that!:=)
Choux is the foremost of my fave experts! I always put you in my fave list no matter what name you took, anyway! I see now that I still have Chouxxx, QuixoticChoux and QueenChoux! :=)
But I always think of you as Mary Sue! :=) | | Question/Answer | | Erewhon asked on 09/01/05 - Happy Endings ... Would you say thaty the only people who believe that life does not end tragically, but triumphantly, are those with religious faith, whose hope and optimism, convince them that life really does have a happy ending? madima answered on 09/01/05:Dear Ronnie,
Whether people have faith or not, they... we... will all die, no matter what.
From what I have seen, a death, no matter how peaceful or how violent, is usually viewed as tragic by the ones who are left behind, the ones who love the departed.
That's why this saying often comes to my mind...When you are born, you cry, while all around you smile. When you die, you smile, while all around you cry.
However, how one views one's own end has nothing to do with one's faith - from what I've seen so far. It depends on how one views life - and death. It depends on one's unique personal experiences with both living and dying.
Having nearly died myself changed much of my attitude about death. It made me appreciate the blessings of my life more than ever. It made me try to make the most of each moment. But at the same time, I realized I can never be afraid of dying anymore, no matter how, where and when I die. | | Question/Answer | | excon asked on 09/01/05 - Looting or perhaps not
Hello Christians:
Lets say that you live in New Orleans. You and your family haven't eaten or drunken anything at all for two days. You're standing in front of a grocery store that's closed. You have money in your pocket, and you would pay for the food and water that you're taking.
So, are you eating to avoid starvation? Or are you nothing more than a crook?
excon
madima answered on 09/01/05:I'll take what I need, even if I have to break in that store, and pay for all of them when things get back to normal.
When you're trapped in a disaster area, survival comes first. You owe that to yourself and to your family. That's what I believe. | | Question/Answer | | excon asked on 09/01/05 - New Orleans
Hello Christians:
Lets say that you live in New Orleans and own a grocery store. You evacuated. When you get back, you find that you’ve been wiped out. Are you upset? At who?
Let's say that you stayed and live above your store, and you own a gun (as all good rightward thinking Christians do)..... People are hungry... and have no money. What are you gonna do?
excon
madima answered on 09/01/05:Well, if I manage to get back, I'll be VERY grateful just for that fact. I could not have lost everything when I was given my life.
For as long as you are alive, you have hope... to start anew, to rebuild. Material things can always be replaced.
If I have stayed, I would open that store for hungry people. I have known of at least one store owner who did that, but not in New Orleans. It was here :=)
I'll reserve the gun for those who threaten the lives of the hungry, the sick and the weak... and mine. | | Question/Answer | | QueenChoux asked on 09/01/05 - Dome of Horror Special to the LATimes:
NEW ORLEANS — A 2-year-old girl slept in a pool of urine. Crack vials littered a restroom. Blood stained the walls next to vending machines smashed by teenagers.
The Louisiana Superdome, once a mighty testament to architecture and ingenuity, became the biggest storm shelter in New Orleans the day before Katrina's arrival Monday. About 16,000 people eventually settled in.
By Wednesday, it had degenerated into horror. A few hundred people were evacuated from the arena Wednesday, and buses will take away the vast majority of refugees today.
"We pee on the floor. We are like animals," said Taffany Smith, 25, as she cradled her 3-week-old son, Terry. In her right hand she carried a half-full bottle of formula provided by rescuers. Baby supplies are running low; one mother said she was given two diapers and told to scrape them off when they got dirty and use them again.
At least two people, including a child, have been raped. At least three people have died, including one man who jumped 50 feet to his death, saying he had nothing left to live for.
Are there any Christians who think the NewOrleans disaster is their God's judgment against AMerica? Or something else supernatural? Thanks. madima answered on 09/01/05:Dear Mary Sue,
The disaster has nothing to do with God, I believe. There's nothing supernatural about it, either.
Even in lab experiments in psychology, when you crowd in so many rats in a very small space, they freak out and kill each other. And these are just rats.
If you imprison several thousand people together (and these people are as good as incarcerated because they have nowhere else to go) and deprive them of food, water and sanitation, they will behave like animals. They will turn on each other and even on their rescuers. They will snap, turn on themselves and commit suicide.
Among humans, it's called despair. | | Question/Answer | | ATON2 asked on 09/01/05 - Ave Atque Vale!! Would love to stay and chat, but I have some last minute packing to do...and then Farewell.....Not for ever I hope :) Try not to hurt each other too much, while I am gone. Will check in as soon as I reach the first cyber-cafe...Gonna miss you guys!!!!!!!! Be back full time the second week in October. madima answered on 09/01/05:Happy trip! :=) | | Question/Answer | | QueenChoux asked on 09/01/05 - The Big One New Orleans had their "Big One". I'm curious; are there any Californians on this Board who live west of the San Andreas fault?
Are any of you planning on moving before the California "Big One"? madima answered on 09/01/05:Dear Mary Sue,
I'm here in Manila, but I happen to be living right on top of an earthquake fault as well. And I mean right on top! :=)
We call it the "Marikina fault" and the last time it shifted was in 1999. I think it was a magnitude 6 earthquake but lasted for only a second or so. If it had gone on a bit longer, my condo building would have toppled to the ground and I suppose Manila will look worst than it did when it was bombed to rubble in the last World War.
But if you ask me, I don't intend to move from this flood-prone, earthquake zone. I love living dangerously! :=)
| | Question/Answer | | QueenChoux asked on 09/01/05 - Watershed Event This catastrophe in NewOrleans is a watershed event in American history. I believe that one of the consequences will be a sane government policy about conservation of gasoline. The end to gas guzzling automobiles like SUV's, ending SO MUCH GAS WASTE maybe gassless Sundays to start.
Do you see anything good possibly coming out of this catastrophe??
Thanks madima answered on 09/01/05:Dear Mary Sue,
I just hope the disaster will bring about a change in land use policy. The U.S. government should not allow the use of marshes and wetlands for real estate development. | | Question/Answer | | hOPE12 asked on 09/01/05 - Here are some positive steps we can take: Hello Everyone,
I decided that there is something I can do and so can each one of you, if you so choose to.
1- I am emailing everyone I know and asking them to contribute what ever they can and then to email there friends.
2- I am going to email over 25,ooo peoople each day by means of a bulk mailer with the same information and who know, even if just some contribute to their local authorities, that is some I have reached that may not have responded unless asked.
3) The children here can make cards for all the thousand or so children in NO, and then mail them to the news people, asking them to make sure they give them to these children when they arive in Texas.. This will let them know that the kids here really care about other children in different parts of the country. I suggest this because children here are sad when they see what is happening, imagine how the kids feel who are going through this hard time.; What a good feeling that will give children, both those that make the cards and those who receive them when they arrive in Texas. These children have in many cases lost one or both parents. It is a small thing but it might help.
4) Write letters to all the officials in your area and ask them to contribute and to get some programs going. These people even when rescued and sent to Texas or wherever will need peoples help for monthes or years to come.
These are just a few suggestions and what I will be busy doing. I look forward to hear you all make suggestions on ways to help these people. Remember not everone is in a position to help financially. But there are others ways we can help. What can you personally do to help these people? I bet if you think about it you can come up with something also.
Take care,
Hope12 madima answered on 09/01/05:That's a noble move, Hope. But I must also caution you.
Just emailing by bulk mailer may get you nowhere. I, for one, automatically delete whatever falls in my bulk mail. I don't even bother to look at them, so do most people.
Unless you personally know the public officials in your area, it's close to impossible to get through the cordon sanitaire. Your letter will most likely end up in the trash bin. At least, that's our experience here.
As you would know by now, I come from a calamity-prone third world country which regularly gets bashed by an average of 30 typhoons per year, a good many of them super typhoons. We also get our usual share of tsunamis, killer earthquakes, fires and volcanic eruptions.
From my experience here, unless you personally go to the disaster site and hand out donations, clothing and food directly to the victims, there is NO WAY to ensure that they will get to the right hands.
Many of the food donations and aid get stuck up in the ports because there's no way to transport them. Or they get entangled in bureaucratic red tape.
That is, if they don't end up in the pockets, in the warehouses or in the stores of corrupt public officials and private parties who take advantage of such disasters. And believe me, there are just too many of them in this world. | | Question/Answer | | hOPE12 asked on 08/29/05 - When bad things happen! Hello Everyone,
We live in this world where bad things happen to people, but is God always the blame for bad things.
Katrina now has hit us here in Miami Florida, many received a lot of damage and 6 people in Broward County lost their life. Should we blame God? Each of these people where told to stay home, stay inside. They didn't listen and went outside anyway during the time Katrina hit. All died by trees or branches crushing them or hitting their cars. Is God at fault here or just who is?
As to what some call a natural disaster, are they really natural? God placed the forces in action, but does that make him responsible for the forces when in action now? Do you feel that man has anything to do with the earths so call "Natural disasters'?
What's your opinion? Think about it before you comment. Think about what man is doing to the earth.
Take care,
Hope12 madima answered on 08/30/05:Dear Hope,
I don't blame God for the typhoons.
Here in my country, the Philippines, we get hit by an average of 30 typhoons every year. We got hit by a super typhoon about a year ago. We had mudslides that killed thousands in the past two years alone. We had tsunamis, too.
Typhoons and tsunamis are parts of the cycle of nature, part of the normal cycle of life, death and rebirth. Creation and destruction are two sides of the same coin. What we call disasters that destroy life eventually pave the way for new life. That's the way it was, the way it is and the way it will always be.
Unfortunately, too often men makes things worse because of their greed. Illegal logging denudes forests, dams restrain natural waterways, development devours wetlands. Men remove natural barriers and protection - and of course, suffer for it, or get killed for it in the end.
I had my own fair share of swimming through typhoon-caused floods here in Manila, sometimes dodging flying pieces of roof peeled off the buildings by the very strong gusts of winds. Not to mention lack of power, leaking roofs, etc.
Just a few months ago, I got into a flimsy wooden boat and sailed where two oceans meet. The over 20-foot waves picked me up and toyed with me and the boat in gale-force winds. I didn't even have a lifevest. The boatmen in this area can't afford them. I thought if the boat capsizes, I'm dead.
But I didn't blame God for the gale and the rip tides and the waves as huge as mountains. I decided to be there in the first place. I made the decision. Just as I made the decision to live my life to the hilt. I live in a world that's full of danger and hazards - not just from Nature. I have the sole responsibility for my life.
Oh, but I do remember, as I rode the crests of the huge waves, I still had time to make an aside to God in my mind: "Dearest Father, you can let the sea play with this boat all you want. I don't really mind these big waves. Actually, I love them. But if you'll be so kind, just don't capsize the boat because I have no life vest and am too far away from land!" :=) | | Question/Answer | | sarnian asked on 08/28/05 - New Orleans Although I give my best wishes to all the people of New Orleans, what good is it to pray to God (assuming for this question that such an entity exists) for New Orleans?
Accordingly to the teachings it is God who controls (or allows) the tornado to pass straight over New Orleans.
Praying to God for New Orleans is like questioning God on his/her decisions and activities.
Maybe God has decided that the town requires to be destroyed, like Sodom or Gomorrah.
So why question and/or irritate God with your little human wishes and preferences?
His ways are inscrutable, isn't it?
Well, accept that than !
With my hope for as little as possible damage, and that all of those remaining there will find a safehaven ...
madima answered on 08/29/05:If New Orleans sink, though I pray it will not come to that - it is not God's fault but man's.
The news says: "Experts have warned about New Orleans' vulnerability for years, chiefly because Louisiana has lost more than a million acres of coastal wetlands in the past seven decades. The vast patchwork of swamps and bayous south of the city serves as a buffer, partially absorbing the surge of water that a hurricane pushes ashore."
Catastrophe is the price man pay for raping Mother Nature, deforesting, turning wetlands into lucrative property development projects.
While the present generation is slowly becoming aware of environmental concerns, it is difficult if not impossible to reverse the damages done by the generations before them. Unfortunately, men pay for the sins of their fathers.
Last year and the years before that, we too paid the price - with mudslides that buried thousands in our deforested mountainside and coastal communities.
But the US is a first world country. I just hope the people of New Orleans are evacuated well and in time.
| | Question/Answer | | QueenChoux asked on 08/28/05 - Vatican to Block Gay Priests Vatican plan to block gay priests
Jamie Doward, religious affairs correspondent
Sunday August 28, 2005
The Observer
"The new Pope faces his first controversy over the direction of the Catholic church after it was revealed that the Vatican has drawn up a religious instruction preventing gay men from being priests.
The controversial document, produced by the Congregation for Catholic Education and Seminaries, the body overseeing the church's training of the priesthood, is being scrutinised by Benedict XVI.
It been suggested Rome would publish the instruction earlier this month, but it dropped the plan out of concern that such a move might tarnish his visit to his home city of Cologne last week.
The document expresses the church's belief that gay men should no longer be allowed to enter seminaries to study for the priesthood. Currently, as all priests take a vow of celibacy, ***their sexual orientation has not been considered a pressing concern***.""
I think this is good news for the Catholic Church.
Do you have any interesting comments to make? madima answered on 08/29/05:I don't know how they can possibly do it.
Of course, they can subject prospective seminarians to psychological testing to ascertain their "true" sexual preferences or gauge if they have any perverted sense of sexuality... But tests can be fooled. All you have to do is answer or behave in the expected "normal" heterosexual way.
And what if one does not have pronounced homosexual traits when one gets in the seminary and only discovers his homosexual preference in the gender-restrictive environment of the priesthood? What will they do then? Encourage seminarians to spy and report on one another?
Homosexual abuse is not just a problem in the seminaries but in the nunneries as well. I have friends who had been sexually abused by the sisters who were supposed to be their superiors and counsellors when they entered the convent. (They have gotten out after that but they were traumatized for life.)
But then, it's not just homosexuals who are guilty of sexual abuse in the church - Catholic or otherwise. We have countless heterosexual priests who molest women. Spanish friars who came to our country "to spread the word of God" over 300 years ago raped women, kept mistresses and sowed wild oats.
If you visit our old churches - 16th century up to 18th century - the "secret doors" for the friars' mistresses are incorporated in the architecture of the churches!
| | Question/Answer | | Erewhon asked on 08/28/05 - Revdauphine - Dorothy - I heard from her this morning. She says she is 'preparing for the storm.'
If you pray, perhaps you will remember her, and if you do not, perhaps you will think of her.
I have asked her whether she is fleeing, and will report back in a clarification to this post whenever I hear anything. madima answered on 08/28/05:I pray that Dorothy and her family will be ok. Thanks for the update, dear Ronnie. | | Question/Answer | | sarnian asked on 08/25/05 - Upcoming execution in Iran Todays paper article :
Last month in Iran 2 boys of 15 and 16 years were publicly executed by hanging.
Tomorrow there will be another public execution there of two men.
Their "evil" deed? They are homosexual.
They did not hurt anyone. They did not display their homosexuality. Just being homosexual was enough.
All that is needed is 4 men (men, not women) to declare in court that you are homosexual.
And since 1979 more than 5000 men and women have been executed in Iran for homosexuality.
I know this is the christianity board, and that Iran is not christian.
Still I like to ask you what you think of these executions :
- What do you think of executions in general, of taking (a) life?
- What do you think of executing people for their sexual preferences?
- Is it perhaps not time to start sanctions against Iran? The european community is considering this.
Any homo joke will automatically receive a "bad" rating, seen the seriousness of the subject.
madima answered on 08/25/05:Since you ask for a personal opinion, I have always favored the death penalty, which is what I grew up in here in my country, and which is the norm here to this very day.
Most of all, I'm for executing murderers, poachers, rapists, drug-pushers, corrupt officials and child abusers as well as abusers of the elderly.
The reason for me is simple and has nothing to do with my Christian beliefs (as there are some Christian dogmas that I don't really believe in or opt not to practice).
I simply believe they deserve it. I have seen and known many victims of such crimes and it fills me with such outrage that if I have the power to and the opportunity, I guess I'll love to execute these criminals myself.
However, I don't believe people should be killed for their sexual preferences. I believe people have a right to have their own sexual preference and their own happiness.
I don't know about sanctions against Iran. How can any nation sanction another's "inhuman" practices when they are also guilty of the same in other forms? If you ask me... if Iranians abhor their government, they have their own choices. They can either overthrow their rulers or flee their country. I have Iranian friends who chose the latter. | | Question/Answer | | HANK1 asked on 08/25/05 - ASK YOURSELF :
Who am I? Where am I going? And what am I really meant to be doing with my life?
This has to do with DESTINY, the path you're meant to take in life.
HANK
madima answered on 08/25/05:Dear Hank,
I first asked that question when I was six years old and I think I found the perfect answer before I was twelve! :=)
I am what I want to be. I will go where no others go. I meant to live my life the way I want to, to the hilt, every blessed second of it, and I'll allow nothing and no one to stand in my way! :=) | | Question/Answer | | QueenChoux asked on 08/22/05 - In Praise of Friends I am so thankful for my friend, Doris; I gave up the thought of ever having another real life friend, and then, she appeared!
New friends can materialize when you least expect it. That is part of what is so fantastic. Just kinda knocking around in The Now, and then, a new friend!
Have you made a new friend (not cyber)in the last year?
Do you have a desire to offer praise for a special friend?
What is your friend like(pick one if you have many)?
Special words for friends? madima answered on 08/23/05:Great to hear that! :=)
Every time I put my feet outside my home, everywhere I go, I get to have lots of friends.
My news sources always become my friends - they have to be because they put their necks on the line for me. The friendship soon extends to their secretaries, their life partners or their sweethearts, their kids, even to their security aides, their servants and their dogs :=)
The Public Relations Officers of the companies I cover and their staff evolve to be friends as well - even when I don't mean them to be. I don't like the thought of their getting hurt when I lambast their clients or their bosses in print.
My colleagues in the media also become my friends - the moment I choose to set aside the thought that we're competitors. Add to that the people I meet in my adventures, members of my mountaineering group, my scuba diving club, old friends from my dance company, my theater group - and ALL their friends, family and ever growing recent acquisitions :=)
I have met five new friends this year who became close enough to me to be classified as surrogate siblings. Three of them came from the media industry and two, from the theater. They are all like me in many ways -my mirror images .... perhaps that's why they gravitated to me, in the first place :=)
I guess God gave me true friends because I never had a brother or a sister, so I will know what it's like to have siblings. The only difference is that I get to choose my friends, or rather, they get to choose me :=) | | Question/Answer | | FormerJesusHelper76 asked on 08/21/05 - Money = Power? There are some who believe that Money = Power. I personally do not hold this believe because I do not believe money is more important then our family, our health for example. Why does america put such an importance on money. This will be the downfall of us. What are your opinions and thoughts. Thank you in advance! madima answered on 08/21/05:Money IS power. Rather, money buys power. But money is not equal to peace of mind, never equal to health and never equal to happiness.
The US is a capitalist nation, so in terms of financial wealth, it is the richest in the world. That also makes the US the most powerful nation on earth. But it pays a price.
In my job as a journalist, I've interviewed the richest people in my country. They are powerful, without question. Their money enables them to be kingmakers, to put heads of state in the palace, to change the laws of the land, to bend policies to their favor, etc.
But I have yet to find a tycoon who is happy.
One of our dollar billionaires here confided to me: "I never had fun."
For me, that's truly sad.
I have never even seen a million dollars. Sometimes I wonder what it will be like. But then, I know, it's not that important. I hate money though I love spending it. And anyway, even though I never had enough, I've always been happy with my life! :=) | | Question/Answer | | QueenChoux asked on 08/18/05 - Christian Outreach
***Churches seeking marketing-savvy breed of pastor
By G. Jeffrey MacDonald | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor***
A year ago, the Rev. Scott Schlotfelt was weighing job offers from three churches smitten by what he had to offer.
But they weren't talking about his preaching or counseling skills. What they were seeking, like a number of churches across the United States, was some savvy marketing. And like a growing number of pastors, consultants, and volunteers, Mr. Schlotfelt was eager to do some branding for the Lord.
"I've kind of had a heart for marketing, [and] I think a lot of churches are looking for outreach" specialists, says Schlotfelt, outreach pastor at Mountain Christian Church in Joppa, Md. He received his undergraduate degree in marketing, then studied for the ministry and helped congregations build up their images through advertising in Las Vegas and Amarillo, Texas.
"It's the medium of marketing that's used to get a message across [in today's culture], whether it's an election or you're trying to sell a product," he adds. "But in this case, we're just trying to hear the hope of a new life that is eternal."
To succeed, a number of denominations and local congregations alike are seeking marketing know-how, whether among church staff or from from hired experts.
Churches' outreach to potential members as summer winds down. The United Methodist Church, for instance, will make its largest media buy of the year starting Aug. 30 - a four-week, $4 million effort. To get that marketing know-how, they're turning to those who know how to sell cars, houses, and other commercial products.
"The church in more ways than not is mirroring Wall Street and the world and Madison Avenue," says H. B. London, vice president of pastoral ministries at Focus on the Family, a national resource network for evangelical Christians. "We're [lagging] behind them to a certain degree, but we're using all their techniques."
For many in church leadership, corporate-style marketing is nothing new. Among males enrolled in seminary in 2000, the most common educational background was technical science, including business, communications, and computer science, according to a study by the Center for the Study of Theological Education at Auburn Theological Seminary in New York. (For women, it's social science.)
Another factor: almost 2 in 3 seminarians are over 30 years of age, according to 2003 data from the Association of Theological Schools, which means church leaders often have had business experience.
Thinking in terms of customers and markets, however, might not always bring out the best in a church leader, according to Jackson Carroll, a professor emeritus of religion and society and former director of research at the Pulpit & Pew Project at Duke University in Durham, N.C. He cites the example of Southern preachers who took up the cause of civil rights in the 1960s despite vehement local resistance.
"It didn't help marketing at all," Professor Carroll says. "People left churches in droves when pastors or leaders in the congregation took a strong stand in favor of integration, [but] they did it anyway."
Today, he says, pastors who make marketing a top priority run the risk of fostering "a congregation that refuses to deal with issues of individual or social justice because it might offend someone."
"Go therefore ..."
Others, however, see marketing as a necessary part of Christ Jesus' great commission: "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations" (Matt. 28:19, New Revised Standard Version).
"Marketing and the church, they go hand in hand [because] we're called to bring our message to a community," says Kristal Dove, operations manager at Church Marketing Solutions. But she says not all church leaders should be involved.
"We basically make it so ministers can focus on people and not have to worry about this stuff," Ms. Dove says.
But in the opinion of Mr. London of Focus on the Family, any church leader's success depends at least in part on bringing the best of corporate-marketing tactics to bear on a righteous cause.
"Nearly every pastor is a salesman or a marketer of one kind or another because ... we have a philosophy to sell," he says. "The best marketers and best salesmen will have more converts, will have more people, will take in more money.... Evangelicals are marketers because they're really passionate about their product."
Have you encountered Christian Marketing in your church experience or anywhere??
Do you think that this approach will help increase church membership in America?
Comments....
madima answered on 08/19/05:Yes, I've encountered what I believe was some type of Christian marketing and it was a big turn-off.
There was a time when we had well-dressed people boarding public transport - buses, light rail transits, etc., singly or in groups. They were thumping Bibles and "selling" Christ and Christianity to busy commuters.
My instinctive reaction? I simply increased the volume of my MP3 headset to shut out their voices. Most others slept on, rattled their morning papers, chatted more loudly with their seat mates, or punched out text messages on their cellphones.
Definitely, I don't like being "sold to" - that's true from make-up to clothes to religion :=) The fact that someone is shoving Christianity in your face like a bargain commodity creates automatic resistance.
America is a consumerist economy, good marketing seem to work wonders there - for as long as you never run out of gimmicks. But I wouldn't really know, not being a native of the US :=)
Here, it does not seem to work. Those religious "marketers" were soon being shoved out of buses and trains. It seems that people here distrust the "hard sell". If a product is really good, it usually becomes popular by word of mouth. No need to push it. The grand sales talk is usually reserved for the no-good bargain items and the unwanted. | | Question/Answer | | QueenChoux asked on 08/18/05 - On the Lighter Side The Daily Telegraph | Posted August 18, 2005 01:21 PM
SHOPPERS face a shortage of women's underwear because of new rules to stop cheap Chinese clothing flooding into the European Union.
EU limits on imports from China have left truckloads of bras, sweatshirts and trousers stuck in British ports and warehouses.
What say you? :):):) madima answered on 08/18/05:Well, honestly, dear Mary Sue, who needs underwear? :=)
Definitely, we do very well without them here in the tropics, where it's just too hot for most clothes!
My mama says that during the Spanish regime - that's the 15th century, our women wore no bras or panties anyway, under their elaborate shawls, gowns and multi-layered petticoats... for the same reason.
Before the conquerors came from Europe, people here wear little clothes. Even today we still have tribes who wear nothing in the rainforests. If they want protection from insects, they rub the juices of plants with insect repellant properties on their bodies.
(The bush people of other countries who stay out in the desert and open plains rub natural sunblock on their nearly naked bodies, too. They don't need clothes for protection.)
Europe, unlike us with sun all year round, has a winter. But then, you can layer tons of clothes for warmth without bothering with underwear, so there should be no problem :=)
It's sometimes funny when nations impose trade barriers on one another. | | Question/Answer | | QueenChoux asked on 08/17/05 - Potential End to Horrible Epidemic? Scientists in Australia's tropical north are collecting blood from crocodiles in the hope of developing a powerful antibiotic for humans, after tests showed that the reptile's immune system kills the HIV virus.
The crocodile's immune system is much more powerful than that of humans, preventing life-threatening infections after savage territorial fights which often leave the animals with gaping wounds and missing limbs.
Perhaps it won't be too long now to save Africa?
Perhaps it won't be very long to save all others?
Comments?? madima answered on 08/17/05:Dear Mary Sue,
Many of the cures to the terrible diseases that plague humanity lies with Mother Nature. That's why we and the generations to come should be the guardians of our environment. That's why we should care for the creatures that share this planet with us and protect them.
Most of the crocodilians in this world are already endangered, if not seriously threatened. It takes a long time to develop cures. Scientists may yet do it for as long as their subjects don't become extinct.
Snakes, which most people fear, hold many cures. Snake venom is being tested to cure Alzheimer's if I remember correctly - among many other human ailments. But what do most people do when they see a snake? They kill it.
Sharks may hold the cure to cancer. They NEVER contract cancer. But shark populations have been depleted 90 per cent all throughout their global range. People hunt them mercilessly, not just for their fins but for the joy of killing them because they are toothy apex predators.
The forests of the Amazon and many of the endangered rain forests of the world have the plants that promise to cure other terrible diseases. But developed nations plunder them for timber and exploit their resources ruthlessly without thoughts of conservation or sustainable harvesting. As we speak, countless species of flora and fauna become extinct from the face of this earth.
We can save, not just Africa, we can save the world and ourselves, but only if we become truly responsible guardians and conservationists of our own planet. | | Question/Answer | | QueenChoux asked on 08/17/05 - Ethical for Christians? COUPLES could choose the sex of their children to balance their families under a radical overhaul of fertility laws being considered by the Government. (In Great Britian)
Families with a number of sons or daughters may get the right to select an embryo of the opposite sex in the first review of assisted reproduction for 15 years, ministers said yesterday.
Do you believe that this practice is moral/ethical for Christians??
Comments Welcome. madima answered on 08/17/05:Dear Mary Sue,
I believe in freedom of choice. If options are available, then we should make the best of them.
Again, personally, I believe the exercise of choice and freedom has nothing to do with being a Christian. Couples have the freedom - and the right - to choose not to have kids or to have them, so, they should also have the freedom to choose the gender of the kids they want to bring to the world - but if and only if they are emotionally, mentally and financially fit to do so.
Unfortunately, we have already seen the consequences of such gender choice here in Asia. You must be aware of the fact that the People's Republic of China implemented a one child policy to control their burgeoning population.
However, China is a patriarchal nation. Couples FAVOR sons over daughters on the traditional belief that sons make better heirs as they would carry the family name for eternity. Girls lose the family name once they marry.
Because of the limitation imposed by the state and because they don't have the technology to opt for the gender of their kids, many parents killed their firstborns when they had daughters, in the hope of eventually getting a son.
The practice and the gender choice ultimately created a very lopsided gender distribution in the mainland's over one billion population, where boys greatly outnumbered girls.
Ironically, it also turned out to be quite "beneficial" to the girls, they say. Now, you have so many eligible males wanting wives with so few available girls to choose from. Even the plain-lookers ... well even the "no-lookers" can afford to be picky with their grooms to be.
But you must also know what some population experts say... when you create an unnaturally dominant population of males, all with soaring hormones... you set the stage for war :=) | | Question/Answer | | QueenChoux asked on 08/16/05 - Are you a "Luddite"? Lud·dite Audio pronunciation of "luddite" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (ldt)
n.
1. Any of a group of British workers who between 1811 and 1816 rioted and destroyed laborsaving textile machinery in the belief that such machinery would diminish employment.
2. One who opposes technical or technological change.
ARE YOU A "LUDDITE"?
Of you are, would you state why?
If not, why not?
Comments welcome. madima answered on 08/17/05:Not by either definition one or two, dear Mary Sue :=)
On both my parents' side, my ancestors from the West came from Spain; those from the East came from Malaysia and China and I don't think any of them had been remotely interested in technology.
If they were not wielding paint brushes over canvases and sculpting stone opuses in their studios, they were performing in orchestras, lecturing in church pulpits or simply globe-trotting - and I'm quite sure they were more of artist-technophobes and adventurer-technophobes rather than Luddites :=)
For my part, I'm a great lover of technology, especially Information Technology, because I use it all of the time!
Also...My bread and butter job as a business journalist allows me to cover some of the IT giants - Nokia, IBM, Cisco, Sun Micro, HP, Sony-Ericsson, Motorolla, Nextel, Samsung, you name it...Can't even wait for my first 3G PDA phone! Yesterday, an SVP from our biggest telecom provider promised he'll give me one this Christmas for my gadget review! :=) | | Question/Answer | | Erewhon asked on 08/16/05 - The Gospel According to Groucho ... Groucho Marx quipped, "Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others."
Though he was joking, I wonder if he is actually hitting close to home?
Do you have a firm set of principles that guide your life? madima answered on 08/16/05:Just a couple, dear Ronnie :=)
Live my life to the hilt, as if every moment is my last - and let nothing stand in the way of my freedom! :=) | | Question/Answer | | powderpuff asked on 08/15/05 - some funnies A Sunday school teacher asked the children just before she dismissed them to go to church, "And why is it necessary to be quiet in church?" Little Annie replied, "Because people are sleeping."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jesus saw the crowd stoning the woman, and stepped forth, shouting, "Let he without sin cast the first stone!" Silence -- then a stone came flying from the crowd, and Jesus turned around saying "C'mon, Mom, I'm trying to make a point here..."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Mission President to a new Elder:
"When a big mean dog attacks you elder, just remember, you don't have to run faster than the dog, ...you just have to out run your companion."
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There are a few things guaranteed to strike fear in the heart of even the strongest war veteran:
--a 3-year old who has just begun wearing big-kid underclothes squatted in the corner with a look of fierce concentration on his face;
--a little tiny voice from the back seat saying 'I gots to use the potty' when you are in bumper to bumper traffic;
--total silence from a room full of children;
--a boom/crash from the other room and the sound of many feet scampering in all directions;
--a boom/crash from the other room...and silence;
--the sound of a flush from a bathroom occupied only by a 2 year old
--all the kids huddled in the corner, whispering, when all you can overhear are the words, "Don't tell Mom!"
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Two missionaries were tracting door to door and knocked on the door of a woman who was not happy to see them. She told them in no uncertain terms that she did not want to hear their message and slammed the door in their faces. To her surprise, however, the door did not close -- in fact, it bounced back open. She tried again, really put her back into it, and slammed the door again with the same result -- the door bounced back open. Convinced these rude young people were sticking their foot in the door, she reared back to give it a slam that would teach them a lesson, when one of them said, "Ma'am, before you do that again, you need to move your cat."
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A primary president, a high councilman, and a bishop sat on the front row of a airplane flight that, unfortunately, was hijacked. When the hijackers' demands were refused, they threatened to shoot some passengers, starting with the first row. The primary president promptly asked for one last wish. She wanted to sing her favorite primary song. The hijacker said that would be fine, then asked the high councilman and bishop if they also had a last wish. The high councilman requested that after the song he be allowed to stand and give the talk he had prepared to give in sacrament meeting that next Sunday. The hijacker agreed, then turned to the bishop. The bishop motioned for the hijacker to come closer and whispered in his ear, "Please shoot me after the song."
madima answered on 08/16/05:Love numbers 2 and 3! Thanks for making me laugh in the midst of today's deadlines! :=) | | Question/Answer | | HANK1 asked on 08/15/05 - My Answer To Bikini Question:
Here's a verse from God's Word. God calls women to modesty, which means to not draw attention to themselves! 1 Timothy 2:9-10 says, "I also want women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or expensive clothes, but with good deeds, appropriate for women who profess to worship God."
HANK
madima answered on 08/16/05:Dear Hank,
I honestly don't see anything wrong with wearing bikinis or even with being naked.
As an artist, I fully appreciate the naked human form, male or female. I don't really understand why most religions tend to negate the beauty of the human body and worst, to demonize it.
I paint nudes. When I'm at work on a canvas and I behold a beautiful man or woman, I cannot help but imagine what they would be like naked. I have to visualize them naked even when I paint their clothed forms, otherwise I will not be able to paint the flow of their garments, etc.
I guess... if God really thinks of clothes as a BIG issue, then all of us, not just women, will be born with clothes on - for modesty's sake.
Why then are we all born naked into this world? :=) | | Question/Answer | | HANK1 asked on 08/15/05 - Let's Take A Swim:
Should a Christian woman wear a bikini?
HANK
madima answered on 08/16/05:Most certainly, if you ask me :=)
I believe Christianity has nothing to do with what you wear. It has something to do with one's faith.
I always wear a bikini when I go to swimming pools for very practical reasons.
Putting on lots of clothes here in the tropics, when the weather is 35 degrees centigrade or above is not advisable, unless you want to suffer from heat stroke. And the less clothes you have the better when you go swimming in fresh water where you are not bouyant, you can move more easily.
When I go snorkeling or scuba diving in blue waters, where the cold can have deleterous effects on my health, or where there's a lot of stinging jellyfishes around, that's when I don a full body wetsuit which covers me from neck to wrist and ankles. Diving in a bikini will be out of the question then :=) | | Question/Answer | | Erewhon asked on 08/12/05 - I Will Give You Rest ... I Will Give You Rest
Ronnie Bray
Late in 1999, Gay, two of her American friends, and I strayed through Durham, and North and East Yorkshire for a couple of days.
We sat in the cool dimness of the awesome 1,000 years old Durham Cathedral in the land of Prince Bishops. The only cathedral in the British Isles built in a single style. It has massive round stone pillars, typical of heavy Norman architecture supporting an unbelievably complex roof. In that cool place whose tiny windows let in but little of the late sunlight, it was easy to wander backwards through the centuries and sense the devotion that had inspired and built it.
Looking round the broad, squat nave, one of our friends looked about at the dark reddish hue of the titanic pillars and the complex tracery of the ceiling of the massive pile, and exclaimed, How on earth did they pour all that concrete? You can see why I love Americans.
Later, we visited the mostly perpendicular Ripon cathedral, built over the Saxon crypt that was more than 1400 years old, before tramming down to see the ruins of Bolton Abbey, despoiled by Henry VIII during the Reformation.
We must have examined several millennia of history transformed into stone and earthworks, and walked where the heroes and villains of English history walked, saw the stunning vistas they saw, and been as enchanted by the broad green lands and rugged purple hills as they were, and been made to feel wonderfully alive by the same sights that inspired them.
We saw many places of ancient tale and fable whose names are connected with significant events in British history. At the end of our journeying, I asked Georgia and Karen which of the places we had been was most memorable. The bed and breakfast place! said the lady from Casa Grande, without hesitation.
Having told you that, I now have to tell you about the bed and breakfast place. It wasn't our first choice. We had telephoned a B&B in a five house village in North Yorkshire, near the historic Richmond Castle, only to find that they had no vacancies. However they recommended their friends' place called Stones Throw.
Stones Throw was a beautiful cottage built of the light gray stone of that area, with a deceptively large interior, kept by a shepherd and his wife. The interior appointments were sumptuous. Little touches here and there advised that a creative romantic spirit had been at work. The beds were surprisingly comfortable, and the rooms artistically and tastefully decorated.
We were greeted with home baked scones filled with fresh cream and home made strawberry jam and put at our ease. However, it was breakfast that really rang the bell.
When we went down to breakfast, it was already laid on the hefty pine table. The table legs were round and stout, such as might be seen on an overweight version of Long John Silver.
I have had Continental breakfast in American Motels and felt cheated. But this was a value-for-money breakfast with a vengeance! Orange juice in man-sized glasses with jugs of the stuff waiting close by for refills. More toast than you could shake a stick at, huge pots of coarse and fine shred marmalade and a huge boat dish of rich yellow butter.
The sideboard displayed a choice of breakfast cereals with an unlimited supply of milk fresh from a smiling cow, and oatmeal, called by the British either porage or porridge, was available for the asking.
After orange juice and cereals, the cooked portion of breakfast was carried in on red hot giant plates creaking under the weight of fried eggs with bright golden-yellow yolks from self-satisfied chickens, rashers of best back bacon with the fat trimmed, succulent pork sausages, crispy fried bread, mushrooms cooked in butter, black pudding fried to crispy deliciousness, and a couple of hash browns - an American import slowly gaining favour - topped with tomato ketchup for the Americans and with brown fruit sauce for the mature taste of the Englishman, and we were mostly silent for twenty minutes doing justice to the oblation.
Having wiped the various sauces from our mouths and chins - beards can be messy things! - we set about the toast. Just as the mountain was disappearing, our hostess arrived from the kitchen with another tottering precipice.
More orange juice, a brief rest to let our repast settle, then with cheery farewells we sloshed our way to the car to head across country towards Yorkshire's East Coast, where we meandered through the unbelievably picturesque hillside fishing village of Robin Hood's Bay, and the old fishing town of Whitby, where Count Dracula came ashore, and where the popular Whitby Jet mourning jewellery popularised by Queen Victoria was still made.
After a visit to the medieval Whitby Abbey and the equally ancient St Michael's church, a gentle troll down the coast road through the holiday resort town of Scarborough, where we enjoyed traditional fish and chips, we turned inland toward West Yorkshire and home, through towns that bear all the signs of the industrial revolution and the hardy folk that made the wheels of commerce turn whilst enduring grinding poverty.
Yet, for all the ancient glories, and the wealth of historic places we had seen, it was the bed and breakfast place that had made the most substantial impression. Contemplating the reason for her choice, I realised it was her favourite because it offered her something that the other places hadn't.
Although the scenery and buildings had broadened her understanding and given solid form to places she had only heard about, the place of rest and refreshment had supplied that which she most needed. She was no longer young, and her health was not as good as it could be, but she had proceeded with the stamina and fortitude of a pilgrim.
But, Stones Throw had granted rest, peace, silence, and fed her spirit with its peaceful seclusion as well as filled her with the best food she had ever tasted.
In our busy lives, we often rush around places thinking that we are doing ourselves some good, when we really ought to be in some bed and breakfast place refreshing our souls. Jesus pointed us to such a place when he said:
Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden,
and I will give you rest . . .
Learn of me . . . and ye shall find rest for your souls
And, of course, you will receive the spiritual equivalent of a Full English Breakfast!
- - -
Copyright © June 2000
Ronnie Bray
All Rights Reserved madima answered on 08/14/05:Dear Ronnie,
You are making me very hungry! :=)
I've been on a forced fasting for three days now! (Can't go out of the house because the streets are flooded from the typhoon since Friday.)
I've been on a diet of bread and strawberry jam, chocolate cookies and "brazo de mercedes".
Now, I think I would brave the floods to get some real food after reading your story!!!! | | Question/Answer | | QueenChoux asked on 08/12/05 - Just Sitting After the local electric substation caught fire, I had to spend five hours in darkness sitting in a wheelchair. Fortunately, I am quite able to sit and do absolutely nothing without getting the heeby jeebies. Occasionally I heard a mew from Nick my animal companion.
About midnight, I turned on a transistor radio and tuned it to Newsradio 78. I heard the voice of Stan Freeberg introducing his show which featured old time radio drama and comedy. The first show was from March 1953....a horror story about a scientist and a mutant spider. "This sounds good", I thought. I always loved the drama in the voices of radio actors.
Soon the three actors were discussion the Professor's experiment. Emmet's secretary asked the scientist how he had devised the experiment in hopes that he could cause spiders to increse their ientlligence and grow to a larger size.
The Professor said that the forces of electricity could be directed through an organism and combined with his secret formula on and on..... I BURST OUT LAUGHING....the show inagined and written only approximately 50 years ago and the idea was so hilarious to my Twenty First Century ears. Not a mention of genomes, chromosomes, DNA, or anything that could alter an organism in any way that could be considered scientifically respectable .
So, I thought over the idea that any age cannot think with information or imagination from past generations
anymore than Creationism disguised as Intelligent Design can be taught in schools as science! Laughable. Just plain laughable.
Mary Sue-thoughts in the dark August 10th, 2005 madima answered on 08/14/05:Radio programs from the 50's? Great way to spend a dark night! :=)
I'm so used to brown-outs by now that I can negotiate my way up and down my spiral staircase and all over my condo in complete darkness. I can even find all of my things in the dark. (I forgot to stock up on batteries and candles last week and I hate to go out in the fierce rain and flood.)
We've been having some late season typhoons here, so my power's out and my ceiling's leaking as usual... that's why I was incommunicado for a few days :=)
But I feel safe and happy in the darkness - and comfortably cold. (Before the storm our temps are soaring over 30 degrees C.) I like sleeping to the sound of the storm too - for as long as it's not tearing away my windows or drenching my bed :=) | | Question/Answer | | QueenChoux asked on 08/12/05 - New Wonder of Science It is the ultimate conundrum for vegetarians who think that meat is murder: a revolution in processed food that will see fresh meat grown from animal cells without a single cow, sheep or pig being killed.
Researchers have published details in a biotechnology journal describing a new technique which they hailed as the answer to the world's food shortage. Lumps of meat would be cultured in laboratory vats rather than carved from livestock reared on a farm.
This news story really took me by surprise.
What are your comments? madima answered on 08/14/05:I would love that to happen! :=)
I hate it that animals are being killed for food and sport.
Lab-cultured meat will perhaps remove the pressure all over the world to convert wildlife habitat to grazing lands for cattle and sheep, which has been decimating if not wiping out not just wild grazers, such as antelope and wildebeest, but the predators who feed on them, from the cheetas to the leopards to hyenas and lions.
Perhaps it will also ease some of the pressure on the world's oceans and bodies of waters which had long been overfished.
I only hope that they market out such lab-cultured meat at the soonest possible time. | | Question/Answer | | paraclete asked on 08/13/05 - Sunday morning As a young man, Norton was an exceptional golfer. At the age of 26, however, he decided to become a priest, and joined a rather peculiar order. He took the usual vows of poverty, chastity, but his order also required that he quit golf and never play again.
This was particularly difficult for Norton, but he agreed and was finally ordained a priest. One Sunday morning, the Reverend Father Norton woke up and realizing it was an exceptionally beautiful and sunny early spring day, decided he just had to play golf.
So ... he told the Associate Pastor that he was feeling sick and persuaded him to say Mass for him that day. As soon as the Associate Pastor left the room, Father Norton headed out of town to a golf course about forty miles away. This way he knew he wouldn't accidentally meet anyone he knew from his parish. Setting up on the first tee, he was alone. After all, it was Sunday morning and everyone else was in church!
At about this time, Saint Peter leaned over to the Lord while looking down from the heavens and exclaimed, "You're not going to let him get away with this, are you?"
The Lord sighed, and said, "No, I guess not."
Just then Father Norton hit the ball and it shot straight towards the pin, dropping just short of it, rolled up and fell into the hole. It WAS A 420-YARD HOLE IN ONE!
St. Peter was astonished. He looked at the Lord and asked, "Why did you let him do that?"
God looked over at him and said, "Who's he going to tell?" madima answered on 08/14/05:That was great! :=)
Not being able to tell is actually the greatest agony! What a punishment! :=) | | Question/Answer | | HANK1 asked on 08/14/05 - Students Of Christianity:
How can a student of Christianity or any other religion truly understand any subject if he/she only has access to one narrow viewpoint?
HANK
madima answered on 08/14/05:Open-mindedness is a pre-requisite to learning.
One can never be a student of Christianity or any other religion if he or she comes with pre-conceived notions of what a man's faith is or should be. Otherwise, he/she will just be a bigot, not a student.
A student keeps his mind and his eyes open, learning not just from his mistakes but from those of others. He should be willing to explore the less trodden even the untrodden paths to knowledge, at the same time respect the viewpoints of others, knowing that he cannot be impeccable. | | Question/Answer | | excon asked on 08/11/05 - Intlligent Design???
Hello Christians:
So, tell me... If we're here because of some intelligent design, why am I bald? Isn't that a design flaw? What about my bad back? Seems to me if someone (or intelligence - or God) could create the Universe, he could have given me a knee that wouldn't go out all the time.
excon
madima answered on 08/12/05:Now that you mentioned "intelligent design", first thing I thought of was the duck-billed platypus. They say it was an example of God's sense of humor during the process of creation.
This mammal, which is a native of Brian's (paraclete's) country, is a patchwork creation. It lays eggs like a bird or a reptile, it has a bill and webbed feet like a duck and a tail like a beaver. The males have poison like a snake in spurs on their hind legs. The females nurse their young with milk that comes out through glands on their skin and the babies lick it off their mom's fur... And yet, I find it beautiful and unique.
There are many other oddities of design in nature, like hermaphrodites - creatures with both sex organs - and some aquatic species can change their sex from male to female or vice versa in the course of their life cycles. Among sea horses, it's the male who gets pregnant and gives birth to the babies :=)
If you ask me, baldness is not a design flaw. In nature, the absence of hair is an adaptation. Among raptors, waders, such as fish hawks, do not have hair or feathers on their legs while their cousins who forage in non-aquatic environments, such as the harpy or the golden eagle, have fully-feathered feet.
A bad back is usually the price that we, of the species "homo sapiens", pay for staying upright. If we had lived on all fours, we won't be straining our backs so much and putting all of our weight into our spinal cords.
You see, the design varies. I would say it is intelligent and quite suited for our lifestyle and our habitats, but not perfect :=) | | Question/Answer | | QueenChoux asked on 08/11/05 - Literal Interpretation vs. Symbolic Do you believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible? Or, do you believe that many spiritual truths are explained by extended metaphor and the like?
For example, bucker asked a question about a man living in a large aquatic animal's stomach for three days. He believes that this happened. That is literal interpretation.
Another Christian might believe that this didn't really happen, but is a story to explain a larger spiritual message.
Are both Christians?
Do you have any comments on this topic? madima answered on 08/12/05:Dear Mary Sue,
Any book is open to interpretation. What a book means to one man will not be the same to another - be it the Bible or any other. I feel it does not make one man less wise or Christian than the other. It is not a question of rightness or wrongness, it is a question of perception.
I respect other people's right to believe in what they believe in, but if you ask me, personally, I think the Bible speaks in symbolisms.
Having known whales personally, having swam with them, hitched rides on their dorsals, put my arms and hands in their mouths, stroked their tongues, etc., I don't think a man can live in a whale's stomach for three days :=)
First of all whales will NOT swallow a man willingly. The only way you can get inside a whale's mouth is for you to force open its mouth, crawl inside and then close its jaws behind you. But the moment the whale gets a taste of you, he will spit you out... Believe me, I tried! :=)
The biggest fish on earth, the whaleshark, which grows up to a length of more than 50 feet and over five tons, eats only plankton. They come to my country to feed from October to May each year. I know them quite intimately.
The other true whales eat only krill. Some eat small fish. The great sperm whale eats giant squids living thousands of feet below the surface. But there are NO man-eaters among whales. Even the apex predator which is the killer whale or orca, (actually not a whale but a huge relative of the dolphin) never preys on men.
The only way a man can perhaps get in a whale's stomach is for someone to perform an incision in the whale's belly and stuff him inside the cetacean's main digestive organ. But he won't survive a day because the tons of gastric juices therein will break down his flesh before long.
And I don't think God will bother to perform such a needless surgery just to teach a man a vital lesson :=) | | Question/Answer | | Laura asked on 08/09/05 - Our roots Our heritage and upbringing seems to have an impact on our beliefs about God and life. I saw that in some of the answers to CeeBee's question. For instance, my husband was brought up in an abusive family. He didn't really have a father-son relationship with his father. His mother doted over his older brother and basically ignored him and any accomplishments he achieved when younger. He has said in the past that he finds it difficult to relate to God as "Father" because he doesn't really know what a father figure is supposed to be. It affected his relationship to his own children to a degree. Though he is a much better father than his own was, he still has difficulty relating to his kids. He expects things from them that they can't or don't deliver which is frustrating to him.
How did your relationships with your parents affect your life today?? And your relationship to God? madima answered on 08/11/05:I think my relationship with my parents determined my relationship with my God.
I'm very close to papa, so the concept of God as Father was nothing new to me.
A heavenly Father was easy to identify and relate to inasmuch as I knew very early on that my set parents on earth love me more than life itself.
I'm an only child and while my parents treated me as their personal treasure, they gave me the kind of freedom they never had and taught me not to fear everything they feared. They gave me an active role in decision-making and respected my free will.
I guess that's why I talk to my Father in heaven in the same manner I talk to my Father on earth :=) | | Question/Answer | | arcura asked on 08/09/05 - Who all here has had this experience?............ Many people do not have the experience of poor houses, the CCC, and beggars often at the door that existed all over the nation 70 years ago.
Compared to when I was a kid the USA, by and large, is opulent to an amazing degree.
Things started to change when World War II broke out.
As the nation geared up to fight more jobs were created to build ships, planes, tanks, guns, ammunition, sew uniforms, weave blankets, tents, etc.
Millions of more jobs were created and many of the poor joined the armed forces to get a job thinking it was better to maybe be killed with a full belly than starve to death on the streets.
Yes things have greatly changed but the sad part is that the young have not the experience to realize the great blessings they have today compared to just 60 or 70 years ago.
Time marches on to a different drummer each generation
Fred madima answered on 08/11/05:Dear Fred, you should come to Manila :=)
This is 2005 but beggars are everywhere, on the church doorsteps, on the train, bus and passenger jeepney stations, in most streets. They wait in ambush at the bakery, plucking on your arm when you buy bread, or even in front of the ATM machines, waiting for you to draw money. They knock on the glass walls of the restaurants watching you eat - when there are no security guards to shoo them off...In the commercial districts, some beggar kids run alongside, if not in front of the vehicles, finding a way to get themselves hit by the cars for easy blackmail money...
More than half of my country's 85 Million population (of which 15 to 20 Million are in Manila) live below poverty line. You will find the same scene in Third World countries...
As for houses...I'm living in a state-built condo and right now, my ceiling is leaking. Thieves have stolen the glass on the windows of the vacant units upstairs, so they get flooded in the typhoon months like this.
Time marches on to the same drummer, I'm afraid, for as long as there is poverty in the land.
But I count myself lucky. Extraordinarily lucky, still. I have never seen a world war yet and I hope I never live to see one. My father was but a boy during World War II but he remembers the horrors he saw to this very day, when Manila was declared an open city and bombed to rubble, when people were eating rats and the dead are being carted away and dumped in mass graves while planes spilled bombs overhead. | | Question/Answer | | QueenChoux asked on 08/09/05 - Problems! It's after one AM and I can't get my ventilator to work. I can take a chance that I don't fall "asleep" overnight, but that is not likely, so I'm going to have to call 911 and go to the hospital and get some help.
For me, that is extremely anxiety provoking, and I'm in quite a panic. I don't like to see physicians or go outside I put some food down for Nick in case I don't return soon.
The medical supply thing is so complicated....bureaucracy.
Thanks for listening. Human contact. Here goes nothing.
Bye madima answered on 08/09/05:Wish I live somewhere closer to Chicagoland. I'll try to fix the ventilator for you and babysit Nick, too.
But I'm with you in spirit.
Take care! | | Question/Answer | | CeeBee2 asked on 08/08/05 - Family Devotions................... One of my memories from childhood is that for about 15-20 minutes every evening (except for Sunday) after supper, my father would read from "the books" that he kept on top of the refrigerator. "The books" were the Bible and a monthly devotional booklet - 30 or so days of child's-level stories-with-a-moral from a series called My Devotions (Concordia Publishing House). He'd read a short Bible passage that then led into the story for the day. After the story, we talked about it and asked/answered questions. Then my father said a short prayer related to the story, after which our family together said a thank-you-God-for-the-meal prayer.
Did/does anyone have a similar experience? madima answered on 08/08/05:Papa is a devout Catholic but he never read the Bible to me. I grew on a diet of poetry, mostly from the Romantic Age, which he read to me every night :=)
But he told me the story of all his favorite saints and angels and the life of Jesus. He gave me my first rosary and taught me all my prayers. He always had the prayer habit, praying upon waking up, before and after each meal, during the Angelus and before going to bed. Mama and me always join in his prayers.
I hate waking up so early in the morning for Sunday Mass. So, if I cannot be perked up by the promise of a treat, papa will lift me out of bed and mama will dress up my inert form for church. Then, they will carry me in their arms, still half-asleep, to the church.
| | Question/Answer | | Erewhon asked on 08/07/05 - *** Christianity *** Look at it this way for a change ... As Christians, we are sometimes prone to denigrate the religious faith of others. This works equally at the denominational level.
Professor Daniel Peterson, with whom I am acquainted, addresses this phenomenon.
"The familiar language of prejudice [says of others]:
"They are not like Us. They are lower, less rational, less spiritually sensitive. They don't think like normal people."
In-groups always exalt themselves by degrading out-groups. Prejudice finds it hard to recognize individual variation; it judges whole classes, without nuance.
It makes no real attempt to understand why others think or act or appear differently; it condemns them because of the sheer fact that they do.
It is prejudice that leads to the notion that other groups need to be controlled, even enslaved, for their own good.
It is prejudice that has led, in some extreme cases, to concentration camps, holocausts, and ethnic cleansings.
[Anti-Mormons] John Ankerberg and John Weldon should be ashamed of themselves for resorting to such language [in their anti-Mormon book, Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Mormonism].
"In Cairo some years ago, I [Peterson] spoke at length with a Muslim chemistry professor at the University of Cairo. He was astonished when he learned that I was a Christian.
"Do you really," he asked, incredulously, "believe that God had a Son, and that he allowed that Son to be murdered in order to buy himself off?"
After expressing some reservations about how he had expressed the doctrine of the atonement, I replied that, yes, I did believe precisely that.
"Oh!" he exclaimed. "How can any intelligent person believe in such nonsense?"
Well, the fact is that highly intelligent people have accepted Christianity. (Origen, Athanasius, Augustine, Aquinas, Pascal, and Kierkegaard are among those who come immediately to mind.)
But it was thought-provoking to find that my most sacred beliefs seemed insanely ludicrous to a highly educated outsider.
It was enlightening to find Christianity, for once, in the minority, and Christian assumptions questioned as less than self-evident.
How many times have I heard people say things like, "How can any intelligent person believe in Islam?" or "How can any intelligent person be a Catholic?"
Yet people like al-Ghazali and Iqbal and Ibn Khaldun have been Muslims, and the Catholic Church has claimed the loyalty of such people as Cardinal Newman and G. K. Chesterton and Jacques Maritain.
Reflecting on this, and on my own experience as an Islamicist, I have come to formulate what might be termed Peterson's First Rule for the Study of Other Religions: If a substantial number of sane and intelligent people believe something that seems to you utterly without sense, the problem probably lies with you, for not grasping what it is about that belief that a lucid and reasonable person might find plausible and satisfying."
Food for thought? madima answered on 08/08/05:In all honesty, I find many of the beliefs espoused by my own church absurd... you know, the thing about indulgences, original sin, the stance on homosexuality, birth control, euthanasia, abortion and divorce, among countless others...
Incidentally, I was "born" in the Catholic faith. Oh, not that I can't change it...It's just the comfort of the familiar... I considered atheism at one point and thought about converting to Islam at another... Then I favored the beliefs and practices of pantheistic ethnic groups I came to know... afterwards I dabbled in yoga, among other things.
I've always been intrigued about other faiths and other beliefs... Even as a child, I like to wander in strange temples and alien churches. I've always had friends of different faiths and I've never been averse to attending their services :=)
To me, now more than ever, the label, the denomination, no longer matters. For as long as you do good and follow your conscience, your own sense of ethics, then you must be in the right track. | | Question/Answer | | QueenChoux asked on 08/06/05 - Crucifixion I'd like you'r thoughtful comments on the following: Hollywood actor-director Mel Gibson has been asked to recreate the crucifixion of Jesus Christ in the streets of Sydney if the city is selected to host a major Catholic gathering in 2008, a newspaper reported Saturday.
Gibson's staging of the Stations of the Cross, a live interpretation of Christ's final hours, would be part of a bid by the city to secure the Catholic Church's World Youth Day in 2008, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.
Comments? madima answered on 08/08/05:Glad to see you're back! :=)
Gibson's recreation is really no big deal for me, if you ask me :=)
We recreate the Stations of the Cross live in every part of my country every year during Holy Week.
Here in the Philippines, we have men and women who have themselves routinely nailed on the cross. I mean, really nailed on the cross, the way Jesus was nailed, with stainless steel nails about five inches long, dipped in alcohol! It's part of their vow for petitions that were granted for themselves or for their loved ones, such as the curing of a grave illness.
So far, nobody has bled to death or died yet. Those who have themselves nailed, "Kristos", as we call them, report that although the pain of crucifixion is horrible, their wounds heal incredibly fast.
I do wonder if Gibson will have the nerve to have the actor playing his Christ do it for real, as we do around here :=) | | Question/Answer | | Laura asked on 08/07/05 - Favor Could everybody please sign up as an expert in travel and tourism so that I may ask a question about plans for future travel? There are like 40 something unanswered questions there so posting another one would be kinda dumb without someone to answer.. I need advice about where to go for a once in a lifetime 14 day vacation that we are planning for next year around October. Will never be able to afford it again so this has to be "The place" for unforgettable memories.. madima answered on 08/08/05:Dear Laura,
If you want to travel to Asia, especially to South East Asia, you can always ask me :=)
However, my expertise is really more on extreme adventure type of travels, for those in top physical condition, who are not afraid of anything... and I mean anything, from exotic foods, which require acquired taste at the very least, to dangerous - if not forbidden - places and creatures :=)
| | Question/Answer | | bucker asked on 08/06/05 - prejudices be honest now. Have any of you ever felt prejudiced against anyone at anytime. Being three different kinds of Indian, Irish, and English. There may be more, I don't know. I Never the less, I have felt prejudice toward others. I do not like this, and I refuse to do it now. This was many years ago. That was before I learned that we are all God's chilfren. madima answered on 08/07/05:When I was a child, I was prejudiced against those who, in my eyes, are not physically beautiful.
Only when I grew up did I realize that true beauty lies within :=) | | Question/Answer | | kindj asked on 08/04/05 - So tell me--where's the hope? Hello again friends, neighbors, or mortal enemies, depending on your point of view and opinion of me. Been gone for awhile. Actually, not gone, just not HERE on this board.
Some of you may or may not know that things kinda came to a head in my life a few months ago, and I thought I would throw in an update, on the off chance that anyone's curious.
After much poking, prodding, testing, blood-drawing, MRI-taking, and uncomfortable questioning by MD's, psychiatrists (I f***ing HATE psychiatrists--always have), and psychologists, and after being examined in all manner of clinics from my regular doc's office to the VA quacks, the final word (so far) is "Major Depressive Disorder Brought On By Insidious Recurrent Episodes of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder." Ain't that a freakin' hoot? I mean, what the hell? Sure, I went to Panama and Kuwait, plus a couple other little brushfires. But damn, those things were nothing like my grandfathers' experiences in WW2, or my uncles' experiences in Korea and Vietnam, and they're fine (well, both grandfathers are dead, and OK, there's the one uncle whom 'Nam hit pretty hard, but he's totally functional). So why me? Sure, I volunteered. Volunteered three times over, to be exact. I knew the possible ramifications of the career path I chose with Uncle Sam. And really, those things weren't a lot of fun and I sure was glad to come home, but really, I didn't think it was THAT bad, especially after hearing various instructors and relatives speak of THEIR experiences. Maybe I'm just a wuss......
So we're trying to get the meds on line and adjusted right. Talk about a shotgun approach: "Let's try this. Oh, you almost murdered an entire small town? Ok, let's try this. What do you mean, you haven't slept in 8 days? Guess we'll try this. What? Now you sleep all the time, including at work? Damn....guess we'll try this..." and on and on, until I think we've hit something that will eventually work, once we quit screwing around with the dosage level and find a good one that works ALL day, and not just until 5 or 6 in the evening.
Even with insurance, this crap is expensive. Almost prohibitively so. However, I make like 14 cents a year too much to get any kind of temporary assistance with it. So I quit taking it for a week last month, to wait for payday to come. Let me tell you, THAT was a bad idea.
In the meantime, everything's gone up except for my paycheck. I work for a non-profit agency that is totally dedicated to helping those less fortunate than me. HA!! Little secret: some of those "less fortunate" are doing better than I am.
Anyway, it's been a financial struggle this year, to say the least. It's a long story, but suffice to say that it's been enough of a struggle that I have 16 days from today to cough up three thousand dollars or they're gonna take my house. I've filed all sorts of paperwork with the company and the VA (since it's a VA loan), but so far, no one's doing sh!t. Big surprise, since by my calculations, there are like four people on the face of the whole earth that care enough to do their job properly.
So I've been sitting back, cursing virtually every choice I've made and characteristic that I have. I've wondered if I shouldn't chunk this drive in me, the one that demands that I do good for people and not screw them over just to make a buck. Maybe I need to forget about finishing up this ridiculous masters in counseling psychology and get an MBA instead. Maybe I should say to hell with what I want to do, what's gonna pay me?
I have a wife and three kids. My wife's been working a bit, but it's not enough. We can't send her to work full-time, or whatever she made would be eaten up by daycare costs, clothing, lunches, gas, etc. I've done the math.
No, it falls to me, and I have failed.
Where's this "hope" that we speak of again?
DK
madima answered on 08/04/05:Dear Dennis,
You have to find hope within yourself. You have to look for it and look hard. Not an easy thing, I know.
Uncle Sam has an obligation to help you, after all what you did for him. An expert suggested filing for bankruptcy. Won't that help?
Also...Why don't you give yourself a respite for the now? You deserve that too. It sounds very depressing to me, counseling and helping those less fortunate who are actually better off than you are, day in and day out.
If you are depressed, as those MDs say you are, then the first thing you do is get out of the company of depressed folks. Their negative vibes will pull you down faster than anything in this world!
Why don't you permit your wife to be the full time breadwinner for the meantime? It's not unheard of. I have a number of friends and acquaintances here who did just that. Being a house husband will allow you to enjoy your kids full-time, too. And in that interlude, you can sort out everything and heal yourself.
Don't ever lose hope.
Really, you have no right to!
You and your family are always in my prayers. | | Question/Answer | | ladybugca asked on 08/03/05 - I Asked God
I asked God for Strength...
And He gave me difficulties to make me strong.
I asked God for Wisdom...
And He gave me problems to solve.
I asked God for Prosperity...
And He gave me brain and brawn to work.
I asked God for Courage...
And He gave me danger to overcome.
I asked God for Love...
And He gave me troubled people to help.
I asked God for Favors...
And He gave me opportunities.
I received nothing I wanted...
And I received everything I needed....
madima answered on 08/04/05:Dear Mary,
I don't really ask, but He gives, so I graciously accept and thank Him :=)
In that way, He is like my parents here on earth.
I'm an only child and my parents have always anticipated most of every need I have and they provide because it's both their responsibility and their pleasure.
Strangely, from both my parents on earth and from my Papa in heaven, I get BOTH what I want and what I need.
I guess they all love to spoil me, though I'm NOT exactly an angel, never have been :=)
Guess I'm just extraordinarily lucky! :=) | | Question/Answer | bucker asked on 08/03/05 - Death gave me another task
As I was picking up limbs in my yard to burn, I found a little dead Bird. I do not know how long it had been there. I thought, how sad, there are no other birds around to see it. Nobody to mourn for it. It is alone in this old world with nothing or no one to care. And then I remembered Matthew 10:29, "and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your father". I felt better about it then. I said, "little Bird, there are four that I know of who care about you. There's the Father, there's the Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, and there's the Holy Spirit. As I placed it in it's final resting place I said, "and there's me". Bucker.
madima answered on 08/04/05:Having nearly died myself very early in life and not just once, I never really thought of Death as a sad thing. If there's a beginning, there has to be an end somehow.
I love animals - both tame and wild - and have seen many of my beloved pets and other creatures die. I never thought they are sad about their dying either, at least, not from what I've seen. They accept their fate without question. They do not complain.
No matter how much we love our pets, especially our cats, many of them prefer to sneak off to die alone - if they still have the strength to. That's why from the first, I told my parents I think I'd prefer that too.
It's not from a misanthropic streak or anything. I love being with people most of the time, I love nature and most of earth's creatures. But if you ask me if I can choose, I'll choose to die alone, in dignity, at peace with myself, not bothering anyone and having no one to bother me. It's one of those ultimate experiences I'd prefer not to share with anyone, not even with those I love most.
If you have the courage to live, you'll have the courage to die. After all, as I've said to some experts here before, I've always felt dying is easy. It's the living that's hard :=) | | Question/Answer | | Erewhon asked on 08/01/05 - For your thoughts and prayers ... ... I give you my heartfelt thanks.
My diagnosis of Valley Fever has been confirmed by my pulmonologist.
He says it could be three months, six months, or even longer before I recover.
In the meantime, I am taking a massive daily dose of an antifungal medicine.
There are times whene I feel reasonably well, but then I take a sharp downward spiral and have to take to my bed for several hours.
As a consequence, my activity will be limited to how well I feel hour to hour [Cheering], and I will limit myself to whatever subjects tickle my fancy.
With my sense of taste gone to the dogs, there might be little that tickles my fancy.
Once again, thank you to you all for your kindheartedness and your good thoughts and prayers.
They are greatly appreciated.
Ronnie madima answered on 08/03/05:Take care, dear Ronnie. You're always in my prayers. | | Question/Answer | | CeeBee2 asked on 07/31/05 - Satan. Where did he come from? How did he originate? (he, right? not she???) madima answered on 07/31/05:If we abide by the premise that God created all things, then God created Satan as well.
In the beginning, there was only emptiness and darkness. God separated Light from Darkness, as he separated good from evil - if we go by the book. So both the Light and the Darkness came from Him alone.
And oh, while spirits are not supposed to have genders, men have conceived of "female equivalents" of Satan in other cultures and other faiths - in Sumeria, it was Lilith; in Phoenicia, Astaroth; in Babylon, Ishtar, the list goes on forever :=) | | Question/Answer | | bucker asked on 07/31/05 - Satan I just have a simple question. Maybe someone can set me straight on this. As I am sure someone will try.
:-) Satan believes in Jesus, why do so many people disbelieve. Is it possible that Satan has some inside information? Does he know something we do not? I decided not to let him out do me. I went to the source. and found the truth myself. Do you know what, I found out? He does have some inside information. He has been kicked right where it hurts by Jesus. He had his kingdom taken away, the keys to his home taken away
and he cannot even get out if Jesus says no. And someday He will say just that. He will say "you cannot bother God's children anymore. You just go down there and be satisfied with the ones you have stolen." So brothers and sisters, just think, some day we will be free from him forever. That sure will be a wonderful time. Don't you think so? Bucker madima answered on 07/31/05:Pardon me, but I won't attempt to set you straight on anything, I'll just state my personal opinion. You are an ordained minister and have every right to believe in what you believe in, just as I have every right to believe in mine :=)
Personally, I do not like to "demonize" things or see evil in people and the world in general. For me, Light and Darkness CO-EXIST. Others may see it as the Light of God versus the darkness of Satan, good versus evil, ignorance versus wisdom. But you cannot see the Light until you go through the Dark Night of Soul. If there is no Darkness, there will be no Light. If there is no Evil, there will be no Good, for what will be the basis of one without the other?
If the darkness has no purpose, then it will not exist. But it exists WITH the Light. So, I will presume it is allowed to exist. I will go further and say that it is there for a purpose.
If I were to assume that Satan exists, then it is because God allowed him to exist. He is a contrapuntal force and being such could be indirectly or directly a purifying or a cleansing force for humanity. God sees that Satan has a function in the order of things, otherwise, an all powerful God will just smite him effortlessly and he will be gone - obliterated in a millisecond. Why wait for millenia upon millenia? Why go through all the protracted trouble?
If Satan exists, he also came from God because God created ALL things. Satan is of God as the darkness is of the light, that's why God knows him. Satan knows of God because he came from no one else but Him.
No doubt, there is great knowledge in the darkness because first, as humans, we have to pass through it to gain the light.
| | Question/Answer | | Bobbye asked on 07/29/05 - PRAYER FOR EREWHON (Ronnie Bray) I received the following e-mail from Gay (Ronnie's wife) advising of Ronnie's serious health problem. I'm sure some of you who are on his mailing list received same.
PLEASE REMEMBER HIM IN PRAYER. Thanks. Bobbye
===============.
(From Gay Bray):
"Sorry to send a collective note here, but so many have written and been concerned with Ronnie's health problems, that I thought I'd just send a note to all. He appreciates all the good wishes he has received, and as time and his health permit, I'm sure he will write individually to you, but we wanted you to know what's going on.
About 3 weeks ago Ronnie showed flu-like symptoms, and was given a prescription for an antibiotic. The very next day he broke out in a rash, like measles, and his fever went down. He still felt lousy, but we were not too concerned. After 3 days the doctor recommended a chest x-ray (which showed pneumonia in his left lung) and a bunch of blood tests and cultures.
The cultures came back negative for any bacterial infection, but positive for Valley Fever. The doctor then gave him an anti-fungal prescription, since V.F. is a fungus-airborne disease. He is scheduled to see a Pulmonary Specialist next Monday and we hope he will be able to receive some good help.
Ronnie has a few situations that complicate his health picture. First, his immune system is low to non-existent due to certain medications he takes for his bad arthritis. Also he has been bothered with lung problems most of his life, and this is just another situation to overcome.
His energy level is very low, as you can imagine, and so he is staying close to his bed for the time being. He has tried to sit at the computer and get back to writing, but his body rebels and he has to give in for now.
He is not alone in the bedroom, because usually both dogs share the bed with him, especially his faithful Border Collie, Frankie. Belle likes to bring a ball to him, on the odd chance that Ronnie would toss it for her to catch or chase."
Gay.
madima answered on 07/31/05:Thanks, Bobbye. I got the note, saw it today, after I returned from my five-day out-of-town coverage. I'm praying for Ronnie's recovery. He and Gay and their loved ones are always in my prayers. | | Question/Answer | | ATON2 asked on 07/29/05 - Is ATON a Muslim???? No. ATON is not now, nor has he ever been a Muslim.
Does ATON defend Muslims??? Yes when they are attacked by rabble rousers. Why? Because he has Muslim relations and he KNOWS the postings on this board to not reflect TRUE Islam.
Is ATON a MORMON. No. ATON is not NOW nor has he ever been a MORMON.
Does ATON defend MORMONS....YES, when they are attacked by rabble rousers. Why?? Because he has MORMON nieces and nephews who are among the finest CHRISTIANS he has ever known.
Is ATON an apostate from Jehovah's Witnesses. NO. ATON has NEVER been a Jehovah's Witness. Does ATON defend J.W.s ONLY when they are right :) Why?? Because they are often wrong :) :) :)
Getting the idea, folks????
I have defended Catholics against the depredations of Tom777 and our own anti-Catholic rabble rousers. Why?? You guessed it...I have Catholic nieces and nephews and cousins.
I have defended Judaism against our resident Anti-Semites...Yeah, you guessed it, again..I have Jewish In-laws.
Does ATON attack Christians...NO...only the pseudo-Christians who have distorted the teachings of Jesus and preached an elitist, country club Heaven which bears a sign "NO JEWS, MUSLIMS, BUDDHISTS, HINDUS or Dogs allowed".
Does ATON NOT have Christian relatives???? More than I can count...including an ordained minister, and a born again nephew who, the moment he accepted Jesus turned from a fun-loving teen ager to the sourest individual I have ever known.
EN FIN: Contrary to a recent, hysterical posting...As I have repeated over and over again... I do not consider the Scriptures of ANY organized religion to be the inspired, inerrant word of God..I am not a member of ANY organized religion..Any one who tries to pigeon-hole me as an adherent of ANY organized religious group is lying....or doing a bit of wishfull thinking.
Are Christians permitted to lie in defense of their beliefs????????? I know about Eusebius...but he was a product of his times. madima answered on 07/31/05:Well... I think that's why you're a favorite of mine, dear ATON :=) | | Question/Answer | | CeeBee2 asked on 07/30/05 - God's gender. Is God male or female - or neither? madima answered on 07/31/05:Neither, I believe. God is a spirit and spirits are not supposed to have any sex or gender.
But God is free to take any form in our minds because in essence He/She is a personal God. We - whoever believes in God -are of the flesh, not of the spirit. It is easier to understand God - or think we understand Him/Her in a physical way.
It is easier to feel closer to a God with identifiable masculine or feminine energies, to think of a Divine Benefactor as either a Heavenly Father or an Ethereal Mother. The concept of God is more comprehensible, more personal that way.
From my limited experience, I noticed that some of our people who favor pantheism tend to perceive God as feminine, as Mother Nature is female, and refer to their deity as a Mother Goddess, accordingly.
I think of God as my Father in Heaven, but that's just because that's the way my parents and my Church referred to Him when I was growing up. Eventually, I realized I'm most comfortable relating to Him in that manner because I love my father on earth so much anyway :=)
| | Question/Answer | | paraclete asked on 07/27/05 - so it's all about fear? Muslim clerics want curbs on conversions
July 28, 2005 - 2:44PM
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Indonesian clerics are calling for strong measures to prevent Muslims from converting to other religions, especially Christianity.
Indonesia is the world's largest Islamic nation.
But the influential Indonesian Ulema Council, which is holding its national congress, has expressed concern that the percentage of Muslims has dropped in some parts of the country.
They said Christian preachers have penetrated some provinces at "an alarming rate," according to The Jakarta Post.
"The phenomenon ... is most disturbing," it quoted a report presented at the conference.
The council is expected to adopt edicts at the end of its congress on Saturday aimed at discouraging religious conversions, including statements against mixed marriages and television shows that promote mysticism.
Indonesia recognises five religions including Christianity.
But attacks against Christians, who comprise eight per cent of the 210 million-strong population, have increased since ex-dictator Suharto's downfall in 1998.
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Muslim groups say evangelical Christians are partly to blame for rising religious tensions, accusing them of trying to convert Muslims, which is illegal in Indonesia.
Currently, three women from the West Java town of Indramayu are on trial for attempting to convert Muslim children to Christianity.
© 2005 AAP
The question is if their religion is so attractive and all inclusive, what do they have to fear from a few conversions? The reality is that, given the opportunity, people will seek something better than the bankrupt religion that is Islam. But a few conversions and they are up in arms, the sky is falling on their world. madima answered on 07/28/05:Hi, Brian,
After having lived in a predominantly Muslim country in the Middle East for a year and after having long-term associations with Muslims (Mindanao, the second biggest island in our archipelago, is Muslim) I don't think Islam is a bankrupt religion :=)
Personally, I have a great deal of respect for the beliefs of my Muslim friends.
But I do observe there's been some forms of religious "coercion" among some Christians who try to agressively haul in converts, even here in my country, that's why these missionaries are encountering a great deal of resistance. Indonesia is quite close to us and we do share some of their Southeast
Asian cultural heritage.
Some Christian groups have attempted to "blackmail" ethnic as well as other non-Christian groups here, dangling favors, international aid and other juicy dole-outs in exchange for conversion, especially in depressed areas.
Some Western evangelists have also come into isolated tribes without knowing anything about their cultures, values and mores and unwittingly created tension. These conversions were also accompanied by a corruption and rape of the cultures invaded, exploitation of the resources of the community, environmental degradation and religious conflict - to name just a few. Eventually, these people come to see the Christian missionaries as exploiters (or their "advance parties") and detestable representatives of the capitalist West. In some cases, Christianization was used as a mere excuse for exploitation.
Christianity is still a Western import here. My country, the Philippines, is the ONLY Christian nation in the Far East simply because it has been colonized by Catholic Spain for 300 years and by Christian America for less than a century.
Orientals DO have a very different culture from Occidentals, even though we of the younger generation are considerably "Westernized" and well acquainted with American/European cultures.
Unfortunately, many, if not most Western evangelists and missionaries who intrude into the East tend to overlook a lot of things in their zest to spread their own beliefs. At the very least, their oversight is interpreted as a complete lack of respect for the people they try to win over to their alien faith.
| | Question/Answer | | arcura asked on 07/27/05 - Do you think or believe that many in the media.... are anti-christian? If so you are right.
Take a look at the secular/religion war.
Use the ULR below.
+++
http://headlines.agapepress.org/archive/7/262005a.asp madima answered on 07/28/05:As an active member of the working press, I say no. The media, in its true spirit, the media as I know it, is neither anti-religion or pro-religion, anti-Christian or pro-Christian. It is supposed to be pro-Truth.
Of course, that's the ideal.
In our ideal quest for the truth, journalists may run against religious beliefs and religious biases of all types, and not just the Christian religions.
Of course, our editors and publishers have their own vested interests. They may favor certain religious groups who broker power with the government or who support them financially. Business, religion and politics always go hand in hand - especially in Third World countries like mine.
In fact, the Christian churches in my own country, specifically the Catholic church, has a LOT to do with suppression and twisting of public information that runs counter to their interests.
It is also a fact that the "Iglesia ni Cristo Church" in my country, which carries a solid vote, has the power to sway, not just political trends and opinions, but also public information disseminated in the media.
The churches here have LOTS of money, LOTS of business interests, LOTS of political clout, which they put to good use in influencing the press, from the journalists to the editors to the publishers and media pundits.
We have LOTS of stories that never see print, killed at the moment of submission, because they run counter to the interests of the Christian church.
In the eternal game of power, the Christian church can - and do - make use of the media as a pawn. | | Question/Answer | | Erewhon asked on 07/25/05 - "Love your enemies" When Jesus said "Love your enemies," was he only stating an option? madima answered on 07/25/05:I believe he does, as human beings have free will, which gives us the luxury of choice.
Anyway, I believe that man's greatest enemy has always been himself. So, if he loves himself - and he should - he ought to love his greatest enemy - the one who lives within :=)
As for the enemies outside of the self, we also have an option, I believe.
Of course, in war, when I confront someone who intends to kill me and I opted to kill him instead, it cannot be said that I did it out of hatred. I did that in self-defense. I may have no knowledge of my enemy at all, no understanding, no emotion, so I have neither love nor hatred, just an instinct to preserve the self.
But love and hatred are both very complex, very intense emotions, and the delineations are NOT that clear... at least outside the realm of Agape, the love that Jesus is supposed to have spoken of.
It's odd ... I guess you can't really hate someone unless you love him. And sometimes, you love someone so much you hate him for it.
As the saying goes: I have no more love left for you to hate you. | | Question/Answer | | HANK1 asked on 07/16/05 - Free-Will:
Do human beings truly have a free will?
HANK
madima answered on 07/16/05:Definitely. We can choose to be happy or we can choose to be miserable. We can choose to succeed or we can choose to fail. It's all a matter of free will :=) | | Question/Answer | | excon asked on 07/13/05 - Morals Hello Christians:
Let’s say that you were 62 years old, and you just got convicted of a crime and sentenced to 25 years in the slam - a virtual life sentence. You are, for the time being, free, but you have to report to the slam in October. You have sufficient assets to allow you to live comfortably, anywhere.
Would you stay? Would your innocence affect your decision? Would your guilt affect your decision. Would guilt or innocence even matter to you, for purposes of this decision? Why?
excon
madima answered on 07/13/05:If I live to be 62 (which most of my friends don't believe I will, at the rate I'm living now) and I'm sentenced to 25 years, with enough assets to boot, I'll bolt. I'll buy myself an island in the remotest, most inaccessible part of the globe.
Of course, in all honesty, if I will ever commit a crime, I will see to it that I will NEVER be caught in the first place.
But in this case, innocence or guilt will not matter. That's my personal freedom at stake, and for me, that's the most important thing in the world.
Well, others say prison walls do not matter. The real prison is in the mind. Our national hero and many brilliant writers produced their magnum opuses behind bars.
I also know that some are of the thinking that prison is free board and lodging... more exciting than a nursing home, especially in countries like the US, where facilities are better, especially the libraries and the internet access.
Still, I loathe the idea of anybody incarcerating me against my will. I chose to live free, so I choose to die free.
| | Question/Answer | | tarot10 asked on 07/11/05 - what should we do about it? If it ain't a loving thing to do we shouldn't do it.
If we see someone harming/endangering/abusing another, what kind of person are we if we do nothing?
What should we do about it? What have you done about it? Have you done anything about it?
IS THE PERSON WHO DOES INDEED DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT, GOING TO FIND HIMSELF/HERSELF TOTALLY ALONE AND OUT IN THE COLD?
I think it would require everyone to take action simultaneously.
Hope you have some solutions for us.
madima answered on 07/12/05:Dear Tarot10,
Some people who do something about it may not just end up alone, out in the cold. They may end up dead, like one gentleman I knew.
Last week, on his way home, he saw a guy exchanging heated words with a woman on the streets, threatening to be physical with her. Our gentleman friend did not know the couple, but he was concerned for the poor woman. He tried to intervene. The guy suddenly pulled a gun and shot him point blank. He died on the spot. He's not even 30 yet, just visiting from the US, where he has a promising career and was the hope of his family.
He was just among the many I knew who was killed under more or less the same kind of circumstances.
Unfortunately, some of the most compassionate and the most humane people in this world end up victims and fatalities themselves when they try to protect their fellowmen.
As for me...if I see someone holding a gun to my parents or someone I love, and I have a gun at hand (as I sometimes do), I will shoot him and ask questions later.
So, Christian or not, what we do about it mostly depends on our personal values, the gravity of the risk or danger as we perceive it, though it may also be determined by who the abusers/perpetrators and the abused/victims are, how much we are emotionally invested in the parties involved and whether we can afford the consequences of our actions. | | Question/Answer | | excon asked on 07/09/05 - Snitching
Hello Christians:
Snitching - tattling - ratting - kissing and telling, buring your sources, etc.
What is the Christian/moral stand on the subject? Why? Do you keep secrets? Would you go to jail to keep a secret? Is it good or bad to do so? What do you teach your kids?
If it's good, why are all the terms describing one who does so, so reviling? If it's good, we should call it kissing or loving.
excon
madima answered on 07/10/05:Hi excon,
I'm an active member of the working press in my country at present, so I can more realistically answer from the journalistic point of view.
I will go to jail to protect a good source. I have never disclosed the true identities of any of my news sources throughout my career.
Oh, there were many times people tried to tempt me or bribe me. And there were those few news sources who tried to burn me with false info.
But a good news source will risk to have his/her head on the chopping block for you... Of course, their motives could also be open to question. Some will "tell" with genuine honesty and idealism, but some will tell to exploit, to manipulate, or out of spite to their superiors or the system.
As journalists, we are told to deal with facts, not with the motives of the sources. When the facts given by the sources are verifiable truths, then they are published and the source protected.
From the Christian and the personal viewpoint, the demarcation lines can be blurry. But definitely, I don't protect liars :=) | | Question/Answer | | Bishop_Chuck asked on 07/08/05 - Church Fire Many of you know me from years here and on askme.come
We have had a major loss here in Sparta TN. Not only our church, but two other churches were set fire to last night. Our meeting place was not hurt near as much as the other two churches ( Methodist and Church of Christ)
But we did recieve damage.
I am asking anyone even non Christians who want to help others in need to help us with any donations they could make.
you can visit our web site for information on helping us
www.unitycatholic.org madima answered on 07/10/05:I'm very sorry to hear about the damage in your meeting place, Bishop Chuck. I hope you will be able to repair it soon. I hope too that the police will catch the culprits.
We don't suffer racial hate crimes here in our part of the world, but we do have our share of religious and terrorist bombings - and that too has been increasing lately.
Please take care and may God be with you. | | Question/Answer | | arcura asked on 07/07/05 - Prayers said in Latin......................... I heard that our new pope asked that Catholics relearn the basic prayers in Latin.
As a convert I was not bought up in the Latin Church.
So please tell me what advantage there is in learning the prayers in Latin.
Would they be better heard by God if in Latin? I doubt it, but if so then why not in Greeek or Hebrew?
Apparently our new Pope, whom I highly respect, thinks there is an advantage at least to the Church in doing so. If so, what is it?
Your philosophical and/or theological thoughts, please.
Fred madima answered on 07/10/05:You're most welcome :=) | | Question/Answer | | arcura asked on 07/07/05 - Prayers said in Latin......................... I heard that our new pope asked that Catholics relearn the basic prayers in Latin.
As a convert I was not bought up in the Latin Church.
So please tell me what advantage there is in learning the prayers in Latin.
Would they be better heard by God if in Latin? I doubt it, but if so then why not in Greeek or Hebrew?
Apparently our new Pope, whom I highly respect, thinks there is an advantage at least to the Church in doing so. If so, what is it?
Your philosophical and/or theological thoughts, please.
Fred madima answered on 07/07/05:Dear Fred,
Just my personal thoughts...I don't think there's any advantage. God will hear you in whatever language you speak. The language does not matter to Him. The intent does.
But I do pray in many languages... English, Pilipino, Spanish and Latin...depending on my mood.
In my country, the novena prayers and songs as well as the prayer of absolution which the priests utter on the closing of a confession are in Latin. The High Mass is still in Latin. And there's a Latin prayer that I say everyday after waking up. It's a beautiful language, a language of antiquity and I find it really romantic. So, I don't really mind :=)
| | Question/Answer | | CeeBee2 asked on 07/02/05 - Asked by a Lutheran minister...................... who was very surprised by the answers he got:
Suppose you were to die today and stand before God, and He asked you, "Why should I allow you into My Heaven?"
What would you say?
madima answered on 07/03/05:Because You summoned me here! Why else? :=)
I'm perfectly happy living on MY piece of earth and staying there forever, though I have great friends up here! I still have a LOT of things to do for a good many of Your creatures down there, by the way! :=)
And beloved Father of mine in heaven, please make up Your Divine mind if You really want me frolicking up here forever with my angels... er, Yours... this VERY minute!
You summoned me at least TWICE already when I was younger and You always changed Your mind at the VERY LAST minute!
Papa, dearest, to be honest with You, I'm getting quite dazed being zapped to and from the earth! :=) | | Question/Answer | | Saladin asked on 06/28/05 - Angel's wings? I am sure that we are familiar with piuctures showing angelic beings with feathered wings.
It is well known (or should be) that wings as a means of propulsion are useless above the dense part of the earth's atmosphere.
So, in spite of biblical references to 'wings' that may be no more than symbolic and refer to their power to move, by what means do you think angels get from heaven to earth and back again?
~~R~~ - cleared for landing madima answered on 06/30/05:Dear Ronnie,
Angels do not need wings. The pinions are given to them by artists to show they are of the heavens. Spirits travel at the speed of - and at the propulsion of thought. All that an angel has to do is wish that he is on earth - or back in heaven and he'll be there. Come to think of it, there are no physical delineations in the spiritual plane :=) | | Question/Answer | ATON2 asked on 06/29/05 - AVE ATQUE, but NOT VALE :)
Not a question: just a quick greeting to my dysfunctional cyber familyMissed you ALL...Too much personal stuff going on to explain. Will be posting sporadically...with new guidelines. No private postings (too much intrigue there, already). No more free rides...answers will be rated strictly on content, not INTENT!!! (EVEN IF I LIKE YOU) :) :) :)
Fair warning: Though I still abhor censorship, I will use the abuse button more frequently...and leave it up to answerway to keep the site clean!!!!!
Now!!! Can we get back to trying to EXPLAIN the ins and outs of Christianity...or do we persist in Anti-Mormon, Anti-Muslim, Anti-EVERYTHING that is NOT fundamentalist Christianity..rabble rousing??????? And for the sake of the Creator...NO MORE about Terry Schiavo or Michael Jackson!!!!!! That has become BORING to the point of Petrification!!!!!
"Once more into the breach...." and devil take the hindmost (whatever THAT means) :) madima answered on 06/30/05:Welcome back, Aton! :=)
We missed you! :=) | | Question/Answer | | FormerJesusHelper76 asked on 06/24/05 - A New Life! How do you feel about bringing in a new life into todays world. Do you think things in society will get better or only get worse. It is very important how the child is raised and where and how. What factors do you think will effect a child.
Thank you in advance!
Joe madima answered on 06/25/05:I admire those who can bring new life in today's world and raise their kids to be responsible human beings - despite all the odds.
But if you ask me personally, I abhor the idea of getting pregnant myself and raising kids. Call it selfish, but I'm not willing to invest the best 21 years of my life in a child just to "perpetrate my legacy" and see to it that "my genes will live on". I already live my life to the hilt every moment, every day and so, I don't need that :=)
Also, I can never do what my parents did for me nor do I feel obliged to. I'd rather invest my life in other forms of social service to give back the blessings given to me.
My parents have both been orphaned very early. The trauma made my father resolve not to have kids, initially. Only my mother prevailed on him to have just one child. She lost her first and my father conceded to have one more try. That's how I came to the light.
I know how difficult it is to raise a child, though. Both my parents raised me full-time, 24/7. They screened out all influences which they believed will be harmful to me in my formative years - from TV to playmates. And as I said before, I can never duplicate that.
| | Question/Answer | | HANK1 asked on 06/21/05 - Jealousy:
Unfortunately, it is all too common that jealous feelings get translated into actions. While I have the greatest sympathy for people who feel jealous in different situations, and while I understand that those feelings can be painful, I have little patience with people who use those feelings as an excuse for inappropriate, overly dramatic, or violent behavior. Such behavior is at best unacceptable, often unethical, and, when it becomes violent, illegal. In general, the pattern of such relationships is that they get worse.
Are you jealous of someone? If you are, why?
HANK
madima answered on 06/22/05:No, jealousy has never been one of my traits. I don't see any reason why I should be jealous of anyone - even if they are prettier, more intelligent, more well-off or more privileged than me.
My life has always been and will always be blessed. I thank God and His angels everyday for that. | | Question/Answer | | CeeBee2 asked on 06/21/05 - Mortem effugere nemo potest.* What would you do if you knew you had only a year to live?
*No one can escape death. madima answered on 06/22/05:Well, I've been there quite early, so I can tell you :=)
Doctors told me I have at most one year to live when I was eleven years old - when they mixed up my x-ray plates with a terminally-ill girl of the same age.
The first thing I realized then was I haven't seen the world just yet. So, right away, I decided I have to see the places I wanted to see before I die, while I still can - and live my life to the hilt.
Another priority was to finish the stories and poems I've started to write - and burn all the unfinished ones, along with my dream journals, letters and diaries before I die.
I also made my parents pledge to take the best care of my favorite pets, especially my most beloved cat, Muning, until the end of his own days. I have to be sufficiently reassured he will be allowed to sleep on my bed whenever he pleases and that he will have my best pillow and my favorite chair.
Finally, I made my parents promise they will not permit me to linger in pain and misery, drugged with morphine all the time, with all those tubes feeding in my body. In case I cannot pull the plug on myself, they will either do it for me, or will allow the doctors to euthanize me immediately. And they should not feel sorry for me :=)
| | Question/Answer | | paraclete asked on 06/22/05 - The miracle of the Lions? Lions 'rescue' girl
June 22, 2005 - 11:52AM
Three lions rescued a kidnapped 12-year-old girl, Ethiopian police claim.
The kidnappers wanted to force her into marriage and had held her for seven days, repeatedly beating her, said Sergeant Wondimu Wedajo.
Then the lions chased them away and guarded her until her family and police arrived, he said from Bita Genet, 560 kilometres south-west of Addis Ababa.
"They stood guard until we found her and then they just left her like a gift and went back into the forest," Sergeant Wondimu said, adding that he did not know whether the lions were male or female.
News of the rescue, which took place in a forest on the outskirts of Bita Genet on June 9, was slow to filter out from Kefa Zone in south western Ethiopia.
"If the lions had not come to her rescue then it could have been much worse. Often these young girls are raped and severely beaten to force them to accept the marriage," he said.
"Everyone thinks this is some kind of miracle, because normally the lions would attack people," Sergeant Wondimu said.
AP
madima answered on 06/22/05:Lions and other big cats would instinctively attack anything that they perceive to threaten them. They are very territorial.
The report did not mention the gender of the lions though it was mentioned that the girl was whimpering and some behaviorists speculated that could be one of the reasons why the lions did not attack.
The scent and behavior of babies or anyone belonging to a different species who are acting/sounding like an infant could be "non-threatening" to lionesses and other nursing big cats. It triggers the protective mother instinct and inhibits aggressive behavior. (On the other hand, other behaviorists also maintain that the shrill cries and quick movements of kids can trigger predatory behavior among the big cats - if they construe it as something similar to the behavior of their prey.)
Big cats - and even their small domestic cousins - are very keen readers of nonverbal behavior.
As someone who have handled big cats, I personally don't think it's a miracle. But it was surely something the girl should thank God for.
| | Question/Answer | | FormerJesusHelper76 asked on 06/08/05 - Prayer I ask you for your prayers for God's will to be done in a family members surgery. THank you in advance! Joe madima answered on 06/08/05:Glad to oblige. | | Question/Answer | | STONY asked on 06/08/05 - A PRAYER REQUEST IN MY EMAIL 2DAY... Date: Sun, 5 Jun 2005 21:05:11 -0700 (PDT)
From: Randi Fass
Subject: Prayer Request
Well, now what?!
For the last 18 months I have been treated for a severe muscle spasm around my left hip. Two 10-week periods of physical therapy, injections of pain killer & steroids. Short term relief. I went back to the surgeon last week and saw a new doctor. When I asked about another shot, he said I didn't need a shot, I needed a neurosurgeon. It's not a muscle spasm, it's a "mass" - probably a benign fatty tumor - that has grown across my lower back. I had regular x-rays last week and am having an MRI Tuesday morning. (I'm deathly claustrophobic so I'll be sedated.) That will give me a clue as to what has to be done. Of course, Ashley is being married in July, so timing is lousy, but it is so painful, I can't go much longer without treatment.
So please pray for:
proper diagnosis
my sanity
pain relief
skilled doctors/surgeons
and above all God's timing and outcome.
Thanks!
Also Martin is in the MidEast until 1 July. Prayers for his safety and salvation encouraged!
xoxox
Randi
Choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve... as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. Joshua 24:15
YA'LL HAVE THE POWER INSIDE OF YOU, SHARE IT WITH SOMEONE ELSE IN NEED....................LOVE, TONY madima answered on 06/08/05:Dear Stony,
I'm including Randi and Martin in my prayers. | | Question/Answer | | Saladin asked on 06/06/05 - All in God's plan?
Tonight's TV news carried a report about a young child killed by the famnily's pet pit bull dogs.
One of the family said that it must have been in God's plan to call this youngster hoime and that it was all in God's hands.
Do you agree or disagree with her, and why?
madima answered on 06/07/05:Dear Ronnie,
I don't agree with her, but if that's the only thing that would make the death of a beloved family member easier on her, then what can we do?
In a case like this, I don't believe it's realistic to say that as the reason for the death of a loved one, but then when a person is grieving and at loss as to what to say... that's often the easiest way out. Fatalism. Fate willed it. God willed it. There's nothing I can do. Everything is out of our hands.
To the bereaved parent, sibling or kin, it will be unacceptable to own neglect and responsibility, to say outright things like: I should never have allowed that child to be near my dogs, or I should have trained those dogs to tolerate children more, or I should have made sure to keep the child and the dogs apart at all times. I should never have left that child alone, unsupervised. I am to blame for her death. Indirectly and without meaning to, I killed her.
Alas! It will all be too painful!
| | Question/Answer | | FormerJesusHelper76 asked on 06/06/05 - Food, Take out and Gluttony. The choices of food in our life can effect everything from our energy, from our behaviour, from our reactions and emotions and so much more.
How important is it for you to eat properly for we are a temple of God. Every aspect of our life is important to God including how we eat and what we eat.
Should we go by the new testament, the old testament or just what our culture teaches us?
Is take out food okay as long as we make healthy choices or should we all be learning to stay at home with making home made meals. The reason for obesity problems in North America do you believe it is because of lazier lifestyles and more take out and a lot more food?
What can we as a society and individuals do to change the trend of this type of lifestyle which goes against the teachings of the bible?
Thanks in advance.
Joe madima answered on 06/06/05:From what I've seen, choices of food is mostly determined by culture and by one's personal resources. If you are not a hunter-gatherer, if you are not a farmer or a livestock raiser, you can only have the kind of food that your money can afford to buy.
In my country, more than half of the 85 million population live below poverty line. That means they normally have only one meal a day and they have little choice about it. The meal may consist of rice and salt or tubers. Among the coastal areas, fish and food from the sea will be included in the diet. In the mountain regions, especially among hunter-gatherer tribes, insects may be included as protein sources. Still malnutrition is rampant and is among the leading causes of child mortality.
When I'm in the city, I eat whatever is laid out for me by my hosts in my daily coverages. That saves me a lot of money because food is quite expensive here. When I'm telecommuting, painting or writing in my own den, I eat straight out of the tin can or binge on chocolates. I have neither time nor patience to cook. When I know I'll engage in a strenuous physical activity and expect my body to perform well - like when I do taebo, aero, or dancing, when I know I'll be diving or caving or mountaineering, I'll load up on carbs.
As an individual, I can always suit my food intake to the kind of activity I schedule for myself and the kind of budget I have within the given period.
But of course, I'm in a Third World country. More affluent societies tend to be more at risk when it comes to obesity. | | Question/Answer | | FormerJesusHelper76 asked on 06/04/05 - E.V.P. Phenomenom? Has anybody ever heard of the EVP Phenomenom? What it is? What research has been done about it and have anybody know anything about it and or has had any experiance with the subject?
Thank you in advance! madima answered on 06/04/05:I hear other-worldly voices but I've never tried taping them. I am clairaudient since I was a child.
Clairaudience, as far as I know, comes from the "opening" of the fifth subtle energy center located at the throat. The center or chakra, can be opened fully at will by adepts, although it can also "open" accidentally. Sometimes, when one is sick - physically or emotionally, or when one is in grave danger, the fifth center may "open" automatically.
All the "voices" I've heard so far, speak to me directly, inside my head. They are "inner voices", thought forms that are heard audibly but not electronic voices.
But if you are really interested in EVP research, you can just google it.
However, it is often difficult to distinguish what comes from within and what comes from outside. It's not just a matter of distinguishing between real inner voices - that is, psychic phenomenon, or schizophrenic auditory hallucinations.
Human beings are conductors of electricity and can also influence the electromagnetic fields around them - accidentally or deliberately.
I have personally known some local psychics who can turn light bulbs and other appliances on/off - on top of doing other things in their physical environment. If humans can do that, then it is possible to influence or interfere with sounds waves as well.
| | Question/Answer | | ROLCAM asked on 06/04/05 - Candid views series # 1. Is true happiness possible ? madima answered on 06/04/05:Yes. I've always been truly happy and that's the way it will always be.
From the start, I knew I have only two choices in life: to be happy or to be miserable.
I chose to be happy :=) | | Question/Answer | | ROLCAM asked on 06/04/05 - Have you had any angel's encounter ? Angels cannot be seen by man with his bodily eyes, but only with the eyes of the spirit which is with him.
- Emanuel Swedenborg
madima answered on 06/04/05:I had a lot, from the time I was a child up to now, too many to enumerate, though I remember all of them :=)
I hear my angels, I feel them, smell them and see them with my own eyes.
Well... "seeing" with the eyes of the spirit, or seeing with the third eye, is quite different from seeing with the physical eyes.
It's quite impossible to explain, but I'll try. In my case, I get this sense that I have actually two pairs of eyes... that I have another pair behind my actual vision and that the two pairs "overlap", enabling me to see subtle energies which I ordinarily will not perceive in terms of light, form, color and texture.
I felt the "overlap" was complete or quite "seamless" as a child that I never thought that my parents and other people around me could not see what I "see". I thought it was natural. Only later on, when I was told of my "aberration" and I "deliberately" tried to "see" other energies that I became conscious of a sense of "separateness" between the two kinds of "seeing".
When I hear my angels, I hear them as inner voices inside my head, the most loving voices I could ever hear.
Sometimes, in church, they open the energy center in my heart and I feel them as an indescribable warmth that causes tears to flow from my eyes.
I ask them to inspire me whenever I sit before my canvas to paint them, or whenever I write, and they always do. I ask them to walk with me in the forests and to dive in the seas with me.
Sometimes, when I'm cold or could not sleep, I ask them to tuck me under their great wings.
And they always oblige :=) | | Question/Answer | | hOPE12 asked on 05/29/05 - God's right to Rule humans! Hello everyone,
Do you personally feel that the creator of the universe has the right to rule man?
If so, why do you feel that way?
If not, why do you feel that way?
How is God's right to rule balanced with the free will God gave us? Does free will mean complete indepedence?
Take care,
Hope12 madima answered on 05/30/05:Dear Hope12,
When you bequeath free will to your creation, you automatically surrender your right to rule that creation.
That is the principle of free will.
In my belief, if God created us with the intention of making us subservient to his will, he would not have created human beings with free will. He would have created robots and programmed them to do all of his bidding. And that would have made for a very unexciting universe. | | Question/Answer | | HANK1 asked on 05/30/05 - Heaven & Earth:
Why do SOME people think MORE about SURVIVING after death than they do about SURVIVING before death on Earth? Is the former psychologically healthy?
HANK
madima answered on 05/30/05:Dear Hank, in my own Third World country, I have seen that philosophy among the very desperate and the very impoverished as well as some very mentally imbalanced folks.
I'm afraid that kind of philosophy has also been promulgated deliberately by many churches, including my own, especially when they operate in or when they move in very depressed areas.
They have no means of truly addressing the suffering and poverty of the people they are attempting to convert. Hence, they promote the idea that it is better to survive after death to an eternal life of bliss.
| | Question/Answer | | HANK1 asked on 05/29/05 - Communication:
How do you speak to an angel? (One of God's messengers) Can an angel be identified tangibly?
HANK
madima answered on 05/29/05:I speak to God's angels and my own guardians the way I speak to people I love :=)
When I was a child I thought everybody else around me could see them, just as I see them!
Now, I usually communicate to them with my thoughts, from the time I wake up to the time I sleep and even in my dreaming. I know the angels by their specific energies and there are a good many whom I know by name, my fave seraphims and my guardian angels in particular.
I can also identify, see, hear and feel the angels of nature, who are sometimes referred to as the devas. | | Question/Answer | | Choux asked on 05/28/05 - Deep Depression I have fallen into a very deep depression. I anticipated being able to read books with my new glasses, and I can't. I was not aware that cataracts disrupted all vision; don't ask me why. Because I have a cataract on my left eye, my vision cannot be corrected enough for me to read or see clearly at any distance (except better at compurter). I'm going to see an opthamologist for help, but of course, I have no resources to get another pair of glasses should I get help from him. Doris, my friend, is working on stuff to see what can be done.
Consequently, I'm taking a vacation from AW until I'm able to function better.
Mary Sue madima answered on 05/28/05:Dear Mary Sue,
Please don't despair. There's a software that can help you out. I've just covered an ongoing IBM program this week. It's called "Computer Eyes", a PC assistive technology which had been used here for 5 years now. I'm sure you can find it in the US, which is the home turf of Big Blue.
IBM has piloted a software, in cooperation with another developer, for visually impaired individuals using computers and a screen reader. You can read all the books you want, do word procesing, information management, internet and email even if you can't see a thing.
Impaired vision is not a setback. I realized that, after I interviewed some of the over 100 people who took the Computer Eyes program.
Please come back soon! | | Question/Answer | | arcura asked on 05/25/05 - Have you seen the latest Star Wars movie? I haven't seen it yet, but I intened to look for this when I do see it.
Star Wars III and The Church
If you intend on seeing Star Wars Episode III you might want to be aware of this theology………………..
Editor's Note: This article contains explanations of scenes from Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith — so if you want to be surprised, archive this article and read it when you return from the cinema.
No one who is remotely theologically grounded would ever equate the Jedi of the "Star Wars" films with the Church — but since, in the Star Wars mythology, they are the agents of good, Christians attending these films naturally identify with them. And why not? They are dedicated to peace and are, as old Ben Kenobi told young Luke Skywalker, the guardians of peace in the Old Republic.
But as the Star Wars legend unfolds, viewers discover that instead of continuing the clear good-versus-evil theme of the first film, the later films demonstrate that the Jedi operate heavily in what some might call the "gray areas." The Jedi are ascetics, but not in the mold of the Christian ascetics who subdued their bodies in order to get closer to God and become more holy. The Jedi are more closely aligned with the pagan ascetics who used self-mastery to gain power. (A detailed explanation of this similarity is available on the MovieMinistry website).
The latest installment, Revenge of the Sith, details Anakin Skywalker's descent from prospective Jedi Master to Sith Lord, Darth Vader. And while George Lucas' characters like to talk a lot about "destiny," it seems clear that the actions of the Jedi were more than mere coincidental factors in Anakin's transformation. What I saw in the film could be a primer in how to turn an apostle to an apostate. For Christians willing to use a fictional movie as a mirror to examine their own behaviors, Revenge of the Sith can serve as a cautionary tale, particularly about how some churches treat their young members. When the Church feels like a hostile place, acts hypocritically, is insensitive, and avoids dogma, it, like the Jedi, can contribute toward pushing people to an embracing, waiting Dark Side.
Kept at Arm's Length
A slave since birth, Anakin is forced to leave his mother on Tatooine because he is going to be made part of something bigger than himself — the Jedi order. But once he is presented to the Jedi Council, their initial inclination is to reject the boy as too old and full of anger (never mind all of the things he might have to be angry about). But by Revenge of the Sith, Anakin has proven his worth on many occasions, including saving his master Obi-Wan ten times. That Anakin is a powerful Jedi is without question, but other than Obi-Wan, none of the other Jedi actively befriend the young man. When Chancellor Palpatine tells Anakin that the Jedi Council are afraid of Anakin's power and are keeping him down because they fear they will be unable to control him, the accusation has a ring of truth to it — and not simply because Anakin is liable to pride.
Hypocrisy
Anakin commits a serious sin — slaying the evil Count Dooku on the order of Chancellor Palpatine. As soon as he does it, he feels regret, saying that to kill an unarmed prisoner is "not the Jedi way." Palpatine tries to assure Anakin that the desire for revenge is natural — but Anakin is troubled by his own actions. He wants to believe in, and follow, the way of the Jedi. But soon after, he discovers that even the guardians of the Jedi order lack the purity he seeks. His own mentor, Obi-Wan, asks him to spy on the chancellor, to use his position of friendship as a means to funnel information to the Jedi Council. Anakin balks at this treachery, citing it as a violation of the Jedi Code, but Obi-Wan tells him that the ongoing war justifies this breach of the rules. Later, after Anakin discovers the true identity of Chancellor Palpatine, that he is a Sith lord, he does what is right and reveals it to the Jedi Council. But when Anakin arrives at the scene of what is supposed to be an arrest, he finds Jedi Master Mace Windu about to execute the Chancellor in direct violation of the Jedi Code which demands that the unarmed prisoner be brought to trial. Again, Windu makes an excuse — it is the same excuse the chancellor gave Anakin for killing Count Dooku — and attempts to follow through on his threat until Anakin stops him, and mayhem ensues. It is the Jedi’s abandonment of their own principles that leads to Anakin's abandonment of the Jedi way.
Hypocrisy leads to disillusionment. The old joke is that a man says that he doesn't want to go to church because it is filled with hypocrites, to which his friend replies, "Then you'll feel right at home!" As long as there are humans involved in churches, there will always be sin issues. It is how we handle those sins, particularly among leadership, that is important. When young people hear adults say one thing, yet do another, it causes them to question the veracity of other teachings. We are on dangerous ground when the Church does not appear to have any more claim to holiness than the world. The young are watching, looking for examples to follow.
nsensitivity
Anakin is troubled by what he perceives to be unfair treatment at the hands of the Jedi Council. He is also plagued by premonitions of his wife's death in childbirth. What he seeks are justice and understanding. What he gets are platitudes and indifference. His friend and master teacher, Obi-Wan, advises patience — eventually the Jedi Council will come around. Never does Obi-Wan commiserate with Anakin or explain, let alone defend him against, the perceived injustice. Troubled, Anakin tells his dreams of Padme's death to Yoda, who advises detachment rather than care for loved ones in danger. Feeling abandoned and ill-advised, it is not surprising that Anakin seeks aid and comfort from his friend, the Chancellor.
Young Christians have problems, doubts, and insecurities. Even if older believers think them unwarranted, they are real to those experiencing them. Dismissing the problems of young Christians as "phases" — something the young will "grow out of" is insensitive, even if true. Additionally, sometimes advisors do not know how to act when faced with tragedy. When Yoda tells Anakin that death is a natural part of life and should be embraced, I thought of the many platitudes that people use when discussing death — "well, they've gone to a better place," "death can be a blessing," etc. As someone who sat in the hospital room as my mother died from lung cancer, I can attest to the hollowness of such words. Death is the enemy — we should hate it. When people have loved ones who die, and want to sob, Scripture says we are to cry with them (Rom. 12:15). This generation is marked by people desperate for understanding and community. One way or another, they will find it.
Abandoning Dogma
From Obi-Wan's brief hesitation in explaining the death of Luke's father in the original Star Wars, to his denunciation of absolutes (while, I might add, making an absolute statement himself) in Revenge of the Sith, I have been bothered by the loose sense of the truth exhibited by the Jedi. Considered to be teachers, custodians of the Jedi way and the Jedi temple, whenever they are caught in a lie, or in a compromise of their principles, they are quick to say that their explanations or actions are true "from a certain point of view." Anakin is a quick study. He comes to believe that whatever is convenient to move your agenda forward can be justified by identifying it as your point of view. And yet, when there is a final clash between Anakin's point of view and Obi-Wan's, Obi-Wan wastes no time in judgmentally accusing Anakin of being "lost" — as if there actually is a way. When assertions of truth serve convenience, we cannot complain when others find them inconvenient.
The Role of Cautionary Tales
The prequels to the original Star Wars Trilogy are nearly a primer on how to create an environment conducive to loss of faith. And lest this look simply like a "blame the Church" screed, I admit that Anakin's arrogance and pride were the primary factors that led to his fall. Individual rebellion is still the hallmark of those who stray from the path. Nevertheless, those in the Church should be willing to examine themselves to see if they are inadvertently creating a culture hostile to the growth of young believers.
Fictional stories have the tremendous capacity to enable us to look at ourselves by looking at others. But they work only to the extent that we are willing to change. By making our houses of worship inviting to all, by nurturing the gifts of our members, seeking forgiveness when we act inconsistently with our preaching, being sensitive to people who are hurting, and by bravely speaking the truth we can show the world the love of Christ. And in doing so, perhaps even those who have apparently abandoned their faith can turn around, as Anakin eventually does, and see embodied in the Church something to believe in. madima answered on 05/25/05:I've seen Revenge of the Sith. I see it as the usual play on man's dilemna with his shadow side.
If I remember my Star Wars right, Anakin did not turn around, though. He eventually met his end as Darth Vader, just as Obi Wan did (living by the light saber, he died by the light saber).
But I see Death as a great equalizer - as in chess, when the game is over, both pawn and king go into the same box.
Looking at my own brief life, I find the Shadow side seductive. It had always been. But I honor the Shadow, just as I honor the Light. I have always looked at them as two sides of the same coin. I don't demonize the darkness, I simply acknowledge it. And in doing so, I find I can sometimes redeem its hidden power.
Much of man's greatest potential, the deepest wellsprings of his creativity, I observe, still lies with the Shadow. If only he would know how to handle it and if only he wouldn't demonize it so... | | Question/Answer | | Pamela asked on 05/22/05 - Cremation or burial? I would like your views on this, please. madima answered on 05/24/05:I believe cremation is more sanitary. But when it comes to my preference for my own body, I'd really prefer to be "recycled" so that my flesh, which is of no longer of use to me, could feed creatures I love, allowing me to complete the cycle of life.
If I'm not mistaken, I think that in Tibet, some still enact what is called "sky burial" - which is not really a burial - though other cultures only allow this great privilege to warriors. The body of the dead is chopped up in a makeshift platform and thrown to vultures, who feed on the flesh. They believe in this way, the dead "returns" in the energy that fuels a revered raptor.
I think this is a very honorable way to dispose of one's already useless flesh... Being food for the great predators of the sea, like sharks, will be another way. | | Question/Answer | | paraclete asked on 05/21/05 - do it again Lord? Sometimes women are overly suspicious of their husbands. When Adam stayed out very late for a few nights, Eve became upset. "You're running around with other women," she charged. "You're being unreasonable," Adam responded. "You're the only woman on earth." The quarrel continued until Adam fell asleep, only to be awakened by someone poking him in the chest. It was Eve. "What do you think you're doing?" Adam demanded. "Counting your ribs," said Eve.
madima answered on 05/21/05:Thanks, for making me laugh! :=) | | Question/Answer | | STONY asked on 05/21/05 - AN ANGELIC ENCOUNTER FROM MY BROTHER IN PHOENIX.................
Subject: emailing: Love Note from the Lord.wpd
Date: Thu, 19 May 2005 10:19:40 -0700
Love Note from the Lord
I have often described the following scene, in regard to how the Lord likes to encourage us.
"You go on a trip to a place that you have never been to before. You go into a room, and on a table you find a card that is addressed to you. You open it and find a ‘love note’ from the Lord.
It tells you, "I was just thinking about you, and wanted to encourage you." Signed, "love, Jesus."
I believe that I received just such a ‘love note’ from the Lord, during a trip to Arkansas. It happened at the furthest point out or halfway point of a roundtrip from Arizona. It happened at the head-quarters of Endtime Handmaidens, in Engeltal, Arkansas. Engeltal means "valley of angels."
After dinner in the dining hall, they were reading portions of Gwen Shaw’s book about encounters with angels. I was thinking about one of my own that had happened in a dream that I had in 1980. In it an angel told me the following. "Your mother wanted me to tell you that she is proud of you."
This message as related to me by this angel was profoundly significant in two ways. It told me that my mother knew that I was saved the year before, and that she was proud that I decided to serve the Lord Jesus Christ.
The second way was in this choice of words in the message. It seemed to me to be a continuation of the last words that she spoke to me shortly before her death in 1966. That day in her hospital room was miraculous in itself. I believe with all my heart she had made one last prayer request of the Lord. That being that she asked Him to see all the members of our family together one more time.
The chance of the six members of our family being together in one place was rare. It truly was a miracle on that day, when we all converged in her hospital room. Then she spoke to each one of us individually as if to say goodbye to us.
I’ll never forget the words that she said to me. "Steve, you are a good boy." With those few words was so much encouragement, forgiveness, and love. So, all those years later the words as relayed by an angel in a dream, seemed to be related. That it completed a thought or a sentence.
"Steve, you are a good boy, and I am proud of you."
Within a week I had another dream about my mother. This dream started with her seated at a dinner table in a small cabin or house. I noticed her immediately, and she simply said, "Jesus could you pass the gravy, please." Until that moment I hadn’t noticed that He was seated across the table from her.
Then there was another scene in this dream. The Lord Jesus Christ and my mother were standing across from each other beside an open door which looked out across cloud tops. There was a line of people coming up to the door. They had canes, crutches, and wheelchairs. When they arrived at the door, they would be greeted by the Lord. I somehow knew that then was when they would be made completely whole.
How did I know this? Because my own mother was standing there at the door with the Lord.
Because she was healed and made whole again. Because she also had used a cane, crutches, and a wheelchair during her long battle with Multiple Sclerosis. In fact, during her last six months she was totally bedridden.
These thoughts and memories were going on in my mind during this discussion about these encounters with angels. I started to leave the dining room, and noticed a painting on the wall near the door. This had a scene that was virtually identical to my dream about my mother having dinner with Jesus. In this painting, the woman of the house was standing in same place where my mother was seated. And Jesus was standing across from her, in the same place that He was in the dream.
All of this happened on a trip to a place that I’d never been to before. In a room where I believe that I discovered a ‘love note’ from the Lord. What an encouragement! Thank God for His mercy and grace.
P.S: I shared this story on a local Christian TV program. My prayer was that it would give at least one person hope. A woman called because the "mother-son" relationship caught her ear.
She lost her 27 year old son within three weeks due to cancer. This story helped her with her grief about her loss. And that still is my hope for everyone that hears this story, no matter what the circumstance is. Don’t lose hope. Start looking for your ‘love note’ from the Lord. You just may find one waiting for you in the most unexpected place. Or within the pages of your Bible which are full of just such ‘love notes’ from the Lord. In Christ’s love and in His service, Steve
[ISRAEL TOUR 1991]
madima answered on 05/21/05:Thanks, dear Tony, for sharing the story.
Now, it's May 22 in Manila and I celebrate every 22nd of the month as my special Angel's day, to commemorate the first time I saw my guardian angels.
I had countless encounters with God's Holy Angels since then, in both my dreaming and in my waking life. | | Question/Answer | | Choux asked on 05/21/05 - Follow-Up re: Excon's Question How many adults here were approached *when they were children* by an adult intent of molestation or worse? What was the outcome?
A semi-random survey....may be interesting to show the magnitude of the problem of childmolesters in society.
I'll go first. A man tried to get me into his car while I was walking on the sidewalk on Ogden Ave in an upscale suburban neighborhood in about 1951. I immediately became aware of the danger as appaprently my mother had indoctrinated me very well. I ran away as fast as I could. However, I didn't tell my mother. madima answered on 05/21/05:Fortunately, nothing of the sort happened to me.
My parents never let me out of their sight when I was a child. I was fetched to and from school. I was not allowed to play with neighbor's kids and whenever I played with the son of my father's best friend and my cousin, it was always under supervision.
I never went to parties or anywhere unescorted, by one or both parents. My father told me never to talk to strangers or take food from them - not that I had any chance to. I am an only child and papa and mama are full time parents.
But one of my surrogate brothers had been molested by his own sister and a friend was molested as a kid by her own father, who was a respected industrialist. I had known of cases in my own school where kids had been lured, drugged and molested by adult strangers.
All of them bore the emotional and mental scars of the abuse for the rest of their lives. | | Question/Answer | | CeeBee2 asked on 05/20/05 - George Will....................... "The greatest threat to civility--and ultimately to civilization--is an excess of certitude. The world is much menaced just now by people who think that the world and their duties in it are clear and simple. They are certain that they know what--who--created the universe and what this creator wants them to do to make our little speck in the universe perfect, even if extreme measures--even violence--are required.
America is currently awash in an unpleasant surplus of clanging, clashing certitudes....It has been said that the spirit of liberty is the spirit of not being too sure that you are right. One way to immunize ourselves against misplaced certitude is to _____________________________."
What do you think one could/should do to immunize oneself against misplaced certitude, to purge oneself of the feeling that he/she (or the group one belongs to) is the only one who is right? madima answered on 05/20/05:I guess if you are inner-directed rather than "other"-directed, then you can immunize yourself against misplaced certitude, specifically misplaced religious certitude.
If you do not identify yourself so closely with a group, you can afford to be detached from the thinking of that group, you can afford to be more "liberal" because you will not be afraid of rocking the boat and gaining the disapproval of people and authority figures you hold in high esteem.
Without attachment and restrictions, your mind will be more free to question your own beliefs and to tolerate what is alien to you. Of course, exposure to diversified thoughts, cultures and philosophies, also helps.
At least, for me, I'd like to think that worked. | | Question/Answer | | ROLCAM asked on 05/20/05 - Please Join In . Prayer To The Holy Spirit.
Holy Spirit, You make me see everything and show me the way to reach my ideal. You give me the divine gift to forgive and forget the wrong that is done to me. You are in all instances of my life with me. I, in this short dialogue, want to thank You for everything and confirm once more that I never want to be separated from You, no matter how great the material desires may be. I want to be with You and my loved ones in Your perpetual glory. Amen.
ROLCAM.
madima answered on 05/20/05:Dear Roland,
I've always had a devotion to the Holy Spirit and still do to this very day :=)
Thanks for the beautiful prayer :=) | | Question/Answer | | Laura asked on 05/20/05 - Lordy...Give me patience!! What did we do before air conditioning?? Ours went out day before yesturday. Today is supposed to be a record high. It's already 95 degrees. I know that air conditioner guys have alot of people to help but why do I always have to be last in line. Then they'll come, say they don't have the parts and it'll be next week before they can get them!! Ugg! Just griping! LOL don't take me seriously.. :-) I hope everyone has a nice COOL weekend..Me included!! madima answered on 05/20/05:I hope you'll be cooler, dear Laura, as I write this.
It's still the peak of summer here, with temps at 40 degrees Centigrade and I don't turn the aircon because we happen to have one of the highest cost of electricity in Asia (and perhaps in the world, for that matter). Turning on the AC from 6PM to 5AM will cost me around US$100 - which I'd rather spend elsewhere.
My parents never had the comfort of any AC in their home. When it's too hot, they simply open all the windows and cool themselves with a huge palm leaf fan :=)
Fortunately, I have a high tolerance for heat, having lived in a desert country for a year and in a tropical country all my life. When indoors, in my condo, I just turn on the electric fan and go about in my birthday suit :=) | | Question/Answer | | Choux asked on 05/16/05 - News in America "News" in America is either entertainment or propaganda. What a sorry state of affairs!
Where do you go to get your facts? madima answered on 05/17/05:Straight from the horses' mouths :=)
After all, I'm a journalist.
Hence, I can ask tycoons, presidents, CEOs, CFOs, COOs, industry movers and shakers, analysts, traders, investors, stockholders, etc., the kind of questions not even their wives would dare ask - especially if the firms they are involved in are publicly listed.
And I can verify their statements against the minutes of their board meetings, their financial statements, disclosures and other indicators.
But I don't deal with politicos, the military, police, athletes, movie stars and figures outside my beat :=) | | Question/Answer | | sapphire630 asked on 05/16/05 - BRRRRRRR PLEAZ send me all the global warming you can!!!
I am freezing and I just want to go home and blast my furnace....I sure would rather have 90 degrees and sunshine. I have to look at a picture of the sun to remember what it looks like.
Please help! Please send me all the HOT HOT weather! madima answered on 05/17/05:You are welcome to have all our sun down here :=)
I am already sporting a double layer of sunburns - the last from my recent three-day adventure in the El Nido islands.
And now, I'm baking in Manila's temperature, which is hitting 40 degrees Centigrade - the temperature of the desert! Our normal temperature averages 27 degrees and 32 degrees C, maximum in mid-summer. But now, going in my room at night is like entering an oven!
Tonight, I'm taking out my bamboo rainmakers! | | Question/Answer | | CeeBee2 asked on 05/16/05 - Being open-minded. Are dangerous precedents being set? Will Benedictine University lose its identity as Catholic? Should other religious colleges be as open-minded?
(In deference to Chou, I put the most important parts in boldface, but pasted the entire article for context.)
EMPHASIS ON BOTH SCIENTIFIC AND SPIRITUAL PURSUITS MAKES MUSLIM STUDENTS FEEL AT HOME AT CATHOLIC BE
Different faiths, same spirit
By John Biemer
Chicago Tribune staff reporter
Published May 16, 2005
Mohammed Ahmed and Abrar Anwar draw curtains to cover the wooden altar, the pulpit and stained-glass images of St. Benedict and Jesus carrying the cross. Faruk Rahmanovic helps them move plastic chairs to the sides of the room and unroll colorful prayer rugs stashed in a cabinet.
Minutes later, about 50 young men and women drop their backpacks near the bookcase full of hymnals, slip off their sneakers and flip-flops and kneel on the rugs. Bader Almoshelli, a sophomore wearing wire-rim glasses and a blue-striped Polo shirt, stands before them to lead Friday prayers that, in part, beseech Allah to help them through exams.
At most Catholic universities, this would be an unusual sight, but it's an everyday occurrence in the student center chapel at Benedictine University in west suburban Lisle. The school's location, science-heavy curriculum and moral foundation have attracted one of the largest Muslim student bodies of any Catholic university in the nation.
"It's definitely ironic," Almoshelli, 19, of Woodridge, said later, with a laugh. "Muslim prayers in a Christian chapel. I guess it's something you wouldn't have expected 50 years ago."
In a survey of 250 members of this year's freshman class at Benedictine, 13.5 percent of the students identified themselves as Muslim--almost 17 times the national average at Catholic universities and colleges nationwide. The 118-year-old college, which has about 3,000 students, has conducted the survey since 1999, when just 6 percent of the freshmen identified themselves as Muslim.
"The people are very nice and the school is Catholic, but it's very, very accommodating and open-minded. Muslim kids feel very much at home over there," said Inamul Haq, who has taught an introductory course on Islam at the university for the last decade.
Muslim students say they appreciate the steps Benedictine has taken to make them feel more comfortable, including the use of the chapel.
Basketball courts and the swimming pool are set aside at certain hours to allow Muslim women to exercise in modesty. The student center's snack bar, the Eagle's Nest, sells hamburgers and chicken nuggets that are halal, or prepared in accordance with Islamic law.
The school's location partly explains the phenomenon. Asian-American populations in DuPage County have exploded in recent years--growing by 80 percent from 1990 to 2000--and as of 2000 made up almost 8 percent of the county's population, according to the U.S. Census.
Many of those residents are of Pakistani and Indian descent, which helps explain Benedictine's sizable Hindu student population as well--5.5 percent of this year's freshman class. By attending Benedictine, largely a commuter school, students from those families can continue to live at home, a priority in some socially conservative households.
Both students and faculty members point out that many students raised in Indo-Pakistani and Middle Eastern families are drawn to the sciences, particularly those who plan to become doctors, dentists or pharmacists. Benedictine emphasizes preparing students to enter those fields.
But students say they're also comfortable with the moral and theological aspect of Catholic teachings. Aisha Ahmed, 20, marvels at how people from vastly different backgrounds can sometimes arrive at the same conclusions.
"The religions may differ, but I think the essence is the same," she said. "Once they have a religious tradition they hold on to so strongly, they can understand why you feel so strongly about your own religion."
Zeina Abusoud, a Jordanian-born Muslim who is director of residence life, said it's more specific than Catholicism. She ticks off the values of the Benedictine religious order--founded by St. Benedict, the father of Western monasticism--such as hospitality, community, education and an active prayer life.
"All the Benedictine values are easily implemented to other people from other religions, not necessarily just Muslims," Abusoud said.
It's not unusual for non-Catholics to attend Catholic colleges; more than a third of students at Catholic institutions are non-Catholic, according to the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities. For example, at Trinity University in Washington, D.C., most undergraduates are African-American women, who often are not Catholic. On the other end of the spectrum is the University of Notre Dame, where 82 percent of surveyed freshmen this year said they were Catholic.
Fifty-three percent of Benedictine's freshmen are Catholic, according to the school survey.
Michael James, vice president of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities and a former faculty adviser to Muslims at Notre Dame, said Benedictine does not surprise him.
"I think as Muslims increase in their numbers in the United States, they are going to be looking for places where they can be fully American, but be able to practice their faith lives," James said.
Student diversity has enriched classroom learning at Benedictine, said Vincent Gaddis, chairman of the history, philosophy and religious studies department. Preconceived notions and stereotypes are often challenged firsthand, such as the Sikh student who spoke up in a discussion about the sense of community in the United States, saying he has felt discrimination since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks even though he isn't Muslim.
However, Gaddis has concerns about whether the school, in its effort to appeal to people of all faiths, will lose part of its identity as a Catholic institution. Interreligious speakers and activities are important, he said, but they may sometimes substitute for those that promote the Catholic message of Christ's teaching.
"How do you strike the proper balance of being open to all and yet not sacrifice the core of who you are?" he said. "
But Abbot Hugh Anderson, who is in charge of campus ministry at Benedictine, said student body diversity hasn't watered down the school's Catholic identity.
"Personally, I don't think the Muslim students would want that," he said. "They have things they stand for and we have things we stand for. And they respect that, and we respect them."
madima answered on 05/17/05:Personally, I don't think of it as a dangerous precedent. I feel all religious colleges should be open-minded.
I spent the first ten years of my schooling - from grade one to fourth year highschool in a Catholic institution - Sacred Heart College. Non-Catholics were admitted into our school and they were not required to attend Religion subjects.
A Catholic identity is not really important to me. What is important is that the school instills proper values and encourage personal growth - not religious bias.
I'm not even particular where I pray, so perhaps that explains my liberal-mindedness. I've prayed inside a mosque, inside the temples of various Eastern religions. For me, different faiths mean just the same thing - for as long as they nurture the good in humanity. | | Question/Answer | | STONY asked on 05/13/05 - A PRAISE REPORT!!! AT THE END OF FEB. MY DR. TOLD ME THERE WAS A GOOD CHANCE I WAS GOING TO LOSE MY RIGHT KIDNEY. IN MARCH I HAD SOME SURGERY DONE TO REMOVE THE HUGE CHUNK OF TRASH FROM THE KIDNEY. THE HUGE HOLE IN MY BACK HAS FINALLY CLOSED AND HEALED UP AND YESTERDAY I SAW THE DR. FOR A FINAL REPORT ON THE SITUATION. I STILL HAVE SOME STONES IN EACH KIDNEY BUT HE WAS AMAZED THAT THERE WAS NO DAMAGE TO THE KIDNEY ITSELF. HE WAS EXPECTING IT TO DIE ON ME AND HAVE TO BE REMOVED. I WANT TO SINCERELY THANK ALL OF YOU WHO KEPT ME IN YOUR PRAYERS, AS THEY WERE ANSWERED. AFTER HEARING THE DR.'S ANSWER, I TOLD HIM; "DOC, NEVER UNDERESTIMATE THE POWER OF PRAYER!!" madima answered on 05/15/05:I'm very glad to hear the update, dear Tony. God heals. Praise be to Him! :=) | | Question/Answer | | paraclete asked on 05/11/05 - overruling religious foolishness Court orders further transfusion against boy's wishes
By Leonie Lamont
May 12, 2005
A Jehovah's Witness teenager felt "violated, raped" after he was given a life-saving blood transfusion against his and his parents' wishes, the Supreme Court has heard.
The Children's Hospital at Westmead sought the court's approval yesterday to administer a further transfusion today, saying the 16-year-old cancer patient was at imminent risk of a fatal stroke if he did not receive it.
Two weeks ago the court authorised transfusion treatment after hearing the teenager had only a 50:50 chance of surviving the night. The teenager, whom the court ordered be known as "Jay", and his parents, opposed the blood transfusion because it violated their religious beliefs.
Jay's father told Justice Clifford Einstein his son had a strong faith. "Last time when he had the treatment, he doesn't want it, he cried, he feels emotionally depressed," the father said.
"We dearly love our son and want the best for him … Jay is not a baby. He fully understands the position he's in and feels that having blood given to him against his wishes is a violation of conscience. He believes that what is happening is not just a medical matter, he is being stripped of his right to be obedient and faithful to his God."
He said the family appreciated the help of the doctors, but could "never consent" to the transfusion. Jay's mother said her son told her he felt "violated, raped" and that his privacy had been invaded. "It is like a nightmare at home because they have violated him," she said. She detailed how she had sat up half the night comforting her crying son. He had been distressed by a document prepared for yesterday's court hearing, in which one of his doctors said he had the "intellectual age of a much younger teenager".
"He said, 'No matter what I say or do they have no consideration … they treat me as a little child'."
Justice Einstein was concerned that Jay was not represented in court, but Ian Harrison SC, for the hospital, said the urgent need for a transfusion should override that concern. He said Jay had undergone two transfusions, and neither he nor his parents had attempted to stop them. He had responded well, and been released home, but his condition had deteriorated and he required the transfusion today.
Justice Einstein said even though Jay was 16 and his wishes should be given serious consideration, he was still a child and his best interests lay in the treatment proposed by the hospital. "His life ought to be spared. He may well die in the absence of an order," the judge said.
He approved the hospital's application, and ordered a legal tutor be appointed to represent the teenager."
There are some interesting points here to consider, why does the JW family continue to consult doctors if they are prepared for the Lord to take their son?
Does this tell us that we need to be protected from ourselves by the state? madima answered on 05/11/05:With all due respect to the faith of others, if the family does not really want to be forced into receiving a treatment which they feel is a violation of what they believe in, they should never have gone to a hospital.
Of course, in some Western countries, if a child is ill and his parents do not seek medical treatment for him and he dies, they could be liable for negligence... That is not the case here in my country and to my knowledge, in the rest of Southeast Asia.
However, someone who really does not believe in blood transfusion should not put himself in an institution which he knows is likely to carry out the procedure on him.
When a patient allows himself to be admitted into a hospital, he legally "surrenders" to the decision of his doctor and the medical institution.
The hospital that admits him take full responsibility for his life and his health, so it is intrinsic in the arrangement that they will do what they believe is best for him, medically. If they believe a transfusion is best, they will carry it out. If they don't and the patient succumbs, they can be sued for malpractice. Their license could be revoked.
If a patient realizes at any point that he does not want to accept treatment, he can always get out of the hospital even without the release of his doctor. Of course, in that case, he automatically frees his doctor of all responsibility (and liability) in case his ailment worsens or if he dies.
Nobody can force any treatment on a patient - unless of course, the patient was sedated without his knowledge and had his transfusion while he was totally unconscious.
It looks to me like we have a totally confused family in this case. They trust in neither the medical profession nor their faith. | | Question/Answer | | arcura asked on 05/11/05 - If you had the chance to do this, would you? British TV Captures Monastic Life
5 Men Live 40 Days in Benedictine Abbey
LONDON, MAY 11, 2005 (Zenit.org).- A TV series recounting the experience of five men who spend 40 days in a Benedictine Abbey will show England what monastic life can offer the modern person.
A three-part series, the first part airs today on BBC 2, "The Monastery" follows five participants of different backgrounds in a spiritual journey as they experience life according to the 1,500-year-old Rule of St. Benedict.
The series was filmed at Worth Abbey, near Crawley, West Sussex, a community of 22 monks, explained the Catholic Communications Network, of the office of the bishops' conference of England and Wales.
The five participants had a point in common -- the desire to see if life holds any greater meaning. All agreed to abide by the monastery's rules, with a strict timetable of instruction, study, prayer, reflection and routine work duties.
The program was meant to reveal if the lessons learned have the power to transform their everyday lives.
Among the participants is Tony Burke, 29, without faith or religious formation.
Single, he lives in London. He works in advertising, and has lived and partied hard in recent years, but is re-thinking his approach to the world. He hopes going into the monastery will help him to discover what is right and wrong and give him a firm grounding for the next 29 years of his life, explained the promoters.
Gary McCormick, 36, single, is a painter and decorator from Cornwall.
Originally from Belfast, he was involved in the UDA (Ulster Defense Association, a paramilitary group of Northern Ireland) in his youth and got caught up in the troubles during the 90s. He spent much of his early life in prison where he discovered faith but, 12 years on, still carries emotional scars.
He hopes to repair the damage of years spent in prison, learn to deal with the pain of the past, and move on with his life.
Nick Buxton, 37, another single participant, is studying for a Ph.D. in Buddhism at Cambridge University. He has been on a spiritual search for the last 10 years.
Recently he has returned to his Anglican roots, but part of him doesn't believe in what he is doing and he is struggling to make the leap of faith.
Anthony Wright, 32, from London, is a high-earning, high-energy bachelor who works for a legal publishing company. Brought up by his grandmother, he is looking to deal with issues surrounding his upbringing and, for him, the monastery offers a unique opportunity to search for inner peace.
Peter Gruffydd is seeking an answer to the ultimate question: "What is the meaning of life?" Married, a published poet, and a retired teacher living in Bristol, he hopes to gain spiritual guidance while in the monastery, having originally rejected religion in his youth.
Father Christopher Jamison, Abbot of Worth, commented: "We saw in this project an opportunity to discover what our way of life offers to people today who do not share our beliefs."
"We had distinct hopes for the participants and for the viewers," he added, as quoted by the BBC.
"For the participants, we hoped that they would discover hidden depths in their lives and in those hidden depths encounter God," said the abbot.
"This hope was fulfilled to an extent that took us all by surprise and the story of their development is movingly portrayed in the programs," he stated.
"They introduced themselves in the life of the monastery rather rapidly.
Although the rule of silence was difficult at first, the five entered into the rhythm of life rather rapidly.
The first episode of the series was transmitted today by BBC 2. The next episodes will be transmitted May 17 and 24.
ZE05051105 madima answered on 05/11/05:I have done it and I'd like to do it over and over, but not in a monastery.
Now, I will prefer a 40-day or so climb to the peak of Everest, K2 or Kangchenjunga, that will be an incomparable spiritual uplifting for me.
Or 40 days in the Sahara,the Namib, the Kalahari or the Gobi desert... or its equivalent in the Amazon jungle.
From the time I was a child, I often devise my own "retreats" during our two month summer breaks. It was a period where I'm often alone, in pursuit of a creative endeavor - writing, reading or painting. I stay in my room and my parents bring food to me...Well, I happened to be an only child :=)
It's not a period of absolute reclusiveness because I can actually "go out" anytime I please to play with the family pets or to chat with my parents, but it instilled in me the pleasure of solitude.
Solitude was something I instinctively sought from the years of my childhood. I like being alone with my thoughts. I was never lonely in my aloneness.
It was reinforced by the mandatory "retreats" I participated in during my elementary and highschool studies at the Sacred Heart College. These retreats were conducted in the convent and I found them exhilerating.
At present, an urban "monastic" life is always accessible to me and I have taken advantage of it whenever I wanted to :=)
I live alone, in a condo in Manila. So, when all the parties and the coverages are over, when all my local and international trips are done, I can always lock and bolt my door, turn off my cellular phones, pull the plug off the wireline phone, turn off the radio and tv and have a respite from the world in the comforts of my own home :=) | | Question/Answer | | ROLCAM asked on 05/11/05 - FACING REALITY !! We are all a heart beat away from death. Sometimes death comes naturally as a consequence of aging; increasingly often it is the outcome of an event when life is cut off abruptly, tragically.
1) Are you personally afraid from death?
2) As a Christian have you prepared to face it? madima answered on 05/11/05:No, I've never been afraid of death, why should I be? I think of it as a reward, a respite, a part of the natural cycle of things.
I was prepared for death at a very young age. I don't deliberately seek out my death but even if I die now, I won't regret it. I have lived my life to the hilt, every moment of it :=) | | Question/Answer | | paraclete asked on 05/10/05 - Prayer request I am asking for prayer support for my son and in particular, a friend of his.
My son messaged me today asking for prayer, he has friend who has attempted suicide, the second time in two weeks. My son is a theological student and a youth leader and he is taking this hard, as he has been working with this person for a while. Appearently it was he who today called the police in an effort to protect this person from himself.
Please pray that my son will not be depressed by this, he is already depressed regarding his study load and failing to cope with the demands of his course and his church committments. madima answered on 05/11/05:I shall include Cameron and his friend in my prayers. May they find the Light. | | Question/Answer | | ROLCAM asked on 05/10/05 - Do you find solace in Religion ?
The unbearable heaviness of being.
The human psyche has always sought a way to alleviate the sometimes unbearable weight of living. Some seek it and find it in relatively harmless ways like overworking or in religion. Others, who are unable to attain the happy medium of simply soldiering on, resort to artificial means like alcoholism and drug abuse to escape from the disillusions that fill our lives; unable to accept the fact that in life one must struggle and cope with disappointments, problems, loneliness, bereavement, disillusion and, above all, death.
How do you struggle and cope ?
madima answered on 05/11/05:I don't struggle, dear Roland. I face what is given me and acknowledge how blessed my life is, although nothing is perfect.
I find much happiness, peace and joy in my life although I never had enough money. I go where my destiny takes me, off the path or on it, without trepidation.
I have never known loneliness. I don't think I will ever be lonely.
I am not afraid of death, I could never be, after experiencing near death and after seeing my angels.
Life is not an ordeal for me, it is a great journey and the greatest blessing. And I thank God for it. | | Question/Answer | | hOPE12 asked on 05/10/05 - My Goodbye to All! Hello Everyone,
I am leaving Answerway for good. I enjoyed being with everyone on Answerway, however, now I need to spend my time in helping others in person. Between my Autism group and my Ministry, I have hardly anytime for the board. I needed to simplify my life and it was either the time I spend with my ministry, which I would never cut, or the ones I so love who have autism or the board. I decided it is the board that I must take the time from. I hope everyone understands that I have great affection for you all but I must leave for good. I will always remember you guys and hope you continue to show love to all you meet in this world. My best wishes and hopes are with you always.
Sincerely with warm affection and love,
Hope12 (Anna) madima answered on 05/11/05:It was good to know you, Anna. God be with you, wherever you go. | | Question/Answer | | hOPE12 asked on 05/09/05 - Exercise????? Hi,
A lack of sufficient exercise can put us at risk of many serious health problems?
Good and sufficient exercise can help us in many ways:
MENTAL ALERTNESS
BALANCE AND FLEXIBILTY
EMOTIONAL HEALTH
BONE DENSITY
ENERGY LEVEL
These are just some of the benefits.
Lack of exercise can cause":
OBESITY
HIGH BLOOD PRESURE
HEART AILMENTS
NERVEOUSNESS
AXIENTY
BOREDOM
CANCER
MENTAL AND EMOTIONAL STRESS
DIABETES AND MANY OTHER AILMENTS.
Knowing all this, what do you do to get your proper exercise each day? Can this play a part in how you treat others and your spiritual health?
Take care,
Hope12 madima answered on 05/09/05:On top of walking at least four city blocks and climbing up and down the 100 steps to my condo unit everyday, I have aerobics on Monday, yoga on Tuesday and Friday, taebo on Wednesday and Thursday. Weekends, I usually trek or scuba dive.
I haven't been running for sometime now. I used to run 10 kilometers every other day and do additional stair climbing in the 20- story building (which houses my press office) with a loaded backpack on every alternate days... But then this is the peak of the summer season here and I'm often away on travel now, so I can't find the time yet :=)
It's easy to keep your spirit healthy when your body is healthy. Just as it is easy to keep your body fit when your spirit is fit. I guess one can't be separated from the other. They are interdependent :=) | | Question/Answer | | STONY asked on 05/09/05 - PRAYER REQUEST... Could you please put this on your prayer list a friend sent it to me... thanks....blessings...
From: Vicky Field
Subject: My son has been shot in Fallujah.
I wanted to get everyone to pray for my son Chad. Today, Sunday, I got a call from the Army, that my son had been shot in the head. I am asking for all your prayers. He was in a Humvee going through Fallujah fighting and a gang of militia fighters fired on the Humvee and hit Chad in the head. The driver got him out of the city and took him to Baghdad. He was in fatal condition, but now has been upgraded to stable critical. His dad and I are on standby to fly to Washington then on to Germany as soon as the military calls us to go. The Army is trying to stabilize him enough to fly to Germany and at that time, we will leave.
Please pray that my son will not have brain damage and that he will be restored and healed by the blood of Jesus, and the grace of God. I ask for you to pass this prayer request on so there will be many prayer warriors praying for him. Thank you so much and I will keep you updated on his condition.
God Bless, Vicky Field
"Little by Little"
Isaiah 33:2 "O Lord, be gracious unto us; we have waited for thee; be thou their arm every morning; our salvation also in the time of trouble" madima answered on 05/09/05:Dear Tony,
I shall include Chad Field in my prayers. May he be healed. | | Question/Answer | | excon asked on 05/09/05 - One's own body
Hello experts:
"Nobody is going to tell me what to do with my own body."
What's wrong with that statement? What's right with that statement?
excon
madima answered on 05/09/05:Hi, excon, :=)
I feel there's nothing wrong with the statement. It's fact that you can use or misuse. That's all there is to it.
My body is my sole property so I can do with it as I will for as long as I am alive and able.
If I love myself I can pamper my body with every means imaginable for as long as I have the resources - time and money and health - to do so.
On the other hand, if I hate myself, I can mutilate or even destroy my body with vices, drugs and every unhealthy practice I can dream of. I can kill myself - and nobody can restrain me - not parents, kins, friends, romantic partners, not even the law - unless I become extremely dangerous not just to myself but to others, in which case, it becomes a totally different ballgame.
Some people can have a sense of propriety over another's body. Parents can, for as long as their kids are under their roof. Fathers and mothers often view their offsprings' bodies as a sort of an extension of theirs -so they will be concerned when that body becomes obese, too thin, sick or damaged.
Lovers and life partners can feel a "right" to own their husband/wife/lover's bodies, which become "theirs" or one with theirs in the sexual act.
Nevertheless, a husband or lover cannot forbade his partner from aborting her child or having herself sterilized, just as she cannot prevent lover or husband from "giving" his body to other women or from having himself vasectomized.
Of course, when couples are married, the law becomes concerned with what one partner does with his/her body when he/she crosses the line to adultery, concubinage,bigamy, polygamy or polyandry.
In death, specially when death is expected and when the dying is still in command of his/her faculties, nobody can tell another what to do with his/her body either. If a terminally sick person wants to pull the plug and he/she still has the strength to do so, or he/she finds willing accomplices, nobody can prevent him/her from doing so - regardless of whether others believe it is right or wrong.
It's only when you are totally incapacitated (by fear or by drugs in the case of rape, etc. or by sickness)or confirmed clinically dead, that other people can do what they will with your body.
| | Question/Answer | | Liz22 asked on 05/05/05 - Thy kingdom come Been out Gardening most of yesterday, and when I sat down on my swing, and looked at the wonders of the earth, only a God could make such beautiful works. I find myself asking for his Kingdom and seeing the Paradise earth someday.
Jesus told us how we should Pray, do we ask for God for his Kingdom to come as Jesus asked of us?
Mt 6:10 Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth."
I know the Kingdom of heavens have already came about, because Satan was thrown down to earth, but where will this New Earth and this New Kingdom take place? I believe it will be here on this very planet as the Heavens are still where they are.
Do you ask for his Kingdom to come?
Thank you, Joy.
madima answered on 05/05/05:Dear Joy,
Why would I ask for something that for me, has already been bequeathed? :=)
For me, the Kingdom of God is in the heart and in the mind.
The body is His temple.
I already feel that I inhabit His Kingdom everyday.
Nonetheless, we all have free will.
We can choose to be happy or we can choose to be miserable. We can choose to be alienated from what is good within us or we can choose to be at one with the best within ourselves.
In short, we can own or disown the Kingdom that is by right ours. | | Question/Answer | | Choux asked on 05/05/05 - 05-05-05 Today is May 5, 2006. What were you doing on 9-9-99; 8-8-88; 7-7-77; 6-6-66; 5-5-55; 4-4-44; 3-3-33???
I'll go first.
9-9-99 Trying to operate my first PC. :D
8-8-88 Sitting at my desk at the Bank.
7-7-77 Playing golf.
6-6-66 Graduating from Northwestern
5-5-55 The best year of my life!
4-4-44 Potty trained very young.
Anyone else? madima answered on 05/05/05:
6-6-66... Unfortunately, I wasn't born yet :=)
7-7-77 - I was just a child but I was onstage for the first time, little knowing that I will grow up in the theater, that it was to be my school of life. I started my performing career very early.
8-8-88 - I became a dance scholar at MDT, the resident jazz company which would later book me for an overseas tour as a professional dancer.
9-9-99 - I have just started working as an economic journalist in my country’s biggest daily.
5-5-05 - I managed to beat two newspaper deadlines then spent the rest of the night with two very close friends and am looking forward to see a third. I realize, now more than ever, how blessed my life is :=)
| | Question/Answer | | ROLCAM asked on 05/05/05 - Tell us all about it. Have you ever experienced theurgy ? madima answered on 05/05/05:Yes. Prayer and the celebration of the Mass is theurgy as well as processions giving thanks to the harvest and invoking the intercession of saints.
I also have more pantheistic type of theurgy, I guess... consecrating a natural and personal altar in the mountains or in the wilderness, praying for rain and using a rainmaker (which I tried twice and worked!), praying to lift the fog and calm an angry sea. | | Question/Answer | | HANK1 asked on 05/04/05 - IS THIS UTOPIAN?
"When wealth is lost, nothing is lost; when health is lost; something is lost; when character is lost, all is lost, wealth lost can be recovered or re-earned."
"Health lost can also be recouped. But a loss of character can never be made up by any other worldly possession. The richest men of the world are not those who possess millions of gold and silver coins. The richest are those who have a spotless career from beginning to end. It is these that pass a happy and enjoyable life here, and find the doors of heaven open for them when they go here."
Source: The Hindu.com
HANK
madima answered on 05/05/05:Dear Hank,
If you ask me, Utopian simply means perfect :=)
In a perfect world, man should not be concerned with his health because he can never get sick. He should not be concerned with wealth because he never be poor. He should never be concerned with character because he is impeccable and could do no wrong.
Utopia is an ideal :=)
I don't think you can find it in this earth of ours :=)
Of course, that doesn't mean we shouldn't keep on looking :=) | | Question/Answer | | Choux asked on 05/03/05 - Ugly Children Cute Children Today on cable, a story getting a lot of play is from a study from Europe, which found out that parents treated their good-looking children better than their uglier children. The child treated best was a good-looking boy.
Were you a good looking child?
Did your parents treat you well?
Comments? madima answered on 05/03/05:I think I was good looking as a child, if the pics do not lie :=)
At annual class pictorials, the fotogs always put me centerstage. I was always class muse and teacher's favorite. My parents treated me like a queen. But then, I NEVER had any competition. I am an only child :=)
But I had a good friend, the middle child in a family of 8 (he died three years ago). He was the most responsible in his family but not the best looking. His mother died early and he alone of his siblings took care of his sick and aging father. But he was not his dad's favorite because he had a younger brother with matinee idol looks.
The younger brother was a bum who sowed wild oats wherever he could and never finished his schooling. But it was his name who was on the lips of my friend's father when he died.
Ironically, my friend looked almost identical with his dad - dark-skinned with a plain oval face. The younger brother was fair-skinned with the classically handsome face of Orlando Bloom... His father's favoritism broke my friend's heart.
I have seen countless cases of good-looking children preferred over their plain-faced or less attractive siblings. I guess many parents like to identify with their most beautiful progenies.
It's a case of projection and transference. What you hate in others - even when they happen to be your own kids - is what you hate about yourself. If people hate what they perceive to be their own ugliness and can't admit it - they will hate it when they see it staring them in the face in their mirror image.
It's part of the Medusa the Gorgon complex, I think :=) | | Question/Answer | | Choux asked on 05/02/05 - Hobbits Last night on 60 Minutes, there was a segment about humanoids nicknamed "Hobbits". On an island in Indonesia, an Australian anthropologist came across skeletons in a dig in a magnificant cave of human-like beings about three feet tall, but with about 1/3 the brain capacity of human biengs. They went extinct about 18,000 years ago. Human beings and "Hobblits" co-existed.
These Hobbits used tools, may have had a rudimentary form of language, were covered with hair. IN the dig they also found a very small elephant which had been slaughtered and eaten.
How do you feel about these "Hobbits" having lived at the same time as us human beings? What if "Hobbits" were alive today? If you had the power, would you have them killed off? Would you love them?
Comments? madima answered on 05/02/05:As another expert noted, pygmies still exist today. They belong to hunter gatherer tribes and some still cling to their old ways though some have intermarried with "normal"-height folks and gone off into the cities.
I admire and respect the pygmies for their jungle skills. They are masters in the ways of Mother Nature and respect her. I would love to know all of their lore... And they know how to poison their arrows well! :=) | | Question/Answer | | curious98 asked on 05/01/05 - A new biblical plague?
HAMBURG — Hundreds of toads have met a bizarre and sinister end in Germany in recent days, it was reported: they exploded.
According to reports from animal welfare workers and veterinarians as many as a thousand of the amphibians have perished after their bodies swelled to bursting point and their entrails were propelled for up to a meter.
It is like "a science fiction film", according to Werner Smolnik of a nature protection society in the northern city of Hamburg, where the phenomenon of the exploding toad has been observed.
"You see the animals crawling on the ground, swelling and then exploding."
He said the bodies of the toads expanded to three and a half times their normal size.
"I have never seen such a thing," said veterinarian Otto Horst. So bad has the death toll been that the lake in the Altona district of Hamburg has been dubbed "the pond of death."
Access to it has been sealed off and every night a biologist visits it between 2 a.m and 3 a.m., which appears to be peak time for batrachians to go bang.
Explanations include an unknown virus, a fungus that has infected the water, or crows, which in an echo of the Alfred Hitchcock movie "The Birds," attack the toads, literally scaring them to death. (Wire reports
from Int.l Press 5/1/2005)
Are we going to face a new Biblical plague or is it a new terrorist weapon?
Comments?
Curious98
madima answered on 05/02/05:Dear Claude,
I don't really believe in biblical plagues. What I believe in is that Nature has a way of effecting balance which gives neither advantage or disadvantage to any species on earth.
When the population of any one species explode, when resources fall short, when living conditions and environments change, Mother Nature "contains" the numbers in her own way.
When the populations of lemmings become too great, they die off, in what some naturalists believe to be natural suicide - whole populations rush off into the sea in a frenzy. Of course, that could also be attributed to the increase in toxins in the plants they forage on (which could wreak havoc in the lemming's internal system). The plants boost their toxicity so they won't be eaten, of course!
When a species becomes inbred, they become vulnerable to diseases and eventually become instinct.
When human populations explode and living resources fall short, major wars usually result to "contain" the population.
Nature always effects balance both by the process of creation and destruction. That to me, seems to be the way of things.
Of course, there are exceptions to the rule. Man, being the most intelligent apex predator on this planet, often messes around with Nature, toying with the most hazardous biochemical weapons, among other things - with dire consequences to his environment and to himself. | | Question/Answer | | ROLCAM asked on 04/30/05 - Special Series. # 1. Special Series relating to the different departments
of a Christian Person's life:-
1)appearance and personality.
Please comment. madima answered on 05/01/05:I don't think God cares how I look :=)
Well, in my adolescence, I can't go without make-up, sexy clothes and accessories, especially because I was in the theater, performing. I'd expect people to turn their heads when I walk down any street and they always do.
When I became closer to Mother Nature and spent more time with her, I realized how much more comfortable it was to be without paint on my face and without such things as high heels :=)
Now, I still have to follow a dress code as a journalist but I don't really care about external appearances as I used to.
| | Question/Answer | | ROLCAM asked on 04/30/05 - Special Series. # 2.
Special Series relating to the different departments
of a Christian Person's life:-
2. possessions.
Please comment.
madima answered on 05/01/05:I don't need much, really :=)
In fact, I can be released naked in a rainforest (which is ACTUALLY done in some advanced survival courses I've known here) and I will know how to survive indefinitely - although, of course, I would prefer if I have at least a jungle knife. (That will make it easier, though I can always improvise with any sharp rock.)
As for living in the concrete jungle... I just had a backpack of clothes good for a week, a change of shoes and less than half a hundred dollars cash when I first flew out of the nest and went to Manila. I had almost nothing by way of possessions when I started out on my own. I never needed much to be happy :=)
After all, peace and happiness comes for free. | | Question/Answer | | FormerJesusHelper76 asked on 05/01/05 - Gods will? How do you know what is God's will in your life? How do you discover his will? Does he reveal it to you or is there a struggle to find it?
What are your thoughts and personal experiances?
Thank you in advance
FJH madima answered on 05/01/05:All I know is that God gave me free will to live my life the way I want it lived.
He gave me freedom to choose - that's why I'm a human being on this earth and not a perfect spiritual being in heaven at this time. The earth is a place for learning and for mistakes.
I believe that He chose me to be here the same way I also chose to be here. That of course, is not really consistent with Catholic dogma. It could be more consistent with the "spirit-choice-before-it- takes-human-flesh" concept of Hinduism and reincarnation.
If I make wrong life choices, I suffer the consequences, of course. God doesn't have to smite me or anything. Even your body has a way of telling you about your wrong choices. If you are obsessed with some things or yield to excesses, you get sick. But hopefully, I learn with my mistakes.
If I choose what is right by me, I also learn, but it doesn't "guarantee" I don't suffer. For example, if I stand by what I believe to be truth, I can still be persecuted. If I defend what I love at all costs, I can kill or be killed for it. But then, free will always has a price and I'm willing to pay it.
| | Question/Answer | | Pete_Hanysz asked on 05/01/05 - Human Kindness hOPE12 needs funds to update her nz website.
I can, & will do it for no fee.
She will be in complete control.
Just glad to help! madima answered on 05/01/05:I salute you! :=)
I love kindness in people :=) | | Question/Answer | | Choux asked on 04/30/05 - Worrying and Acceptance I'm thinking if we *accept reality*, we cut down on our worrying a whole lot.
Christian-"Thy will be done"
Four Agreements-"Don't take anything personally"
12 Step-"Turn it over to your higher power."
Serenity Prayer-Ask the Lord for the wisdom to know the difference between what we can control and what we cannot control.
The lesson we must learn is that we *WE CAN ONLY CONTROL AND MANAGE OURSELVES*. We must have a realistic understanding that we are of little importance in the world.
What do you think? madima answered on 04/30/05:Dear Mary Sue,
Have you heard about one of the annual rituals of Buddhist monks? :=)
They create this huge, elaborate mandala made of colored sand in their temples. They do it painstakingly and it takes them months and months to fashion the design. Eventually, when it is finished, they put the mandala on public view for a limited time, so it will be appreciated. And then at the end of the lunar year, they blow away the colored sand and begin another mandala.
It is meant to recognize and honor the impermanence of things on this earth.
Now, if we can only accept that all things will come to pass and that we will all die, no matter what we do, perhaps we will appreciate every second of our borrowed life on this planet.
We will make the most of everything by living to the hilt and not worrying about things going wrong or desires not being fulfilled :=) | | Question/Answer | | Choux asked on 04/30/05 - Have Wondered I have always wondered why people like movies and tv shows with gore:: bloody corpses, decapitations, shoot outs(ala The Sopranos), hangings, the more creative the better.
Even in realilty. Sitting around the guillotine in France during the Reign of Terror. Slowing doen and staring at car accidents in hops of "seeing something".
Do you think it is in our genetic make-up? Why? madima answered on 04/30/05:Well... man is a predator. More than anything, he is an apex predator, the most dangerous and destructive of them all.
No matter how civilized we have become, no matter what our culture taught us, no matter how much our religion has sublimated our primal instincts, the predatory urge is in our genes.
Normally, except for those who hunt or those in the minority who belong to hunter-gatherer tribes, or those in the slaughterhouse business, men don't see their food being butchered anymore. But the fascination for blood and gore remains. It has been relegated to the shadow part of the persona but it is there.
One of my friends is now caring for an eagle chick who had been confiscated from poachers. I found it very interesting that the eagle instinctively lunged and pecked on the red ink spots in his box. It seems his brain has been programmed that red - blood and raw meat - is nourishment. I observed the same thing with other raptors.
It must be the same way with people. | | Question/Answer | | ROLCAM asked on 04/30/05 - INSPIRED BY:- revdauphinee !! Is WORRYING a sin ?
ROLCAM. madima answered on 04/30/05:No, but it's a great nuisance for me :=)
Worrying for me is wasted energy.
Besides, I have no reason to worry.
I can't worry about the past. It is done and dead. I can never go back to it.
I can't worry about the present. I'm just too busy living it!
I can't worry about the future because I'm simply too busy with the present!
Besides, God will take care of my future, so why worry?
God has a very good track record and I don't think He'll fail me. He has taken care of me very well in the past and in the present, so the future should be a breeze! :=) | | Question/Answer | | ROLCAM asked on 04/30/05 - QUOTATION !! Grace keeps us from worrying because worry deals with the past, while grace deals with the present and future.
-Joyce Meyer
Do you believe in the state of grace ? madima answered on 04/30/05:Yes, I believe in the state of grace. In fact, I believe I'm always in a state of grace, somehow, despite my shortcomings. I do not know the real reason why and it's an endless source of wonder for me, but that's how I feel and I am thankful to God for it. | | Question/Answer | | hOPE12 asked on 04/30/05 - Is there a difference? Hello Experts,
In your knowledge of the scriptures, is there a difference between:
1) The healing Jesus performed?
2) The healing of the touch of someone we love or the touch of another human?
3) The touch many refer to as the "laying on of hands?"
Take care,
Hope12 madima answered on 04/30/05:Off the bat, I cannot cite the exact passage but if I remember right, Jesus told his disciples that they, as well as other men, are capable of healing as he could - and more.
I had been with a Catholic Church affiliated healing group for a number of years. We had priests in our group and that was the same thing they cited.
In the healing practice, we had been taught that we have the energy of God within ourselves because we are created by God. That "God energy" can be accessed through the highest centers of the body and channeled through our hands.
So, if you believe you have God in you and you are motivated by love, the laying of hands and other positive "energy transfer" modes could have a very powerful effect - and not just on humans. It can also be done on sick pets, wild animals, plants, trees and places. | | Question/Answer | | Saladin asked on 04/30/05 - Deception ...
Deception comes in many forms and has crept into nearly all aspects of modern-day life.
Media reports abound with examples—politicians lying about their actions, accountants and lawyers overstating corporate profits, advertisers misleading consumers, litigants cheating insurance companies, just to name a few.
Then there is religious deception.
The clergy mislead the masses by teaching false doctrines, such as the immortality of the soul, hellfire, and the Trinity.—2 Timothy 4:3, 4.
Should we be surprised by all this deception?
Not really. Regarding “the last days,” the Bible warned: “Wicked men and impostors will advance from bad to worse, misleading and being misled.” (2 Timothy 3:1, 13)
As Christians, we need to be alert to misleading ideas that could turn us away from the truth.
Two questions naturally arise:
Why is deception so prevalent today, and how can we guard against being deceived?
What is your opinions?
How do you personally feel on the matter of deception in the world [...]
Is avoiding a direct question and making denials a form of wicked deception that will prevent the deceiver from entering heaven?
madima answered on 04/30/05:Dear Ronnie,
If you ask me... :=)
Deception has ALWAYS been prevalent. Deception means to mislead, to pretend to be what you are not. But deception is not always manipulating, lying or cheating for its own end.
In the animal kingdom, deception is often a key to survival. The weak and the small prey deceive the strong and the hungry predators so they will not be eaten.
There's one nonpoisonous snake that imitates the look of the venomous coral snake - stripes and all - so predators will leave it alone. Among moths and butterflies, there are those who imitate the look of bad-tasting members of their family to deceive the birds so they will not be eaten.There are caterpillars, worms and other crawlers whose rear ends look like their heads so that when they are pounced on, they can only be slightly damaged and escape with their brains intact. Octopi and squid deceive moray eels and fish who dine on them by camouflage which make them look like part of their surroundings. Deer and tiger, as well as other big cats, deceptively blend with their environment, be it open plains, grassland or tundra, for their own specific ends - so one can't be eaten and so that the other can stalk his food effectively. A perfectly healthy mother grouse pretends to be hurt and drags its wing in front of a fox to lure it away from her brood. Possums and some snakes play dead. The simplest unicellular creatures with no "brains" as we know it, "fake it" to get into the body's defenses.I can go on and on to give you millions of examples.
Even among men, deception has survival value. Sometimes, the vulnerable deceive others to give the impression that they are strong, so they will not be trampled on or be taken advantage of.
Of course, the wise among the strong can also pretend to be weak, that is one of the strategems of Lao Tzu in his "Art of War" :=)
Surely, there are others who deceive to get what they want without really sweating for it - and so you have scam artists.
Deception is not limited to others, however. Many people constantly deceive themselves to be able to go on living :=)
I think deception is and will always be part of our existence in this world. I think God, in His eternal omniscience, understands that perfectly :=)
And for as long as there's someone who is willing to be deceived, there will always be a deceiver :=)
| | Question/Answer | | hOPE12 asked on 04/29/05 - Near death expeience, are the scriptual, are they real? Hello Experts,
What about those who claim to have had near-death experiences? Does that not prove that the spirit or soul leaves the body at death? George Gallup, Jr., U.S. public-opinion pollster, investigated this subject and published the results in Adventures in Immortality. Doctors and scientists who were interviewed were skeptical about the validity of the near-death accounts. Said a Maryland biophysicist: “These are the experiences of a mind in an abnormal state physiologically . . . The brain is a very complex organ and it can play a lot of tricks when you mistreat it—look at the experiences with hallucinogenic drugs.” An Ohio psychiatrist: “These reports are fantasies or hallucinatory phenomena.” A Michigan scientist: “These are trauma-induced fantasies.”
Gallup came to the conclusion that near-death accounts do not “by any means constitute what might be considered proof of immortality or the afterlife.” He adds: “They may be simply dramatic internal scenarios that are played out entirely in the minds of those who undergo physical traumas.” He also suggests that some religious thinkers would explain such experiences as being “part of a demonic strategy to trick human beings.” What Jehovah God said long ago still stands: “The dead know nothing.”—Ecclesiastes 9:5.
What are you comments on the matter of near death experiences, are they real, and are they proof of Immortality of the soul?
Take care,
Hope12 madima answered on 04/29/05:I had a near death experience so I can say that for me, they are real.
By the way, I was not on drugs at the time. I've never touched drugs or any hallucinogenic stuff in my life.
Demonic strategy? No, definitely not. I can't imagine why would such an exhilerating uplifting experience that puts you closer to God be a work of "demons".
I've had what many would label "extrasensory" (and extraordinary)experiences since childhood. For me, that's normal. I thought everybody sees what I see and experience what I experience. | | Question/Answer | | arcura asked on 04/29/05 - Do you like jokes like this for better or worse? The teacher of the earth science class was lecturing on map reading.
After explaining about latitude, longitude, degrees and minutes the teacher asked, "Suppose I asked you to meet me for lunch at 23 degrees, 4 minutes north latitude and 45 degrees, 15 minutes east longitude...?"
After a confused silence, a voice volunteered,
"I guess you'd be eating alone." madima answered on 04/29/05:Good laugh! :=)
But I've always loved orienteering exercises, so if that teacher was with us, I guess she won't be eating alone after all! :=) | | Question/Answer | | ROLCAM asked on 04/27/05 - Prayers Required !! To all Christians.
Angele is a wonderful six year old girl who has always been full of life and love. She has been diagnosed with a brain stem tumor on the 23rd February, 2005 and has gone to through so much since then (including a major operation to remove to pressure building up in the brain). Unfortunately the tumor is inoperable and the only hope we’ve been given is radiotherapy.
We believe that there are things stronger than medicine and are thus are asking you to join us in praying for our little baby girl’s full recovery. As Jesus has said “Truly I say to you, ask and it will be given you, seek and you will find, knock and it will be opened … if you ask anything of the Father in my name, He will give it to you”.
Please join us in asking the Father in Jesus’ name for the full recovery of our beautiful little angel.
Thank you in advance,
Louise and Robert
(Angele’s Parents)
madima answered on 04/29/05:I'm including Angele in my prayers. May God heal this little angel. | | Question/Answer | | bal317 asked on 04/29/05 - Prayer Request Please Hello Dear Experts: I have had yet another death in my family. For the last month, I have been trotting back and forth approx. 80miles 3-4 times a week to the hospital. My cousin who's Mother raised me and my baby brother, and he always treated us as his sister/brother, not an intruder, has died. We had his funeral today. He had a 2nd marriage, children and grandchildren from his first marriage. Shared step children with his second wife.
We were never mention'd in anything, obit. or otherwise. Time came in the Service for anyone who had anything to say please come forward. As I sat there and listen to 2 other's I then went before about 300 people and told our story. I had made a collection of youthful pictures to present of his life, as I had the only photo's from our past. Well, I told our connection and you could hear a pin drop.
Actually, when I was deceiding to go up and speak, I had not seen the Church was packed, standing room only, until I turned to speak did I see so many.
Something came down inside of me, and by the Grace of God what and how I said it, was taken in kind and I got much Blessings for sharing a huge missing piece.
So, as I ask Prayer's for us, I would also like it if any of you have family/friends that you have let slide out of your life. Just because you have not called and thought they might call you. Please do so, and share your past memories. They are very precious.
With the deepest of sincerity, God Bless you All.
Thank you,
bal317 madima answered on 04/29/05:My condolences to you, dear Bal. You and your family are in my prayers. | | Question/Answer | | hOPE12 asked on 04/29/05 - Getting older and yet not giving up. Hello Experts,
There are those of us who are getting older and so I thought, "What can we each offer as a way of keeping our life, active, exciting, and alive as we grow older?
What do you personally do to make your life, exciting and not boring and at the same time give you satisfation of being useful and helpful to others, as well as for yourself?
Take care,
Hope12 madima answered on 04/29/05:Dear Hope,
We all begin to grow old the moment we are born. But only the cells in the body gets old. The soul is timeless, the human spirit is ageless :=)
My parents say they live for me. Many times they admit they are tired of the everyday struggle for survival but they cannot allow themselves to die while they feel I still need them. They cannot "abandon" me.
My parents turned to the Church and to their pets for solace after I left the nest. They hear mass daily and participate in the activities of their prayer group when they can. My father religiously goes to the library after church on weekdays; my mother tends to her garden. And they both tend to a houseful of dogs and cats - on top of their endless daily chores - chopping wood, fetching water, etc. especially after the last super storm wrought havoc on the city's power and water supply.
Ifever I'll live long enough to be really "old", I guess I'll never run out of things to do - stories to write, canvases to paint, adventures to plan. For as long as I have strength left in me, I can tend to an endangered wild animal or work for the preservation of a species.
| | Question/Answer | | hOPE12 asked on 04/29/05 - What does all of this mean for you and your family? Hello Experts,
There is no denying that religious passions today still can move people to hatred, killing and war. Yet alongside this there is evidence of increasing dissatisfaction with religion. Many have a spiritual hunger or a desire to worship but are confused and uncertain about religion. They may be embarrassed to appear religious or they may feel that religion is too confusing for them.
1- Is that how you feel?
Or, perhaps you do consider yourself quite religious. You may care about your religion, being convinced that it is correct. In any case, there is good reason for you to accept an invitation to give some thought to the matter of right religion. The book The Great Religious Leaders made this observation: “When we actually know what religion does for and to the individual, and how a person’s powers are increased by an intelligent understanding and appropriation of religion, life ought to be infinitely more worth living.”
Not only should true religion make ‘life more worth living,’ but we can assure you that the facts prove that it does! But before you agree or disagree with that statement, I invite you to think further about the matter of true religion.
2- Is there just one true religion?
3- If so, how could you identify it?
4- And what can it mean for you?
Take care,
Hope12
madima answered on 04/29/05:1- Is that how you feel?
No, dear Hope. I've never been concerned with what is correct for other people really, but what is right by me. I worship God because I want to and I do it everyday. I know my freedom and my rights and I use them. But I don't classify myself as "religious".
2- Is there just one true religion?
No, I don't think there's one true religion. For me, there's just one credo that I must live by, that is to do what I believe is right. It doesn't matter by what name people call their God or their faith.
In all honesty, I did not choose the religion I grew up in. It is the religion of my parents. I saw nothing bad in it. I was as comfortable in this faith as I could be, but I don't believe in all of its dogmas.
I don't think that my religion makes life worth living. I make my life worth living. That sole responsibility lies with me and no other. If I can't make my own life worth living, then nothing and nobody else can :=) | | Question/Answer | | Laura asked on 04/26/05 - I know that this board is for Q@A about Christianity but..... This is for a Christian sister and her family. Our son is moving back to Oklahoma from New York. He got an honerable discharge from the service and is moving back here. He doesn't have too much choice as job opportunities are here for him. As you may know, he got custody of his kids about a year ago. He and the children have been in continuious counseling since and are now stable and well adjusted.
His ex calls the kids about once every other month and hasen't taken advantage of her opportunities to visit with them at Christmas and spring break. She didn't call our son to tell him that she didn't plan on visiting with them, nor did she call her daughter on her birthday.
About a two weeks ago and after he had already been discharged from the Army, his ex called his commanding officer and told him that she had reliable info that our son was going to go AWOL and run away with the kids to Canada and that he was abusing them. She didn't know he was out of the Army. About a month before that he had recieved a letter from her saying that she knew he was abusing the kids and he turned the letter over to the kids counselor.
Now that he is coming back here, it is obvious that she will no doubt will attempt to cause him and the kids grief. He is getting the kids into continuing couseling just as soon as he gets here and he is debating whether he wants to get DHS involved as they can really be a pain but he wants desperately to protect his kids. They have gone through so much and he doesn't want a repeat of a year ago.
Please put him on your prayer list along with his children and us. We have the tape recorder set up (sad isn't it) and we are sleeping with one eye open. I wish personally that he could move to Siberia to keep his kids safe but he misses his family and our support. He can't do it on his own. Please keep him and his kids in your prayers. God bless. Laura madima answered on 04/27/05:Dear Laura, your son and grandchildren and your family will always be in my prayers. | | Question/Answer | | Choux asked on 04/26/05 - April 26-Hazeldon Meditation I guess everyone understands that 12 Step Programs are based on Christian Principles(and Buddhist, too).
"Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I amy be in, therein to be content"- Helen Keller
"There is wonder in the moment, if we look for it, let it touch us, believe in it. And with the recogition and celebration of the wonder, comes the joy we desire and await.
Being wholly in tune with the present moment is how we come to know the spiritual essence that connects all life. We search for peace, happiness, and contentment outside of ourselves. We need instead to discover it within us, now and always, in whatever we are experiencing".
Do you live in the moment?
Are you spontaneous?
Any comments you want to make? madima answered on 04/27/05:I've always felt at home in the darkness and in the silence - just as I feel at home in the light and in the racket of the city :=)
But I seek silence when I want to hear my own heart speak, when I want to listen to my own thoughts.
I seek darkness when I want to find enlightenment. Only in the darkness can one see light.
Yes, I live in the moment. No use mulling about the past which you cannot relive, or bothering about a future you may never get to see.
I don't like making life plans, short-term, medium-term or long-term, because I feel that will make me inflexible. I won't be agile enough to take the exciting, unexpected opportunities on the way. And THAT will be a great tragedy, indeed! :=)
| | Question/Answer | | hOPE12 asked on 04/25/05 - Knowledge, just how much is too much? Hello,
A couple sitting on the beach in West Africa were watching the silvery moon above. "How much does man know about the moon, and how much is there to know?" the husband stated.
His wife responded: "Imagine that we could observe the earth driffting byy like this, how much knowledge is there already on earth, and how much more there is to learn? And just think! not only is the earth rotating around the sun but our whole solar system is in motion. This means that we will probably never again be here at this eaxact point in the universe. In fact, we know our p9resent location only in relation to familiar heavenly bodies. We posses so much knowledge about some things, but in a sense, we don't even know where we are?"
We today are able to comunicate information almost beyond our comprehensions. Rotary presses run at incredible speeds, turning out newspapers, magazines, and books. For someone using the Internet, endless amaounts of information are just a click away. In these and many other ways, dissemination of information is increasing faster than anyone can assimilate it. The sheer quantity of it, forces us to be selective.
1_ Why should we be selective in taking in this knowledge?
2- Can some knowledge be beyond our personal capacity of understanding?
John 17:3 States: "This means everlasting life their taking in knowledge of you, the only true God, and of the one whom you sent forth, Jesus Christ."
3-Is taking in knowledge of God and Christ beyond our capcity?
4- Whill the day ever come when we know everthing?
5- How can taking in knowledge about something become a danger to us?
6- Why can Bible knowledge become pleasurable to us?
7- What kind of knowledge will benefit us for all eternity?
Take care,
Hope12
madima answered on 04/25/05:1-_ Why should we be selective in taking in this knowledge?
We have only a limited time on earth, so we must "prioritize" what we need to know in proportion with what little time we have. The average human life span now is 70 to 80 years. You can only learn so much in less than a century.
2- Can some knowledge be beyond our personal capacity of understanding?
Sure, the true nature of God is part of the "Unknowable".
3-Is taking in knowledge of God and Christ beyond our capcity?
The human capacity really has no limits if you can access the "superconscious" mind as well as the collective unconscious.
But most of us would only know what we want to know of God and Christ because that is all we need to know.
4- Will the day ever come when we know everything?
If we can have eternal life on earth, in our human bodies and mind, then will that be possible.
5- How can taking in knowledge about something become a danger to us?
Knowledge is power. If you use power to destroy or corrupt others, you become a danger to yourself and your fellowmen.
6- Why can Bible knowledge become pleasurable to us?
It is pleasurable to have a peek into the Unknowable.
7- What kind of knowledge will benefit us for all eternity?
To be honest, eternity does not really concern me right now when I'm still in a survival mode. What concerns me is today, this precise moment.
For me, the knowledge that benefits me most is the knowledge about my Self because it is with myself that I live with 24 hours of the day, every day :=)
| | Question/Answer | | hOPE12 asked on 04/25/05 - How would you keep your Christian attitude? Hello Everyone,
If a person has an employer who yells, curses, and keep doing this all day long, how would you personally handle such a person? He dosn't yell at anyone in particular but is constantly yelling all day long. What can a person do to deal better with this type of behavior and still keep their Christian personality?
Take care,
Hope12 madima answered on 04/25/05:For me, it's simple. Either desensitize and be functionally deaf to all that racket or find another job.
Personally, I will opt for the latter.
I don't think there's any sense confining myself all-day long with a person whose behavior I cannot tolerate. | | Question/Answer | | Choux asked on 04/25/05 - Meditation "In the 16th Century one has only to consider the difficulties involved in feeding a baby if the mother's mild ran dry." - Philippe Aires
"Scietific progress has brought our society to the point where such a natural disaster as a milkless mother need have no consquences for her or her infant. Clean water, sewage disposal, immunization, and a widely availabe varied diet ensures relatively good health for millions. Sometimes it tempts us to look at the past as if it were another planet or the history of another species.
People had the same feelings four hundred years ago as we have today. Life was brutally hard; no families expected that all the chirdren born would survive to maturity; people were old at 35 and often dead at 45. But they loved, feared, raged, and sought spiritual peace as we do.
Imagining myself into the difficulties of the past can broaden my sympathies for the prsent."
Hazeldon 12 SAtep Meditation Book April 25th.
Do you Romanticize the past?
Do you scorn the advances of science?
Any comments? madima answered on 04/25/05:The past is dead and I live for the moment :=)
But as an actress, I had the privilege of living in the past in personifying the characters I played onstage...wearing hoopskirts and varied costumes of centuries gone, getting into the minds of their heroines :=)
I don't think the past was that bad, given my capabilities in the present. I mean, I won't mind living without television, electric stoves, electric lights, etc. I won't mind drinking from a stream, hunting for my food or walking for miles and miles, having to do without a car.
But I don't scorn the advance of science. I think its greatest inventions were the PC and the cellphone! :=) | | Question/Answer | | Choux asked on 04/25/05 - BELIEF...How Much is Too Much Hope's question about knowledge a few questions down prompted me into thinking, "How much belief is too much belief?"
I don't think that too much knowlege is possible; we learn as much as we are able and willing.
BUT, too much faith/belief??????
Comments? madima answered on 04/25/05:Remember Gautama Buddha? :=)
He discovered that the best way is the middle way.
Too much of everything is not really good.
I don't think too much knowledge is possible either. The more you learn, the more you realize how little you know.
A lifetime is NEVER enough to learn all that we need to know :=)
Still... that should not keep us from trying :=) | | Question/Answer | | HANK1 asked on 04/25/05 - OSCAR WILDE:
"Anything worth knowing can't be taught in a classroom."
Comments?
HANK
madima answered on 04/25/05:Academic knowledge is surely different from common sense and wisdom gained from life.
My Theater Arts degree was not what made me a professional actress. Books and teachers cannot really tutor any performer on the craft of emotional recall, recreation of emotions onstage or the skill of holding an audience.
My journalism degree did not teach me how to be a journalist. It gave me the basics of writing for publications but it did not teach me what it takes to get the loyalty of news sources, how to make them risk their necks to give me the information I wanted.
| | Question/Answer | | ROLCAM asked on 04/23/05 - Do you wish you were Gerry ? Subject: Baseball
Two ninety year old men, Gerry and Sam, have been friends all their lives.
It seems that Sam is dying of cancer, and Gerry comes to visit him every day.
"Sam," says Gerry, "You know how we have both loved baseball all our lives, and how we played minor league ball together for so many years. Sam, you have to do me one favor. When you get to Heaven, and I know you will go to Heaven, somehow you've got to let me know if there's baseball in Heaven."
Sam looks up at Gerry from his death bed, and says, "Gerry, you've been my best friend many years. This favor, if it is at all possible, I'll do for you."
And shortly after that, Sam passes on.
It is midnight a couple of nights later. Gerry is sound asleep when he is awakened by a blinding flash of white light and a voice calls out to him, "Gerry.... Gerry...."
"Who is it?" says Gerry sitting up suddenly. "Who is it?"
"Gerry, it's me, Sam."
"Come on. You're not Sam. Sam just died"
"I'm telling you," insists the voice. "It's me, Sam!"
"Sam? Is that you? Where are you?"
"I'm in heaven," says Sam, "and I've got to tell you, I've got really good news and a little bad news."
"So, tell me the good news first," says Gerry.
"The good news," says Sam "is that there is baseball in heaven. Better yet, all our old buddies who've gone before us are there. Better yet, we're all young men again. Better yet, it's always spring time and it never rains or snows. And best of all, we can play baseball all we want, and we never get tired.
"Really?" says Gerry, "That is fantastic, wonderful beyond my wildest dreams! But, what's the bad news?"
"You're pitching next Tuesday". madima answered on 04/23/05:Thanks! For making me laugh! :=)
I won't be interested in a baseball game in heaven though...
I think I'll be more interested in a big cat sanctuary there :=) | | Question/Answer | | paraclete asked on 04/23/05 - never trust a Muslim Veiled threat an insult to all
By Miranda Devine
April 24, 2005
The Sun-Herald
Muslim cleric: women incite men's lust with 'satanic dress'
At Bankstown Town Hall last month, just three kilometres from the scene of one of the most horrific of the gang rapes of 2000, a young and popular Lebanese Muslim sheik told a packed audience that rape victims have "no one to blame but themselves".
These are the words of Sheik Faiz Mohamad, 34, to more than 1000 people squeezed into the hall on March 18, as recorded digitally by a concerned citizen.
"A victim of rape every minute somewhere in the world. Why? No one to blame but herself. She displayed her beauty to the entire world. She degraded herself by being an object of sexual desire and thus becoming vulnerable to man who looks at her for gratification of his sexual urge."
There was much more about women's responsibilities and the sins of the "kaffir" (infidel) that night from the charismatic former boxer and Liverpool Global Islamic Youth Centre teacher. But there was nothing about the responsibility of men to exercise self-restraint, even though most of the audience was male.
Sheik Faiz declined requests on Friday to be interviewed, so we don't know if he is aware of the implications of what he said. But in a community still reeling from the spate of racially motivated gang rapes by Lebanese Muslim males from Bankstown and surrounds, it was extraordinarily impolitic.
"Strapless, backless, sleeveless, nothing but satanic skirts, slit skirts, translucent blouses, miniskirts, tight jeans," he shouted into the microphone. "All this to tease man and appeal to his carnal nature."
Mostly he appealed to Muslim women to wear the hijab (head covering), which, incidentally, has become fashionable on global catwalks since France banned it in public schools last year.
Born in Sydney of Lebanese parents, Faiz embraced Islam at 19 and spent several years studying in Saudi Arabia. On the one hand, he numbers among his friends and students such positive role models as Bulldogs league star Hazem El Masri and boxing champion Anthony Mundine, testament to the clean-living discipline of Islam.
On the other hand, the centre at which he teaches has attracted controversy over the actions of two former students. Supermarket shelf-stacker Zaky Mallah, 21, was last week sentenced to two years' jail for threatening to kill Commonwealth officials and Muslim convert Jack Roche, 51, was convicted last year of plotting to blow up the Israeli embassy in Canberra.
Many in Sydney's Lebanese Muslim community reject Faiz's comments but are reluctant to speak on the record.
"Islam teaches that a woman could walk in front of you naked and you are supposed to be strong enough to say no," said one Muslim leader. "It is a test of your faith."
Faiz could be a good influence on young people, "if he calms down and gets rid of his anger . . . and understood the impact of his words. It's not what he would do [that's a problem]. It's what he says; he colours the minds of young people."
A non-Muslim who lives in Auburn and attended Faiz's lecture said: "My biggest concern is that the Muslims who come to our country and just want to mind their own business, get a job, have a family and a home life with freedom, are progressively being pressured by their own community leaders to conform. The mould [they] are being pressed into is not good for them and not good for Australian society."
Faiz's view that unveiled women invite rape does Muslims a disservice by promoting an image which is repugnant to the majority of his fellow citizens. After all, when a judge feels so strongly that he would stand in front of a group of strangers, as one did in recent weeks, and make the comment that Lebanese Muslim men are a "cancer", you know the community has an image problem which Faiz isn't helping.
Faiz may not care but his words are a slap in the face to the brave young woman, known to the courts as Miss C, who was raped 25 times by 14 men over six hours outside the Bankstown Trotting Club and elsewhere in 2000.
At worst, his words sanction the kind of contempt for non-Muslim women that led those gang rapists to regard 18-year-old Miss C, dressed in her best suit for a job interview, sitting on a train reading The Great Gatsby, as an "Aussie pig" and slut.
"I looked in his eyes. I had never seen such indifference," Miss C testified."
and they wonder why we don't trust them? madima answered on 04/23/05:I don't think rape has anything to do with one's faith or with the clothes a woman wears.
Women in chador as well as nuns in full habit had been raped. Men of all sorts of religion, from Muslims to Christians, had been convicted of rape.
As I've stated in an earlier response, rape is not an issue of sex or "uncontrollable libido", it is an issue of power.
Rapists seek to dominate and humiliate via the ultimate violation of a woman's body. Rapists have extremely low self-esteem and perverted minds.
A woman can cover herself from head to foot and still be sensual - and sexual.
Here in the Far East, one of the "most sexy" traditional women's costume is the Japanese kimono. It covers the entire body but allows a peek into the erogenous area of the woman's nape.
In fact, I don't find mini skirts, backless dresses, spaghetti straps and tight-fitting jeans "sexy" at all because they leave nothing to the imagination. They do not tittilate the senses.
| | Question/Answer | | Saladin asked on 04/23/05 - Men are so weak-willed
Men cannot help but act on their primal instrinct to knock a woman down, rip off her clothes, and then rape her if she is wearing somehting thaty allows men to be tittilated?
That any one who calls himself a Christian should actually think like this is cause to lock them up and castrate them.
Step forward you dogs.
I have a blunt hacksaw and am ready to strengthen your morality by removing your instrument of accomplishment.
I guess Jesus was dead wrong when he taught that a man could control his sinful urges, and god was just as bad for forbidding what men can not help but do?
You have to feel sorry for the poor fools.
I know I should, but I find this particular kind of arrogant stupidity nauseating.
Do you feel sorry for these rapists who wold be good but can't control their id-driven urges, or will you hold them down while I improve their behaviour?
Eh?
Answers from any female but only moral males, welcomed.
Ronnie
madima answered on 04/23/05:Rape is not really about sex but about power, dear Ronnie.
Rapists are mostly men with very low self-esteem who feel a sick need to humiliate and dominate women whom they perceive to be vulnerable and helpless.
It's not about uncontrollable libido at all. The sex urge can always be controlled.
Rape is a crime that happens not just with complete strangers but with boyfriends, ex-boyfriends, husbands and with brothers, fathers, cousins, uncles and grandfathers in the case of incestuous rape.
Here in my country, rape is still punishable by death. A few years ago, they put a father who raped his daughter in the electric chair and fried him. I never felt sorry for him. | | Question/Answer | | revdauphinee asked on 04/22/05 - been gone! i have been of line for a few days due to computer problems .almost went through withdrawal not being able to access answerway! madima answered on 04/23/05:Welcome back, Dorothy. I hope Gracie is feeling better too. | | Question/Answer | | Choux asked on 04/22/05 - Daily Meditation From a non-denominational 12 Step Program meditation book I have come across; opened to this page:
"It is only when there is nothing but praise that life loses its charm, and I begin to wonder what I should do about it."
"We lose our appreciation for joyful times when they become a matter of course. Compliments lose their delicious quality with overuse. Balance in all things offers the greatest satisfaction.
It's not likely that we realize the full value of variety in our lives. Probably we long for easy times, the absence of struggle, and certainty regarding outcomes. Were life to treat us in such a manner, we'd soon lose our zest for the day ahead. The sense of accomplishment that we hunger for is nestled within the day's rough ripples.
Our experience in this life is purposeful, which means there are matters we'll be asked to attend to. Not every involvement will provide pleasure. Some, in fact, will inflict pain, but we'll discover elements that will enhance our self-awareness. Through this knowledge we'll find lasting fulfilllment.
"*Today* will be a mixture of joy, boredom, perhaps both pain and sorrow. Each element will give me reason for growth".
What do you think of this meditation for your stage in life, ie, senior citizen, middle aged, youth???
Is there anything of specific value here in your opinion? madima answered on 04/23/05:Well... my life, then and now, has always been like a pendulum, swinging on both extremes, and I've been used to it :=)
There's never been any routine. I hate routines. But I learned very early that I can always find peace in the midst of chaos -or chaos in the midst of peace - whenever I WANT to. It all depends on what I want to find at any given moment. In my life, I am the absolute master.
Today, this very moment, is always a surprise.But there is never a dull moment :=)
In the end, I believe I'm responsible for everything that happened, is happening and will happen in my life - both good and bad.
Things happened, are happening and will happen because I made them happen. I needed them to happen because I need to gain a lesson from them. I need to learn :=)
| | Question/Answer | | freethinker asked on 04/22/05 - Greetings from Turkey Greetings from Turkey.
No question.
Just a hello to all!
This is a times internet connection.
Ciao soon!
madima answered on 04/22/05:I've always equated Turkey with "oryantal" or belly dancing :=)
I wanted to go there just to see THAT. I heard Turkish men are equally good at the moves as the women.
Have a great time! :=)
| | Question/Answer | | Mathatmacoat asked on 04/22/05 - In the interests of fostering better international understanding Basic Guide To Aussie Life
1. The bigger the hat, the smaller the farm.
2. The shorter the nickname, the more they like you.
3. Whether it's the opening of Parliament, or the launch of a new art gallery , there is no Australian event that cannot be improved by a sausage sizzle.
4. If the guy next to you is swearing like a wharfie he's probably a media billionaire. Or on the other hand, he may be a wharfie.
5. There is no food that cannot be improved by the application of tomato sauce.
6. On the beach, all Australians hide their keys and wallets by placing them inside their sandshoes. No thief has ever worked this out.
7. Industrial design knows of no article more useful than the plastic milk crate.
8. All our best heroes are losers.
9. The alpha male in any group is he who takes the barbecue tongs from the hands of the host and blithely begins turning the snags.
10. It's not summer until the steering wheel is too hot to hold.
11. A thong is not a piece of scanty swimwear, as in America, but a fine example of Australian footwear. A group of sheilas wearing black rubber thongs may not be as exciting as you had hoped.
12. It is proper to refer to your best friend as "a total bastard". By contrast, your worst enemy is "a bit of a bastard".
13. Historians believe the widespread use of the word "mate" can be traced to the harsh conditions on the Australian frontier in the 1890s, and the development of a code of mutual aid, or "mateship". Alternatively, Australians may just be really hopeless with names.
14. The wise man chooses a partner who is attractive not only to himself, but to the mosquitoes.
15. If it can't be fixed with pantyhose and fencing wire, it's not worth fixing.
16. The most popular and widely praised family in any street is the one that has the swimming pool.
17. It's considered better to be down on your luck than up yourself.
18. The phrase "we've got a great lifestyle" means everyone in the family drinks too much.
19. If invited to a party, you should take cheap red wine and then spend all night drinking the host's beer. (Don't worry, he'll have catered for it).
20. If there's any sort of free event or party within a hundred kilometres, you'd be a mug not to go.
21. The phrase "a simple picnic" is not known. You should take everything you own. If you don't need to make three trips back to the car, you're not trying.
22. Unless ethnic or a Pom, you are not permitted to sit down in your front yard, or on your front porch. Pottering about, gardening or leaning on the fence is acceptable. Just don't sit. That's what backyards are for.
23. The tarred road always ends just after the house of the local mayor.
24. On picnics, the Esky is always too small, creating a food versus grog battle that can only ever be solved by leaving the food behind. madima answered on 04/22/05:Well, thanks for the pointers, Mathatmacoat :=)
I've always dreamed of going to Australia, but what interests me most in that great continent is the people of the dreaming.
I want to visit Uluru, see and hear a real digiredoo being played. The wild creatures there fascinate me too, not just the koalas and the wallabies and the roos, but also the funnel web spiders and the brown snakes...
But most of all, I'll love to free dive with your white pointers at Neptune Islands and explore the Great Barrier Reef to my heart's content :=) | | Question/Answer | | CeeBee2 asked on 04/21/05 - Why Do We Feel So Bad When We Have It So Good? Today's standard of living that you and I share is better than almost all the men and women of history. (The U.S. and EU middle class or above lives better than 99.4 percent of the human beings who have ever existed and better than most of the royalty in history.)
We have easy access to a huge variety of foods at affordable prices. (We used to buy fresh only when fruits or vegetables were "in season" or harvested from our gardens.)
Our average lifespan has almost doubled since the beginning of the 20th century (77 years compared to 41).
Deadly diseases such as polio, smallpox, measles, and rickets have been defeated. Even croup could be fatal.
Our houses are more than double the size of the past generation, plus we have forced-air heat (not a coal or wood stove/furnace) and ac that was unheard of by our grandparents.
Most of us have health insurance.
The "jet set", a term that once described people of rare affluence, now describes 200 million Americans who regularly travel by land, air, and water.
Crime is down, our environment is cleaner, we are more educated, and we experience greater equality. In real dollars almost everything costs less today than it did during the 1950s, health care is light-years better, three times as many people now make it to college, communication is nearly instantaneous, and no one thinks twice when women and blacks go to the polls to vote.
(paraphased from http://www.theocentric.com/theoarchives/000298.html)
I remember the 1940s and 1950s with great affection, but if you had a choice, would you really prefer to live back then instead of now? madima answered on 04/21/05:I wasn't born yet in the 40's and 50's, but I've often heard my parents talk about these times and they do not remember them with joy.
This was an era of rebuilding after the war, the buying power of our currency was more than 50 times than it was now, inflation has not reached that high, there was not so much traffic because there were few car owners and little infrastructure, life was less complicated but it was much more difficult, they said.
Although I have the ability to live very simply without the trappings of modernity, though I can live alone for long periods of time in the midst of a wilderness with just a backpack of the basics, I can't really imagine a life without the internet and the cellular phone - gadgets of the 90's and the new millenium :=) | | Question/Answer | | Choux asked on 04/21/05 - Re-Doing my Apartment This isn't an easy project, cheer me on, please! I am going to get rid of at least half my books and I find I'm on dead center...inertia...and, get rid of my wedding pictures and some stuff just collecting dust....it is difficult.
My friend Doris helped me with the heavy work, she took many of my clothes and donated them, and other stuff like furniture, she kept what she wanted and donated the rest.
Soon, I hope, I will have a lovely simple but beautiful in a (minimalistic way) living space, just the basics, easy to clean, keep the cat hair and dander at bay. Even poor Nick has allergies!! :):):)
I gotta get this done!! I hate living in a messy pit.
Cheer me on!! Old lady in need of cheery encouragement!!
madima answered on 04/21/05:Take heart, you can do it! :=)
I've started my great house cleaning project last year and it's not half way over yet!!!
Hopefully, I can get the Salesian sisters to cart away five cartons of books and clothing, etc. by next week!
I've re-done my condo unit five times in nine years! Everytime I think I'm done, I realize I've not even begun! :=) | | Question/Answer | | Choux asked on 04/21/05 - Heavens On Earth What are your ideas about what is "heaven on earth"? Those glorious times?
Meditating/praying and being connected to your higher power?
Living on a body of water in a quaint cottage and a neighborhood full of wonderful people?
Sharing small moments with a good friend?
Living near the forest and being acquainted with the plants and animals nearby?
What is you special "heaven"? madima answered on 04/21/05:The truth is, my special "heaven" is that quiet place of bliss within myself that I can find anytime, anywhere :=)
I can find it in the flurry of my deadlines and in the chaos of the city, in the gymn that smells of sweat and in the crowded buses stuck in traffic. I can find it in my garden, in the mountains, in the canyons, in the caves, in the forests and in the seas :=) | | Question/Answer | | Saladin asked on 04/20/05 - Okay, Christians ..... (and Paraclete)
.... did you ever call your mother's husband by any title that indicated in any degree that you owned him as your father?
Father
Dad
Daddy
Poppa
Papa
Pop
Pops
whatever?
Did you offend God when you did so?
madima answered on 04/20/05:
Dear Ronnie,
I call him "papa" or "pa" and rarely refer to him in my second language as "tatay" or "ama".
I don't think I offend God when I call him so. He IS my father on this earth. I'm just calling him by the name I'm supposed to call him with :=)
In our culture, parents are regarded as God's representatives on earth.
I refer to God as my heavenly Lord and Father because that's what He is :=)
| | Question/Answer | | Saladin asked on 04/19/05 - Benedict ... more trivia ...
Benedict n. a newly married man who has been a confirmed bachelor. [ an alteration of Benedick, the bachelor who marries Beatrice in Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing (1598?)]
Saint Benedict, A.D. 480?–543?, was an Italian monk who founded the Benedictine order.
Benedict XIV, (Prospero Lambertini) 1675–1758, Italian ecclesiastic who served as pope from 1740–58.
Benedict XV, (Giacomo della Chiesa) 1854–1922, Italian ecclesiastic who served as pope from 1914–22.
Eggs Benedict n. toasted halves of English muffin, each covered with a slice of ham and a poached egg and topped with hollandaise sauce.
Benedictinge, n. a monk of St. Benedict's order
Benedictine n.
1.
a. a member of an order of monks founded at Monte Cassino by St. Benedict about A.D. 530.
b. a member of any congregation of nuns following the rule of St. Benedict.
2.
a French liqueur orig. made by Benedictine monks. —adj.
3.
of or pertaining to St. Benedict or the Benedictines.
Benediction n.
1. an utterance of good wishes.
2. the invocation of a blessing, esp. the short blessing at the close of a religious service.
3. (usu. cap.) a Roman or Anglo-Catholic service that includes a blessing of the congregation with the Host in the monstrance.
4. something that imparts a benefit or improvement.
[1400–50; late ME (< MF) < L benedictio]
:)
Ronnie - no question this time, but I wish a blessing on all Catholics
madima answered on 04/19/05:Thanks so much, Ronnie :=)
God bless you as well :=)
St. Benedict is one of my favorite saints. He is also a favorite saint of my parents. I always invoke his intercession for protection. His prayer of exorcism - in Latin - was among the first prayers I learned as a child :=) | | Question/Answer | | CeeBee2 asked on 04/18/05 - karma - 1) do you believe that karma operates in your life? 2) If your answer to 1) is yes, please give an example of karma at work in your life. madima answered on 04/19/05:The principle of karma is simply universal justice, you reap what you sow.
I feed stray animals. In turn, I have never been hungry, even when I run out of money. Somebody always feeds me, somehow.
I never hurt wild creatures, I never take from Nature what I don't need. In turn, when I go into the wilderness, in the mountains and in the seas, Nature never hurts me. | | Question/Answer | | kindj asked on 04/18/05 - By the way... ....I was wondering:
How rich do I have to be before I can be "eccentric" instead of "crazy?"
DK madima answered on 04/18/05:You have to be worth at least a billion US dollars :=) | | Question/Answer | | Saladin asked on 04/18/05 - Life's Less Important Questions ... ...
I planted some bird seed. A bird came up. Now I don't know what to feed it.
I had amnesia once -- maybe twice.
Photons have mass? I didn't even know they were Catholic.
All I ask is a chance to prove money can't make me happy.
I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous.
What is a "free" gift? Aren't all gifts free?
They told me I was gullible.... and I believed them.
Two can live as cheaply as one, for half as long.
What if there were no hypothetical questions?
One nice thing about egotists... they don't talk about other people.
A flashlight is a case for holding dead batteries.
What was the greatest thing before sliced bread?
I used to be indecisive. Now I'm not sure.
The high cost of living hasn't affected its popularity.
Is there another word for synonym?
The speed of time is one second per second.
Show me a man with both feet firmly on the ground, and I'll show you a man who can't get his pants off.
What's another word for thesaurus?
Is Marx's tomb a communist plot?
Is it my imagination, or do buffalo wings taste like chicken.
'ey, up, lads an' lasses, cop for these!
R
madima answered on 04/18/05:Indeed, "The high cost of living hasn't affected its popularity."
Love that!
Thanks for making my day, dear Ronnie!!!! :=) | | Question/Answer | | hOPE12 asked on 04/15/05 - A Real tough Question: Hello Experts,
Now here a good question for you guys. If after getting married a husband or a wife become slow mentally and does not have the mature understanding to make family choices, can he still remain the head of his household? Does God's laws expect a wife to be in subjection even though a man's ability to make choices is mentally impaired? Please give your answer from the Bible. Thank you
Take care,
Hope12 madima answered on 04/15/05:Pardon me, dear Hope, but while I'm a Christian and I respect the Bible, I will not go to the Bible for answers on a question which I believe, should best be decided by common sense.
If one's husband becomes mentally ill after marriage and makes crazy decisions that will endanger his life or the lives of his family, there's no question about allowing him to remain the head of the household.
This is not a question of God's law, this is already a question of personal survival and endangerment of human life.
If a mentally deranged husband decides to kill his wife and his kids because in his crazed perception they have displeased God and only their blood can atone for their sins, should he be allowed to do so? | | Question/Answer | | hOPE12 asked on 04/15/05 - Hypothetical question? Hello Everyone,
How would you balance your choice if you had to choose between your child and your mate?
Another words suppose someone said that if you to choose your child's life or your mates life. Which loved one would be let go? Could you choose? What thoughts would enter your mind as you must choose between the two most loved ones in your life?
Now lets take it even further. What if you had to choose your worship to God or your loved ones life? Could you choose? What would you base your choice on?
I bring this up because throughout history many have had to make that choice. Some world rulers have killed those who have choose to worship God. Some children where even killed in front of the parent because they choose to serve God, when given that choice.
Once again, what would your choice be???
Take care,
Hope12 madima answered on 04/15/05:So, I'll give my honest hypothetical answer on your hypothetical question based on my personal code of morality :=)
I'll choose my mate over my child because I can always produce another child.
But then, I can say that because I have not known what it is to be married and I never had kids and don't like the idea of having any.
I like playing with other people's kids but I don't think I can spare 9 months of my life getting pregnant and invest at least 21 of my best years in caring for one the way my parents did to me. My parents took very good care of me and if I can't do that to my child, I don't think it will be fair to have any.
Of course, my parents would choose differently. Papa told me more than twice that if it comes down to the ultimate choice, he would choose me over mama. Mama told me she would choose me over papa.
As for the other choice... I have no ambition to be a saint or a martyr and gone are the coliseum days when Christians are fed to lions. So heaven forbid, on the one billion to one chance that a religious terrorist or a crazy man holds a gun to my parents before me (and I was caught unarmed and unable to shoot him before he could do any harm) and makes me choose publicly between them and God, I will choose my parents.
In my culture, one's parents are God's representatives on earth, so I personally believe that choosing them is equivalent to choosing God. Others, the terrorist or the crazy man included, may not understand the choice but God will. | | Question/Answer | | revdauphinee asked on 04/15/05 - Urgent Prayer request please offer up prayer for my 2yr old great grandaughter who has just been diagnosed with menengitis and is hospitalised.Thank you in advance!
Dorothy madima answered on 04/15/05:I'll include her in my prayers, dear Dorothy. | | Question/Answer | | Mathatmacoat asked on 04/13/05 - Earthquakes and Volcanos Have you noticed what is happening in Indonesia? First earthquakes and now an active volcano springs to life near the last earthquake. Do you think God might be trying to get someone's attention? madima answered on 04/13/05:If you ask me…What’s happening in our neighboring Indonesia is a “normal” working of Nature.
Indonesia, like my country, is within the Pacific Ring of Fire, a real “volcano belt”, and the floor of the Pacific Ocean is crisscrossed with major earthquake faults. The volcanoes and the earthquake faults have always been there.
Personally, I’ve never believed that volcanoes erupt and that earthquakes, tsunamis and all sorts of catastrophes happen because “God is angry.” I don’t think He needs to get my attention – or anybody’s -by making the great ocean come inside my house, or open up the earth I walk on or pelt me with fire from the volcano’s mouth.
Life and death, destruction and creation are parts of the cycle of nature. They are the natural order of things. When the tectonic plates of the earth move – as they have been doing for billions of years, continents drift closer or farther apart, they “divorce” and reconnect, they change their configurations so that old species can die and new ones can be born.
Change is a natural phenomenon in the life of men, on the earth he lives on, in the galaxy and in the entire universe. Change can be destructive or creative but it happens because it is meant to happen.
A super volcano currently sleeps in Sumatra, inside Lake Toba. It last erupted 73,000 years ago in an event so massive that it altered the entire world's climate. It has a big eruption every 2,000 years, and it last erupted about 2,000 years ago. Another eruption is due soon and the latest seismological stresses along the Indonesian fault could hasten that eruption.
Other super volcanoes are found in Italy, South America, the United States and New Zealand -- where Mount Taupo could be ready for eruption.
But have you yourself seen a volcano erupting? I have personally known a lot of volcanoes. I climbed Mt. Pinatubo a couple of years back. Its latest eruption, in 1991, was the third largest eruption of the century, releasing gas that circled the globe in three weeks and jacked up the entire global climate by at least one degree Centigrade for years. Now we go to the sulfuric lake that sprang from its caldera because the waters heal many ailments.
I often go to Taal Volcano, the world’s smallest active volcano but my favorite is Mt. Mayon, the most beautiful volcano on earth. One Christmas eve, when I was vacationing in Legaspi, the city sprawled at her base, I went out to watch Mayon spew fire from her perfect cone and I thought I have never seen anything so powerful, so beautiful and so deadly.
But no, I don’t think God is trying to get my attention by rousing Mt. Mayon’s fires. This beauty has killed thousands of people caught unawares in her latest major eruption, but she has also fertilized the earth. She has watered and fed the countless who had returned to her bosom after her wrath has subsided.
| | Question/Answer | | STONY asked on 04/13/05 - THOUGHT YA'LL MIGHT ENJOY THESE...
Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 05:18:50 -0700
Subject: Old Farmers' Advice
Old Farmers' Advice:
Your fences need to be horse-high, pig-tight and bull-strong.
Life ain't about how fast you run or how high you climb, but
how well you bounce.
Keep porcupines, skunks, bankers and lawyers at a distance.
Life is simpler if you plow around the stump.
A bumble bee is considerably faster than a John Deere tractor.
Words that soak into your ears are whispered...not yelled.
Meanness don't just happen overnight.
Forgive your enemies. It messes up their heads.
Don’t corner anything meaner’n you.
It don't take a very big person to carry a grudge.
You can’t un-say a cruel word.
Every path has a few puddles.
When you wallow with pigs, expect to get dirty.
The best sermons are lived, not preached.
Most of the stuff people worry about ain't never gonna
happen anyway.
Try not to judge folks by their relatives.
Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer – or, never
Miss a good opportunity to shut up.
Live a good, honorable life. Then when you get older and
think back, you can enjoy it a second time.
Timing has a lot to do with the outcome of a rain dance.
The easiest way to eat crow is while it's still warm, 'cause
the colder it gets, the harder it is to swaller.
If you find yourself in a hole, first thing to do is
stop diggin'.
It don't take a genius to spot a goat in a flock of sheep.
Sometimes you get, and sometimes you get got.
The biggest troublemaker you'll probably ever have to deal
with watches you shave his face in the mirror every mornin'.
Always drink upstream from the herd.
Good judgment comes from experience. Most a that comes
from bad judgment.
Lettin' the cat outta the bag is a whole lot easier than
puttin' it back in.
If you get to thinkin' you're a person of some influence, try
orderin' somebody else's dog around.
madima answered on 04/13/05:Love them! Thanks, Tony! :=)
But wait... :=)
Your fences need to be horse-high, pig-tight and bull-strong.
How come I can always climb them? :=)
Life ain't about how fast you run or how high you climb, but
how well you bounce.
I love trampolines! :=)
Keep porcupines, skunks, bankers and lawyers at a distance.
I have actually cornered and stroked a huge wild porcupine in the forest of Palawan! I stroked him in the direction of his quills of course! He's such a nice guy and did not protest! But our native species, unlike the North American ones, do not "throw" their quills.
I heard skunks make good pets - once you have de-activated their stink glands! :=)
I deal with bankers and lawyers EVERYDAY on my job - as news sources! But anyway, I NEVER give them my money, so it must be safe :=)
Life is simpler if you plow around the stump.
But be careful of wayward roots!:=)
Don’t corner anything meaner’n you.
Well, I did and got away with it! Meaner and six times bigger too! :=)
Every path has a few puddles.
I love playing in them, anyway.
The best sermons are lived, not preached.
Amen.
If you find yourself in a hole, first thing to do is stop diggin'.
Yes...I start rapelling...
It don't take a genius to spot a goat in a flock of sheep.
Not when he's wearing sheep's clothing.
Always drink upstream from the herd.
A VERY sage advice! Don't know how many times I've followed that :=)
Lettin' the cat outta the bag is a whole lot easier than puttin' it back in.
Not if you let him know there's a goodie for him inside :=)
If you get to thinkin' you're a person of some influence, try orderin' somebody else's dog around.
Oh, then I must be a person of GREAT influence! :=)
| | Question/Answer | | hOPE12 asked on 04/13/05 - Do you count your days? Hello Everyone,
Psalm 90:12 says: "Show us just how to count our days in such a way that we may bring a heart of wisdom in."
Should we personally count our day also and how can we do this?
Take care,
Hope12 madima answered on 04/13/05:I have only Today. Yesterday is dead and Tomorrow is something I may never see. I don't count my days. I live for the moment. That's all I have :=) | | Question/Answer | | hOPE12 asked on 04/13/05 - Bought with a price. Hello,
At 1 Corinthians 6:20 we read: "You were bought with a price. By all means glorify God."
What does this mean?
Thanks,
Hope12 madima answered on 04/13/05:In the religious context, the Christian context in particular, it will pertain to the sacrifice of the Son of God for the redemption of men.
And so it should be honored as a blessed gift.
In my personal context, it means my life was bought with my mother's pain at childbirth - at risk to her own life, when she brought me into the world.
It was bought with her and my father's sacrifice and love in my formative years, in protecting me and in teaching me to find my way, my own meaning and my fulfillment.
And so I live my life to the hilt. I see to it that it shall not be lived in vain.
And I mean to repay my debt. | | Question/Answer | | bluevision asked on 04/12/05 - Speculation All of you think that Christians shouldn't gamble. What about speculation then? Do you think it's alright for Christians to speculate in stocks & shares? I understand that some Christians don't buy shares because it is a form of gambling to them. madima answered on 04/12/05:Depends on what you mean by "gambling" :=)
Gambling in its true essence means "to take a chance", "take a risk". Living life on this earth is basically taking a gamble.
I gamble with my life everytime I go out on an adventure or in a dangerous dive, every time I go after sharks or cobras. I gamble with my neck everytime I play with a tiger. I gamble with my heart everytime I love :=)
One time I had a windfall, I made bets on the local stock market and hauled in reasonable profits. I don't think there's anything wrong with it. It's not speculation. It IS "educated" gambling to me - knowing when to go for it and knowing when to stop.
No matter how much you study the movement of the market and the issues themselves, any stockmart player worth his salt knows that money invested this way is money you can afford to lose, in the first place.
I don't think anyone in his right mind will put his entire life savings in the eternally volatile stockmart. Not even the best players can know precisely when the share price will hit the highest (so he can sell) or when it will hit the lowest (so he can buy)- unless he does insider trading.
I don't like gambling in casinos because I know that the odds are heavily stacked against me (though I did gamble twice on "complementary chips" given by the casino owners in the course of my press coverages and didn't lose).
I have only gambled in the stockmarket, mostly with blue chips and IPOs, when I know that I have at least 80 per cent chances of winning and only with disposable money. Perhaps that's why I have never lost.
I only gamble to win! :=)
| | Question/Answer | | Laura asked on 04/12/05 - I'll live!! Got the results of my tests today. I have something called Hashimoto's Thyroiditis. I go back to the doctor on Thursday to talk about medication. Thanks to all who kept me in their thoughts and prayers. God bless all of you. Laura
P.S. If any of ya'all have thyroid problems and want to give me advice you are welcome to. I've heard it can really be a roller coaster ride until they get the meds just right. madima answered on 04/12/05:That's great news, dear Laura! :=)
Mama had thyroid problems. She went under the knife because of it and had to be careful with her diet afterwards. Just abide by what your doctors tell you.
You'll always be in my prayers. | | Question/Answer | | Saladin asked on 04/11/05 - Could this happen to you?
COWBOY JAKE AND THE UNFAMILIAR VOICE IN HEAVEN
Jake, the rancher went one day,
To fix a distant fence.
The wind was cold and gusty,
And the clouds rolled gray and dense.
As he pounded the last staple in,
Gathered his tools to go,
The temperature had fallen,
Wind and snow began to blow.
When he reached his pickup,
He had a heavy heart.
From the sound of the ignition,
He knew it wouldn't start!
So Jake did just what we would do,
If only we'd been there.
He humbly bowed his balding head,
And sent aloft a prayer.
He turned the key just one more time,
Then softly cursed his luck.
They found him three days later,
Frozen stiff in his old truck.
Now Jake had been around in life,
And done his share of roaming.
But when he got to Heaven,
Well, it looked just like Wyoming !
Of all the saints in Heaven,
His favourite was one was Peter.
(Now, this line isn't needed,
But it helps with rhyme and metre!)
They sat and talked a while or two,
Or maybe it was three,
But nobody was keeping score,
For, in Heaven, time is free.
"I've always heard," Jake said to Pete,
"That God will answer prayer,
But the one time that I asked for help,
Well, HE just plain wasn't there."
"Does God answer the prayers of some,
And ignore the prayers of others?
That don't seem exactly square,
Seeing that all men are brothers."
"Or does he randomly reply,
Without good rhyme or reason?
Or maybe, it's the time of day,
The weather, or the season."
"Now I ain't trying to act smart,
It's just the way I feel.
And I was wondering, could you explain,
Just what the heck's the deal?!"
Peter had listened patiently,
And when old Jake was done,
He gave a smile of recognition,
Then he said, "So, you're the one!!"
"That day when your truck wouldn't start
And you sent your prayer aflying,
You gave us all a real bad time,
With hundreds of us all trying."
"A thousand angels rushed
To check the status of your file.
But you know, Jake,
We hadn't heard from you in quite a while."
"And though all prayers are answered,
And God ain't got no quota,
He didn't recognize your voice,
So he started a truck in North Dakota!"
========================
Could this happen to you, or does God know your voice well enough to find you?
(No bragging, please!)
:)
Ronnie
madima answered on 04/11/05:Dear Ronnie,
I always say my prayers... sometimes I whisper it, sometimes I sing it, sometimes I walk it, sometimes I dance it :=)
So far, He has never turned a deaf ear to me :=)
Well... I never shout and I'm not really a demanding child. I don't make requests to Him often. I was born presuming that like my birth father on earth, my Father in Heaven should know what I require. But in the rare times that I made some polite requests, 99 per cent were granted :=)
As for the one per cent balance... He did not give me what I wished for but He gave me something better. Much, much better! :=) | | Question/Answer | | powderpuff asked on 04/09/05 - another polygamy question If polygamy was permitted and even encouraged (once upon a long time ago), and even approved by God, for what ever reason, (the reason does not really matter), would it be true that men can love more than one woman at a time? Or do you think the capacity for man to love more than one woman at a time went away once the reason for polygamy was gone? madima answered on 04/09/05:Dearest Sharlene,
I believe that men are capable of loving more than one woman at a time - just as women are capable of loving more than one man at a time.
This is so because ideally, no single man and no single woman can provide his/her partner with all that one requires in a mate. One cannot have EVERYTHING. One cannot be perfect. So, whatever is lacking in one, you can always find in another.
But I think polygamy was practiced more out of the need for genetic and economic expansion as well as protection.
If a man has more wives, he can have more children. If he can produce more children, not only can he can disseminate his genes more extensively with more heirs, he can also produce more laborers to increase the family wealth and produce more sons to serve as soldiers to protect his properties and his country.
Polygamy was also believed to solve major social problems, such as illegal sex and prostitution. When a man has a harem, he does not need to keep a mistress or solicit for sex on the streets.
However, even among those who still practice polygamy today, the Muslims, specifically, it is required that the man possess the financial ability to support his wives before he can add them to his family.
I have lived in Dubai, a Muslim emirate, and I have many Muslim brothers living in the South of our country. My Muslim male friends told me that they are allowed to have as much as seven wives if they can prove they are financially capable of supporting them.
As the Qur'an states: "but if ye fear that ye shall not be able to deal justly (with them), then only one...(4:3)"
Even so, a man who will bring in the second to the seventh wife in his home MUST get the approval of his first wife before he can do so. The subsequent marriages must not disrupt the existing family unit.
Surprisingly, despite their freedom to enter into polygamous unions, my male Muslim friends profess they chose not to, even though they are financially capable of doing so. They are afraid it will make life very complicated.
But then, they are "modern" men, mostly educated in the West, and they have adopted Western ways and values :=)
| | Question/Answer | | cliff_dweller asked on 04/09/05 - God in real life Do you think that God is present in your life? How does He make Himself real to you? madima answered on 04/09/05:Yes, I feel God is always present in my life. Without God-consciousness in me, I can never create or be creative. I see my God everywhere and feel Him everywhere. He is in everything and in the great nothing. | | Question/Answer | | arcura asked on 04/08/05 - For your information.................................. Check out this beautiful site.
http://www.wtv-zone.com/Mary/forsakenroots.html madima answered on 04/09/05:Thanks! I just did! :=)
It was very enlightening - to say the least :=) | | Question/Answer | | Laura asked on 04/08/05 - Medical problem. I went to the doctor the other day because I have been feeling just generally bad. I was beginning to think I was just a big hypochondriac because I have so many weird symptoms. The doctor found a lump in the area of my thyroid and did some blood tests.
He called today and said that I am hypothyroid and that the lump needs to be investigated further. I have an ultrasound sceduled for Monday. Please keep me in your thoughts. I'm nervous about all this and alittle scared. Thanks ahead of time. Laura madima answered on 04/08/05:I'm praying for your healing, dear Laura.
Don't worry. | | Question/Answer | | arcura asked on 04/08/05 - Does your denomination embrace the Aposltle's Creed? If so what are the words you say?
Here is what the Catholics say.
The Apostle's Creed
I believe in God the Father Almighty, Creator of
Heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ,
His only Son, our Lord Who was conceived by
the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered
under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.
He descended into Hell; the third day He
arose again from the dead; He ascended into
Heaven and is seated at the right hand of God
the Father Almighty, from thence He shall come
to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the Holy Catholic Church, the Communion
of Saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection
of the body, and life everlasting. Amen.
Thanks for your answers on this,
Fred madima answered on 04/08/05:Thank you, dear Fred :=) | | Question/Answer | | Saladin asked on 04/08/05 - Humour ... ... ...
Can you give instances (book, chapter, and verse(s)) of humour in the Bible?
:)
Ronnie
madima answered on 04/08/05:Dear Ronnie,
Pardon my irreverent mind... but you asked for humor... Well, this is MY idea of wicked humor... (Anyway, I'm seeing my father confessor next week, so...) :=)
What about thinking of Proverbs 1:12 (King James version) as an advice for eating oysters?
"Let us swallow them up alive as the grave; and whole, as those that go down into the pit."
Or.... recalling Isaiah 57:4 when French kissing? :=)
"Against whom do ye sport yourselves? against whom make ye a wide mouth, [and] draw out the tongue? "
| | Question/Answer | | arcura asked on 04/08/05 - Does your denomination embrace the Aposltle's Creed? If so what are the words you say?
Here is what the Catholics say.
The Apostle's Creed
I believe in God the Father Almighty, Creator of
Heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ,
His only Son, our Lord Who was conceived by
the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered
under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.
He descended into Hell; the third day He
arose again from the dead; He ascended into
Heaven and is seated at the right hand of God
the Father Almighty, from thence He shall come
to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the Holy Catholic Church, the Communion
of Saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection
of the body, and life everlasting. Amen.
Thanks for your answers on this,
Fred madima answered on 04/08/05:I do, being a Catholic.
In fact, I say it everyday because I pray the Holy Rosary everyday. | | Question/Answer | | tomder55 asked on 04/08/05 - A Story about John Paul II During the summer of 1942, two women in Krakow, Poland, were denounced as Jews, taken to the city's prison, held there for a few months and then sent to the Belzec extermination camp, where, in October, they were killed in primitive Nazi gas chambers by carbon monoxide from diesel engines.
Their names were Frimeta Gelband and Salomea Zierer; they were sisters. As it happens, Frimeta was my wife's grandmother. Salomea, known as "Salla," had two daughters, one of whom survived the war and one of whom did not.
The elder of these daughters was Edith Zierer. In January 1945, at 13, she emerged from a Nazi labor camp in Czestochowa, Poland, a waif on the verge of death. Separated from her family, unaware that her mother had been killed by the Germans, she could scarcely walk.
But walk she did, to a train station, where she climbed onto a coal wagon. The train moved slowly, the wind cut through her. When the cold became too much to bear, she got off the train at a village called Jendzejuw. In a corner of the station, she sat. Nobody looked at her, a girl in the striped and numbered uniform of a prisoner, late in a terrible war. Unable to move, Edith waited.
Death was approaching, but a young man approached first, "very good looking," as she recalled, and vigorous. He wore a long robe and appeared to the girl to be a priest. "Why are you here?" he asked. "What are you doing?"
Edith said she was trying to get to Krakow to find her parents.
The man disappeared. He came back with a cup of tea. Edith drank. He said he could help her get to Krakow. Again, the mysterious benefactor went away, returning with bread and cheese.
They talked about the advancing Soviet army. Edith said she believed her parents and younger sister, Judith, were alive.
"Try to stand," the man said. Edith tried - and failed. The man carried her to another village, where he put her in the cattle car of a train bound for Krakow. Another family was there. The man got in beside Edith, covered her with his cloak, and set about making a small fire.
His name, he told Edith, was Karol Wojtyla.
Although she took him for a priest, he was still a seminarian who would not be ordained until the following year. Another 33 years would pass before he would become Pope John Paul II and embark on a papacy that would help break the religion of communism and so transform the world.
I do not know what moved this young seminarian to save the life of a lost Jewish girl. I do know that his was an act of humanity made as the two great dehumanizing forces of the 20th century, the twin totalitarianisms of fascism and communism, bore down on his nation, Poland.
Here were two people alone in a ravaged land, a 24-year-old Catholic and a 13-year-old Jew. The future pope had already lost his family - mother, father and brother. Edith, although she did not know it yet, had already lost her mother at Belzec, her father at Majdanek, and her little sister at Auschwitz. They could not have been more alone.
We are alone. All of us. The great opiates of the 20th century - communist and fascist ideology - promised to subsume the individual into the collective glory of a beckoning utopia, but they delivered only new and more terrible forms of suffering.
In his early, and very personal, observation and absorption of this suffering lie the roots of the late pope's core belief: the inalienable value and sanctity of each human life.
This belief carried Pope John Paul II to convictions that some found old-fashioned or rigid. But in an indulgent age of moral pliancy, why seek to be indulged by the pope, of all people? He offered his truth with the same simplicity and directness he showed in proffering tea and bread and shelter from cold to an abandoned Jewish girl in 1945, when nobody was watching.
It was a truth based on the belief that, as he once put it, "a degradation, indeed a pulverization, of the fundamental uniqueness of each human being" had lain at the root of the repetitive mass murder of the 20th century.
The power of that truth answered forever Stalin's contemptuous question - "How many divisions has the pope?" - as John Paul II, starting with his 1979 visit, undid Stalin's iron legacy in Poland and so opened the way for the unification of Europe a decade later.
This was not his achievement alone, by any means, but in an inalienable way it was his. I do not believe the strength that enabled him to do this and the strength that led him to save Edith Zierer differed in any fundamental way. Like his healing ecumenism, these acts required the courage born in a core certitude.
Edith fled from Karol Wojtyla when they arrived at Krakow in 1945. The family on the train - also Jews - had warned her that he might take her off to "the cloisters." She recalls him calling out "Edyta, Edyta," - the Polish form of her name - as she hid behind large containers of milk.
But hiding was not forgetting. She wrote his name in a diary, her savior, and when, in 1978, she read in a copy of Paris Match that he had become pope, she broke into tears. By then, Edith Zierer was in Haifa, Israel, where she now lives.
Successive letters to him went unanswered. But at last, in 1997, she received a letter from the Vatican in which the pope recalled their meeting. A year later, they met again at the Vatican.
Edith thanked the pope for saving her. He put one hand on her head, another hand in hers, and blessed her. As they parted, he said, "Come back, my child."
By Roger Cohen International Herald Tribune
Wednesday, April 6, 2005
.................................................
More than half a century later, near the end of his life, Wotjyla's Last Will would pass over his world-historical role in the destruction of Communism, as if it never happened, to return to memories of family and friends.
As the end of my life approaches I return with my memory to the beginning, to my parents, to my brother, to the sister (I never knew because she died before my birth), to the parish in Wadowice, where I was baptized, to that city I love, to my peers, friends from elementary school, high school and the university, up to the time of the occupation when I was a worker, and then in the parish of Niegowic, then St. Florian's in Krakow, to the pastoral ministry of academics, to the milieu of ... to all milieux ... to Krakow and to Rome ... to the people who were entrusted to me in a special way by the Lord.
madima answered on 04/08/05:Thanks for the great story, tomder55 :=)
I was just talking to one of my compatriots who had personally met Pope John Paul II last night. He is one of our most famous paranormal authors here, Jaime "Jimmy" Licauco.
Jimmy met the Pope in the late 80's, one of the privileged handful who had an audience with him. When the Pope learned Jimmy was Filipino, he turned to him immediately. He had a special place for the Philippines in his heart, he said. Jimmy gave him a copy of his book on Filipino psychic healers. Significantly, the Pope believes in the healing powers of the mind.
Jimmy, who is himself very sensitive to auras and psychic energies, said he felt almost "staggered" by the Pope's powerful personal energy. It was incredibly strong.
I wish I had met the Pope - I mean, I wish I had a personal audience with him. He has visited Manila twice in his lifetime.
But perhaps, God willing, I will meet his successor - in Vatican, when I make my pilgrimage there.
It's one of the to-do lists in my lifetime :=) | | Question/Answer | | Choux asked on 04/08/05 - Finger in Chili a Hoax? Investigators now think that the finger in the cup of Wendy's Chili was a hoax perpetrated by the woman who bit into the finger. They think that she got the finger from a dead relative, put it into the chili in order to get a large settlement. The relative may be exhumed. madima answered on 04/08/05:I just hope the police finds out the truth behind this matter.
From the first time I read it, I was reminded of the true story of a psychopath restaurant worker in Macau who butchered a family of eight and disposed of their bodies by baking them into the steamed buns that he served at the restaurant.
I was in Macau last year and our bus passed by the actual restaurant where it happened. Our guide pointed it out to us. The place was already padlocked but I had goose pimples even before it came to view.
The grisly murders happened about ten years ago and had been adapted into at least two movies - "The Untold Story", which was made in HongKong, and another horror movie, made in the Philippines.
By the way, our Macanese guide told us that the psychopath murderer is still languishing in China's prison to this very day.
I just hope that what happened at Wendy's is nothing similar to this.
| | Question/Answer | | ROLCAM asked on 04/07/05 - RITUAL ?? What is the most common religious ritual? madima answered on 04/08/05:Prayer will be the most common private religious ritual. On the other hand, the celebration of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass will one of the most common public religious ritual. | | Question/Answer | | STONY asked on 04/07/05 - FOR YA'LL FLA. RESIDENTS.... YOU NO LONGER NEED TO QUIVER IN FEAR OF CRIMINALS OR CARJACKERS IN OUR STATE. YESTERDAY THE GOV. SIGNED INTO LAW THE RIGHT TO FIGHT BACK WITH FORCE AND IT GOES INTO EFFECT ON OCT.1, 2005. WHAT IT BASICALLY SAYS IS THIS, BREAK INTO MY HOUSE AND YOU CAN LEAVE WITH THIRTY SLUGS YOU DID NOT BRING WITH YOU WHEN YOU ENTERED. ATTEMPT TO JACK MY CAR AND YOU WILL GET A FREE RIDE IN THE AMBULANCE AS THEY CART YOUR BODY AWAY
BECAUSE THIS CITIZEN IS ARMED AND DANGEROUS. I REMEMBER THE COCAINE COWBOYS OF THE 80'S AND THE LAW IS NOT ON THE SIDE OF THE CRIMINAL ANYMORE. IT AIN'T FREE REIGN ON FLORIDIANS ANYMORE. CRIMINALS TAKE NOTICE
BECAUSE AN OLD TEXAS SAYING IS COMING TO PASS HERE IN THIS STATE, "IF YOU [MESS] WITH THE BULL YOU GET THE HORNS ALSO." JUST SLIGHTLY CLEANED UP. madima answered on 04/08/05:Well, dear Tony, that kind of law has its advantages as well as disadvantages. It IS very hard to keep your head cool when you have a gun in your hands, that I have known from personal experience.
There was a time when I was a neophyte journalist that I went out with a folding knife tucked in my jeans and a .45 in my bag. I was covering trade and industry, wrote an expose which antagonized some big time smugglers and received death threats. I was living alone and the newspaper owners cannot provide security for me, so I decided to provide security for myself.
What I noticed was I became very aggressive -and I happened to be a woman. My tolerance level plummeted incredibly fast (which was very unusual), even with just accidental intrusion on my physical, private space. My fingers itched to pull the trigger.
When provoked, even accidentally or for petty reasons, I found I would instantly and instinctively reach for the gun. It took immense control on my part not to pull it and fire. | | Question/Answer | | Saladin asked on 04/07/05 - - or - Is Seeing Believing?
If you think your senses are trustworthy, this will shock you:
http://www.michaelbach.de/ot/mot_mib/index.html
madima answered on 04/08/05:Dear Ronnie,
I never used the default buttons...how come I can still see ALL of the dots all of the time? :=)
Do you know that one of my favorite "exercises" is to walk with my eyes closed in wild trails when I'm alone in the mountains and in the forests? Sometimes I do it in the daytime, sometimes I do it at night, with darkness so thick, I don't have to close my eyes to feel blind :=)
I have never fallen off a precipice just yet, never had been scratched by thorny plants, never stepped on a cobra or had my toes stubbed on rocks :=) | | Question/Answer | | Choux asked on 04/07/05 - Follow-Up to Hope's Question Hope asked if we beleive in an afterlife, and if so or not, reasons for our opinions. I would like to ask, why would a person want to "live" without a body? To me, that sounds like a horror!
Why want to have an afterlife at all? Isn't death peace at last? madima answered on 04/07/05:Dear Mary Sue,
If you know me a little by now, am the kind of person who lives very much in the present. "Today" is what matters most to me. Yesterday is dead and tomorrow is one I may never see :=)
But believe it or not, I had many Out of Body Experiences (OBE), Near Death Experiences (NDE) and astral projection episodes. In short, I am positive I have known what it is like to be in my astral body - completely divorced from the physical, a sort of pure consciousness. And I can tell you, it is not a horrible experience at all.
My NDE in particular, was such a beautiful experience that I NEVER wanted to come back. I had the full life review - saw my life pass before my eyes, from the moment of birth. I passed through the seemingly endless tunnel and beheld the Great Light at the end. I saw dead friends and kins. I saw my angels. The feeling is one of indescribable love, happiness and peace.
However, in the course of everyday living, I had also experienced encounters with restless, earthbound spirits and I have always prayed for the intercession of St. Michael the Archangel that they may find their way back into The Light. My daily prayers include a prayer to God for them, as well as for the souls in purgatory.
| | Question/Answer | | Choux asked on 04/07/05 - Being Correct Is there a misconception that the Holy Spirit of Christianity is about *being correct*???
Comments please about the nature of the Holy Spirit. madima answered on 04/07/05:Dear Mary Sue,
From my personal view, the Holy Spirit as I know Him, is not about "being correct" although as the Third Persona of God in the Holy Trinity and in scripture, He has intellect, emotions, and will.
The Holy Spirit :
speaks (Acts 13:2),
intercedes (Romans 8:26),
testifies (John 15:26)
guides (John 16:13),
commands (Acts 16:6,7),
appoints (Acts 20:28),
leads (Romans 8:14),
reproves and convicts sin (John 16:8).
seals God's promise in believers' hearts (Ephesians 1:13-14)
shapes the individual's and community's life to Christ's (Romans 8:1-17)
However, the Holy Spirit can act in whatever manner He wants to act - through the apostles and saints, the church and beyond.
The Holy Spirit is often symbolized as a tongue of fire and as a white dove, but He is not just an emanation or a force. He is the Third Person of God, not a personification of good qualities, or "correctness". He is God Himself.
| | Question/Answer | | Choux asked on 04/06/05 - The Coverage of the Pope's Death All the coverage of the Pope's death has had an unforeseen effect on me. I'm nostalgic for the Catholic Church. I don't know what to make of it. I can't remember what housework I did yesterday, but I remember parts of the mass in Latin. How powerful, childhood indoctrination. I even miss the holy card of the guardian angel. :) Comments? madima answered on 04/07/05:Well, dearest Mary Sue, rituals are very powerful :=)
I guess part of the enchantment of any church and the Catholic church in particular, is in the mystique and the grandeur of its rituals.
Some of the most vivid memories of my childhood were those inside the St. Ferdinand Basilica of the city where I was born, during the celebration of the holy mass, the feasts of the saints and the lavish processions... the priests' vestments embroidered in gold and studded with jewels,the icons and angels carved from ivory, the fragrance of incense and flowers, the soft light of the chandeliers and the candles...
Here, the priest still says the High Mass in Latin...As a result, up to this day, I can still sing and say a handful of prayers in Latin :=)
When I was a child, papa regularly took me to see his friend, the bishop (who eventually became a cardinal), after Sunday mass and he would give me his hand to kiss. His huge ruby ring always touched my third eye (perhaps that's why it blasted open so early!) :=)
Why don't you visit a Catholic church close by your place? Perhaps the most beautiful memories will come back :=)
| | Question/Answer | | paraclete asked on 04/05/05 - Feeling a little depressed? This will give you a lift
www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~geoffo/humour/flattery.html madima answered on 04/06/05:Hi, Brian,
I sent it to a friend who was depressed :=)
It seemed to have worked wonders!
Thanks! :=) | | Question/Answer | | Saladin asked on 04/05/05 - Conversion ... ... ...
Can conversion without a change of behaviour achieve anything?
:)
Ronnie
madima answered on 04/06/05:Not a thing, dear Ronnie.
By conversion, one is supposed to change one's belief. The essence of conversion is "alteration".
If one professes he has been converted to a faith that espouses altruism, for example, but remains imprisoned in his hateful ways, his "conversion" is mere lip service. | | Question/Answer | | paraclete asked on 04/05/05 - How do you remove rhetoric from reality? I'm greatly disturbed by a statement I just witnessed on the PBS program "newshour"
An american female was being interviewed regarding the Late Pope and she said "we know he will always be there and we can pray to him"
Surely catholics dont equate the Pope to God, to Christ, don't think he now has any ability to answer prayer, surely the catholic church has moved on from this nonsense of saints as intercessors madima answered on 04/06/05:So am I equally disturbed by this.
As a Catholic, I love the Pope. I don't agree with everything he says but I respect him. I pray that God be with him. I pray FOR him. I do not pray TO him.
I have devotions to the Holy Angels of God and to His holy saints. I pray FOR their intercession and pray that they join me in my daily prayers to the Lord. I do the same thing to my family and friends. I ask them to join me in prayers, as part of our bond. I feel comfortable doing that. But I do not pray TO God's angels and saints. | | Question/Answer | | ETWolverine asked on 04/04/05 - Living wills Hello everyone.
The Terri Schiavo case has increased the number of people who are asking their legal counsel about living wills. As a courtesy, a number of legal websites, newspapers, etc. have printed templates of living wills that people can use as the basis for creating their own living wills. I happen to think this is a good thing, and a service that everyone should take advantage of.
However, every version of the living wills that I have seen call for doctors to STOP giving life-saving care at a certain point... whatever that point may be (incapacitation, coma, PVS, brain-death, whatever). But I have not seen a single living will form that says "In the event of my incapacitation, I wish to LIVE, and have the doctors continue to administer care until my death occurs. I do not want the plug to be pulled or care to be interrupted until my natural death occurs."
First, why is there no such form on file?
Second, how can I make such a form for myself, those being my wishes?
Elliot madima answered on 04/04/05:Hi Elliot,
I'm not an American, so I won't really know much about the system in your country. But I would hazard a guess that such a form will be unusual because while people normally have that primal instinct to live, they hate to suffer and they hate to prolong their suffering when there's no more hope.
Where I am, I have never encountered a living will form. In a country where more than half of the population live below poverty line, most are financially as well as emotionally incapable of doing so.
The mothers of two of my close friends, who both have large families, initially wanted to prolong their lives after their doctors pronounced there's no more hope for them. Initially.
The first mother had five kids and the second had ten. They still have very young children. I guess every parent wants to live for their children, most of all. These sick mothers saw many traditional and non-traditional healers, they tried every treatment, they fought hard.
But when they saw that their illnesses were draining their families' economic resources to the point they were mired in debt, when they were already screaming with pain for most of their waking hours, pain that no painkillers could banish, they both begged for death.
However, if you wish to ensure that you will never be euthanized, I think you could draft your living will stating your wishes, with the help of a competent lawyer.
And perhaps you'd better set aside sufficient funds exclusively to be disposed of for the purpose of your indefinite care and maintenance in the event, God forbid, that you suffer such an incapacitation. | | Question/Answer | | Saladin asked on 04/03/05 - President Gordon B Hinckley's Expression of Sympathy on the Passing of Pope John Paul II ...
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
First Presidency Expresses Sympathy
2 April 2005
SALT LAKE CITY — Following the death of Pope John Paul II, the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints issued the following statement:
"We join those throughout the world who mourn the passing of Pope John Paul II, an extraordinary man of faith, vision, and intellect, whose courageous actions have touched the world in ways that will be felt for generations to come."
"The Pope’s voice remained firm in defense of freedom, family, and Christianity. On matters of principle and morality he was uncompromising."
"On his compassion for the world's poor, he has been unwavering."
---
Latter-day Saints fully join themselves to his sentiments. We share the pain of your loss.
:)
Ronnie
madima answered on 04/03/05:Thanks for the info, dear Ronnie. These are very kind words, so welcome in this hour. | | Question/Answer | | purplewings asked on 04/03/05 - A simple Living Will-Don't leave it to chance. LIVING WILL
I, _________________________ (fill in the blank), being of sound mind and body, do not wish to be kept alive indefinitely by artificial means.
Under no circumstances should my fate be put in the hands of peckerwood politicians who couldn't pass ninth-grade biology if their lives depended on it.
If a reasonable amount of time passes and I fail to sit up and ask for a cold beer (Ed. Note II: A soda will do just fine for me), it should be presumed that I won't ever get better.
When such a determination is reached, I hereby instruct my spouse, children and attending physicians to pull the plug, reel in the tubes and call it a day.
Under no circumstances shall the members of the Legislature enact a special law to keep me on life-support machinery. It is my wish that these boneheads mind their own damn business, and pay attention instead to the health, education and future of the millions of Americans who aren't in a permanent coma.
Under no circumstances shall any politician butt into this case. I don't care how many fundamentalist votes they're trying to scrounge for their run for the presidency in 2008, it is my wish that they play politics with someone else's life and leave me alone to die in peace.
I couldn't care less if a hundred religious zealots send e-mails to legislators in which they pretend to care about me. I don't know these people, and I certainly haven't authorized them to preach and crusade on my behalf. They should mind their own business, too.
If any of my family goes against my wishes and turns my case into a political cause, I hereby promise to come back from the grave and make his or her existence a living hell.
Signed: ________________________________________ madima answered on 04/03/05:Thanks for posting this, dear Loral! It's the kind of will papa and mama and even me will sign! :=) | | Question/Answer | | Saladin asked on 04/02/05 - Pain .... .... .... .... ... ... ... ... .. .. .. .. . . . .
Terri's death has not only focussed attention on merciful death, euthanasia, living wills, advance declarations, spokespersons for the unconscious, etc., but has raised the question of the purpose of suffering.
Shoul we accept our sufferings without relief on grounds thatsuffering i sourposeful and rmeinds us that God is in charge, andhe detemrines our entrances and exits.
Or shoud we do all wer can to wase the suffering of loved ones and others when the power to do so exists.
It would be wrong per se to permit a person to suffer in illness on our supposition that God allows pain because it is somehow good for us.
What good is accomplished by allowing a dying person to suffer rather than apply an anodyne to ease their pain in passing?
QUESTION:
What is the place of suffering in your theology?
Ronnie
madima answered on 04/02/05:Dear Ronnie,
In my personal theology, suffering is an anathema.
I'm not afraid of suffering, it is the way of human existence, but I will not go out of my way to find it. I don't want people I love to suffer, either.
Now, if God loves me, and I have every reason to believe He does, I don't think He wants me to suffer. I don't think He wants me to just stand by and watch while my loved ones suffer, either.
So, in my personal code of ethics, in my personal theology, if it's within my power, I have every right to end my own suffering and that of people I love - especially if they expressedly ordered me to. | | Question/Answer | | HANK1 asked on 04/02/05 - The Pope Is Dead:
Pope John II died at 1:37 C.S.T. today (4/2/05).
HANK
madima answered on 04/02/05:He suffers no more. May God be with him. | | Question/Answer | | cliff_dweller asked on 04/02/05 - Prayer Seems like a highly debated topic, even though Jesus told us to spend time in prayer and the Word daily. My question is: Do you pray? Why or why not? madima answered on 04/02/05:I pray because it has been a part of my life as far back as I can remember. In fact, I can't remember a day that goes by without me praying.
Of course, that doesn't make me a saint. It does not mean I will never err or be tempted. But somehow, I find it makes life less stressful.
Even in the period during my teens when I fell in the company of influential agnostics and atheists and questioned the existence of God, I surprisingly did not forsake prayers.
I was brought up in the prayer habit by parents who believe that "a family who prays together, stays together".
I pray, not just as I begin and end my day, but while I go through the course of living, anywhere and everywhere at any time. I found that prayer infuses positive energies into each action and allows me to go into a relaxed, meditative state inside my mind even when there is chaos around me, along with the never ending deadlines.
I also found that each ordinary action can be taken in a "prayer mode" - like walking, waiting for a bus, riding to and from work, cleaning the home, gardening, stroking and feeding a pet, etc. I know of someone who prays while she cooks so that the food will be the best nourishment for those who will eat it. Another prays while planting her seeds in the garden that they may flourish well. The possibilities are endless.
For me, prayer is a constant "conversation", a constant act of giving thanks. It's not just something I do before an altar. It's part of my life. | | Question/Answer | | cliff_dweller asked on 04/01/05 - Two things that arised from ROLCAM'S questions If we were to share our faith with one person per week what would the results be? I challange everyone to share their faith with one person this week. Please document what the results are. remember Christ wasn't ashamed, embarrased when He went to the cross for us madima answered on 04/01/05:Hi cliff_dweller,
I feel that sharing one's faith is ok - and I've done it many times before - but if and only if someone expressed genuine interest in what I believe in. Otherwise I feel it's intrusion, or worse, disrespect.
I'm a Catholic, though I'm neither devout nor dogmatic. All of my friends are of various faiths. My constant buddy at present is a Protestant. One of my soul sisters is a Mormon, another is a Wiccan. I have long-standing friendships with Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Taoist, animists, pantheists, agnostics, atheists, etc.
I think my friendships with them survived for years and years because I showed respect for what they believe in and vice versa.
It never really mattered to me that other people, particularly those whom I love most, are of a different faith or religion. They don't have to believe in what I believe in. They have a right to their own beliefs. What matters most is that we respect and care for each other. | | Question/Answer | | ROLCAM asked on 04/01/05 - Do you pray ?? This is the answer I got when I asked a devout Muslim:-
I pray before sunrise, in the early afternoon, again in the late afternoon, after sunset, and late in the evening. On a good day, I also pray during the morning and late at night. I offer supplications when I awaken, when I leave the house, before and after I eat, before I begin to do things, during the morning, during the evening, and before I go to sleep. I'm Muslim.
How can Christians match this type of devotion to prayer? madima answered on 04/01/05:Dear Roland,
I don't consider myself a devout Catholic but my parents have instilled the prayer habit in me as far as I can remember. My father begins and ends each day with prayers. In between, we pray the angelus and say prayers before and after each meals.
So, even after I've left the nest, I always pray upon waking up and before going to sleep without fail.
I also find comfort in praying while walking on the way to work, walking home, before and sometimes during and after diving, trekking or mountain-climbing.
I pray to say thanks to my Father and to ask for the company of His angels because they give me comfort and joy. I pray while painting, specially when I'm painting angels :=)
I pray for the people and creatures I love, for the safeguarding of all the wild places on earth and sea and sky. When I get mad or when I'm deliriously happy, I pray :=)
| | Question/Answer | | Choux asked on 03/31/05 - Starvation and Pain I will post something personal to help ease the minds of those who think that Terri was in any kind of pain while dying.
In the mid 1980's, I went on the fad diet of the time, Optifast. Optifast was a *complete fast*. Of course, I drank water or diet pop. I ate no food or any liquid with calories. I was on the fast for approximately three months. After three days, I didn't miss food, and in fact, a kind of well being set in for some reason. I felt very good. There are chemical reactions that happen in the body of a person who eats no calories.
I have no doubt that there was no pain for Terri, and remember, I had the pain receptors in my head for sure. No pain.
Love Life!
Mary Sue madima answered on 03/31/05:Dear Mary Sue,
The last fasting I did was during this Holy Week but I had been gradually lessening my food intake before the actual "hard" fast.
After the first two days, I could no longer feel any craving for food. By the third day, I have forgotten the hunger, though I tend to sleep longer in what appears to be the body's way of "compensation". I felt no discomfort and was still efficient at work.
My grandmother died of starvation during the war. That was what papa said. She was not sick but she willfully starved herself that my father may live. My father was around 7 or 8 years old at the time, my grandfather has just died and the two of them - a woman in her twenties and a boy - were trapped in Manila when it was declared an "open city" and bombed to rubble.
My grandma gave all of her food rations to my father and refused to nourish herself. She kept telling him it was ok. Being just a boy, he failed to grasp what she was doing for him then. The only thing he knew was that the rations, whenever he could get them, was so small and he was always still hungry, so hungry he could not even sleep.
Papa told me he stayed by his mother's side as she lay dying. He could not recall that she was in pain though it took her many days to die. She slipped into a coma without a word or a whimper and was in her death throes for a long time. But what he could never forget was that she died with her eyes open. | | Question/Answer | | Choux asked on 03/29/05 - Something Wonderful Happened Something really great happened to me. About two months ago, I remembered something I forgot for years!!! :D
I did a little research, talked to a social worker, and voila! somethng good will happen in a week.
I can't tell you now in case something goes wrong in the meantime, but next week I can tell you what happened.
In honor of the occasion, I want to make a pledge to be the happier side of Mary Sue on the Board. Think positive thoughts, REALLY make an effort to discontinue being critical, even of my pet peeves.
Something wonderful can happen when you least expect it!
Question:: What is the last wonderful thing that happened to you that you didn't expect at all?? madima answered on 03/30/05:Wow! You're keeping us in suspense for ONE WEEK!!!!! Dear Mary Sue, that's too much!!!
But I'm happy for you! :=) You deserve to be happy ALL of the time! :=)
Something wonderful ALWAYS happens to me each day. In fact, I'm keeping a "Book of Thanks" for all of them, just for fun :=)
Today, I found a new friend from an unexpected place. It was wonderful that I was able to convince her that she should not allow others to bring down her self-esteem.
I got a call from two other people I'm very fond of and we're renewing our bonds.
My "surrogate mother" at the press office surprised me with her home-cooked specialty at lunch. She really spoils me rotten.
While I was on the landing of the 100 steps to my condo unit, lugging two heavy boxes, which I had been prepared to lug all the way to my place by myself(we have no elevator), two boys, complete strangers, materialized out of nowhere and carried them for me.
On my doorstep, my stray tuxedo cat was curled up asleep, waiting for me to come home and he greeted me so ecstatically! He's sleek and well-fed, not hungry at all. He just wanted to play and be loved, it seems.
T'was a wonderful day! :=)
| | Question/Answer | | Saladin asked on 03/29/05 - Ho! Patriots!
OK, this is for you if you agreed with "George Carlin's" post.
When you got to MacDonald's and the server is Hispanic whose English is not as good as yours, do you stand up for your rights and walk out, or do you practice hypocrisy when you have to look your enemy straight in the eye?
Ronnie
madima answered on 03/30/05:Hi, Ronnie,
You know I'm not American but I've been to McDo outlets in many non-English speaking countries in Asia and elsewhere :=)
At first, I thought that if someone is serving in an institution which happens to be one of the best known US icons, he/she should be required to speak English passably.
But the reality is, if I stick to very high expectations, I will not be fed. So, in the presence of the inevitable language barrier, I just resort to nonverbal communication when I can :=)
I point at the menu, I signify the numbers with my fingers, etc. :=)
You'll be amazed at the eloquence of the sign language you can muster when you are hungry in a foreign country :=) | | Question/Answer | | freethinker asked on 03/29/05 - And the seal killing goes on again
In Canada the yearly seal killing has started again.
300.000 young seals will be killed within days.
Within hours the first 12.000 seals were killed.
With steel pipes they are hit on the head, to prevent their skins from damaging.
Within minutes they will be skinned, often still alive.
We all have seen the pictures before.
I know, I know, there is money to be made.
But how do you feel about this, as a member of humanity ?
madima answered on 03/29/05:How do I feel about the wanton, senseless slaughter of wildlife, in all honesty? It's one of the very few things that make me see red... one of the very few things that make me contemplate going for environmental terrorism.
I'm not usually a violent person, but thank heavens I'm not in THAT area.
If I had been there, I'll get some guns and enough rounds of ammunition and either alone or with trusted friends, I'm going to shoot those guys until they leave those helpless seals alone.
I would love to see how they will feel if the predator becomes prey.
Of course, on top of that, I would also resort to other ways, like killing off the source of the demand - the middlemen, the buyers of sealskins, their processors and the big company buyers of the finished product. | | Question/Answer | | freethinker asked on 03/28/05 - Chosen Death
In a very impressive documentary on the Belgium Television the subject was Chosen Death.
In november 2003 Jean Aebisscher (58) from the Swiss Canton Vaud is informed that he has a brain tumor with metastatis.
Jean still looks quite well, is still mobile, but realises that he is terminal ill.
Jean decides that it is better to end his life now, than being consumed by his illness, and deteriorate into some form of plant-like life, and die from the disease with lots of pain.
In Switzerland - like in so many other countries in Europe - euthanasia is allowed undere specific conditions.
One of these conditions is that the assistent in the procedure has no (financial) interest in the procedure, and that there is a proper legal and medical support for the entire procedure.
That's why the organisation “Exit Suisse Romande” is asked to assist, an organisation that yearly assist many people in ending the lives.
Another of the Swiss conditions is that the patient is completely aware of his/her condition, clearly state his/her wish to end life, and is able to drink the potion that will cause the end.
The documentary accompanies Jean and his girlfriend through his last days, and shows his grief to die, to end a life that is so much valued by Jean.
The program is a clear plea for the possibility of an intentional and decent departure based on human dignity, when all hope is finished for a normal natural life, and all that is left is pain and fear.
We saw Jean make an appointment with ‘Exit’ for the 6th of Januari 2004.
That day the ‘Exit’ representative visited Jean at home, where he was waiting with his nearest friends.
The camera registered the final moments of Jean, and show how peaceful he dies, without fear, without pain.
I'm NOT asking if you agree with Jean's decision to end life.
I'm NOT asking if you would do the same.
All I ask is if you agree that people in a similar situation like Jean can make use of the possibility of euthanasia.
Maybe you can also let me know if - if you were able to do so - you would try to talk such a person out of taking his/her own life, and - if so - WHY you would do that.
madima answered on 03/28/05:If you ask me, I personally believe people should be allowed to decide whether they want to opt for euthanasia or not and they should be allowed to carry out their decision. It's their life and they should be free to do according to their will - not on the will of their church, their government or their families.
I will do all I can to dissuade a healthy suicidal person from killing himself/ herself but I will not attempt to dissuade a terminally ill patient who opts for euthanasia because I respect his/her decision to do as he/she wishes with his/her own life - and death.
To interfere under that situation will be interfering with his/her free will. I don't think God, as I know my God to be, will intervene with that free will Himself - that is the very essence of being human, so how dare I?
Although you are NOT asking me if I agree with Jean's decision or not, I can tell you I had been in the shoes of Jean at a very young age and I knew I will not allow anyone or anything to dissuade me from my option.
Without hesitation, I myself opted for euthanasia when doctors told me I can't expect to live for another year - after they accidentally exchanged my x-ray plates with a terminally ill girl of my age.
If I should be faced with the same situation and the same choice now or in the future, I will still opt for euthanasia.
I decide what I do with my life and my death. I decide what to do with what is right by me at this moment in time. And God can decide to do what He will with me afterwards. | | Question/Answer | | Saladin asked on 03/28/05 - Life was never meant to be like this ...
The following Editorial from today's NYT disturbs me, not because I am an evolutionist, but because I am a creationist who is unafraid to hear the disparate views of others.
================
Censorship in the Science Museums
Published: March 28, 2005
Big-screen Imax theaters typically offer lavish visual spectacles with bland and uplifting scripts. Their films are seldom the stuff of controversy. So it was a bit of a shock to learn, from an article by Cornelia Dean in The Times on March 19, that a dozen or so Imax theaters, mostly in the South, have been shying away from science documentaries that might offend Christian fundamentalists.
Worse yet, some of those theaters are located in science centers or museums, the supposed expositors of scientific truth for public education.
Some of the documentaries whose distribution has been affected by religious controversy include "Cosmic Voyage," a journey through the far-flung universe, and "Galápagos," about the islands where Charles Darwin made observations that played a crucial role in his theory of evolution.
"Volcanoes of the Deep Sea," depicting the bizarre creatures that flourish near hot, sulfurous vents in the ocean floor, is the current focus of controversy.
It was vetted for accuracy by a panel of scientists and was sponsored in part by the National Science Foundation, a government funding agency, and Rutgers University.
It raised hackles by suggesting that life on Earth may have originated at these undersea vents.
No one can object if Imax theaters, whether commercial or located in museums, turned down the deep sea film in the belief that it was too boring to draw much of an audience, as some managers indicated.
But it is surely unacceptable for science museums to reject the film in part because some people in test audiences complained that the material was blasphemous.
The Fort Worth Museum of Science and History, which made that judgment initially, wisely reversed itself and agreed to show the film after its cowardice became known and was widely criticized.
The danger in self-censorship by museums is that it will reduce the already tiny world of Imax theaters available for big-screen science documentaries.
Producers have a hard time making money as it is. It would be unfortunate if censorship by science museums helped drive them away from topics that might offend religious fundamentalists.
==================
I can not understand why Christians should make a rush to silence voices and ideas other than their own.
So, my question is:
"Is Democracy compatible with Christianity,
and 'why' or 'why not'?"
Answers that do not answer the question 'as asked' will get one of those little grey things!
:)
Ronnie
madima answered on 03/28/05:Dear Ronnie,
I find this news VERY disturbing too, coming from a nation that is supposed to embody BOTH democracy and Christianity. America was not supposed to have been called the Land of the Free for nothing...
I'm a big fan of documentaries and I have seen features on Galapagos, on Volcanoes of the Deep Sea as well as the cosmic voyage series from the National Geographic Channel several times. I don't know if these are the same programs that were converted into an Imax version. I found them to be a highly informative and very scientific.And definitely, they are NOT easy to make. For me, anybody calling them "blasphemous" is utterly crazy!
But the question: "Is democracy compatible with Christianity?" is a tricky one.
Now, if you ask me, ideally, a democratic state should promote freedom and openness. Ideally, a religion that promotes love and altruism, like Christianity, should not be straitjacketing its believers. Ideally, by their essence, democracy and Christianity should espouse freedom from censorship and so, they should be compatible. But sadly, they are not. Nothing in this world is ideal.
Democracy is a form of government for the people, of the people and by the people as one American President defined it. Christianity is a religion derived from Jesus Christ.
But there remains to be a separation between the state and the church, although each find usefulness in the other under certain circumstances. (For one thing...Aspiring heads of state use the church during elections and the church uses the state for its fund-generation activities.)
Well.., democratic nations often do things that are not democratic and Christians often do things that are un-Christian. That's part of the flaws of human governments, human religions and humanity itself.
Also...If museums in a democracy are funded by powerful Christian patrons with caboodles of greenbacks despite their undemocratic and bigoted minds, then you and I shouldn't really be surprised :=) | | Question/Answer | | LTgolf asked on 03/26/05 - The Bible
If the Bible ( both old and new ) was never written, would we even think or believe there is a God, or a creater as some would have it.
Leon
madima answered on 03/26/05:Dearest Leon,
First of all, happy Easter to you!!!! :=)
I believe that even if the Bible was never written, men will still create a God for themselves. Men have always done so and always will.
Prehistoric men created their gods out of the forces of nature. Because they cannot fully explain such forces - both the beneficial and the malevolent, they attributed such to supernatural powers. And they sought to gain the favors of these powers or appease their furies, by acts of worship, songs, prayers and the offering of sacrifices. | | Question/Answer | | Choux asked on 03/26/05 - Does God Want You To Be Happy? I'm repeating the question because there is some kind of glitch on my computer or at AW, and I can't answer the question or make clarifications.
My Answer::
The "Real God" which is a mystery, gave us our life, our greatest gift. We must all make the best of our lives, that is our responsibility, but we have the help of others. :):):) madima answered on 03/26/05:Dear Mary Sue,
Just as I answered Roland, I'll admit to you that have no power to know what's in God's mind. But I do know that my God is a benevolent God, so I'm sure He wants me to be happy.
I am happy :=)
Happy Easter! :=) | | Question/Answer | | ROLCAM asked on 03/26/05 - Simple question ?? Does God want you to be happy? madima answered on 03/26/05:I have no power to know what's in God's mind, dear Roland, but I do know that my God is a benevolent God, so I'm sure he wants me to be happy.
I am happy :=) | | Question/Answer | | Saladin asked on 03/24/05 - Native American Wisdom ...
Do you think that Native American Wisdom has anything of benefit to Christian America?
If so, what and why?
:)
Ronnie
madima answered on 03/25/05:Yes, very much so, dear Ronnie.
From what I have learned, the true Native American Indians respected nature and lived off the land wisely. They never took more than what they needed.
The present Christian America seems to have become a society of wastrels, prone to excess. It has lost much of its values and its respect for the land.
But then, it's only an outsider's observation. I was not born in America nor have I lived there long enough :=) | | Question/Answer | | arcura asked on 03/25/05 - In about an hour I'll be gone...................... We are going to vist our Grand Children and other relatives over Easter. Will be back next week, the good Lord willing.
Please pray for the safety of all those traveling this weekend?
Thanks and God bless all here all year with His Holy Spirit and His infinite and perfect love and mercy,
Fred madima answered on 03/25/05:Happy trip, Fred and Happy Easter to you and your family! :=) | | Question/Answer | | Choux asked on 03/25/05 - How Will You Die? How will you die? Just like every *natural death* since the beginning of time. I have watched two people die, and seen others in various stages of death.
We all lie on our death bed(home, hospital, hospice) and we are made as comfortable as possible, and we take day or days to die.
Relatives give their last visit, and then at some point, we are gone.
In America, brain damaged people(strokes, oxygen deprivation, accidents, and some diseases) and Alzheimer's sufferers are routinely allowed to die by withholding food and water.
Do you think that this practice should continue?
Do you think that new laws should be written to cover all cases of severe brain damage? madima answered on 03/25/05:Dear Mary Sue,
I'd like to die quickly, alone, without pain, in a place I love - in the sea, the peak of a mountain, the heart of the wilderness or in the depths of a beautiful cave :=)
I’d prefer that my body be consumed by wild creatures – a shark, a vulture, a big cat, so the flesh I no longer need can nourish something in my death and complete the cycle of life.
However, some say you need to accumulate very good karma over many lifetimes on earth before you can have a good death :=)
Yet, death is no big deal for me after I had several dry-runs - a couple of near-death experiences so very early in life.
I also witnessed death quite early - my elementary school best friend died at age 8 and my first love died at age 15. I myself was told I’ll be dead before I was 12 after a mix-up of my x-rays with a terminally ill girl my age.
Looking back, I found it quite surreal now that at age 11, I was discussing my funeral arrangements with my parents. But even at that age, death held no horrors for me and I discussed my dying with papa and mama as if I was just going on a trip from which I will never return.
But what I discovered then was that dying seems easy. It’s harder on the people you leave behind, especially on the people who love you, who are unwilling to release you. That’s why I don’t think I’d like anybody near me when the time comes, especially the people I love. It’s not my pain but theirs that I won’t be able to stand.
As for your two other questions… I’ve always been in favor of euthanasia though I don’t like the idea of withholding food and drink from a terminally ill patient. I do know that as the body shuts down, people naturally stop their food and liquid intake but it will be more humane to just give a lethal dose of drugs to end their pain and suffering.
I don’t see euthanasia is wrong although my church is vehemently against it. I live in a Catholic country and in principle, euthanasia is not an approved practice here, although it is really a silent “internal arrangement” made between patients and doctors, or the patient’s family and doctors.
This is also a Third World country, so the state and most households can never financially support the protracted care of terminally ill patients. Euthanasia is rampant, though it is not publicized or politicized, as in the U.S. It is simply done.
In our case, I don’t think laws will help that much. In the end, the ultimate discretion is with the patient or his/her family/guardians (if the patient can no longer make rationale decisions) and with the doctors on the case.
Still…I don’t see why there should be so much furor over the right to die. After what I’ve experienced, I feel dying is easy. It’s living that’s hard.
| | Question/Answer | | STONY asked on 03/24/05 - IT IS WELL, WITH MY SOUL, IT IS WE IT IS WELL IT IS WELL!! THE GIANT STONE HAS CRUMBLED UNDER THE EXPERTISE OF THE SURGEON WITH THE LASER SCALPEL. I HAVE A BULLET SIZED HOLE IN MY BACK, BUT THIS SHALL ALSO HEAL. ALL CATHODERS HACE BEEN REMOVED AND IN A FEW MORE DAYS I FILL START TO FEEL NORMAL AGAIN. THE WORST PART OF THE OPERATION WAS WHEN THEY ROLLED ME OVER ON MY SIDE TO INSERT THE LASER. ABSOLUTELY NO ONE BOTHERED TO TAKE NOTICE OF WHERE THE SACK WITH THE "FAMILY JEWELS" WAS LOCATED, SO THEY PINCHED THEM BETWEEN MY LEGS FOR AT LEAST 3 HRS. THE NEXT MORNING I FELT LIKE I'D BEEN KICKED IN THE GROIN AND IT HURT ALL THE WAY TO MY BELLY BUTTON. I THANK GOD FOR MY BOTTLE OF PERCOCET AT HOME. THE BLEEDING FROM 2 CATHODERS STOPPED ON TUESDAY
AND EVERYTHING IS GETTING BACK TO NORMAL. I PRAISE GOD, THE DISTANCE OF 1" AND I COULD HAVE LOST THE WHOLE KIDNEY. WE DO HAVE AN AWESOME GOD!! madima answered on 03/24/05:Thank God your operation was successful. But please be very vigilant about your health from now on and be careful with what you eat.
You are always in my prayers.
Have a Happy Easter! :=) | | Question/Answer | | Laura asked on 03/24/05 - Why is it important? Why is an advanced directive so important? When I filled mine out my daughter read it and disagreed with my wishes. Though she said that she would honor them, I am glad that I have it in writing now.
She can not stand the thought of losing me and though my wishes are that if I was in the same condition (for example, as Terri, assuming that she is truly in a vegetative state)I would not want to be kept artificially alive by any means, my daughter finds that difficult to accept. But her desires to keep her mother around no matter what are NOT my wishes.
Whatever your wishes, here is a website where you can get state specific advanced directives. They are free. Go to advance directive forms, choose your state, copy and paste to wordpad and print it out.
http://www.uslivingwillregistry.com/
God bless. Laura
madima answered on 03/24/05:Dear Laura,
Thanks for the website. I'll look it up.
When I was 11 and the doctor told my family that I'll not live to see my 12th birthday (my X-ray had been interchanged with that of a terminally ill girl of the same age), I had a countless series of long talks with my parents. I made it very clear that I want to be euthanized.
My mother flatly refused to listen to me. I finally got the tearful agreement of my father, though in secret, I doubted whether he will really carry out my wishes when the time comes.
I'm an only child and I know how much they love me. They can never be reconciled with the thought of me dying ahead of them.
That's why I made a hidden resolve that before things get ugly, while I'm still physically able, I'll pull the plug myself if I can't get a reliable secret understanding with my doctors that they will do it for me,if everything else fails.
But I've never been afraid of death and I know, somehow, it'll be easier for me when I'm the one doing the dying.
It will be very difficult, and unimaginably painful, if my parents are the one who will be connected to that life support system and I'll be the one who will make the decision to pull it off.
I pray I won't be in a position to make that choice, ever. But I guess I can do it, though I don't want to, if it meant releasing them from hopeless suffering and pain. | | Question/Answer | | ROLCAM asked on 03/24/05 - My Easter Contribution. Prayer for God's Grace
May the grace of Christ our Saviour,
And the Father's boundless love,
With the Holy Spirit's favor,
Rest upon us from above.
Thus may we abide in union
With each other and the Lord,
And possess, in sweet communion,
Joys which earth cannot afford.
Amen.
- Rev. John Newton madima answered on 03/24/05:Thanks for the prayer, dear Roland :=) | | Question/Answer | Saladin asked on 03/23/05 - Easter Story No. 1 ...The Nail
By Ronnie Bray
It was an annular ringed nail made to be driven into wood by a nailing machine and to stay there forever. That is what the rings were for. Once in place, it took superhuman strength to remove it. But then, our job at Shaw’s pallet factory in Dobcross, at the old textile mill, was putting them in, not taking them out.
Dobcross is an ancient stone built Pennine village on the wrong side of the Mountains and close enough to Oldham to celebrate Whit Monday instead of Good Friday.
The pallet making shop was four times as long as it was wide and had a pallet manufacturing line at either side close to the side walls. Two teams placed elm blocks in rolling jigs at appropriate points and another man placed wooden boards on them for the first nailer to fix, then the work was turned over and a ready-made top was put on before the pallet went through the last nailer to complete the palette before it rolled off the production line before it was taken off and stacked to be run into the yard by fork lift trucks who stacked them thirty or more high making wooden canyons along the sides of the roadways in the big mill yard.
Hoppers on top of each nailing machine held the nails that were fed down through tubes to the nailing heads. From time to time, one of the crew went aloft to empty boxes of three-inch long annular ringed nails into the hopper to keep the supply stocked. Occasionally, a few nails would spill over the sides of the steel hoppers as they were being emptied, landing on the floor to be swept up at the close of each day’s operations.
It was commonplace to have nails kicking around the floor and no one paid any mind to them.
My position on the team varied according to need and whether I needed to be free to take care of any Trade union business, for I was the Senior Shop Steward at Shaw’s, having unionised the factory after I had led the workforce out for a three-day strike over pay and conditions.
On the day I found the nail I was working at the back of the machine, pulling the half-made pallets through to the turnover element before sending them down to have their tops fitted and nailed. I needed to go for a drink, or something equally trivial, and asked one of the team to cover for me.
Then I jumped down from the staging on which we worked on the assembly lines, and that’s when I found the nail.
At first it didn’t register what had happened, but a moment later it was obvious that against all the odds, one of the spilled nails had landed on its head and stood there just the right distance away from the staging for my right boot to find it when I jumped off.
I felt a bit sick when I saw the point of the nail sticking through the toe cap of my boot and knew that I had been nailed good and proper.
I was still feeling a bit sick when my workmates carried me into the supervisor’s office and laid me out on the desk. Someone had notified the work’s First Aid man who arrived breathless and asked for a claw hammer.
I had already tried to remove the nail by hand and the resultant pain left me in no doubt that it was not of a mind to be taken out without some of the brute force that it took to drive it in. I explained to the First Aid man that if he touched my foot at all, never mind with a claw hammer, he would be on the desk next to me with someone trying to pull my other boot out of his face. And he understood!
So, I was consigned to Oldham general Hospital in an ambulance where, because I had had a drink of orange juice at ten that morning, I had to wait in casualty in a wheelchair with my bad foot cradled across my good one with the nail sticking up like Blackpool Tower, attracting wry comments from other patients and visitors.
My wait was of four hours duration because the physicians wisely decided that I would need a general anaesthetic before they could pull the nail out of my foot. Pain was the given reason for the anaesthetic, and the possibility of ingested orange juice inducing vomiting and premature death from inhalation pneumonia, was the reason for the four hour delay.
At the examination immediately prior to the general anaesthetic, the kindly physician, an Indian, was reaching for the nail head with his finger and thumb.
Before he could touch the piercer, I placed my hand around his windpipe and smiled at him, saying gently, “We are not going to hurt each other, are we?” And he understood!
I awoke on the table, minus boot, and minus the nail. They had already discarded the nail and I did not need a souvenir.
I felt drunk and could not stop laughing for about ten minutes, after which they declared me ready for discharge, having dressed the wounds, one on top and one underneath my foot a little way back from where the toes join the foot.
It remained sore for a few days before the pain subsided, and the holes healed well, leaving small scars that have faded into nothing with the passing of the years.
Only a faint memory remains and I hardly think about that event now – except at Easter.
Then it is that I am reminded that the Romans did not have the luxury of one eight of an inch diameter annular ringed nails, but crude shafts beaten from iron by a blacksmith: heavy square things with broad blunt heads that were made to fix heavy timbers in place; wedge-shaped things with sharp edges that tore into flesh when driven through human hands and feet, and hurt not one whit less when that flesh was both human and divine.
Sometimes I remember that no one suffered more keenly the anguish of the driving of the nails through his hands and feet than Christ did, and yet he murmured not, and I am ashamed because of my all-too-human murmurings when my pain was so small, and His so great, even unto death.
Then, I understand a little better than once I did, how it was love that kept Jesus fastened on the cross and not the pitiless nails, and I feel ashamed because I complained about one little one, and feel ashamed to think that sometimes I forget the nails he bore in his flesh because of His love for me; and in such moments or remembering the recollection of his words floods into my mind like Spirit-borne light, bringing a new and more profound realisation of what He meant when He said,
The Lord your Redeemer suffered death in the flesh;
wherefore he suffered the pain of all men,
that all men might repent and come unto him
>
Then the soaring words of the prophet Isaiah stir in my heart:
He was wounded for our transgressions,
he was bruised for our iniquities:
the chastisement of our peace was upon him;
and with his stripes we are healed
Then I am healed again through His suffering, and know His peace – and then I understand!
- - -
Copyright © 30 September 2001
Ronnie Bray
All Rights Reserved
madima answered on 03/24/05:Thanks for the story, dear Ronnie and advance Happy Easter to you and Gay! :=)
You may not know it, but here in the Philippines, some men and women have themselves crucified -literally - every Holy Friday, in a true re-enactment of the passion of Christ.
Of course, we also have flagellants - people who whip themselves until their bodies are all bloodied up, all the way to the church.
But the "Kristos" - as we call those who have themselves crucified - are mostly people who have made petitions for the healing of their hopelessly sick family members or kin. Some are doing penance for grievous sins or crimes they have committed.
They carry their huge wooden cross and have themselves crucified on designated spots. The nails, which are several inches long, are disinfected and soaked in alcohol. Their arms and feet are bound securely with ropes before they are nailed to the cross - to take their full weight off the nails. The ones who nail them are careful not to hit bone. Sometimes, the "Kristos" hang nailed on the cross for less than an hour and they are brought down when they can no longer bear the pain.
Surprisingly, it has been reported that the wounds from the nails heal very easily afterwards. And the Kristos do it year after year, every Holy Friday. The Churches here do not discourage the practice of crucifixion as well as flagellation.
Unfortunately, these practices have become a sort of "tourist attraction" in some localities and the atmosphere is more of a circus, with foreigners snapping pictures and filming everything.
As for me... I think I'd stick to the "via cruzes" (doing the stations of the cross) on foot, a quiet time during the "siete palabras" (the seven last words), fasting and prayers tomorrow, which is Holy Friday here :=) | | Question/Answer | | arcura asked on 03/23/05 - Please have a HAPPY - HOLY - EASTER everyone......
HAPPY, HOLY EASTER
![]()
madima answered on 03/24/05:Happy Easter, Fred :=) | | Question/Answer | | ETWolverine asked on 03/23/05 - Just a thought. For the past several days we have been bombarded in the media with "experts" who say that the removal of Terri Schiavo's feeding tube will allow her a death with dignity. Specifically, The New York Times said that "Experts Say Ending Feeding Can Lead To Gentle Death".
Well, if that's the case, I think we should stop feeding the hungry in Africa. After all, letting them starve to death is "gentle". So why do they need our help? What's all this talk of the tragedy of human poverty in the thrid wold countries. Let them starve: its gentle.
Does anyone else here see the hypocracy taking place in the Terry Schiavo case?
Elliot madima answered on 03/23/05:Dear Elliot,
The hungry people in Africa are not brain dead. Terri is brain dead. That's all there is to it, in my view.
And what many people don't realize, but which all doctors do not deny, is that even though Terri is brain dead for the past 15 years, she is in great pain. And nobody has done anything to stop that pain.
When she eventually lapses into a coma and dies, she will no longer be in pain. | | Question/Answer | | Saladin asked on 03/23/05 - Do you feel threatened? I just heard on the news (CNN) that a film theatre chain is pulling a film about volcanoes on the grounds that those who do not believe in evolution could be offended.
1) Should Creationists be offended by a film that supports evolution?
2) If you are a Creationist would this film 'offended' you?
3) If you answer "Yes" to #2, please explain why, or, if "No" why not?
:)
Ronnie
madima answered on 03/23/05:Dear Ronnie,
No, I won't be offended either way because I love films about volcanoes :=)
I live within the Pacific Ring of Fire. I was born at the foot of Mt. Banahaw, a dormant volcano (which can grow active anytime - like Mt. Pinatubo did - erupting in the 1990's after several centuries of sleep).
I grew up around a LOT of volcanoes and I simply love them - regardless of creationist or evolution theories and regardless of their great power to destroy. Naturally, I'd love to see ANY film about them :=)
I am particularly enamored with Mt. Mayon, the most beautiful and the most perfect volcano in the world. It is 12 hours away from Manila and is a very active volcano.
Taal Volcano, the smallest active volcano in the world, is just an hour and a half drive from Manila and I often go there :=) | | Question/Answer | | Saladin asked on 03/21/05 - About the Evil spirit at your bedside ...
(This is only for those who actually believe there are such spirits)
1. If such a spirit did visit you, what form would it take?
If you have not formed a sure opinion, please say what you imagine it could be.
Thank you for your co-operation.
:)
Ronnie
madima answered on 03/22/05:It will be my pleasure, dearest Ronnie :=)
My art exhibit, which I hope to conduct this year, will be mostly paintings of my angels... and well, one devil, the arch-enemy of my fave archangel :=)
Of course, I'm also painting a lot of angels who are guardians of the gates of hell and demon-fighters, so I guess, I will be painting more devils in the long run :=) | | Question/Answer | | STONY asked on 03/17/05 - WILL BE GONE FOR A FEW DAYS... KIDNEY SURGERY SCHEDUALED FOR 2 P.M. EST TODAY. SEE YA'LL WHEN IT'S OVER. madima answered on 03/22/05:Dearest Tony,
I just came back from Shanghai, so I didn't get to see this until now. But you are always in my prayers. I hope you have recovered. | | Question/Answer | | Choux asked on 03/21/05 - NO REASON ONE OF THE EXPERTS SAID IN A PREVIOUS COMMENT THAT THERE IS NO REASON FOR OUR LIVES ON EARTH IF *THERE IS NO AFTERLIFE*.
*LIFE* IS THE GREATEST GIFT OF "GOD" NOT AN "AFTERLIFE".
ISN'T LIFE ITSELF YOUR GREATEST GIFT? madima answered on 03/22/05:Dear Mary Sue,
I've always believed that life is the greatest gift of all.
I live for the moment. And that's why I live my life to the hilt!
I'll have more than enough time to see what afterlife is all about when I'm dead :=)
I'll have an eternity, perhaps. That's an awfully long time :=) | | Question/Answer | | Saladin asked on 03/20/05 - Seances, etc ... ... ...
Have you ever been to a seance where a clairvoyant gets in touch with the dead spirits of people and gives them messages from beyond the grave?
madima answered on 03/22/05:Nope, but I've played the spirit of the glass once, for fun.
At one point, everyone took their fingers off the top of the glass and left just mine. I exerted no pressure, just touched the glass with my finger tip and it moved with astounding swiftness, as if it had a life of its own.
I felt the energy too. It was electrifying but did not like it. I prayed for the repose of the restless spirits afterwards. But some of my classmates who participated in the session had very disturbing dreams later. | | Question/Answer | | Saladin asked on 03/21/05 - One on One seances ......
If you were asleep and your dead grandmother came ot you in a dream and told you where there was a cache of her money buried in the garden that she wanted you to have and you went the next day and found it just as she had said .....
1. Would you have been in a seance?
2. If you don't approve of seances, or are terrified that a ghostie might slap your face or rob you of your faith in Jesus, would you keep the money?
Please answer the questions as asked. This is scientific research.
:)
Ronnie
madima answered on 03/22/05:Dear Ronnie,
My dead grandmother had never come to me in my dreaming, but my rich grandaunt had - the one who adopted my father when he was completely orphaned at 8. She did him much wrong, and I think she was asking for forgiveness. So, I prayed for her.
No, I don't like seances. It leaves the medium and everyone else in the room extremely vulnerable to possession...Actually, mediumship involves allowing the summoned spirit to posses you.
I have only willfully summoned dead spirits once, with my college classmates - for fun - in the spirit of the glass. I didn't like the energy and the spirit haunted my friends.
I've actually found that "pot of gold" in the dreaming, dear Ronnie. But it is not material wealth. I think it's a wealth of knowledge about myself, my subconscious, creative self, specifically :=)
That's why I have kept the gold, but I have not lost my faith :=)
| | Question/Answer | Saladin asked on 03/21/05 - You look up and there is an evil spirit standing by your bed .....
What possible harm could the evil spirit do to you?
Why would you be afraid?
Sensible answers only please. This scientific research.
:)
Ronnie
madima answered on 03/22/05:No evil could he do to me, dear Ronnie, and I shall not be afraid :=)
I will say unto him what I've always said in the presence of evil:
Vade retro Satana! Nunquam suade mihi vana! Sunt mala quae libas. Ipse venena bibas!
| | Question/Answer | | Saladin asked on 03/21/05 - About the Evil spirit at your bedside ...
(This is only for those who actually believe there are such spirits)
1. If such a spirit did visit you, what form would it take?
If you have not formed a sure opinion, please say what you imagine it could be.
Thank you for your co-operation.
:)
Ronnie
madima answered on 03/22/05:Dear Ronnie,
I think I've seen evil spirits. For me, they take the most beautiful physical forms - beautiful women and men, they seem to be, but without the light of God.
In fact, I have painted the demon himself, in his battle with my fave angel, St. Michael. I have depicted him as I've seen him in my dreaming, a most beautiful being without light. | | Question/Answer | | arcura asked on 03/22/05 - Why should or can we personally do about Terri???? My hear goes out to Terri Schiavo and her family - More so perhaps that many.
Why?
Because Bonnie and I have been there!
Here’s our story in brief.
Our 12 year old son, Shem, began vomiting much. He appeared to be dehydrating. We took him to the hospital in Butte, Montana.
In a short time he went into a coma, but by then the doctor’s had determined that Shem had contracted Reye’s Syndrome.
It was recommended that we take him to a neurologist specialist in Reye’s Syndrome in Missoula. So we followed the ambulance there.
Shem’s brain had swollen so badly that the Doctor said they would have to open his skull so that his brain would not crush itself.
This was done. They split his skull down the top middle to open like a book.
But Shem’s kidneys fail from the shock of the surgery and that disease. With his kidneys not working his blood was filling up with body waste poisons, mainly ammonia.
So he was put on a dialysis machine to clean his blood. It did not do the job. Shem was brain dead; a flat liner.
His body was still alive. If we took his hand his fingers would lightly close around ours a normal body learned reaction.
His eyes did not open, but with the help of a machine he breathed.
We were told that he would never awaken - that if left on the machines he might live a few more days, perhaps a week.
What do you? Come visit him several time a day or let him die completely. We decided the latter. It was the most difficult decision either Bonnie or I had ever made. It still is. I weep now writing this.
My last words to my son were, “We love you son, but go with God now, go with God.”
I don’t know if Shem heard me. But God did.
Granted - our situation is different than that of Terri and her family.
But the similarities are apparent. We’ve been there. We know what it’s like. It’s a situation where one cannot even imaging the pain, concern, and confusion involved if they have not directly, personally experience it.
AND SO, in Terri’s case all I can do – the best I can do – is pray that the Lord’s will be done as best for all those involved.
The Terri Schiavo case has had great effect on much of the nation. Some good and some bad will come of it. I just pray that the Lord helps us all make the best of it and learn from the worst.
God’s peace and kindness to all, Fred madima answered on 03/22/05:Hi, Fred,
I'm very sorry about your loss. But as one who had been in almost the same situation, I know Shem must be very grateful for what you did.
Personally, I can only pray that God take Terri as soon as possible.
As I said, I had been in the same situation, well, almost.
At age 11, my doctor told me I will not live to see my 12th birthday. (It turned out later that my X-ray plate and that of a terminally-ill girl the same age had been interchanged.)
But faced with the prospect of dying a lingering, painful and expensive death, I resolved that I will spare myself and my parents that agony, at any cost.
I made my father promise to allow me to die with dignity even if it meant euthanasia. (I know I can never extract that promise from mama, so...)
However, I chose not to tell him that before THAT time comes, I've already resolved to pull the plug myself to spare him and mama the pain and suffering.
I am their only child. I know that they love me more than life itself. They live for me. But I love them enough not to want them to go through what I knew lies ahead.
And yes, I love life. But I believe that those who have the courage to live must also have the courage to die. One day, we will all die anyway. | | Question/Answer | | FormerJesusHelper76 asked on 03/22/05 - Financial Renewel! In the bible days, The law was after certain amount of years. All debt was erased and land given back and so on. If we did not have forgiven debt and processes for this to take place. The financial system over many many years will see a collapse.
Do you think that would work in our society. After certain amount of time have all debt forgiven and start over again. Would that not help the severe financial concerns we all have?
Joe madima answered on 03/22/05:Hi, Joe,
This has already been implemented between nations to a degree and is being implemented right now.
This is the principle of debt condonation between a first world country and a debtor third world country.
However, as you can see now, it does not seem to work, as new debts pile up after the old ones are written off. Third world economies are always on deficit spending, so it is impossible to get out of the debt trap.
Essentially, even if old debts are wiped out and one starts again on a clean slate, if an individual cannot be self-sufficient, he will be back to incurring debts. The vicious cycle will never be broken. | | Question/Answer | | FormerJesusHelper76 asked on 03/13/05 - Host(Bread)Catholic Church! Hello! At church today near the end of the sermon. The priest gave a very serious and stern warning to all members. He was angry. There were some points I understood but others I did not.
He was talking about how serious the Host celebration is and that in the past they have found The Host in the pews. I do not agree with that. If you are taking bread it should be put in your mouth and eaten. That is very unrespectful.
He also gave parents that this bread should not be broken and given to or shared with their children. There was one time this young girl was given the whole thing and almost choked on it. I think there is nothing wrong with breaking it and sharing it. Jesus broke the bread and shared it with his disciples. What do you think about this?
As soon as you get the host, put it in your mouth right away and do not show it to your children, do not wait untill you sit down and etc....
For some reason today I was going to sit this one out and I said to my wife that what is more important to God is prayer. It is the prayer that is important and is the better thank you to Jesus for his sacrifice. I did not sit it out and received it but now after that angry speech from the priest I wished I sat it out.
Please let me know what you think. God bless and thank you in advance for all your answers.
Joe madima answered on 03/16/05:Hi, Joe,
Just my guess...The priest could be meaning to say that parents should not administer communion to their children themselve when the kids are not yet "eligible" to receive the Holy Sacrament - or they have not fulfilled the requirements.
Here in my country, some priests are very strict, when they see "too young" children lining up on the communion rail, they first ask the kids if they have confessed or have received communion before.
There were times that communard-parents took the sacred host, hid it in their pockets and took it home to their kids because the kids could not attend or are sick. The priests maintain that this practice should not be.
The host is from Christ, it is Christ's body and should be received from the representative of Christ in the mass, in this case, it is the priest, not the parent.
Worse, some young communards took the host and hid it away and used it for twisted purposes which were sacrilegeous, some played with it.
I am inclined to think that these could be among the reasons why priests like the one in your parish would be outraged. | | Question/Answer | | hOPE12 asked on 03/12/05 - In all Fairness: Hello Everyone,
Here is something to really think about.
This was taken from the
UNION-TRIBUNE ASSOCIATED PRESS
March 12, 2005
TAMPA, Fla. – The husband of brain-damaged Terri Schiavo yesterday rejected a $1 million offer from a Rancho Santa Fe businessman to drop efforts to remove her feeding tube.
Other such offers – one for $10 million – already have been made and rejected during Michael Schiavo's legal battle for permission to stop his wife's artificial feedings so she can die, said his attorney, George Felos.
The woman's parents are trying to keep their 41-year-old daughter alive, but Michael Schiavo says he once promised his wife before she suffered a heart attack and severe brain damage 15 years ago that he would not keep her alive by artificial means.
She has lived in what court-appointed doctors call a persistent vegetative state since then.
Businessman Robert Herring, founder of WealthTV, offered the money to Michael Schiavo if he transfers the legal right to decide his wife's treatment to her parents, Bob and Mary Schindler. Herring and the parents said they believe medical advances could eventually help her.
The offer will remain until Monday, Herring said in a statement released by high-profile attorney Gloria Allred.
Herring has said he does not know Terri Schiavo.
Felos said that even if the husband did walk away, there is still a court order in place requiring removal of Terri Schiavo's feeding tube at 1 p.m. Friday.
The Schindlers, in a statement yesterday, said they were gratified by the offer but weren't surprised it was rejected.
*****************************************************
My question is this, if this husband really loves his wife or even cares about her why is he so set on killing her? She is not dead and she is breathing on her own. We live in a world where those with eating disorders are given feeding tubes to keep them from killing themselves, and yet there is so much hoopla about keeping this wormen alive by a feeding tube. Does that make sense? Is not her life precious also? She smiles and responds to her mothers touch. Why didn't the husband if he loved his wife take this mans offer and then use some of the money to see if there is anything they could do further to help his wife? Also to remove the tube is cruel because she would have to starve to death which is a horrible and painful way to die and could take a few days, or weeks. If this was your loved one would you want to do what this man wants to do to his wife, who by the way he claims to love? What is your take on all this?
Take care,
Hope12
madima answered on 03/12/05:Dear Hope12,
I cannot judge Michael. I do believe he loves Terri enough and is selfless enough to want to end her 15 years of misery. Fifteen years of being brain-damaged makes her one of the living dead. She can never recover to have a quality life.
If I had been in Michael's shoes, I am sure I will do the same thing. If I had been in Terri's shoes - and I almost have been - I would ask for the same thing.
When I was told, at age 11, that I will not live to see my next birthday, I made my father promise me that he will never allow me to suffer so much pain.
I knew, even that early, that it was too much to ask, even of a parent who loves you. I'm their only child and they have already lost my brother before me. So, while I was extracting that promise from papa, I was secretly telling myself that if I'm strong enough and still conscious when the time comes, to spare him and mama the agony, I'll pull the plug myself before things get really ugly. Perhaps, I don't even need to wait too long.
Later, it turned out that my x-ray plate and that of a terminally-ill girl of the same age had been interchanged.
But I knew, then and now, that if the plates had not been switched, there's no way I'll change my mind. | | Question/Answer | | STONY asked on 03/12/05 - TO ALL MY PRAYER WARRIORS... I SPOKE TO SARA YESTERDAY AND HER VOICE WAS CRISP AND CLEAR AND SHE SOUNDED JUST LIKE SHE DID WHEN SHE WAS 17. SHE IS LEARNING TO TAKE ONE STEP AT A TIME AND NOT GET OVERWHELMED BY WHAT TOMORROW MAY BRING. THANK YOU ALL FROM THE BOTTOM OF MY HEART FOR YOUR PRAYERS. madima answered on 03/12/05:Dear Tony,
I'm glad to hear that. I'm praying for her complete healing and rehabilitation. | | Question/Answer | | Choux asked on 03/07/05 - Problems, Problems Today I'm a little annoying today because I have had sciatica for two days running now, little sleep, and I went out of the house for the second time in a year with the help of my dear homemaker and friend Doris, and was terrified if I could handle just average stuff.
I apologize, and Wings, thanks for alerting me to my being too obnoxious. :):):)
If anyone can offer suggestions, please help me.
Regards, Mary Sue madima answered on 03/07/05:Dear Mary Sue,
Immediate relief of your sciatica is of utmost importance, before anything else. Have you seen the doctor and taken medication for your pain already?
Maybe you can ask Doris to put alternating hot and cold packs on your back, where it hurts? Hot and cold towels will also do. They will help with the pain. (I have a number of friends who had been plagued with back pains at a very early age - mostly male dancers who had been lifting partners heavier than they are in the wrong way.)
They told me the best sleep position for them is the fetal position - curled up with firm pillows supporting the back and the knees, but your doctor should tell you this. No soft mattresses for you too.
And please take care not to bend, lift, or sit in a soft, low chair, too because your pain will get worse.
Don't do anything stressful. Going out of the house is good for you. With sciatica, it's not advisable to lie in bed for longer than 2 days because this can worsen your condition. Just do activities you are able to tolerate.
Nick will help. My cats have always been my best living "hot packs" when I'm sick or in pain... only they are restless hot packs on four legs, one wrong move and they're off! :=)
Take care! | | Question/Answer | | bal317 asked on 03/02/05 - Easter With Easter coming, and all the recent impact that the movie Passion of the Christ, has had on many.
Are any of you thinking of this month a little different? If so how?
I have always felt the month of Easter seemed like the one time many were more focus'd on the actual event's of Jesus, the one Holiday that has held it's true meaning. madima answered on 03/02/05:Hi, bal,
I don't really think of this month as any different. But personally, it is a time of rest for me because we observe a five-day holiday, starting from Holy Wednesday to Easter Sunday.
Easter has always been a time of festivity and spectacle here in my country, which is not surprising because the Philippines is a predominantly Catholic nation.
The passion of Christ is re-enacted everywhere in the streets. It's a time for penitence, fasting, holy retreats and spiritual cleansing that culminates in beach outings and celebrations on Easter Sunday. | | Question/Answer | | bal317 asked on 03/02/05 - Getting down on knees I was just going through the unfortunate stack of obit's I have acquired, as many knows our Family seems to of loss several this last year.
Anyway, I ran across my 90 yr. old Uncle's, and remembered his daughter saying at his funeral, what she loved and did not realize her Father still did, and that was at night he would get down on his knees by his bed and Pray with her Mother. She later told him she was surprised he still Prayed like that, specially at his age. He said, there is no one so big, or old that they should not get down on their knees being humble to Pray to God.
My question is, When is the last time any of you got down on your knees to Pray?
Do you feel this is the way to show being humble?
I must admit, it's been a while for me, even tho I do Pray, just not on my knees. So I am going to start. madima answered on 03/02/05:Hi, bal,
The last time I got down on my knees to pray was yesterday when I dropped by the adoration chapel at the penthouse of the building where our press office is located.
I always kneel in prayer when I'm in church. My papa has callouses on his knees from praying and so does mama.
But when I'm at home, I pray in any position I feel comfortable in. Often, I feel more charged with energy during prayer when I am in the lotus position.
Actually, some priests I know recommend taking the prostrate position, forehead touching the ground, especially when inviting the angels of God to join the devotee in prayer. I've found that very effective as well.
When I'm very exhausted or not feeling well, I pray supine, in the dead man's pose.
Personally, I feel the position that the body takes in prayer has to do more with what promotes openness and in a sense, surrender of the senses. When I pray, I open up myself to be in direct communication with God. | | Question/Answer | | freethinker asked on 02/27/05 - More on blessing
On my question on blessings most of the answers were on the positive effect emerging from these blessing requests.
But what about all these cases where we have major human catastrophies?
Like the far-eastern natural disaster following the earthquake off-sumatra and the resulting tsunami.
If one claims all POSITIVES that happen to humanity to god, you can not claim all NEGATIVES that happen to that same humanity NOT to god.
Was there a lack of "blessing" to Sumatra, Thailand, Shri Lanka, India, and the eastern African countries?
If so, based on what do you base that conclusion?
And if not, is that request for "blessing" not a futile excercise, and mainly - like I already suggested - a feel good christian activity ?
madima answered on 02/27/05:Hi! I have always believed in God and personally, I believe my life is blessed.
And from my viewpoint, "blessing" gives one a sense of meaning, regardless of whether the instigating circumstance is positive or negative. Please don't ask me for a "scientific" explanation because I believe this is a purely subjective matter :=)
I live in Southeast Asia and have lost friends in the past tsunami. But if you were to ask me, and if I have died in that tsunami myself, I will consider it to be a blessing.
You and I will die one day, nobody lives forever. But I love the sea and if I have a choice, I'd rather die in the waters that I love than linger for months and years in constant pain with a dozen or more tubes feeding into my body. In that sense, the gift of easy death in a tsunami will be a blessing.
I do have kin and family who died painful and lingering deaths in protracted illness. And yet there are many who will consider that kind of pain a blessing in itself as it gives its own kind of lesson. Some Christians and even non-Christians would classify that physical pain as a "purification" and a form of expiation.
I have always courted danger, diving with sharks, playing with big cats and venomous serpents when I can. I feel blessed by their nearness, by their touch, by the trust of truly wild and dangerous beings. I do observe all the precautions but there are no guarantees and it has crossed my mind more than once: What if one of these guys get me?
Well,if one of those sharks or one of those tigers ever eat me, I can console myself that my body provided some nourishment for a beautiful, magnificent being. And that spares me the mundane fate of being food for worms.
A blessing is how you look at things and how you let things affect you, positive or negative, regardless.
So I'm inclined to think that a request for blessing is not a futile exercise. It's not really a request for good things to happen exclusively.
I see it as a request for enlightenment, so you could see the good things even in the bad things that transpire in your life. Human life is inescapably a mixture of both. | | Question/Answer | | Choux asked on 02/24/05 - What are You Doing Today? I'm going to go get my mail now. Then, go have a shampoo and shower, a clean change of clothes, wash my dishes, sweep the kitchen floor, plan a couple of days of menus, tonight, watch The Apprentice, work on one of my hobbies, check back on AW, AND all the while, be thankful that I am doing these mundane things and enjoying them! I forgot, think about sex. :):):)
Et vous?
madima answered on 02/24/05:It’s a hot Friday morning here, though it’s not quite summer yet, and we’re on holiday. But first and foremost I’ll have to get my day’s deadline out of the way – write a couple of stories for tomorrow’s business page, transcribe three interviews for my features and finish some magazine stories which are overdue. That done, I may still find some time to tinker with Act 1, Scene 1 of the full-length play I’m drafting. The dramatis personae will be based on AW. I haven’t really decided yet if it will be a Broadway musical, straight melodrama or theater of the absurd! :=)
I don’t feel like going out because I’ve not been home for many a day. There’s two bags full of books I haven’t even unpacked and two suitcases full of dirty laundry! I have to pack a fresh suitcase for my next trip to the white sugar sands and emerald seas of El Nido soon and perhaps have another suitcase “reserved” for emergency travels that may come between – there’s likely to be some. My diving boots and mask need to be replaced! There’s a tear in my fave backpack and I need to waterproof my trekking shoes again. But these can wait…
A couple of my girlfriends have crammed my ref full of home-cooked goodies because they love to mother me and know I’m bored to death with hotel food. The Lord bless them! This also means I can afford to be in hermitage here till Sunday and need not sneak out, even for food! Being home alone to do anything I please is one of the most heavenly luxuries for me!
Before dusk, I’ll turn off my cellphones and adjust the ring tone of my land line to “silent”, so I can vanish from the world, even for awhile. There’ll be no TV, no radio, no newspapers… I'll only allow myself one concession... to turn on my DVD player so I can work out and dance later... Ahhhh! I’ll love it!!!! :=)
I know, somewhere beneath all the food containers in the ref are two boxes of oil paints I had tucked away so they won’t dry up until I get the time to finish my canvases. Hopefully, I can unthaw them tonight or tomorrow, so I can start at least one canvas before the weekend is over! My first art exhibit is due in August and I haven’t done a new painting for months!
I still have a letter to write to papa and mama… and some special people :=) Perhaps I’ll peek out of my door later after all, just in case the stray black tuxedo tomcat, who’s been “serenading” me sporadically for the past weeks, is passing by. He might want some food. I’ll leave out crumbs on my verandah for the birds and hope the butterflies give me a visit, too… Perhaps some of the dragonflies will perch on my potted plants again at twilight…
Have a great day, dear Mary Sue! :=)
| | Question/Answer | | hOPE12 asked on 02/23/05 - Stress: Hello again,
We all face many things each day that cause us stree and anxiety.
1- My question is what causes you stress and anxiety and and what do you do to relieve it?
Children experience stress in school, older people experience stress due to getting older. As one wise person once said: "When I was young, I could handle everything. Now that I am older, it is more difficult. The hectic life I have led has begun to take its toll on me."
How do you reduce the stress in your life and in your childrens life? What are some things that help you t relax?
Take care,
Hope12 madima answered on 02/24/05:Deadlines have given me some degree of stress since childhood - deadline for the submission of projects, stories, poetry (where I know I have to be the best) and events like press nights -full dress-technicals and gala openings of plays where I perform the lead, as well as important dance performances in new theaters for the first time.
As a journalist, going after big exposes, banner headline material, procuring dangerous and classified information while trying to protect my news sources at the same time creates reasonable stress.
When I was a child, all I have to do is to climb on my father's lap or ask my mother to cuddle me. When nobody's around, I'll just stroke my favorite cat - or any cat within grabbing distance :=) I think the act of comforting me also comforts them a great deal :=)
When there was no cat to stroke (pets were forbidden in my college dorm and in my condo at present), I only need to take paper and pen, if there was no PC or notebook computer within my reach. Writing relaxes me.
If I have access to pastel, colored pencil, oil paints or acrylics and any "passable" surface, I'll paint any subject that comes to mind until my mind quiets down.
If there's a sea, mountain, forest or cave nearby, I would prefer to dive, climb, trek or explore alone. For me, being at one with nature is still the best way to de-stress.
| | Question/Answer | | HANK1 asked on 02/11/05 - A CHALLENGE:
I'm going to try and be PERFECT for three days in my personal life starting tomorrow (2/12/05). If I think I did something wrong, I'll make a note of it and publish all of my wrongs on Tuesday (2/15/05).
I CHALLENGE YOU TO DO THE SAME! (Don't ask me for a definition of PERFECT. You know about manners, values, transgressions, the Commandments etc.) Good luck!
HANK
madima answered on 02/11/05:I can promise to be a "perfect" lady for dinner for one person this Valentine's day :=)
I'm already the "perfect" property of a black tuxedo stray cat who had been serenading my door three-midnights-a-running. I hand-feed him, give him lots of loving, play with him, brush his coat and respect his independence.
And I'm usually quite perfect when I'm alone :=)
| | Question/Answer | | Pete_Hanysz asked on 02/11/05 - Desert Island Discs I would be fascinated to read what twelve pieces of music you would choose to have with you, if you were marooned on a desert island, with a CD player of course.
You would also be allowed a book (The Bible & the complete works of Shakespeare are already there) & an item of no practical use.
Please indulge me:)
Pete madima answered on 02/11/05:I'll go for exotic Persian music - the zither rendition of Omar Khayam's Rubaiyat, as well as the classic masters - Nicolo Paganini, some Tchaikovski, Beethoven, Brahms and Schubert. But of course, I'll also have some modern jazz and hip-hop tunes to dance with :=)
Rather than books, I'd rather have my IBM sub notebook, powered by solar batteries, with wireless broadband - so I can write as much as I want and surf the net, plus ample supply of canvas and oil paints :=) | | Question/Answer | | HANK1 asked on 02/11/05 - FOR AND AGAINST!
If God is for us, who can be against us?
HANK
madima answered on 02/11/05:Dear HANK, I do not like to demonize things and people. We are against ourselves, I believe, though often, we do not admit it. Man's greatest enemy - and greatest friend - has always been himself. The real battle is not outside. It is within. | | Question/Answer | | powderpuff asked on 02/11/05 - best way to convert someone? Kudos to those who show due respect. Eric McHenry of Standing Together, an Evangelical ministry devoted to sharing Christ's love, has made a significant effort among other street preachers to be respectful toward members of the LDS Church attending general conference.
“We felt that the actions of the street preachers has not reflected the greater heart [of the Evangelical community],” McHenry said.
He said some of these actions, such as rudeness, name-calling and stomping and spitting on temple garments do not reflect Christ’s love in any way. He also referred to 1 Corinthians 13:1 in describing the futility of these people’s efforts. KJV:
1 Corinthians 13
1 Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.
“The thing we’ve been criticized for is criticizing other Christians to make ourselves look good,” McHenry said.
This is why he felt a good-faith effort to find similarities rather than differences, and to build civility rather than discord was so necessary.
He said there are four types of Christians:
First is the kind that will “clack’em over the head with the Bible and show them the truth.” He believes this is overkill.
Second are those who feel there are just two things to avoid in conversation: politics and religion.
Next are those that have Mormon friends, but think they just can’t talk to them about faith.
Finally, he described the group he belongs to as those with “convictive civility,” which he regards as a better representation of faith. These are those who recognize differences between religions courteously.
To read more info, visit: http://newsnet.byu.edu/story.cfm/54288
My questions: Are you so moved by your own denominational or private belief, that you feel a need to straighten false believers out (those who dont' share your belief), set them straight? After all, you might believe it is a matter of saving a soul.... If so, would it be best to attempt by being an example of your belief or by coercion? Would coversion by coercion be genuine? If you were trying to convert someone, what method do you think would work best?
madima answered on 02/11/05:Dearest Sharlene,
I've always respected the faith and beliefs of others, so I expect them to respect mine.
I was brought up in the faith of my parents and I never thought to forego it (though I question many of its dogmas) because somehow, I found comfort in it... But I don't think that because others don't believe in what I believe in, they are "wrong" and should be "converted" to my religion.
I like to help others when I can, whatever faith they may believe in. I think it's a privilege. But I don't think I have a "messianic complex". I cannot presume I can "save" someone's soul by coercing him/her to become a member of my religious denomination, or any denomination for that matter.
I have seen enough people of various faiths who "preach" to others in church, take pride in their collection of "saved souls", then beat their kids and partners at home and do atrocious things contrary to what they preach.
I had several instances where some made unsolicited attempts to "convert" me. My response is to "turn off" my senses, refusing to see and hear automatically. The reaction, though polite, is similar to what happens when one is held up by a nuisance sales person who tries to force you to buy his unwanted wares.
I have also seen the responses of poverty-stricken groups to self-professed "evangelists" who dole out relief goods in exchange for the opportunity to "sermonize". Hungry folks nod in agreement just to grab the goodies to ease the rumble in their stomachs but they do not change what they believe in their hearts. | | Question/Answer | | HANK1 asked on 02/10/05 - LET'S GO FORWARD:
Now that Krewton has been reported by several, let's get back to the basics. I have a question:
What is the meaning of Lent and how is it observed in your Church?
HANK
madima answered on 02/10/05:Lent derives from the Middle English "lente" - springtime. The Old English "lencten" is also akin to Old High German "lenzin", which means "spring". It's
the 40 weekdays from Ash Wednesday to Easter observed by the Roman Catholic, Eastern, and some Protestant churches as a period of penitence and fasting.
As a Catholic nation, we have a very colorful way of observing Lent, which culminates on a four-day national holiday starting Maundy Thursday to Easter Sunday.
The passion of Christ is enacted on the streets in festivals, such as the famous "Moriones" in the island of Marinduque, where elaborately masked actors do the re-enactment. We also have hooded flaggelants - who whip themselves on the streets in penitence or walk on their knees to the church's altar. On the extreme, there are men and women who actually have themselves crucified on the cross on Holy Fridays. These are people who made petitions which were granted - such as the healing of a terminally ill kin, or ex convicts atoning for their sins.
My friends and I personally find Lent as the best time for Holy Retreats, for doing the Way of the Cross - in some localities, the 14 stations are set up on the streets, and for visiting churches "Visitacion Iglesia", when the Blessed Sacrament is exposed.
Easter Sunday is celebrated with grand processions and families go out to the beaches nearest them, cleansing themselves in the waters of the sea.
| | Question/Answer | | FormerJesusHelper76 asked on 02/09/05 - Christianity Board!!!!!!!! These are to the people who keep bringing up ratings and other people who are rating a certain way. To all the people who keep feeding into this. I think this board would be a lot better it people stopped focusing on such things and start discussing Christianity again.
In your opinion, does Christianity play a big role in your life today? Do you install it in your everyday life. Is Jesus the most important person in your life and how do you live your life to reflect your beliefs? What denominations or religions do you believe belong in the catogory of Christianity? Thank you for your answers.
Here are my answers. Christianity I try to focus on this when living my daily life but I do admit it is not easy everyday. It is a challenge and I need to work at it everyday. I am human and because of that I have my faults. Even though I should carry Jesus in my life daily and make him important in my life I sometimes do not. My wife and family always come first but I know without God and Jesus in my life that I would not have my Wife and family or for that matter my life, so I need to remember to always be thankful for what God has provided to me. I do my best to be caring, loving and happy daily. To treat others the way I want to be treated. I do not know all the different denominations that teach about Jesus or that are considered Christianity. I think it is a matter of opinion as well because they are some that might be considered cults by some. The ones that I know off hand is Protestant, Baptist, Catholic.
Appreciate all your responses. God bless you all!
Joe (Foo Man Chew) madima answered on 02/09/05:I think Christianity as a religion plays a role in my life mainly because I live in a predominantly Christian country and was brought up in a religious family, with Chistian "habits" :=)
I pray upon waking up and before going to sleep. I hear mass when I can. There's an altar in my home and in the home of my parents, there's a chapel in every building I go to, a religious image in every home I visit. The morning prayers, the three o'clock prayers and the angelus are broadcasted in many of the offices as well.
I try to live by the Christian way, though of course, I don't always succeed. To be frank, the most important person in my life is still me because I live with myself everyday, year in and year out. Nobody else spends as much time with me, though I have countless friends and am in a people-oriented profession. I also have to take care of me because if I don't, nobody else will take care of my parents.
There are so many Christian denominations:
The Amish,The Brethren,the Roman Catholic Church, the Children of God, Christadelphians, Christian Science, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints -Mormons, Community of Christ: Formerly the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, Eastern Orthodox churches,
The Family (David Berg), Family of Love
Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints Polygynists, Gnosticism, Jehovah's Witnesses, Messianic Judaism & "Jews for Jesus", Quakers (Society of Friends), Seventh-Day Adventist Church,
Two by Twos ("The Jesus Way", "The Church with no Name", etc), Unification Church,
Unitarian-Universalism,United Pentecostal Church International, Unity Church in Canada
Unity School of Christianity, Urantia Book, Worldwide Church of God and The Way International. | | Question/Answer | | jeremy_hobbs asked on 02/09/05 - What does God/Creator mean to you? This is a question for Christians as well as non-Christians. All answers are welcome. madima answered on 02/09/05:Dear Jeremy,
The God of my fathers and most of my country is a Catholic God.
I find comfort in Him, in His easy familiarity, though my version of Him is not the vindictive punisher or the ruthless censor of every human action and thought that my church makes Him out to be.
In my mind, He is my benevolent "other" father, the one who delegates His angels and saints to watch over me and protect me every moment of my life. He is also a great friend I can talk to with ease anytime of day and night, though often, he does not reply in human words.
However, I do not really find Him in the Bible, though I respect the book which the church says is His word.
I find Him in the elements of fire and air, water and earth. I find His love in the unexpected kindness of my fellowmen and in the trust and affection of dangerous wild things. I see Him in the Taoist, the Hindu and the Buddhist temples, in the altars of the pantheists and the sacred shrines of my friends of various other faiths.
Most of all, I find Him in me. In this aspect, I personally do not share the Christian concept of the God outside, sitting in a throne somewhere inaccessible in the ether. I subscribe more to the Eastern concept of the God-within, in the altar of the heart and in the seat of my human consciousness. | | Question/Answer | | Choux asked on 02/09/05 - Sad Letter I received a letter today for one of my physician's office staff. He is dying, and if I want to send a note, they will give the note to him.
He is a Muslim man from Bethelehem, Israel, a Catholic, very moral and cheerful. He cared for his patients who were his life, for the most part, he having worked, really too hard over the years.
I am getting ready to compost a wonderful, as wonderful as I can, to him, very uplifting and life affitming for him.
My question. What would you suggest for me to include. I don't want to miss something wonderful. Thanks...Mary Sue madima answered on 02/09/05:Dear Mary Sue,
I saw the draft of your letter on your post after this. It is a good letter. But may I suggest, if you have time, that you include how he specifically touched your life and how, in your knowledge, he touched the life of others whom you know personally (if this is applicable)?
What you plan to do is a great act of kindness and appreciation. | | Question/Answer | | STONY asked on 02/09/05 - I FOUND THIS MOST INTRESTING...
26 Beautiful One-liners
1. Give God what's right -- not what's left.
2. Man's way leads to a hopeless end -- God's way leads to an
endless hope.
3. A lot of kneeling will keep you in good standing.
4. He who kneels before God can stand before anyone.
5. In the sentence of life, the devil may be a comma--but never let him
be the period.
6. Don't put a question mark where God puts a period.
7. Are you wrinkled with burden? Come to the church for a face-lift.
8. When praying, don't give God instructions - just report for duty.
9. Don't wait for six strong men to take you to church.
10. We don't change God's message -- His message changes us.
11. The church is prayer-conditioned.
12. When God ordains, He sustains.
13. WARNING: Exposure to the Son may prevent burning.
14. Plan ahead -- It wasn't raining when Noah built the ark.
15. Most people want to serve God, but only in an advisory position.
16. Suffering from truth decay? Brush up on your Bible.
17. Exercise daily -- walk with the Lord.
18. Never give the devil a ride -- he will always want to drive.
19. Nothing else ruins the truth like stretching it.
20. Compassion is difficult to give away because it keeps coming back.
21. He who angers you controls you.
22. Worry is the darkroom in which negatives can develop.
23. Give Satan an inch & he'll be a ruler.
24. Be ye fishers of men -- you catch them & He'll clean them.
25. God doesn't call the qualified, He qualifies the called.
26. Read the Bible -- It will scare the hell out of you.
QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS? madima answered on 02/09/05:I absolutely love number 8!
Thanks Tony! :=) | | Question/Answer | | sapphire630 asked on 02/09/05 - From Fat Tuesday forth! Hope ya'all filled up on your Fat Tuesday pastries and rolled in your ashes for ash Wed. and decided what to give up for lent.
Next it's off to crash Pete's barbcue; be sure to bring the vegan's to save the Easter Bunny and the Cajuns and Texas cowboys to bring the 'gator stew and burma bull.
madima answered on 02/09/05:T'was a sumptuous Chinese dinner feast for me, lychees dipped in chocolate, etc! :=) Spectacular pyrotechnics too, for the year of the wood rooster... The dragons danced around yours truly!
I was assigned to interview a feng shui grand master, Joseph Chau, who was also featured by CNN. His wife is a compatriot, a Filipina, and the family spent their Chinese New Year here in Manila.
Kung Hei Fat Choy! | | Question/Answer | | hOPE12 asked on 02/07/05 - The Spiritual Heart! Hello Experts,
We all know we have a physical heart and when we go for a complete physical check up by the doctor we pretty know if it is in good shape or not.
What though of the spiritual heart?
God being the doctor of the spiritual heart, what condition will he find our spiritual heart in?
How can we correct what is in our spiritual heart that is wrong?
What are some of the conditions that can kill the spiritual heart?
Take care,
Hope12
madima answered on 02/07/05:I believe that our spiritual heart - the soul - is nourished by love.
You know something's wrong if you feel "dispirited" - literally "without spirit". If you no longer have the appetite for life. Everything and everyone seems dull or undesirable. You cannot start or finish anything.
Envy and hatred, greed and lust kills the soul, poisoning it ever so slowly.
For me, it takes so little to nourish the spiritual heart - doing something for a stranger without expecting any reward, writing poetry and painting, being with nature and being in the state of prayer, to mention a few. | | Question/Answer | | hOPE12 asked on 02/07/05 - Are we not being a bit picky? Hello Experts,
There have been questioned asked on this board with question marks that are being asked and those asking them are wanting direct answers in the way they think it should be answered.
Is that fair? Do they really read the full answers? If each person asking the question did, then they would find that answer in the comment just not in the way they wish to get the answer. I see no rules from Answerway stating that an answer has to be the way the one asking the question thinks it should be answered, as long as the answer could be found in the persons comments. Simple questions, don't always need simple answers, when one feels the need to elaborate on the comments they contribute. I personally do not follow rules set out by individual experts, but I do follow the rules of Answerway.
My suggestion to those asking questions on this board is to read all the contents of the comments. If this is done and given thought as to what is being said then the answer to the questions given would be obvious.
As to the questions that Acura gave on her hypothetical questions she asked:
1question
“You get ready, you aim. But do you fire? Do you let your abhorrence to killing stop you from shooting the enemy who is shooting at you and your friends and hitting some of them?
The Answer given was:
1 Answer.
“We need to each ask ourselves, “Do I really love my neighbor? If we say yes, then we would never kill them. Our neighbors are all the people of this world. We would never even think of killing another in war.”
Does this not say no automatically? If we love our neighbor we would not even go to war little lone pick up a gun to kill another, so the answer is in the comment if one truly reads it?
2 Question asked:
”There are some who seem to think that shooting at and killing the enemy is not the thing to do. That’s the reason for these questions. Is it the proper thing to do or not?”
Again the answer was given in the comments:
2 Answer:
“If we are a true “Christian and a follower of Jesus Christ, then we would never even go to war but instead would go to jail rather then kill another who is our neighbor. Then and only then can we honestly say from our heart, we are a follower of Jesus Christ and what he taught!”
Are we not getting a bit picky in what way the answers are given? We are adults and therefore if we disagree with the answers given then be an adult and just say you disagree. There is no need for one star because someone did write the words “No I would Not shoot”. When that persons answer is quit obvious.
Comment please and just write them however you wish to but respectful please!
Take care,
Hope12 madima answered on 02/07/05:Personally, I don't really care how I'm rated :=)
We're all volunteer experts here and the original purpose of the board is to help people and give answers.
There's really no way the rating system can be controlled. If the question is asked from a biased viewpoint in the first place, and the asker already has the "right" answer in mind, no matter how well-researched or reasonable the answer is, it will be rated as subjectively as the asker wants it to be.
However, the expert still has the option whether to answer the question or not.
If the expert sees that the asker is rude or heavily prejudiced, or he/she is just asking questions just to solicit attention, provoke others, create trouble or be a nuisance, then questions from that asker should be ignored thereafter. | | Question/Answer | | FormerJesusHelper76 asked on 02/06/05 - Abuse!!!!!!! Those poor children that got abused continusly. How can us, regular ordinary Joe help these children get through such abuse? I am sure some will be afraid to trust others ever again, some might act out and try to get revenge. How should society help these children grow up healthier and hopefully happier?
Is there anyway for them to lead ordinary lives and learn how to trust again. Yes, and these children should be prayed for as well.
Joe madima answered on 02/07/05:Dear Joe,
Sadly, there's nothing you can do, unless you volunteer your services as a counselor in centers dealing with abused children, or donate money to organizations assisting them.
Yes, there is a way abused children can lead normal lives. The moment they become aware that they are trapped in a vicious cycle and deliberately break it, they shall be free. It has to be a very deliberate act on their part. It's never easy but it can be done. It has been done.
My parents, who were orphaned very early, suffered abuse from their guardians. But they broke the cycle. I have known many experts and askers here who were abused as kids but have never abused their offspring. | | Question/Answer | | arcura asked on 02/06/05 - Let me sincerely ask this hypothetical question… Imagine this, you are in the military – fully equipped and trained to do you duty as a soldier. But you are one who abhors killing other human beings.
You are sent into war by your superiors to do what you have pledge and sworn to do. That is to fight for your country and protect it and its citizens which includes those who are to join the fight with you on your side. In this case it does not matter which armed force you are fight with or against. The other side is the enemy.
Suddenly there is a fire fight. Bullets and shells are flying in both directions. Some of you comrades are hit.
You have the opportunity from your position to knock out the opposition and save your friends from further harm.
You get ready, you aim. But do you fire? Do you let your abhorrence to killing stop you from shooting the enemy who is shooting at you and your friends and hitting some of them?
There are some who seem to think that shooting at and killing the enemy is not the thing to do. That’s the reason for these questions. Is it the proper thing to do or not?
For clarification I do here mention that I am not a supported of capital punishment. I think that the death penalty should be abolished.
Peace and kindness, arcura madima answered on 02/07/05:Dear Fred,
I hate wars. I've seen what it did to my parents - and they were both very young when the last war happened. But if I'm a soldier and the choice is to kill or be killed, I shall kill.
No offense, but I feel the premise given here is not possible. If one goes into soldiering, one is expected to go into battle. If one goes into battle, either he kills or he is killed. It's just one of two options.
Is it proper to kill in defense of self and country? I believe, yes. Sages say that in war, all is fair. The rule here is self-preservation. If a man or a woman abhors killing, he or she should not to be a soldier. | | Question/Answer | | FormerJesusHelper76 asked on 02/06/05 - Premonitions! There is a lot of talk about Silvia Browne and her talking to the dead and other things that she talks about. Does this gift exist. In my opinion it does. It is how you use it which is most important. It is true she is making much money off her success.
For me seeing other people say she is a complete fraud and that no one can have those experiances. I think your wrong. She is making lots of money out there but there are some people out there with genuine experiances, about family and friends that has nothing to do with money but everything to do with the safety of the family.
I for one has mentioned it many times that since my teenage years have had countless dreams that have come true. Family knows, people at school know, people at work know. It is a gift I believe and It should not be misused. Everybody at a certain extent have had personal experiances that are very compelling evidence that we can pick up things, learn about things and know things through other things besides our 5 senses.
Just wanted to share my opinion about it.
Joe madima answered on 02/07/05:Dear Joe,
My opinion is... I believe in ESP and the "siddhis" - clairvoyance, clairaudience and clairsentience as well as the ability to do astral projection. I believe that the gift exists.
However, I never had any direct personal interaction with Sylvia Browne, nor have I watched her shows though I think I've read her autobiography somewhere.
What makes me wonder is... Psychic abilities are meant to guide the one gifted with it. Primarily, it is meant for the possessor, for use in his or her own life. Helping others using the gift is just a "bonus" and a way of "giving back" for the blessing bestowed.
However, I believe, one who is genuinely gifted must not charge for the use of such gifts because it was freely given.
Also, I would assume that whoever has it will more or less lead an "enlightened" life and will be able to avoid most of the normal pitfalls of humanity, or at least, do not suffer a tragic end.
If such a gift is directed to help others without helping the self first and foremost, then, it becomes a mere denial of one's deepest problems. If it is abused or misdirected, or practiced blindly, it may lead to the ruin of the one with such a gift.
If I remember right, Edgar Cayce of Virginia, one of the most renowned American psychics of his time, died lonely and bankrupt, a healer who has restored so many but was unable to heal his own body. John Dee, the most famous psychic of the Elizabethan period, also died in penury. His partner, Edward Kelley, was strangled in a freak accident as he attempted to escape from prison. For her part, Sylvia Browne's gifts did not help her avoid a broken marriage. | | Question/Answer | | HANK1 asked on 02/05/05 - CONCLUSION:
Only savages inflict upon their victims the horrors of torture. Who does this remind you of?
HANK
madima answered on 02/05/05:Only savages? No, I don't think so, dear Hank.
The worst torture, in my opinion, is not of the body but of the heart and mind.
And the ones who inflict the most devastating and the most effective torture are the most intelligent, the most educated, the most powerful elite members of the society.
It takes brains - and creativity - to know how to destroy another human being completely.
I think human history has proven that enough. | | Question/Answer | | HANK1 asked on 02/05/05 - WOULD YOU FAINT? ... PART II:
How would you feel if you looked at the sky some very dark night and saw a panoramic view of Satan wearing his red and black robe looking straight at you? I have often wondered about this as well!
madima answered on 02/05/05:I've seen Satan twice in my dreams as well and in fact I've painted him in his fight with my fave angel, Michael :=)
I haven't fainted :=)
I see him as a beautiful being without light, but still breathtakingly beautiful as he was once an angel of God turned adversary.
He has no robes on, in my image of him. I painted him naked, with a body like Michael Angelo's David. Only, his skin was darker, his curly hair was jet-black and from him, no light emanated.
That's my artistic concept of evil in this world - beautiful, dark and seductive. | | Question/Answer | | HANK1 asked on 02/05/05 - WOULD YOU FAINT?
How would you feel if you looked at the sky some very dark night and saw a panoramic view of God wearing his white robe looking straight at you? I have often wondered about this!
HANK
madima answered on 02/05/05:I think I'd smile :=)
Faint? No. That will be wasting the spectacular moment.
I think I have seen Him though, in my near-death experience. He does not wear white robes. He is the Light.
I feel God has no real image, though. It is us who make an image of Him to grasp His essence, to translate the pure spirit into our physical world :=) | | Question/Answer | | HANK1 asked on 02/05/05 - AREN'T WE LUCKY?
"The punishment for poisoning during the Elizabethan period was to be boiled to death. Mutilation and branding were also common. People often had their right hand cut off if they were caught stealing, and on certain occasions eyes were plucked out with hot pinchers and fingers were torn off.
Some minor cruelties included the pillory, the stocks, the finger pillory, the ducking stool, and the ranks. The dunking stool was a stool or chair in which a woman who had been accused of adultery or other crimes would be repeatedly dunked under water until pronounced dead.
The pillory was another device that was commonly used. There were a couple of different forms of the pillory. The pillory was a frame in the shape of a T, usually placed in the center of the town. The accused would place his/her hands in the cross bar of the T with his/her head sticking out of a hole at the top. The accused then had to stay in the pillory for an extremely long time and would be harassed by everyone that crossed his/her path.
Another form of the pillory that isn't as widely known was for the feet. This device had holes through which the toes were forced; then the toes were crushed with a hammer and wedge. This form of pillory had much less emotional pain, but the excruciating physical pain was much more enduring.
The harsher the crime committed, the more horrendous the punishment during this time. A person accused of manslaughter, rape, or robbery, might find himself trapped in cages hung up in public places where others could observe his slow death. Right before being pronounced dead, he was taken down and quartered until the pain finally killed him."
Source: "Torture & Punishment In Elizabethan Times" -- Erin Lestikow, Katie O'Fallon, Lori Patterson
Would the use of a 'hands and head' pillory be feasible to enforce and promote morality in America?
HANK
madima answered on 02/05/05:I don't think a wrong could be made right by another wrong.
Punishment and negative reinforcement does not really work to promote morality. It never did during those times, 5 centuries ago. It won't do today.
As for lucky... We don't have gory physical punishments publicized in this era, though torture goes on in secret in prisons everywhere.
Nonetheless, many people in the world today are "tortured", suffering slow death by poisoning, breathing polluted air, drinking polluted water, eating contaminated food that gives them all kinds of ailments and cancers in later years.
| | Question/Answer | | Saladin asked on 02/04/05 - Food Quality - Your opinion ...
What is your opinion of:
1. Military food.
2. Prison food.
:)
madima answered on 02/05/05:I have tasted military food just once, when I visited the military academy. Not too bad, I think, but I've always been biased in favor of mama's cooking.
I have visited prisons at least twice but never at mealtimes, so I can't be an authority on that :=)
I've seen papa and mama's hospital food, took just one look and said, "No way will I eat that!"
I'm already having nightmares about hotel food. I've eaten mostly nothing but them in the past half decade or so!
I'm happiest with comfort food.
Chocolates! :=) | | Question/Answer | | Saladin asked on 02/04/05 - Expert - Let me ask in another way ....
Let me ask each of you to state what qualifications you believe a person must have to be an expert on COOKING.
Would you count someone who has been to a restaurant to eat?
Would you count someone who has been to a take-away food place?
Would you count someone who eats regularly?
Or would you have other criteria for nominating someone as an expert in COOKING?
:)
madima answered on 02/05/05:I'll personally go for option number four :=)
A real expert in cooking must please my palate, that is all :=)
So far, my palate has been marinated in all sorts of hotel food during weekdays and week-ends on out-of-town coverages and steeped in tinned meat and sardines when I work at home! I so yearn for mama's home cooking and I don't know how to cook!!!!!
| | Question/Answer | | FormerJesusHelper76 asked on 02/04/05 - Heaven and Hell Do you believe in Heaven and Hell or just one or the other?
In your own beliefs or opinions what happens to us when we die? Do we go into a new world with a new body? Do we just sleep for eternity? Do we come back here in another life?
What are your beliefs or opinions about this? Thank you in advance!
Joe madima answered on 02/05/05:I believe I'm in living in heaven right now, much of the time, because I chose to :=)
But I think hell is just in the vicinity... I see it in the suffering of my fellowmen that can never be alleviated.
I have never been afraid of dying after my near-death experience. I believe I'll just go into the Light. And I believe I'll be happy.
It might interest you to look into the Tibetan Book of the Dead(The Bardo Thotrol). It chronicles the stages that a soul goes through after death. It was traditionally read aloud to the dying to help them attain liberation. However, this is Tibetan Buddhism :=)
Honestly, where I'll go after death does not really bother me now. I live in the present. And while I do not fear death, I love being alive :=) | | Question/Answer | | FormerJesusHelper76 asked on 02/05/05 - Dream Questions???Comments Welcome!!! Please I know some of you might be interested in dreams and etc...
I had this real upsetting one and I would like to share it with you and get your opinion of it. No I was not eating anything weird before going to sleep, no medication etc... I was feeling really relaxed, peaceful and more.
Here Goes... It is very confusing and very weird.
About myself and my wife. We were going to renew our vows. She wanted to wear her wedding dress, but I did not want to wear the tux. Before all this there was lots of confusing events. Myself driving a vehicle and at the same time controlling another vehicle ahead of me. Trying to get to the wedding quickly. It was suppose to happen at 2 oclock. There were many people missing from the original wedding and we decided to renew our vows 6 months after the wedding. Got there and she came over. We gave the rings to some person. I heard the priest talking to my mother saying you really need to pray for them. My mother said she has, she has. The priest kept repeating it over and over and then he started getting angry and nasty. My mom got upset and could not believe it. There was such a negative atmosphere. My wife said she had 2 symptoms lets get this done and over with. She has epilepsy.. So as we went up we said lets have fun we started dancing and smiling and laughing and we did not care what people thought. Next thing you know she is kneeling looking at the front, got up and kneeled again then she collapsed and had a huge seizure. Next thing you know she disappeared and the priest came up to me with an envolope with all her belongings in it and said I am sorry. I looked through the package and could not find the rings, the right ones. I searched and searched and they could not find them eighter. I felt bad because at this point I was like what is her family going to think she is at the hospital and I am here searching for rings. They are engraved. When I first received the package I cried. There are other parts of the dream as well. When I woke up I told my wife about the dream it scared her. Usually I have dreams that come true, about her having seizures. This dream seemed way out there.
I felt so upset when I woke up and held her tight and thanked God I have her. I was also scared she was going to have her seizure.
When I went to sleep felt possitive, happy, relaxed and peaceful and having such a negative dream. Why do you think this happens? How can it effect a person so deeply even though I know it was a dream?
Thank you in advance! Joe madima answered on 02/05/05:Dear Joe,
Your state of mind the day before or just prior to sleep can have a bearing on your dreaming. However, because dreams usually deal with your secret fears and issues, a gradual build-up of worries and other concerns that you refuse to acknowledge over time can suddenly surface in the dreaming, especially when you reach a “saturation point”.
Indeed, there is a precognitive element in the dreaming because the subconscious tends to be more intuitive than the waking mind and has access to the collective unconscious.
But the precognitive part of your dream may still be explained away by your physical proximity to your wife. Your body, not just your mind, is tuned in to her. You can instinctively anticipate her seizure. Even household pets can reportedly sense that, according to scientific studies. Before the disturbed electrical rhythms of the central nervous system manifest as convulsive attacks, certain nonverbal signals and even scents, can be detected. Furthermore, you will be more “attuned” to your wife in an altered state of consciousness, where your senses are fully focused.
However, on the symbolic level, it appears that there are problems in your relationship with her that you do not want to acknowledge, that’s why they haunt you in your sleep.
This is how I would analyze your dream:
>We were going to renew our vows.
This hints that deep within you, you feel a need to re-instate your sense of commitment to the marriage. There’s an uncertainty here over your relationship that is not acknowledged.
>She wanted to wear her wedding dress, but I did not want to wear the tux.
This signifies the underlying conflict between you and your wife. The clothes you wear in the dreaming symbolize the roles you play in life. Looks like your wife’s idea of a marriage/commitment differs greatly from yours.
>Before all this there was lots of confusing events. Myself driving a vehicle and at the same time controlling another vehicle ahead of me.
The confusion shows your inner confusion. The vehicle signifies control and life itself. You want to have control over your life and that of another person – most probably your wife – who is not “in pace” with your concept of how life should be lived. She is “ahead” of you. You could be afraid of being left behind.
>Trying to get to the wedding quickly. It was suppose to happen at 2 oclock.
The haste shown here could indicate that you tend to gloss over things, favoring speedy resolution over understanding of the real issues. The number 2 signifies duality and can hint that you cannot make up your mind about what you really want in this relationship. You cannot see the “two” sides – the light and dark, positive and negative – sufficiently.
>There were many people missing from the original wedding and we decided to renew our vows 6 months after the wedding.
There could be “something” missing from your marriage as well, expectations that were not fulfilled, issues that were unresolved. The number six is a multiple of two – a triple duality.
>We gave the rings to some person.
Your commitment to each other could have been “misplaced”. Subconsciously, you feel that both you and your wife have given your rings, the symbols of what bind the two of you until death do you part, has been given to a stranger – “some person” – whose name or identity you don’t know. This could also indicate estrangement between the two of you.
>I heard the priest talking to my mother saying you really need to pray for them. My mother said she has, she has.
“Them” obviously refers to you and your wife. You feel that superhuman intervention is somehow needed to preserve your relationship. The priest and your mother are animus and anima figures, symbolizing reason and emotion.
>The priest kept repeating it over and over and then he started getting angry and nasty. My mom got upset and could not believe it. There was such a negative atmosphere.
However, there seems to be conflict between your emotion and your reason.
>My wife said she had 2 symptoms lets get this done and over with.
Again, the number two is repeated, underscoring its significance. But your wife does not want to pay attention to it, either.
>So as we went up we said let’s have fun we started dancing and smiling and laughing and we did not care what people thought.
This clearly shows sublimation of negative emotions. Confronting the negative issues – the conflict of emotion and reason shown by your priest and mother figures earlier – is unacceptable to both you and your wife. So, you prefer to present a happy face to the world rather than address the true cause of your unhappiness.
>Next thing you know she is kneeling looking at the front, got up and kneeled again then she collapsed and had a huge seizure.
However, denying the inner turmoil exacts its toll. The symbol could be taken on two levels. You secretly see this as the “cause” of your wife’s illness. Or you fear this will lead to her collapse and the collapse of your relationship.
>Next thing you know she disappeared and the priest came up to me with an envelope with all her belongings in it and said I am sorry.
This is your ultimate subconscious fear, that you will lose your wife.
>I looked through the package and could not find the rings, the right ones. I searched and searched and they could not find them either.
In your inner fear and confusion, you feel you have “lost” the marriage. You are unable to “find” the symbols of your commitment as husband and wife.
>I felt bad because at this point I was like what is her family going to think she is at the hospital and I am here searching for rings. They are engraved. When I first received the package I cried.
This shows your feeling of helplessness and loss of power over your relationship.
But dear Joe, please bear in mind that dreams confront us with issues we refuse to acknowledge but need to resolve. Heed the message of your subconscious and sort out the issues in your relationship. Talk to your wife. Seek counseling if necessary. When you have addressed the problems and differences that secretly bother you, you will no longer dream of lost wedding rings.
I hope this helps.
| | Question/Answer | | Saladin asked on 02/01/05 - To my Roman Catholic friends ...
I am sorry that my friend the pope is having a hard time and that his health has taken a turn for the worse.
My family keep him in our prayers.
God bless you.
Ronnie and Gay
madima answered on 02/01/05:Thanks for you and your family's prayers, dear Ronnie.
May God bless you and yours too. | | Question/Answer | | Saladin asked on 01/31/05 - Solely out of interest ....
What musical instruments do/can you play with a reasonable degree of proficiency?
I can do:
Guitar - strum chords only
Kazoo
Comb and Paper
Harmonica - limited
Pianola/player piano - highly skilled
Autoharp - highly skilled
Piano/organ - you must be joking!
Jaws Harp - extremely proficient
Ukulele - Wizard
Ukulele-banjo - ditto
G-banjo - extremely upleasant experience
5-string Banjo - worse but rhythmic
Swanee whistle - you wouldn't believe it!
Clarinet - ask me to tell you the story some day!
Ocarino - you have a great memory!
Tin flute - passable in the lower register
Drum - I can stay in time
Triangle - maestro!
How about you?
madima answered on 01/31/05:None, at present, very unfortunately, but will try to learn at least one in this lifetime! It's a must-do for me!
I'd love to play the violin...Also the didgeridoo of the people of the dreaming, though it is said that only males are allowed to play it.
My great grandpa was a composer/musician who played the bamboo organ in Las Pinas, reputedly one of the wonders of the world. My grandfather is a pianist and papa is a violinist.
But when I told papa I wanted to learn the violin, he locked it up in the family chest and told me I should not be a musician or an artist because they live lonely lives and usually die in poverty :=(
Anyway, I went into the other arts - theater, dance, painting, etc... And I found my life so rich because of them :=(
There's still a harp in the house... and bamboo flutes, a clarinet, ukulele and a native drum made of animal skins... When I get to have the time, I'll try to learn them :=) | | Question/Answer | | Choux asked on 01/29/05 - Spirituality vis a vis Supernatural What are your thoughts about the meaning of the word Spirituality?
My thoughts are this. Spirituality is a state of mind and emotions in which an individual seeks positive abstract qualities of personhood such as altruism, love, compassion, etc. For me spirituality has nothing to do with the supernatural.
Supernatural as described as invisible powers, not from Nature, such as demons, devils, GodAlighty as described in the Bible, etc.
Not interested in seeing Dictionary Definitions, just your ideas on what Spirituality means in the year **2005** to folks. :):):) Thanking you in advance. madima answered on 01/30/05:For me, it's just honoring the spirit within:=)
Spiritual concerns have nothing to do with the material and the financial and are often in direct conflict with the latter.
I can and do forsake material needs and undertakings to nourish the spiritual aspect of myself.
Leading a prayerful life is part of being spiritual for me. Enjoying my solitude and communing with myself, as well as with nature, is also part of the package.
| | Question/Answer | | darkstar asked on 01/30/05 - whats in a name? hi, i was wondering how many people think their name influences they way people precieve you? most of us keep the name we were born with and do you feel that people have preconcieved ideas about you becasue of your name? after all your parents are the ones who decided your name most likely and do you feel your name has influenced the kind of person you are?
i had six children with a wide variety of names they are: Amin, Jacob, Ana, Kelly, Abbie, and Sadie. Amin was named before the terroist Amin was ever in the news but this has affected him some i think. now i have 8 grand children and their names are Forrest (F), Ivy, Jacob, Kaleb, Andrew, Kellen, Jasmine and Summer Lily....Just curious, how do you feel about your name? i was embarrassed about my name growing up, as a child, i thought my name was a trashy name for some reason, can't remember why thou now, darlene madima answered on 01/30/05:I've always liked your name, Darlene :=)
It reminds me of that beautiful term of endearment, "darling".
I never thought much about my real name, although there were times I wish I had the liberty to choose my own.
But the truth is, I have so many names in real life that I feel I can always choose the one that I see fit for whatever circumstance I find myself in :=)
The name on my official birth certificate happens to be different from the name on my baptismal certificate. A lot of people must have been confused somewhere...
Anyway, both names are not identical with the name which was put down on my school registry, which is the name that currently appears on both my official school records and my passport.
My father named me after his favorite saint. It was also the name of the nun who was his favorite aunt. But then, he had to add the name of the grandaunt who adopted him because of pressure from her side of the family. So my "real" name is actually an odd combination of the names of the two women who mattered most in his life :=)
Strangely, papa has never called me by ANY of my official names but always by the pet name he gave me as a child. For him, it seems I've never grown up :=)
Papa's grandaunt, as well as all our relatives on his maternal side call me by "her" name while my grandaunt in the convent on his paternal side, along with the other nuns, call me by "her" name - the name of a saint.
Some of my friends and teachers call me by my initials, which sounds sexy. My closest friends call me by my pet name, which sounds somewhat cute. Those unfamiliar to me call me by my full name, which sounds formal.
However, when I took to the stage and to newspapering, my editors and my directors shortened my name. I did not complain. Anyway, I felt the version of my name which appeared on the marquee, on the press releases and the programs suited the purpose of publicity.
To make matters more complicated, as a journalist, I have to use two names, so I won't get in trouble with the publishers.
The official shortened version of my name appears on my byline on the national daily where I am a staff reporter and on the national weekly magazine where I moonlight.
I use another name, the pseudonym I've been using since highschool, on another national daily. We're forbidden to write for competing papers, however, I write for a different section, so I see no real conflict of interest plus I need the extra income :=)
Of course, here in the virtual world, I can have all the names I chose for myself :=) | | Question/Answer | | FormerJesusHelper76 asked on 01/28/05 - Zeal? Does this word mean anything to any of you? What does it mean? Is there such a thing of too much Zeal or not enough?
Thanks in advance!
Joe madima answered on 01/29/05:Zeal is enthusiasm for doing something.
Yes, I believe there could be too much zeal or not enough. The latter could lead to apathy while the former could lead to fanaticism.
Both extremes in anything can be harmful.
Hate crimes as well as discrimination has been attributed to too much religious zeal. | | Question/Answer | | bal317 asked on 01/28/05 - Prayer's needed As many of you know I live in Iowa, and our neighboring State is Illinois. I am in the "dumps" over the Local News.
Mostly involving teenager's.
We have had since Wednesday reportings of teenager's actually, killing other teens in such a way it is so horid. Bashing in their heads, kidnapping their prey, and dismantle'ing their bodies.
Then another, a 16 yr. old boy, was asked to babysit, a 15 month old, when the Mother returned, her baby was in critical conditions, from the teen sexually molesting the child in such a way that baby is in critical condition.
A pack of pit bulls, attacked and killed a 14 yr. old. But the "funny" thing they report this girl was found missing from her bed at 6:30 am by her parents, then they first thought she was a hit and run, but they found all these dog marks, so their's still questions.
A adult male, boyfriend of the mother of 2 children, ages 2yr.old and 4 yr.old sexually molested these girls and stepped on their pelvic smashing them in, one died and the other one remains in serious critical condition.
Then a teen boy, had been feeding his family rat poisoning, saying he only wanted to make his family ill, not kill them?
Baby dead, thought at first due to traumatic diseased brain problems, then found out the baby had been overly medicated by the parents.
Last- 3 grade schooler's were charged for drawing a picture of a kid they did not like, but made the figures like stick figures only they held knifes and was suppose to be killing the kid they did not like.
I thought if I could ask for Prayer's for our area's people specially the one's that are facing serious challenges of destruction of not only those they harm, but to themselves and their parents or people that love them, as they will be taken out of their normal lives for a long time if not forever. And to the parents and loved ones that have been faced with loosing the innocent ones in such a horid way.
Specially Prayer's for all those poor innocent victims, that as the evil was destroying their life, that God took over early and eased their dying pain.
Thank you all and Bless you,
bal317
madima answered on 01/29/05:Dear Bal,
I shall include them in my prayers, as you requested.
I'm a member of the working press myself, though I cover the business beat. I have never covered the police beat, where I am most likely to come across such atrocities.
Reading such stuff used to make me feel so helpless. I myself don't listen to the news and read the newspapers, anymore, including my own. And yet, I'm aware that so much more is not reported in the news.
Take care and God bless you. | | Question/Answer | | Liz22 asked on 01/27/05 - I Love You All I had to ask the Lord to help me in what to say, and I would like to apologize for the silly post I had put up, the issue on Blood, the words did not come out right, but after much research and listening to you experts, of course I would take blood.
I would like to apologize to Darkstar I did not know about her circumstances and my heart and Prayers go out for her and that her lovely Grand Daughter will get well.
You all mean a lot to me, and I have heard people tell me where I live, it is only the internet, don't let it bother you, but to me, I know you are real people with real feelings and I just wanted to say' Forgive me, and I love you all.
You have guided me and showed me new paths, and I only Pray you know how wonderful you all are.
I have to leave here in the morning to another specialist and I wanted to get this out before I go.
But more I wanted to leave you my love and may the Lord Jesus Bless you more than you could know. madima answered on 01/28/05:Dear Joy,
I have known of your circumstances since last year when you mentioned it in your responses.
You are always in my prayers. | | Question/Answer | | Saladin asked on 01/28/05 - The Ivory Tower ...
I have long entertained the notion that Christians of all hues inhabit an invisible Ivory Tower and regard themselves in and high above all others, referring to "the world," as it ift were a place they did not inhabit, making divisions of righteousness between themselves and their comrades safe in the tower, "the righteous and the right", and "them out there!" meaning the wicked people.
Ambrose Bierce described a Christian as one who felt "the teachings of the New Testament adequately suited to the needs of his neighbour."
How do you, personally, regard yourself in relation to non-Christians and those not of your denomination?
:)
Ronnie
madima answered on 01/28/05:Now that you made me look back... :=)
Personally, I've never regarded myself as above others not of my religion.
Although my parents (and my ancestors) are devout Catholics, it never occurred to me that I'm "better" than any one because of my faith - despite the fact that at school, in the first ten years of my education, our Catholic religion teachers promoted that idea.
Of course, I've always known that I'm better than my peers in other respects. I was at the top of the class in academics. I was the editor-in-chief of the school paper. I had always been an achiever in certain areas where I chose to be. But I have never thought I was "better" because of the denomination I belonged to.
In fact, I have always admired the good practices of other faiths. I was moved by the simplicity of the belief of our animist/pantheist ethnic people. The mystique of Eastern faiths intrigue me to no end.
Above all, I count Muslims, Protestants, Buddhists, Hindus, agnostics and atheists among my closest friends. | | Question/Answer | | Bobbye asked on 01/28/05 - JONAH & THE WHALE: I ran across this info in Zondervan's Pictorial Bible Dictionary -- of which I consider one of the most scholarly in Bible dictionaries. Thought you would find this of interest.
HAVE ANY OF YOU READ OF THIS?
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"'Whale' is retained in the RSV in the acount found in Matthew 12:40. In Jonaha 1:17 the RSV uses 'great fish,' and in Genesis 1:32 and Job 7;12 it is rendered 'sea monsters' or 'sea monster.'
"Goodwin maintains that among whales, only the sperm whale has a throat structure capable of swallowing a man. Such whales have been seen in the Mediterranean (the Great Sea; west of The Holy Land). He relates an incident told by Sir Francis Fox of a sailor, who in 1891 fell overboard, was swallowed by a sperm whale and after twenty-four hours was rescued by his shipmates when they opened ... the whale. After being mentally deranged for two weeks, he is said to have recovered. Sir Francis got this story from the ship's captain and crew."
Source: Tenney, Merrill C. "The Zondervan Pictorial Bible Dictionary." Zondervan Publishing House; Grand Rapids, MI; 1963.
===================== madima answered on 01/28/05:Thanks Bobbye. I haven't read this one. But speaking from the viewpoint of a licensed diver and animal lover who had very close personal encounters with whales, I've always thought of the story of Jonah as symbolic, not an actual event.
I have seen sperm whales in the open sea. Sperm whales are intelligent carnivores but although it has been said that their vision is poor, I don't think that they will ever swallow a man whole, even by mistake. Their diet consists mostly of the giant squid - deep sea dwellers which reach lengths of six feet or more, but remotely resembles man.
Whales can "mouth" objects when they are curious to get a feel of it simply because they have no other appendages to explore with, like hands.
Still, I believe the only way a man could get inside the mouth of a whale is if he yanks open the whale's mouth, squeeze inside and close it behind him. But then, the whale will immediately sense he is not its natural food and spit him out! :=)
You can say I speak from experience. I have put my hands inside the mouth of wild whales more than twice. My last encounter was with two over 30-footers in May, last year :=)
And it's just my hands :=) | | Question/Answer | | ROLCAM asked on 01/27/05 - Do you believe this ? "The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective"
(Jas. 5:16) madima answered on 01/27/05:Definitely :=) | | Question/Answer | | ROLCAM asked on 01/27/05 - Should Christians do this ? Too many believers pick and choose their own truths.
madima answered on 01/27/05:That's the way of men.
We see what we want to see.
But we have no right to judge another.
God alone can judge whether the truth we have chosen is THE truth in His eyes. | | Question/Answer | | ROLCAM asked on 01/27/05 - Are you Really a Christian? Are you wondering if the commitment you made was real?
madima answered on 01/27/05:I was born a Christian.
I try to be one, though I don't always succeed all of the time.
After all, I'm still human :=) | | Question/Answer | | ROLCAM asked on 01/27/05 - Search your heart ? What is So Wonderful About Jesus? madima answered on 01/27/05:The fact that He is wonderful to me :=) | | Question/Answer | | ROLCAM asked on 01/27/05 - Heaven ?? Why can't we experience heaven right here, right now?
madima answered on 01/27/05:I have experienced heaven in the here and now.
Life is heaven when you want it to be.
I've always believed we have a choice in life.
We can choose to be miserable or we can choose to be happy.
I have always chosen the latter.
So my life has been heaven, most of the time:=) | | Question/Answer | | ROLCAM asked on 01/27/05 - Care Enough to Share
"Why are Christians so pushy with their faith? Why don't they just let people believe what they want to believe?"
madima answered on 01/27/05:I don't think I was ever pushy with my faith :=)
I know I believe what I want to believe.
I have the right to.
So, everybody else has the right to do the same.
That's respect for a fellow human being. | | Question/Answer | | ROLCAM asked on 01/27/05 - What do you believe ?? Can God do everything? madima answered on 01/27/05:I guess He can, that's why He's God.
But I don't think He should do everything.
If He does, I shall have nothing left to do. No purpose left on earth.
I shall learn nothing.
I shall be nothing.
My life is mine.
I am here to work on my life :=)
It's just good to know He is there. | | Question/Answer | | ROLCAM asked on 01/27/05 - God, Please … "Do you want to talk to God, but you do not even know how to begin." madima answered on 01/27/05:It's the easiest thing in the world. I talk to Him the way I talk to my papa. He IS my father upstairs. That's the way it has always been with me. That's the way it will always be :=) | | Question/Answer | | Bobbye asked on 01/27/05 - TENTS OR PRAYER SHAWLS? In May, 2002, a respondent on one of the boards provided the following re the Jewish prayer shawl or "tallit" (also, talit; talith, talis), mentioning specifically the Apostle Paul and his "tent making."
WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS? Tents or shawls? Have you a reference source for either?
==========================.
"In biblical times the Jewish men wore this garment called a TALITH, TALIS, TALIT or PRAYER SHAWL all the time, not just at prayer.
"TALITH contains two Hebrew words; TAL meaning tent and ITH meaning little. Thus, you have LITTLE TENT.
"Each man had his own little tent. (The apostle Paul was ... a tentmaker. Many believe that he made Prayer Shawls, not tents to live in.)
"Six million Jews could not fit into the tent of meeting that was set up in the Old Testament. Therefore, what was given to them was their own private sanctuary where they could meet with Yahveh. Each man had one! His Prayer Shawl or Talis. They would pull it up over their head, forming a tent, where they would begin to chant and sing their Hebrew songs, and call upon Elohim, Yaweh, Adonai.
"It was an intimate, private, set apart from anyone else time, totally focused upon Yahveh. This was their prayer closet!"
Further from the respondent, "Even today the Jewish people say that the Talis/Talith (Prayer Shawl) is a religious symbol, a garment, shroud, canopy, cloak which envelops the Jew both physically and spiritually, in prayer and celebration, in joy and sorrow.
"It is used at all major Jewish occasions: circumcisions, barmitsvahs, weddings and burials. It protects the scrolls of the Torah when they are moved. The dead are wrapped in it when they are buried. The bride and bridegroom are covered with the canopy of the prayer shawl. (Some wrap them in it, while others have the whole wedding party stand under it.)"
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YOUR THOUGHTS?
(BTW, the "talith" is an interesting study re Jesus' tallith and His burial:i.e."...the napkin was folded...." Only a Hebrew would know the proper method of folding the "napkin" or talith.)
------------.
Bobbye
madima answered on 01/27/05:My thoughts? I think I would prefer veils.
There was a time, when I was little, that my mother used to put on a veil to go to church.
I had a veil on during my first communion and at Sacred Heart College, where I spent my first ten years of schooling, we were once required to put on a veil when attending mass during our elementary years.
But the veil I remembered wearing, the rare ocassions I wore one, was just the size of a small handkerchief, not unlike my mother's, of elaborate lacework and almost as big as a shawl.
I'm aware that the practice was not as pervasive as my mother's time, or her mother's. But I could recall a time when we would hesitate to go up the communion rail if we have no veils on. And I've always been intrigued by mama's veils.
Most faiths regard the crown of the head as a sacred area because it's where the God-consciousness resides. Hence, out of respect, it should be covered.
In artistic representations, the manifestation of sanctity is the halo on the head of the elect,the saints, the angels and Jesus, Himself.
| | Question/Answer | | CeeBee2 asked on 01/27/05 - Chou assigned me to be Thursday's moderator on this board. If you behave, you will be the guest of honor at a smorgasbord featuring your favorite foods. If you don't behave, well, hmmmmmmm, gee whiz, oh my.........
(Since I know all of you will behave, please list your favorite foods so I can begin grocery shopping.) madima answered on 01/27/05:I LOVE chocolates with Brazilian nuts, with strawberries and with cherries, chocolate ice cream and moist choco cake :=) | | Question/Answer | | Saladin asked on 01/24/05 - What am I? .......
"Fame, love, and fortune on my footsteps wait,
Cities and fields I walk; I penetrate
Deserts and seas remote, and, passing by
Hovel, and mart, and palace, soon or late
I knock unbidden once at every gate!
If sleeping, wake—if feasting, rise before
I turn away. It is the hour of fate,
And they who follow me reach every state
Mortals desire, and conquer every foe
Save death; but those who doubt or hesitate,
Condemned to failure, penury and woe,
Seek me in vain and uselessly implore—
I answer not, and I return no more."
What am I?
madima answered on 01/24/05:Great way to liven up my mind... before I get down to the deadline today :=)
Thanks, Ronnie! :=) | | Question/Answer | | Choux asked on 01/24/05 - Who do you serve? Matthew 6:24 "No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money."
Luke 16:13 "No servant cans ervetwo masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money."
These days, it seems that the choices are much wider. Serve God or serve Money, Lust, Gambling, etal.....
Who do you serve? madima answered on 01/24/05:I'd like to truly serve God one day, that will be the ideal, but right now, to be honest, I don't think I'm serving any master :=)
I'm still on survival mode, so I guess I'm still serving myself and my parents.
I don't think I'm serving money. If I do, I won't have the time to be here at AW, nor will have the time for my adventures and my little pleasures.
I don't gamble and I don't drink, so I'm not serving vice, either :=) | | Question/Answer | | Choux asked on 01/24/05 - Adultery Jesus said Luke 16:18 "Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery, and the man who marries a divorced woman commits adultery."
Matthew 5:32 "But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulmess, causes her to commit adultery, and anyone who marries a woman so divorced commits adultery."
Are you committing adultery according to the words of Jesus?
Do you have any comments about these verses? madima answered on 01/24/05:Nope, I don't think I've committed adultery. I have not married anybody just yet and I've never fallen for married or separated guys. The latter is purely personal preference.
As you would know by now, I love my father very much and he has never been unfaithful to my mother. There were times he was tempted, he confided to me. But he never yielded.
I told him I'll never forgive him if he betrays my mother, who had always been faithful and good, for another woman.
So, I could never imagine myself coveting another woman's husband and never did. I would not do to another what I wouldn't want to be done unto me.
But I have seen a lot of men and women who had been constantly betrayed and abused by their partners, who live a life of endless misery. As you would also know by now, divorce is not allowed in my country.
Yet, I am in favor of divorce. People do make mistakes and it's not just unfaithfulness that should be the basis for terminating a marriage. There's also the matter of abuse - physical, emotional and mental, among other things. We have so many battered wives and abused children here. There's nothing much that the state or the church can do for them.
I can't think of a reason why men and women who have officially terminated a relationship that can either kill or damage them in any way should be deprived of the chance to be happy with another.
But then, I don't believe in all of the dogmas. I know that whatever reason I give, divorce is not recognized by my church. It's against the word of God, they said.
But I don't agree with them. And that's all there is to it :=) | | Question/Answer | | excon asked on 01/24/05 - Aids
Hello experts:
This is what lizz22 said:
>>>... in the 70s Aids was just breaking out, I could had been one of them, but thanks to Gods words, I am not. At least with Cancer you have sympathy.<<<
What exactly is she saying? Does that mean she/you doesn't have sympathy for people with aids? Her church doesn't? Her social group doesn't?
Do you think aids is Gods punishment for being gay? If you don't, what do you do about it? Do you say nothing when you hear stuff like that?
excon
madima answered on 01/24/05:Dear excon,
I have known since last year that Liz (Joy) is suffering from cancer. She has mentioned it, I think once in her post about physical suffering and she has always been included in my prayers.
I'm also aware that many of the experts here are suffering from various physical ailments and dealing with great pain every day of their lives.
I don't think AIDS is God's punishment for being gay. The God I knew since youth is not a punishing avenger. | | Question/Answer | | ROLCAM asked on 01/24/05 - Have you ever read anything more beautiful ? Love is patient; love is kind and envies no one.
Love is never boastful, nor conceited, nor rude;
never selfish, not quick to take offence.
Love keeps no score of wrongs; does not gloat
over men`s sins, but delights in the truth.
There is nothing love cannot face; there is no limit
to its faith, its hope and its endurance.
CORINTHIANS 12,13
madima answered on 01/24/05:Thanks for the post, dear Roland.
I agree with Mary Sue though that this love you speak of is agape, selfless love, the love of saints, the love of angels, the love of God for man.
Unfortunately, I'm not always a saint :=)
My consistent primary love style, when I took the love style test three times, has always been Eros, the love which is the stuff of poetry, passionate love, quick to burn and burning high, often quick to die.
My secondary love style is ludus, a playful kind of love and my tertiary love style is a combination of the first two, ludic-eros.
But I feel I had been well loved in the way of agape - by my parents, my friends, my angels and my Father upstairs :=) | | Question/Answer | | powderpuff asked on 01/24/05 - Hope for Joy Dear Joy,
I'm sorry to hear your stuggle with a life threatening illness continues. I will keep you in my thoughts and prayers as you face some tough dicisions during the following weeks. You mentioned that in your recent post titled: Are We Ignoring God's Laws,
"At least with Cancer you have sympathy."
Pease remember that as a Christian, when the time comes you will be judged with the same measure you use to judge others. Don't forget that if you want or expect sympathy or similar sentiments should be expected for someone with cancer- similar sentiments (more aptly given in the form of compassion) should be given to those who suffer other life threatening illnesses or diseases.
Children born with birth defects, and people suffering from diseases that might benefit from medical intervention, including blood transfusions, don't necessarily need sympathy. What they need is compassion and hope.
You are in my thoughts and prayers, and in my heart I hope for you strenght and peace of mind as you struggle with the decisions you face in your life today.
Wishing you the best,
powderpuff madima answered on 01/24/05:I am with you in your prayers for Joy. | | Question/Answer | | Saladin asked on 01/24/05 - A Hard Question ...
Let us say, for example, that an eleven year old girl is pregnant through rape.
Would you agree to her having an abortion?
:)
Ronnie
madima answered on 01/24/05:Definitely, I will.
I think I've expounded on the reason why I'm pro-choice on at least four earlier responses :=) | | Question/Answer | | STONY asked on 01/24/05 - A GOOD ONE!! A dog had followed his owner to school. His owner was a
fourth grader at a public elementary school. However,
when the bell rang, the dog sidled inside the building and
made it all the way to the child's classroom before a
teacher noticed and shoo'ed him outside, closing the
door behind him. The dog sat down, whimpered and
stared at the closed doors. Then God appeared beside
the dog, patted his head, and said, "Don't feel bad fella'....
they won't let ME in either."
**********************************************
*************************
"In God We Trust ? "
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Does evil exist?
The university professor challenged his students with this question.
Did God create everything that exists?
A student bravely replied, "Yes, he did!"
"God created everything?" The professor asked.
"Yes sir", the student replied.
The professor answered, "If God created everything, then God created evil since evil exists, and according to the principal that our works define who we are then God is evil".
The student became quiet before such an answer.
The professor was quite pleased with himself and boasted to the students that he had proven once more that the Christian faith was a myth.
Another student raised his hand and said, "Can I ask you a question, professor?
"Of course", replied the professor.
The student stood up and asked, "Professor, does cold exist?"
"What kind of question is this? Of course it exists. Have you never been cold?" The students snickered at the young man's question.
The young man replied, "In fact sir, cold does not exist. According to the laws of physics, what we consider cold is in reality the absence of heat. Everybody
or object is susceptible to study when it has or transmits energy, and heat is what makes a body or matter have or transmit energy. Absolute zero
-460 degrees F is the total absence of heat; all matter becomes inert and capable of reaction at that temperature. Cold does not exist. We have created this word to describe how we feel if we have no heat." The student continued. "Professor, does darkness exist?"
The professor responded, "Of course it does".
The student replied, "Once again you are wrong sir, darkness does not exist either. Darkness is in reality the absence of light. Light we can study, but
not darkness. In fact we can use Newton's prism to break white light into many colors and study the various wavelengths of each color. You cannot measure darkness. A simple ray of light can break into a world of darkness and illuminate it. How can you know how dark a certain space is? You measure the amount of light present. Isn't this correct? Darkness is a term used by man to describe what happens when there is no light present."
Finally the young man asked the professor. "Sir, does evil exist?"
Now uncertain, the professor responded, "Of course, as I have already said. We see it every day. It is in the daily example of man's inhumanity to man. It
is in the multitude of crime and violence everywhere in the world. These manifestations are nothing else but evil."
To this the student replied, "Evil does not exist sir, or at least it does not exist unto itself. Evil is simply the absence of God. It is just like darkness and cold, a word that man has created to describe the absence of God. God did not create evil. Evil is not like faith, or love that exists just as does light and heat. Evil is the result of what happens when man does not have God's love present in his heart. It's like the cold that comes when there is no heat or the darkness that comes when there is no light."
The professor sat down.
The young man's name --- Albert Einstein madima answered on 01/24/05:Good post. Thanks, Tony, hope you are doing well today :=) I heard it's very cold even in Florida. | | Question/Answer | | Saladin asked on 01/24/05 - Why God Smiles .............................
Do you believe that because someone is unable to 'prove' that God exists, that God then ceases to exist, or that he only exists because someone believes inhim?
Is the existence of God dependant on proveability or does he exist whether such proof is available or not?
I once let a school mate examine my air pistol. When he pointed it at me I told him not to do that because it was loaded.
He continued to hold a bead on me with it because he did not believe that it was loaded.
Whose belief made the difference to whether the gun was loaded or not?
Did my belief that I had loaded it make it loaded, or did his belief that it was not loaded make it not loaded?
:)
Ronnie - who KNEW that the gun WAS loaded!
madima answered on 01/24/05:I think God's existence depends on your faith. Where you believe He exists, He will exist. I don't think I can prove His existence by scientific means.
There are many things I believe in for which I have no concrete proof. But I believe in them anyway because I like to and the belief does me no harm :=)
But belief in God is a spiritual matter.Of course, there could be a difference where the matter of contention is physical.
If a doctor believes you are incurably sick by his medical findings but you believe you can be cured, sometimes healing occurs and you get a remission. The mind can have untold powers over the body.
But if a real gun is loaded, your belief will not matter, I think. If you believe it is not loaded when it is and someone fires it at you, you get shot.
Unless, of course, the aim misses, you duck in time or the gun gets stuck :=) | | Question/Answer | | Saladin asked on 01/24/05 - Onward Christian Soldiers? If you thought it would help to spread Christianity, would you hijack an airliner and fly it into a skyscraper in Teheran?
:)
Ronnie - The Questor
madima answered on 01/24/05:Nope, I wouldn't hijack an airliner and fly it into a Teheran skyscraper, even if I knew how to fly. I don't think annihilation of the innocent helps Christianity. It's very un-Christian.
| | Question/Answer | | arcura asked on 01/23/05 - Will you pray for Christian unity?............... VATICAN CITY, JAN. 23, 2005 (Zenit.org).- John Paul II appealed for "tireless" prayer for the unity of Christians, and encouraged young people to become witnesses of full communion.
"Pray for the full communion of Christians. The world expects your evangelical testimony of unity!" the Holy Father said.
The Pope made his appeal before today leading the crowds gathered in St. Peter's Square in praying the midday Angelus. The appeal came amid the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.
"I invite the Christian communities to live intensely this annual spiritual event, in which we have a foretaste, in a certain sense, of the joy of full communion at least in desire and unanimous invocation," he said.
"One is ever more clearly aware that unity is, in the first place, a gift of God to be implored tirelessly in humility and truth," he added.
The Holy Father prayed to the Virgin Mary to help Christians "to overcome every obstacle and to obtain this gift as soon as possible."
"From my heart I exhort all believers, especially young people, to prolong the ecumenical commitment during the whole year and to become in every place instruments and witnesses of the full communion invoked by Christ in the cenacle," the Pope continued.
The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity will conclude in Rome with the celebration of vespers this Tuesday in the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls.
"I will unite myself spiritually to that liturgy, in which representatives from other Christian Churches and confessions will participate, and which will be presided over by Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity," John Paul II said. madima answered on 01/24/05:Dear Fred,
Although I am a Catholic and respect the Pope, I do not pray for Christian unity. I believe that is too restrictive, being the unity of only a certain group of people bound by one belief. I see it as too discriminatory.
I do pray for world peace and for the alleviation of human suffering and hunger.
Everyday, I pray for the healing of mother nature and of the world, for the protection of all the wild places on earth and sky and sea, and all the endangered wild creatures that live therein.
| | Question/Answer | | bal317 asked on 01/23/05 - Can we agree? Hello: In a couple of responses I have received, people feel they have asked a poor question and won't ask again.
I feel like we as people get confused and want some sort of answer to our questions, even tho many will think, wow they didn't know this or that.
To me, there is no poor or "dumb" questions, it's just many of us have been more advantaged to of experienced certain area's than other's, but we should respond as best we can to other's so they can at least get view points in order to help them out.
Thank you all for being wonderful to me, cause there are several area's I need help in that I fall on your advice in helping me understand and it's all been so helpful.
bal317 madima answered on 01/23/05:I don't think there are poor questions, just poor answers :=)
The best questions you can ever get is from a child, who asks from the viewpoint of complete innocence.
I guess the next best is from a student, who genuinely seeks knowledge.
But it can come from anyone, of any age, from all walks of life.
Sometimes the "dumbest" questions are the ones that really matter to an individual's life, the one that makes the responder go deep into his own life, the one that is most difficult to answer :=) | | Question/Answer | | STONY asked on 01/22/05 - TO ALL CONCERNED ABOUT MY HEALTH... I HAVE A DR. APP'T ON 1/31 TO ESTABLISH A NEW MEDICAID DR ASSIGNED TO ME. AFTER THAT I CAN GET A SURGERY SCHEDUALED TO TRY TO CORRECT THE PROBLEM.
I'M CERTAINLY GLAD THIS IS NOT AT PRESENT A LIFE THREATENING ORDEAL, BECAUSE UNTIL I GET ESTABLISHED WITH A NEW DR., MEDICAID HAS REFUSED TO PAY FOR ANY SURGICAL PROCEEDURES. I MAY HAVE TO CONSIDER IN THE NEXT ELECTION IF MY HEALTH NEEDS ARE TO BE LEFT IN THE HANDS OF JEB BUSH OUR ILLUSTRIOUS GOVERNOR HERE IN FLORIDA. madima answered on 01/22/05:Glad to hear from you, Tony :=)
My prayers are with you. | | Question/Answer | | powderpuff asked on 01/19/05 - Proselytizing during relief efforts What do you think? Good idea or bad idea? I tend to think that using the opportunity of disaster to gain converts is a bad idea, possibly even offensive to those who are already suffering.
I found this article today at DenverPost.com:
http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~11676~2657661,00.html
"Many evangelical Christian groups, which put a stronger emphasis on winning new converts, believe relief can be packaged with religion as long as immediate needs are addressed first. After all, they say, this is when people are asking life's deepest questions.
That logic motivated Colorado Springs-based Focus on the Family to include excerpts from a book written by Dobson, founder of the influential media ministry, in 300,000 survival packets bound for the region."
I tend to think that by giving charitable relief, it would be possible to gain the interest of those getting the relief without the risk of offending them or causing them more pain or confusion.
I'm just curious what you think about it any why. madima answered on 01/19/05:I think it's a bad idea, dear Sharlene.
It betrays an ulterior agenda and gives the impression that the group supposedly coming out to help the victims of a disaster are not there to help at all... Or that genuine help is not the priority.
It comes across as being opportunistic, if not downright exploitative. It's tantamount to emotional blackmail.
Genuinely compassionate people don't capitalize on their fellowmen's misfortunes to coerce them into a belief system. It does not matter whether that belief system is good or bad. The motivation behind the deed fouls up everything.
Here, non-government organizations and foreign groups giving aid are forbidden to proselytize to the mostly animist/pantheist ethnic minority tribes inhabiting the mountains and the forests.
These are the remote tribes, some of whom are still hunter-gatherers. They are deprived of medical attention, education and food. They have the highest infant mortality rates, most of their children and even the adults are malnourished.
The state's stance is: if anybody wants to help, just help, with no strings attached.
Of course, most victims of disaster and people who are hungry will say yes to anything that anybody says if the latter dangles a food packet before his face.
I have seen the faces of starvation in disasters here at home...
When the empty stomach grumbles, nobody really has the time to read what's in the survival packet, anyway.
That's especially when much of the aid is still stuck in the "processing" centers, snagged in red tape and the barest trickle gets to those who need help, especially those in the inaccessible areas.
Desperate, starved people will stampede and kill to get at that food - if they still have an ounce of strength left.
Man's most primal instinct is still to survive.
And that will be foremost in the minds of any disaster victim.
| | Question/Answer | | ROLCAM asked on 01/18/05 - Our Lord's Promises Series # 9. Promises of Our Lord to those devoted to
His Sacred Heart.
I will bless every place where a picture of My Heart
shall be set up and honoured.
Please,let me have your positive views on this promise.
ROLCAM.
madima answered on 01/18/05:I'm aware that this may not hold well with our friends who are not of the Catholic faith :=)
But I can only speak from my own experience as a Catholic brought up in a family with a devotion to the Sacred Heart.
The flaming Sacred Heart crowned with thorns is the emblem of the school where I spent the first ten years of my life as a student.
I saw the Sacred Heart of Jesus on the central altar of our chapel, morning, noon and night.
And as I mentioned before, I grew up with the Sacred Heart of Jesus on the family altar.
I believe my school and my home were not only blessed but protected. There was a great fire that went out of control and destroyed most of the city of my birth, but it did not touch us.
The fire stopped a block away from my home and less than a block away from my school.
We had been visited by many fires, super typhoons, earthquakes, floods and mudslides thereafter - disasters that devastated most of the city.
But my school and my home are always spared. | | Question/Answer | | ROLCAM asked on 01/18/05 - Our Lord's Promises Series # 10.
Promises of Our Lord to those devoted to
His Sacred Heart.
I will give to priests the gift of touching the most
hardened hearts.
Please,let me have your positive views on this promise.
ROLCAM.
madima answered on 01/18/05:I'm aware that priests are getting a bad rap everywhere right now, with so many scandals, and fewer men are entering the vocation.
But I have never met a bad priest in my life.
Father Allarey, my father's best friend from childhood, was a priest. He was my father confessor until his death and was like a second father to me.
Beyond being a man of God, he was a good person. He ministered to those in prison and to the sick. And yes, I believe he touched the most incorrigible hearts and the most hopeless. | | Question/Answer | | ROLCAM asked on 01/17/05 - Our Lord's Promises Series # 6.
Promises of Our Lord to those devoted to
His Sacred Heart.
Sinners shall find in My Heart the source and the infinite ocean of mercy.
Please,let me have your positive views on this promise.
ROLCAM.
madima answered on 01/17/05:In the past, there were things I did in my immaturity and ruthlessness that I found hard to forgive myself for.
My father said they were petty, compared to what he had done, in the years of his bitter loss and in his struggle to survive.
But we are confessed of our sins. And in His Sacred Heart, we have found forgiveness. In His mercy, we have found peace. | | Question/Answer | | ROLCAM asked on 01/16/05 - Our Lord's Promises Series # 4.
Promises of Our Lord to those devoted to
His Sacred Heart.
I will be their refuge during life and above all in death.
Please ,let me have your views on this promise.
ROLCAM.
madima answered on 01/17/05:He has always been my refuge, all my life, even in the times when I refused to see Him, I guess :=)
Twice, in near-death, I like to believe He has shown Himself to me. He is the Light. That's why I could never be afraid of death anymore. | | Question/Answer | | ROLCAM asked on 01/17/05 - Our Lord's Promises Series # 8.
Promises of Our Lord to those devoted to
His Sacred Heart.
Fervent souls shall quickly mount to high perfection.
Please,let me have your positive views on this promise.
ROLCAM.
madima answered on 01/17/05:I've experienced what it is to be fervent, though not consistently :=)
I'm not perfect. I wish I shall be.
And yet, nothing forbids us from aspiring to be perfect in this life. | | Question/Answer | | ROLCAM asked on 01/16/05 - Our Lord's Promises Series # 3. Promises of Our Lord to those devoted to
His Sacred Heart.
I will comfort them in all their afflictions.
Please ,let me have your views on this promise.
ROLCAM.
madima answered on 01/17/05:My parents are devotees of the Sacred Heart. For many years, they have suffered untold afflictions, from the sorrow of being very young orphans, to sickness and abuse... And yet, they were comforted. | | Question/Answer | | ROLCAM asked on 01/16/05 - Our Lord's Promises Series # 2.
Promises of Our Lord to those devoted to
His Sacred Heart.
I will establish peace in their homes.
Please ,let me have your views on this promise.
ROLCAM.
madima answered on 01/17/05:Devotion to one faith, one belief, one God, unifies a family. Somehow, union brings peace, despite the adversities we live by every day.
I have shared my parents' devotion to the Sacred Heart since I was a child. I remember a picture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus has always stood on our altar. It still does to this day.
Incidentally, one of the most popular tenets here in my country is: "The family that prays together, stays together."
My own family has proven that to be true. | | Question/Answer | | ROLCAM asked on 01/17/05 - Our Lord's Promises Series # 7.
Promises of Our Lord to those devoted to
His Sacred Heart.
Tepid souls shall grow fervent.
Please,let me have your positive views on this promise.
ROLCAM.
madima answered on 01/17/05:I've never professed to be a saint :=)
There were times in my adolescence that I thought the flame of my faith was dying, if not dead. I went to the state university and was exposed to exciting atheist professors, what my parents labeled as amoral artists and directors, who made me question my faith.
But on every crossroad, someone or something always comes to lead me back :=)
I still respect the faith of others and will continue to do so. I still do not believe in all the dogmas and there are things in my personal faith that I cannot explain by the book, or by any other means - not that I care for their explanations...
But I believe I am blessed and am content. | | Question/Answer | | ROLCAM asked on 01/17/05 - Our Lord's Promises Series # 5.
Promises of Our Lord to those devoted to
His Sacred Heart.
I will bestow a large blessing on all their undertakings.
Please,let me have your positive views on this promise.
ROLCAM.
ROLCAM.
madima answered on 01/17/05:This I can understand perfectly as a devotee to His Sacred Heart.
I have not failed in any of my undertakings, even in fields I have not really trained for or never expected to get into.
There were times I was out of job, or I was not paid for the jobs I did, I never had enough money, but I was never hungry.
I was surprised to see, not just friends, but total strangers, volunteering to feed me! Not out of pity, but out of affection, kindness and love :=)
And it's not just food for my body that they served, but food for my heart, my mind and my soul!
I was given just recognition for all that I did. Sometimes the recognition was delayed, but they always came, and when they do, I can't help but feel that many of them were more than I thought I deserved.
Where I was lacking, or ignorant, or ill-prepared, teachers always came uncalled for, to guide me and stand by me.
I cannot ask for more. | | Question/Answer | | CeeBee2 asked on 01/16/05 - Along with Chou's "Unfit for Life" post yesterday -- I saw this in today's Chicago Tribune (sorry for the c/p, Chou):
TV-watching is an iffy stage of child's growth
Julie Deardorff
Published January 16, 2005
Our day-care provider recently gave my husband a glowing report about our 4-month-old son. "She said he was really good today," he told me. "He watched television right along with the big boys."
TV? I was incredulous.
Of all the bad influences I thought I could avoid in my son's infancy, television was near the top of the list. We don't have cable and find most network programming a waste of time. If not for PBS and the fact that society demands we be media literate, we'd get rid of the addictive black box.
Now I was picturing my baby's sweet, drooling face with a glazed, zombie-like expression. I worried that his developing brain would be rewired in the worst possible way. Would his synapses form correctly? Would he have attention deficit problems?
As it turns out, researchers share similar concerns about the effect of electronic media exposure on infants under 1 year of age, a new marketing niche and the target of "educational" videos, such as the Baby Einstein series.
But at the cooing, pre-crawling stage, the concern isn't necessarily just over content or the captivating bright lights and rapidly shifting images on the screen. It's that watching television, a passive, two-dimensional act, displaces three-dimensional activities like human interaction that are far more beneficial to a child's mind.
The brain largely develops through trial and error. With television, children only have feedback; they can't get their tiny, messy hands on things to see how their behavior changes the environment, said Kevin Krull, head of child neuropsychology at Texas Children's Hospital.
"Children have learned to be receptors rather than stimulators," Krull said. "They are designed to get down and crawl, to see when they push something, it rolls, and how they affect the world. The bigger danger with television is that they learn less."
This was why the American Academy of Pediatrics adopted a policy statement in 1999 that discouraged television viewing for children under 2, said Donald Shifrin, the AAP's chair of the Committee on Communications.
Though the guidelines initially were met with some anger, disbelief and even derision by parents and social scientists who argued that there was no proof that television was harmful, Shifrin, a Seattle pediatrician, says they're even more important today, given TV viewing trends.
In a startling finding, 26 percent of children between 6 months and 2 years have a television in their room, according to a 2003 study of young children's media habits by the Kaiser Family Foundation. This revelation motivated the folks at PBS to devise more programs like "Teletubbies" that cater to the very youngest, most vulnerable viewers. The theory is that as long as children are exposed at such young ages--and there is no doubt they will be--there should be something decent for them to see.
Still, even Charlotte Brantley, head of PBS' Ready to Learn Service, an early learning program funded by the U.S. Department of Education, is adamant that media viewing should "never take the place of interaction with a warm and caring adult."
If television is adding value, then great, use it. But Brantley warns, "Think about the kind of individuals you invite home and use the same thought process for television shows."
What is so confusing to parents is that there is little agreement on the how electronic media affect infants, and few studies are available. We know, for example, that children with attention deficit disorder watch a higher percentage of television, but it's not known whether these children are harder to manage and thus placed in front of a television more often by frustrated parents, or whether television contributes to the problem.
We also know that popular video series such as Baby Einstein can provide entertainment and give a parent a much-needed break. But they're not a proven learning aid.
In fact, University of Massachusetts psychologist Daniel Anderson has found that when learning from videos is compared with equivalent live presentations, "there is usually substantially less learning from videos," according to research published in this month's American Behavioral Scientist.
I'm sure there will be times when my son's bright eyes are glued to the television and I'm thankful for peace, or a chance to feed my sulking cat, who has been feeling neglected since my son's birth. But deep down I'll be troubled and I'll know I should sit next to him so we can watch the show together. Because nothing replaces parent-child interaction. And television isn't going away. madima answered on 01/16/05:I thank my parents for seeing to it that I didn't develop the TV habit... or rather, TV addiction :=)
I didn't get to watch TV until I was freshman in college and out of the nest at age 15.
I grew up with no TV in the house. But my parents were both full time parents, anyway. They personally taught me my letters, as soon as I showed interest in them, which was early enough.
My parents gave me all kinds of toys and mental enrichment. Papa brought me crayons, colored pencils and watercolors as soon as my then stubby fingers can manage them.
They made a secret garden for me close to the house, so I can interact, not just with the family pets - a dozen dogs and a dozen cats (the numbers fluctuate) but with the wild creatures that abound in my environment - butterflies, bees, spiders, lizards, field rats, snakes, birds, etc.
When my legs were strong enough, papa took me with him on his daily trips to the provincial library and introduced me to the wonderful world of books. That made me a voracious reader to this day.
TV did not really make as much impact on me when I was exposed to it. And I don't regret it. My time is better diverted to more creative activities, such as painting and writing :=)
Up to now, I very rarely turn on the TV. I only use my TV set to view my DVD documentaries, musicals and classic films. Ifever I watch TV at all, it's just three channels - Discovery, Animal Planet and National Geographic :=) | | Question/Answer | | ROLCAM asked on 01/16/05 - Our Lord's Promises Series # 1. Promises of Our Lord to those devoted to
His Sacred Heart.
I will give them all the graces necessary in their state of life.
Please ,let me have your views on this promise.
ROLCAM. madima answered on 01/16/05:I have always been devoted to the Sacred Heart of Jesus :=)
But then, dear Roland, it came with the package. I spent the first ten years of my schooling -primary and secondary - in the Sacred Heart College, run by the Sisters of Charity.
I have invoked the Sacred Heart of Jesus in times of crises and need. And it has never failed yet. | | Question/Answer | | HANK1 asked on 01/16/05 - HEADS OR TAILS ...
It seems to me that people should pray with their heads lifted upwards toward God than lifted downwards toward Satan.
HANK
madima answered on 01/16/05:Dear Hank,
I don't think God would mind whatever bodily position we take in prayer, for as long as we pray sincerely.
If I remember correctly, nonverbal communication postures are also culturally influenced :=)
In most Eastern cultures, the bowed head is a sign of respect and obedience. Not staring directly at an older person in the eye while he/she is speaking to you (which in the West warrants suspicion and is a sign of insincerity, lying, etc.) is also a gesture of deferrence.
I remember one advisory from the church which says that if you want to pray effectively, you have to prostrate yourself on the ground, your brow touching the earth, as people did in the olden times.
I have prayed in that manner a couple of times and surprisingly, I found it uplifting :=)
I have also prayed in the lotus position and in the dead man's pose - lying supine. I have prayed sitting down while in a bus or in a plane and I have prayed while walking, swimming, diving and climbing. I found that physical stance does not affect the prayer, really.
Our sincerity and faith do :=)
| | Question/Answer | | STONY asked on 01/13/05 - HAVE BEEN AWAY FROM HERE FOR A WHILE... MY HEALTH HAS TAKEN A TURN SOUTH, SURGERY WILL BE UPCOMING SOON AND ITS QUESTIONABLE IF THEY CAN SAVE ONE OF MY KIDNEYS. I MADE A DECISION SEVERAL YEARS AGO TO NOT HAVE A CERTAIN PROCEEDURE DONE TO MY BODY AND NOW IT HAS COME BACK TO HAUNT ME. IF THE SPIRIT OF GOD MOVES ON YOU TO PRAY FOR ME THEN BY ALL MEANS DO SO
BECAUSE MY MIND IS ALREADY MADE UP. I HAVE NO DESIRE TO CONTINUE IN A DISEASE RIDDEN BODY THAT WILL ULTIMATELY GET WORSE. IF I CHOOSE NOT TO HAVE THE SURGERY THEN THE END WILL JUST COME A LITTLE BIT SOONER
AND I ALREADY KNOW MY DESTINATION, SO FEAR IS NOT A FACTOR IN THIS..............STONY madima answered on 01/15/05:Dear Tony,
You are in my prayers. Get well soon! :=) | | Question/Answer | | Saladin asked on 01/13/05 - How is/was your nest of nurture?
My childhood home did not provide for some of the basic needs of a growing child.
Yet I have grown to understand that we do not all get what we need or even what is good for us.
And yet I was moved by the high idealism in the following piece by Joseph Fielding Smith.
In the ideal home true parents rear loving, thoughtful children, loyal to the death, to father and mother and home!
In it there is the religious spirit, for both parents and children have faith in God, and their practices are in conformity with that faith; the members are free from the vices and contaminations of the world, are pure in morals, having upright hearts beyond bribes and temptations, ranging high in the exalted standards of manhood and womanhood.
Peace, order, and contentment reign in the hearts of the inmates—let them be rich or poor, in things material.
There are no vain regrets; no expressions of discontent against father, from the boys and girls, in which they complain: "If we only had this or that, or were like this family or that, or could do like so and so!"—complaints that have caused fathers many uncertain steps, dim eyes, restless nights, and untold anxiety.
In their place is the loving thoughtfulness to mother and father by which the boys and girls work with a will and a determination to carry some of the burden that the parents have staggered under these many years.
There is the kiss for mother, the caress for father, the thought that they have sacrificed their own hopes and ambitions, their strength, even life itself to their children—there is gratitude in payment for all that has been given them!
In the ideal home the soul is not starved, neither are the growth and expansion of the finer sentiments paralyzed for the coarse and sensual pleasures.
The main aim is not to heap up material wealth, which generally draws further and further from the true, the ideal, the spiritual life; but it is rather to create soul-wealth, consciousness of noble achievement, an outflow of love and helpfulness.
It is not costly paintings, tapestries, priceless bric-a-brac, various ornaments, costly furniture, fields, herds, houses and lands which constitute the ideal home, nor yet the social enjoyments and ease so tenaciously sought by many; but it is rather beauty of soul, cultivated, loving, faithful, true spirits; hands that help and hearts that sympathize; love that seeks not its own, thoughts and acts that touch our lives to finer issues—these lie at the foundation of the ideal home.
Joseph Fielding Smith - 1905
======================
Comments?
madima answered on 01/15/05:I had the best nest of nurture, I think, though it was not lined with gold :=)
Both my parents cared for me, giving me all the love they can give, full-time, till I left the nest at fifteen to go to the state university, which was 150 kilometers away from our ancestral home.
Papa and mama were both orphaned early. Both did not have a happy childhood and were sickly. In fact, they met in a hospital, when they were both grievously ill. There was never enough money when I was growing up. Papa was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, but he lost it all. He went from riches to rags when his adoptive mother, my grandaunt, who was his guardian, squandered his parents' money in no time. He was completely orphaned by age eight.
At first, papa did not want to have any children when he married. No use to bring a child of his into the misery of the world, he said. When he, at last, gave in to mama's wishes, he specified he only wanted one, so his offspring could be given all the love he never had.
If mama did not lose her firstborn son, I would never have been born...
But when I came to the light, papa and mama lived for me - literally. When I was growing up, I was the center of their world. And they made me feel that the whole universe was created for me and me, alone.
I guess, the love they gave me in the first 15 years of my life was more than enough to sustain me for five lifetimes or more :=)
I can't ever thank God enough for my parents.
| | Question/Answer | | FormerJesusHelper76 asked on 01/12/05 - Sick! Okay some people blame illnesses and diseases on God and that they are a punishment from him because of our immoral behaviour. Do any of you believe this? Many people get sick in this world it is part of life but why do some people get sick more often then others? Is God to blame or is it just as much nature as the weather?
Thank you in advance!
Joe madima answered on 01/12/05:I have never blamed God for any illness of mine. I believe I have the sole responsibility for my own body. I don't always take good care of it and push it beyond the limits when I can. Hence, my body tells me when and what I am abusing by way of "dis-ease". It's the only way my body can force me to stop and "listen" to its needs.
| | Question/Answer | | arcura asked on 01/11/05 - Ok - Who all has seen this one?................ In the Beginning...
God covered the earth with broccoli, cauliflower
and spinach combined with an abundance of green,
yellow and red vegetables.
He did this so that Man and Woman
would live long and healthy lives.
Then, using God's bountiful gifts, Satan created Dairy
Queen. And Satan said: "You want hot fudge with
that?" And Man said: "Yes!"
And Woman said: "I'll have one too...with sprinkles."
And low and behold they gained 10 pounds.
And so God created the healthful raw milk yogurt
that Woman might keep the figure that Man found so fair.
And Satan brought forth white flour from the wheat, and
sugar from the cane, and combined them.
And Woman went from size 2 to size 14.
So God said: "Try my fresh green garden salad."
And Satan presented crumbled Bleu Cheese dressing
and garlic toast on the side. And Man and Woman
unfastened their belts following the repast.
God then said: "I have sent you heart-healthy
vegetables and olive oil in which to cook them."
And Satan brought forth deep-fried shrimp in
partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, ribs slathered
in sauce with MSG and other food additives and
chicken-fried steak so big it needed its own platter.
And Man's cholesterol went through the roof.
Then God brought forth the potato, brimming with
potassium and good nutrition.
Then Satan peeled off the healthful skin, sliced the
starchy center into chips and deep-fried them in
trans fats adding copious quantities of salt. And
Man packed on more pounds.
God then brought forth running shoes so that his
children might lose those extra pounds. And Satan
introduced cable TV with remote control so Man
would not have to toil changing the channels. And Man
and Woman laughed and cried before the flickering
light and started wearing stretchy lycra jogging suits.
God then gave pasture-raised beef so that Man
might consume fewer calories and still satisfy his appetite.
And Satan created McDonald's and the 99-cent
double cheeseburger.
Then Satan said: "You want fries with that?"
And Man replied: "Yes! And super size 'em!"
And Satan said: "It is good." And Man and Woman
went into cardiac arrest.
God sighed...and created quadruple by-pass surgery.
Satan chuckled and created The Health Care System.
madima answered on 01/12/05:Thanks, Fred. That's funny! :=)
But to be honest, all these talk about food just made me terribly hungry!!!!
Nothing has passed my lips since this morning, except for a bottle of kimchi, bread sticks and a handful of M&M's washed down with lemonade!
I just wish Carol (Ceebee)is here....
I don't know how to cook and have no time to go out for food just now... Busy packing for my first out-of-town trip this year... Just have to be online to turn in my story for the day... Will be back in four days or so :=) | | Question/Answer | | FormerJesusHelper76 asked on 01/11/05 - E.S.P. , Psychics, and Premonitions (Dreams)! How does Christianity explain these occurances? Many people have claimed to experianced these things. Of course there are called different things for the same thing. Have you had any special experiances? Where do they come from? Gift from God?
I have had many many dreams that would come true, I have had many strong feelings about things and new things without being told for example situations or things with my wife and family.
Thank you in advance!
Joe madima answered on 01/11/05:To tell you the truth, I haven't actively sought Christianity's explanation on ESP and stuff like it because from the first, I have the impression that the views are conflicting.
There are Biblical passages interpreted as condemning occult practices, psychic gifts and cautioning that the dreaming can be used as channels of the devil.
On the other hand, there are passages that are interpreted as lauding these gifts as God-inspired or God given, such as Ezekiel's vision of the angels, Joseph's interpretation of the Pharaoh's dreaming, to mention a few.
I had countless psychic experiences. I've mentioned some to you before. I've kept a dream journal since I was little and used the dreaming for insight into my life, past, present and future.
I'd like to think the gift of intuition comes from inner knowing, a combination of many things.
First, there's very basic, primal, survival instinct. What others refer to as the gift of the third eye is the same as the ESP of animals, predator and prey. It enables you to survive even when your physical faculties and other senses are impaired.
On the other extreme, there is higher knowing from the subconscious, the collective unconscious and the superconscious - the spiritual part of man that links him to God. | | Question/Answer | | FormerJesusHelper76 asked on 01/11/05 - Afterlife! Your thoughts please! Hello there! There are many thoughts about what happens to us after death. There are many theories which I will list. Some people beleive once you die that is it, blackness; You are welcomed to the spirit world as soon as you die; You get a life review right away that you are your own judge; That your this spirit that floats around; That when you die you get a new body that is similar to the one on earth but younger and a body that can not be destroyed; That everybody gets called for judgement at all the same time, Until that time we are sleeping; There have been people who experianced good and bad near death experiances.
What are your thoughts on this? What does the bible say about it?
Okay now the word Hell. I remember when I was a child in the Romen Catholic church one prayer we used. It said Jesus died and decended into hell and then after three days rose to life. He went into heaven and is seated at the right side of the father. In recend years the word hell has been changed to dead. Does Hell really mean the fiery place? Why would Jesus go to Hell first? Some earlier definitions of Hell meant the grave. Meanings of different words change many how does that effect our beliefs?
Thanks in advance!
Joe
madima answered on 01/11/05:Hi, Joe,
Hope you're feeling better now :=)
I can only tell you my thoughts on the matter. I think I've told you before that I nearly died... so I know what it should be like. I have experienced the life review more than once. I have seen the tunnel and the Light. It was a beautiful experience. In fact, I was quite unwilling to "come back".
And because of it, I realized I have no reason to fear death :=)
Nor have I since. | | Question/Answer | | Saladin asked on 01/11/05 - Ben Stein's last column
Ben Stein's Last Column...
! How Can Someone Who Lives in Insane Luxury Be a Star in Today's World?
As I begin to write this, I "slug" it, as we writers say, which means I put a heading on top of the document to identify it. This heading is "eonlineFINAL," and it gives me a shiver to write it. I have been doing this column for so long that I cannot even recall when I started. I loved writing this column so much for so long I came to believe it would never end.
It worked well for a long time, but gradually, my changing as a person and the world's change have overtaken it. On a small scale, Morton's, while better than ever, no longer attracts as many stars as it used to. It still brings in the rich people in droves and definitely some stars. I saw Samuel L. Jackson there a few days ago, and we had a nice visit, and right! before that, I saw and had a splendid talk with Warren Beatty in an e levator, in which we agreed that Splendor in the Grass was a super movie. But Morton's is not the star galaxy it once was, though it probably will be again.
Beyond that, a bigger change has happened. I no longer think Hollywood stars are terribly important. They are uniformly pleasant, friendly people, and they treat me better than I deserve to be treated. But a man or woman who makes a huge wage for memorizing lines and reciting them in front of a camera is no longer my idea of a shining star we should all look up to. How can a man or woman who makes an eight-figure wage and lives in insane luxury really be a star in today's world, if by a "star" we mean someone bright and powerful and attractive as a role model? Real stars are not riding around in the backs of limousines or in Porsches or getting trained in yoga or Pilates and eating only raw fruit while they have Vietnamese girls do their nails. They can! be interesting, nice people, but they are not heroes to me any longer.
A real star is the soldier of the 4th Infantry Division who poked his head into a hole on a farm near Tikrit, Iraq. He could have been met by a bomb or a hail of AK-47 bullets. Instead, he faced an abject Saddam Hussein and the gratitude of all of the decent people of the world.
A real star is the U.S. soldier who was sent to disarm a bomb next to a road north of Baghdad. He approached it, and the bomb went off and killed him.
A real star, the kind who haunts my memory night and day, is the U.S. soldier in Baghdad who saw a little girl playing with a piece of unexploded ordnance on a street near where he was guarding a station. He pushed her aside and threw himself on it just as it exploded. He left a family desolate in California and a little gir! l alive in Baghdad.
The stars who deserve media attention are not the ones who have lavish weddings on TV but the ones who patrol the streets of Mosul even after two of their buddies were murdered and their bodies battered and stripped for the sin of trying to protect Iraqis from terrorists.
We put couples with incomes of $100 million a year on the covers of our magazines. The noncoms and officers who barely scrape by on military pay but stand on guard in Afghanistan and Iraq and on ships and in submarines and near the Arctic Circle are anonymous as they live and die
I am no longer comfortable being a part of the system that has such poor values, and I do not want to perpetuate those values by pretending that who is eating at Morton's is a big subject.
Th! ere are plenty of other stars in the American firmament....the policemen and women who go off on patrol in South Central and have no idea if they will return alive; the orderlies and paramedics who bring in people who have been in terrible accidents and prepare them for surgery; the teachers and nurses who throw their whole spirits into caring for autistic children; the kind men and women who work in hospices and in cancer wards.
Think of each and every fireman who was running up the stairs at the World Trade Center as the towers began to collapse. Now you have my idea of a real hero.
We are not responsible for the operation of the universe, and what happens to us is not terribly important. God is real, not a fiction; and when we turn over our lives to Him, He takes far better care of us than we could ever do for ourselves. In a word, we make ourselves sane when we fire ourselves as th! e directors of the movie of our lives and turn the power over to Him.
I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters. This is my highest and best use as a human. I can put it another way. Years ago, I realized I could never be as great an actor as Olivier or as good a comic as Steve Martin...or Martin Mull or Fred Willard--or as good an economist as Samuelson or Friedman or as good a writer as Fitzgerald. Or even remotely close to any of them.
But I could be a devoted father to my son, husband to my wife and, above all, a good son to the parents who had done so much for me. This came to be my main task in life. I did it moderately well with my son, pretty well with my wife and well indeed with my parents (with my sister's help). I cared for and paid attention to them in their declining years. I stayed with my father as he got sick, went into extremis and then into a coma and then ent! ered immortality with my sister and me reading him the Psalms.
This was the only point at which my life touched the lives of the soldiers in Iraq or the firefighters in New York. I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters and that it is my duty, in return for the lavish life God has devolved upon me, to help others He has placed in my path This is my highest and best use as a human.
Faith is not believing that God can. It is knowing that God will.
By Ben Stein
=======
Comments?
madima answered on 01/11/05:You should be a real star too, you know... from the way I know you...But that should be the subject of a separate column... or rather a feature story :=) Who knows, one of these days, I might write it?
Happy Birthday, dear Ronnie!!!! :=)
| | Question/Answer | | Choux asked on 01/11/05 - American Abortion 2004 Let's actually talk about something specifically! Abortion in America.
Abortion is wrong, and until there is a rational approach to solving the problem of abortion, all is empty hot air. If abortion is wrong, then there must be a penalty. Women *must be punished* for having an abortion. If there is no punishment, then all mention of abortion *must be erased* from the law...no accountability, no criminality, no need to mention. A crime with a victim and no criminal punishment?? Roe v. Wade should be revoked. Women have a right to use birth control, not to have an abortion.
Women must take responsibility for their actions. There are many forms of birth control, and no woman need get pregnant if she doesn't want to.
After Roe v Wade is rescinded either:::
1. States can pass laws regulating abortion as long as there is a mandatory penalty of *prison time* for women. OR:
2. No laws will ever appear on the books ever again if no woman is punished.
Adult women need to grow up and take responsibility for their lives and bodies, and for their actions that harm another being. In cases of a fetus causing the death of the mother, the fetus must be aborted. That is a decision between a woman and her physician just as in cases of rape and incest.
What do you think?
I guess I'm back? *chagrin*
Choux :D madima answered on 01/11/05:Just want to welcome you back! :=)
I told you! Nick won't allow you to stay away too long! :=)
Sorry to say I can't give you feedback on American abortion though. I've never stayed long enough to be well-versed with the medical practices there.
I do find it ironic that many of my countrymen envy America not just its prosperity but its many freedoms - among them its laws legalizing abortion and divorce.
Because my country is predominantly Catholic, birth control is not allowed in here - except for the rhythm method, which has a very high failure rate. And abortion is illegal.
That is, despite the fact that population growth averages almost 30 per cent per annum and more than half of the 85 million population live below poverty line.
The government says our per capita income is about $1,000 per person per year though independent researches say it could be as low as $400 per person per year. That means the average really earn just over $1 per day - and the average number of people per household is five to six. But the Church's favorite line remains: "Go and multiply." So, you can imagine :=)
Despite the ban of the church and threats of the fires of hell, impoverished people(who have no resort to birth control for lack of education and money) seek abortionists. In the poorest rural areas, midwives who never had medical training double as abortionists and are not paid money but farm produce and chickens.
I've also lived in a Moslem country. In Dubai, abortion is illegal. They jail the abortionists. Nevertheless, abortion is performed in secret, by nurses, midwives and doctors who want extra income. And women who had been raped by employers, boyfriends, etc., normal ones and mentally ill ones who had been tricked into unwanted pregnancies as well as those who cannot withstand the pressure of their families who do not want the shame of a kid out of wedlock had them done. Many die or suffer complications.
But if a woman really takes full responsibility for her body... I think it's logical that she should get no blame or punishment for whatever decision she makes.
After all, it's her body and hers alone.
| | Question/Answer | | FormerJesusHelper76 asked on 01/10/05 - Ghosts! Does Christianity explain about peoples experiances with Ghosts? Are there other explanations? Anybody have any personal thoughts on this?
I personally have had no experiances with what we would call a ghost. I am interested in stories of it. Why do some people see them? Why are they here? Etc...... Thank you for your thoughts in advance!
Joe madima answered on 01/10/05:Hi, Joe,
Come to think of it, I've never asked a priest about the church's official position on ghosts.
However, I know of at least one priest here who did the "elevation of spirits" ritual with my Catholic Church affiliated healing group. The rite is meant to assist the restless souls who remain on the earth plane and calls on the assistance of God's Holy Angels to lead them into the Light.
Personally, I've lots of experiences with ghosts, that is earthbound souls of folks who suffered untimely, often violent deaths -apart from devas (nature spirits), elementals and angelic presences.
When I was resting in the number 7 dressing room of the Cultural Center of the Philippines, I "heard" a wailing ghost. At the time, I was performing my first starring role in the CCP resident company as Julie in Strindberg's "Miss Julie". We had three shows in a day - a 10AM matinee, a 3PM matinee and an 8PM show. It was 1PM. I heard the strange sound, which was like a man having nightmares, groans and wailing and choking.
At first, I thought, it was my male lead. Later, when I asked around, the stage hands told me that there was a foreign violinist who died of heart attack in the dressing room adjoining mine. (I did offer prayers for him and the incident was never repeated in the 3 years I was company actress at the CCP.)
Staying alone in haunted hotels, I often see the invisible "residents". At Cebu Plaza Hotel, a white formless mist dragging a very cold front passed to and fro before my eyes as I watched TV - among others. At Dos Palmas Resort Hotel, where people had been killed and at least a couple were beheaded, I saw the ghost of a man and a girl who was huddling under the stairs of my seafront cottage. I even heard their voices. They were asking me not to leave them there.
The latest was in Aurora Province. I was staying in the "cabana" of the governor facing the Pacific Ocean. I stole away alone at midnight to walk on the unlit, deserted beach (against the advice of all the security guards). It was an endless stretch of black sand and there was a portion where the waves sounded so angry as they crashed against the shore. The moon was hidden in the clouds but there was residual light. I could see from my peripheral vision one black shadow standing out in the blackness. It was my first time to see a real "black ghost".
But I was not afraid, having seen many varied "presences" since my childhood. For me it was nothing extraordinary. The strange thing was, the further I went, the darker my surroundings became. Only the angry whitecaps stood out in the blackness. I also noticed that the black shadows were "multiplying" until I have quite an entourage behind me.
Well... I have a lifetime devotion to St. Michael, the archangel, the Lord of the Way and Guide of Lost souls. In fact, my father was named Miguel, after this Holy Angel, and he too had been devoted to the saint all his life.
I simply asked for St. Michael's intercession and invoked him to lead the lost, earthbound souls behind me into the Light.
After I uttered the prayer, somehow, the sea no longer sounded so "angry". There was a strange stillness that came over the place. I don't know if I just imagined it. Somehow, the black ghosts vanished and I made my way back to the cabana.
The security people and the housekeepers of my host told me I should be thankful nothing bad happened to me. They don't go where I went, not even when there's a group of them. For them, it was so terrifying. A lot of people have drowned in that area. The locals believe that the sea "demands" a human sacrifice every year, sometimes, more than one sacrifice.
I had an almost identical experience in another coastal area fronting the ocean several months ago, though it was not as dramatic.
To be frank, I'm more apprehensive of the New People's Army and the terrorist groups who inhabit the mountains and the forests and patrol the remote coastal regions. Ghosts never hurt me but the former are known to shoot first and ask questions later.
But because of my encounters with ghosts I have always included a prayer both for the souls in purgatory and for earthbound souls everyday.
If there's one thing I'm sure of, it's the words of my father confessor. He said the prayers of the faithful can help ease the suffering of lost souls.
| | Question/Answer | | Saladin asked on 01/09/05 - Silence!
Dear Experts:
What are your views on the place, purpose, and value of silence in Christian worship?
I have a book on the stocks on this subject.
:)
Ronnie
madima answered on 01/10/05:Dear Ronnie,
I value silence as much as I value words - in worship and in everything else in my life.
The celebration of the mass uses ritualistic words - prayers and songs. But at the point when you are asked to make a personal petition to God, there is silence.
After receiving the Holy Communion, you go in a mode of silence, in prayer and in respect, as you consume the host.
Whenever I go to the adoration chapel where the Blessed Sacrament is exposed, I worship in silence.
When I want to empty my thoughts, I prefer to be silent. Likewise, I favor complete silence as I write, as I paint, as I walk in the wilderness. I feel comfortable in a world without sound, without distractions. I have no fear of it.
If a friend knows the meaning of my silence as much as he knows the meaning of my words, then it can be said that he knows me :=)
Silence is sacred. | | Question/Answer | | FormerJesusHelper76 asked on 01/08/05 - Forgiveness! There are certain people who believe that Forgiving somebody means that you do not want them to be punished for what they have done. In my belief this is not true. I believe you can forgive somebody and also want them to face up and take the consequences of their actions.
For example: Somebody has just murdered five children. The husband forgives his wife but also would like justice and deal with the punishment of their actions.
When we are young children and we did something wrong. We are punished for it. Does that mean that we do not love them or forgive them. The parents continue to love their children.
Even God punishes us. He forgives us. Everything we do effects everybody else. Does God still love us yes.
Joe madima answered on 01/09/05:Dear Joe,
I don't regard my God as a punishing God. I don't think that the undesirable things that happened in my life (though I can't really recall now if there are any)are "punishments" that He meted out for transgressions which my forefathers and I committed. It's just that I'm not perfect, I make mistakes and I learn from them.
As a child, I was never spanked or physically punished in any way. My parents never humiliated me or witheld their love, even though I wasn't exactly an angel all of the time... They simply took me aside, told me I did not do right and why it was not right, what the repercussions will be - for them, for me, for whoever was to suffer for my wrongdoing. But then,they are no strangers. They're my parents. And I have never committed such grievous a wrong as murder.
Forgiveness for me is "releasing" the negative energy of the wrongdoing into the universe. Letting it go, so it will not interfere with my life and my Present anymore.
Of course, it does not mean I shall forget the lesson or I shall trust the transgressor ever again or even love him. That, I guess, is the primal survival instinct working. Especially, since I've been living independently and alone by myself since I was fifteen.
Sure, you can help, to a certain degree, if needed - if that's within your power and if the person expressedly asks for help. That's Christian. But no more. You don't want an uncontrollable murderer or an incorrigible traitor around you, much less in bed with you.
And after all, I'm still human. I am not God :=)
| | Question/Answer | | FormerJesusHelper76 asked on 01/09/05 - ~Prayer Request~ I ask you for your prayers for my family and myself. Thank you. God bless!
Joe madima answered on 01/09/05:Dear Joe, you and your family are in my prayers today and thereafter :=) | | Question/Answer | | bal317 asked on 01/06/05 - What do you think of Oprah? How do any of you feel when Oprah made the announcement, because of someone she knew came up missing in this disaster, she hired retired Marine's to go look for her friends, friend?
Do any of you feel this was a selfish move?
What about the many other's who can't afford this type of help, and see's her doing such?
So should this seeings how they are only looking for this one person, been kept out of the media because of hurting other's feelings? Or do you think there's knowing to it and it's ok?
Thanks,
bal317 madima answered on 01/06/05:No, dear Bal, I don't feel hers was a selfish move.
I myself have not heard from friends who were in Indonesia and Phuket when the tsunami came. I do wish I have the resources to go there and look for them, or at least to find their bodies and give them decent burial and bring something back to their parents, but I don't...
And I don't think an individual can save all of the 200,000 who were lost even if he/she has all the money in the world. For a single person to be able to save one will be more than enough.
| | Question/Answer | | arcura asked on 01/06/05 - My my, those naughty moralists have made his movie a flop. Millions of bucks lost. What’s the secular world coming to?
LONDON - Director Oliver Stone said he was surprised by the critical reaction to his historical epic "Alexander" — and put the blame on the fundamentalist morality in some parts of the United States.
Critics lambasted the film, which stars Irish actor Colin Farrell, and some conservative groups condemned Stone's depiction of the Macedonian conqueror's sexuality.
"I was quite taken aback by the controversy and fierceness of the reviews about a character we don't really know too much about," Stone told reporters in London Wednesday before the film's British premiere.
"I operate on my passion and sometimes I'm naive, I don't think about the consequences," he said.
Stone said the commercial failure of "Alexander" in the United States could be linked to "a raging fundamentalism in morality."
"From day one audiences didn't show up," he said. "They didn't even read the reviews in the South because the media was using the words, `Alex the gay.' As a result you can bet that they thought, `We're not going to see a film about a military leader that has got something wrong with him.'"
Stone, director of "Platoon," "JFK" and "Natural Born Killers," said "Alexander" was "the epic of my life."
madima answered on 01/06/05:Hi, Fred,
I saw "Alexander". My friends had to literally drag me to the moviehouse to watch it. But I knew they were not after the story or the historical accuracy. They were yearning to see beefcake! Same reason they watched Achilles! :=(
I WANTED to see an epic! Alas, I did not see one! It was all histrionics!
For me, it's ok to depict Alexander as bisexual because that's what he was. Whatever his sexual preferences were, he was an amazing strategist, a magnificent leader who changed the course of history. But the director belabored his main character's sexuality so much that he lost the entire story in the process.
I don't think it's a matter of morality. As a movie goer, I came to see an epic. And a great epic at that! I guess, so did most of the audience. They did not see one.
Hence, the film flopped. | | Question/Answer | | Chilloutinparis asked on 01/06/05 - Xmas Holidays
I trust and hope that all had a splendid holiday with peace, delight and a cornucopia of joy!
Chip
madima answered on 01/06/05:Hi, Chip,
Nice to meet you. Not a holiday for me, really. Still had to work. But t'was exciting and full of joy, nonetheless.
Hope you had a great time yourself. | | Question/Answer | | ROLCAM asked on 01/06/05 - Meteors, tsunamis and the wounds of Job. Meteors, tsunamis and the wounds of Job
Isaac Newton thought of the universe as a creation run by a god who was a genial engineer - an absent but assiduous planner of everything. The horrific devastation in Asia has given rise to several Newtonian explanations, trying to explain the suffering caused by way of a hidden divine plan of subtle genius. Those of us who are angered by this kind of explanation will find some satisfaction in the Book of Job.
Have you been angered by the explanation ?
Do you find help in reading the Bible ? madima answered on 01/06/05:Hi, Roland,
I'm in Southeast Asia and the tsunami devastation is very close to home. We had tsunamis here ourselves several years ago that wiped out thousands of people. But no, I've never had the habit of blaming God for natural catastrophes or attributing disasters to divine plans.
I try to live close to nature when I can, so I am aware of her powers to heal as well as to destroy.
I do read the Bible, but not often and only for inspiration. And to be honest, it's not the first thing that came to my mind in these times.
My first reaction when I heard the tsunami news was not to seek solace but to get ready because we could be next. Not that I'm afraid of dying, but I don't like being caught flatfooted by anything :=)
My home is situated close to an earthquake fault and I did experience minor tremors. Metro Manila has been expecting big temblors all these times.
My next reaction was to call the family of my friends who were in Indonesia and in Phuket that day. (They are still missing todate.)
And then I packed all the clothing and items I could donate to the Salesian Sisters who were organizing aid for the victims. | | Question/Answer | | Calminthestorm04 asked on 01/02/05 - help had a weird dream Dreaming that there were these ships in the sky, triangular. There were several witnesses and it seemed where ever we seemed to go they followed. they had amazing flying capabilities. they would come down so close and this bright light would almost blind you. it looked like they were looking for me. We kept running away from they we thought there was a time problem with this but it turned out no time was lost. Can the devil play with our dreams, it was something that was cool to see at first then started to get scary. Ezekiel there was some interpretation. Is there something else out there that was created. There were other parts of the dream about sperm and when is the best time to notice when there is higher sperm counts. stuff like that. help. madima answered on 01/02/05:Hi,
This strikes me as a dream showing much of your internal conflict - between what you feel and what you think, between your natural creative and destructive tendencies.
Ships are conveyors of the emotion in the dreaming. Water signifies emotions. Ships take you to out to the sea, so you can "feel" your way through the sea of life.
The fact that the ships in your dream are in the sky - in the mind, symbolically, indicates that you subconsciously feel that your emotions are getting in the way of your thinking.
Your feelings, which you secretly fear are "inappropriate" haunts you, following you around in your mind. This also hints of guilt.
The ships are triangular, that could be significant, too. Three angles could stand for the trinity, which is perceived as a divine number that leads to "the one". It could also signify the three elements of your life - emotional, mental and spiritual, which you need to connect and harmonize. They "hound" you on the mental level - in the sky - because you have not yet "unified" them. In you, these elements of your being are not yet "one".
It seems too that you fear "enlightenment". You see the bright light but it evokes fear from you and you equate it with those whom you called "witnesses" who behaved more like flying spies and tormentors.
No, I don't believe the devil can play with your dreams unless you consciously or subconsciously summon him to come to you in the dreaming.
Your dreams are simply your subconscious mind's way of telling you about your hidden fears, feelings and desires. You are "told" in the dreaming so you can correct or resolve your hidden issues on the conscious level.
The last part of your post became almost gibberish. However, the sperm imagery hints not just about sexuality but creativity. The wish to know "when is the best time to notice when there is higher sperm counts" signifies lack of self knowledge when is the most opportune time to create or to be creative.
I hope this helps. | | Question/Answer | | Mathatmacoat asked on 12/31/04 - Are you a Babylonian? The celebration of the new year is the oldest of all holidays. It was first observed in ancient Babylon about 4000 years ago. In the years around 2000 BC, the Babylonian New Year began with the first New Moon (actually the first visible cresent) after the Vernal Equinox (first day of spring).
The Babylonian new year celebration lasted for eleven days. Each day had its own particular mode of celebration, but it is safe to say that modern New Year's Eve festivities pale in comparison.
Happy New Year!
madima answered on 01/01/05:I'm more of a hedonist when it comes to New Years, but I'm always open to new things... like finding out what's it like to be a Babylonian :=)
Happy New Year! :=) | | Question/Answer | | FormerJesusHelper76 asked on 01/01/05 - Theraputic Healing! Do you believe in laying of the hands and theraputic healing. Anybody here have had any experiances or/and thoughts on this.
I believe its possible. Some people might claim a certain person healed them with theraputic touch but what they do not know is it is God that is doing the healing and that healer is just the vehicle for it.
Thank you in advance!
Joe madima answered on 01/01/05:Yes. I have done pranic healing myself. I believe man's energies can be channeled to heal another if he asks to be an instrument of God.
We have major energy centers, not just in the palms of the hands but in seven areas in the physical body, in the so-called chakras. The healing energies that come out of the hands are actually channeled from the highest energy center at the crown of the head which is linked to God-consciousness and to God.
I have been a member of a healing group, the Catholic Church-affiliated Knights of the Holy Cross of Jesus, for eight years now though I've not been active for sometime. | | Question/Answer | | Saladin asked on 01/01/05 - Ali Iqbal
My neighbour, friend, and brother Ali Iqbal died just before Christmas in Pakistan where he was attending his eldest daughter's wedding.
If you had met him, you would have loved him as I love him.
Will you join your prayers with mine for his soul, and for the comfort and blessing of his wonderfully loving family?
Ronnie
madima answered on 01/01/05:I join you in prayers for Ali Iqbal and his family, dear Ronnie. | | Question/Answer | | Choux asked on 12/30/04 - Qutting the Board I'm quitting the Christianity Board because I can't stop picking-on most of the other Board members. It is not fair to you. And, it brings out the worst in me. I have other places here I can participate. HAPPY NEW YEAR 2005 madima answered on 12/31/04:You can't! I'll tell Nick not to let you!!!!
Happy New Year!!!! | | Question/Answer | | Saladin asked on 12/30/04 - A Question for Christians ...
News story:
The Colorado Springs Gazette is catching it in the neck for distributing the New Testament as an advertising supplement in last Sunday's edition of the newspaper.
The volume went into the same pocket of the newspaper's plastic pouch where items like CD's from America Online or soap samples often go.
The Bible group paid the standard advertising rate, and its spokeswoman, Judy Billings, said it considered the 91,000 copies of the New Testament a Christmas gift to the people of Colorado Springs.
Some Jews and Muslims said getting the New Testament with the Sunday paper felt like being proselytized in their homes.
=====================================================
1. Is this a good idea or a bad one, and why either way?
2. How would you feel if you had a copy of the Qur'an delivered with your newspaper this coming Sunday, and why?
Please give it some thought before you answer.
Thankee.
:)
Ronnie
madima answered on 12/31/04:I can only speak here as a journalist, because I guess I can understand the viewpoint of the Gazette... :=)
If it's a paid ad, it should be ok. The newspaper gets its revenues (Pity the Gazette! They're a business operation and they badly need those revenues, with so much competition from tv, radio and the internet!).The advertiser, in this case the Bible group, gets the space it has paid for to reach its targeted mass audience.
The reader can always exercise his freedom, anyway. If he likes the New Testament volume, he can keep it. If he doesn't, he can always throw it in the garbage bin.
If the Qur'An will be delivered with my newspaper this Sunday I will love it! :=) That will be an interesting read since I've never gotten around reading the complete Qur'An even when I lived in a Moslem country! I've always been a voracious reader whenever I have the luxury of time!
Unfortunately, I don't have newspapers on Sunday :=(
Though I'm a member of the working press, I just go over to the websites of our dailies if I want to read the news. I email all my stories daily. I just get to touch the newspaper, real newsprint with the smell of printer's ink, when I hang out in the press office! :=)
Happy New Year, dear Ronnie! :=) | | Question/Answer | | FormerJesusHelper76 asked on 12/31/04 - Money In a Christmas card. Somebody wishes somebody health and lots of money. Do you see anything wrong with this or is it just me.
Interested in all your thoughts!
Joe madima answered on 12/31/04:I don't see anything wrong there :=)
Health is precious. As they say, "health is wealth." One cannot be that useful to others or even to himself if he is ailing.
We do have countless physically disabled or sick people who contribute a lot to humanity, not allowing their physical limitations to handicap their creativity, but it's still more of the exception rather than the rule.
Money is a useful tool if one knows how to use it, I believe.
Of course, you can't use lots of money to buy love or peace of mind.
I never had enough money in my life, though I always had lots of love. Most people who know my life style wouldn't believe me when I tell them what I get on my paycheck :=)
But I do wish I will have lots of money so I don't have to work to feed myself and my parents anymore. The moment I'm no longer on survival mode, I can devote my time to putting up wild animal sanctuaries all over and working on a global environmental conservation drive :=)
| | Question/Answer | | darkstar asked on 12/31/04 - is this just the beginning? is there some people here who believe that this most recent earthquake of 9 on the scale is just the beginning of the end? madima answered on 12/31/04:No, dear Darlene, I don't believe so.
The tectonic plates of the earth shift every now and then to create earthquakes and tsunamis, to bring out islands from the ocean floor or to submerge them into oblivion, to pull continents together or tear them apart... The same shifting of the earth plates pushed out the mountain ranges of America and Europe to their heights. That same force is responsible for creating the Himalayan ranges and making such mountains like Everest "grow" by several feet each year... I guess that was also the cause of the deepening of the great marine trenches such as the Marianas and the Philippine Deep...
Well, that "now and then" could span millions of years. Some species have become extinct because of such changes. Geography has been altered. But the world has not ended.
Happy New Year! :=) | | Question/Answer | | FormerJesusHelper76 asked on 12/30/04 - Guardian Angels Do you believe you have a Guardian Angel? Yes or No and the reason why! In the beginning God created the Angels first, right?
Joe madima answered on 12/30/04:Dear Joe,
I have two guardian angels who keep watch over me all the time :=)
I believe in them because I have seen them, dreamed with them, written poetry with them, painted with them and had great adventures with them. When I'm feeling sick or can't sleep, I often ask them to tuck me under their great wings. I feel their love all the time. And I call them by their first names :=)
But more than that, I have a close relationship with all the other angels of the Lord.
Almost eight years ago, I began my devotion to God's Holy Angels. The Catholic Church has sanctioned a 3-year personal consecration to them under the "opus sanctorum angelorum". I have completed the rite and gone beyond. | | Question/Answer | | FormerJesusHelper76 asked on 12/30/04 - Earthquakes and Natural Disasters! They are a very terrible experiance. To see the devasitation that this causes. This disaster in Asia must be the worst i have ever seen with 80,000 and more counting deaths. Some people suggest this is Gods way of controlling the Earths population or that this is a way Earth is trying to clean up the damage we are doing. What are your thoughts on this? Many people are talking this way. Is it a CLEANING FROM EARTH, OR SIGNS FROM GOD ABOUT PUNISHMENT. What do you think?
Joe madima answered on 12/30/04:Dear Joe,
I don't think that the tectonic plates of the earth shifting to create the tsunami is God's punishment or an act of cleansing.
It's just the way of nature to shift and change itself. Life and death just... happens. We will all die, be it on our beds, out on the streets, or in the grip of the powerful forces of nature.
I have always loved the sea and I always will. Many times, being inside the great waters or over it, especially during or in the wake of a storm, the thought has crossed my mind that it can take my life anytime.
Yes, I have this certain feeling of "protection". I have been assured that the waters will never hurt me. And yet, adventuress that I am, I know how puny one is, how powerless, against the raw forces of nature.
Know what? I realized I wouldn't even mind dying in the waters, in a place that I love, where I feel protected. I have friends who nearly drowned who recalled the sensation of almost dying. It's not painful at all...And I should know. I have almost died, though not at sea.
If I had a choice, I'd rather die in the dreaming or surrender my life to something cataclysmic rather than succumb in bed with prolonged agony, connected to a lot of tubes and hoses. | | Question/Answer | | Saladin asked on 12/29/04 - Open Question ...
Do Christians HAVE to be nice to everyone no matter what?
Curious minds want to know.
madima answered on 12/30/04:Dear Ronnie,
I've been told by friends that I can kill people with my sweetness - literally and figuratively, that is :=)
But that really depends on what do you mean by "nice"...I don't scream and shout at my fellowmen (well... no one has done such things to me, so far). I don't use invectives and try not to hurt with words and actions, as much as is humanly possible.
But I have my own way of getting even when I feel I've been slighted :=)
And that could be... terrible, to say the least? :=) | | Question/Answer | | HANK1 asked on 12/29/04 - A HARD ONE:
Who was the first person to draw a picture of Satan?
HANK
madima answered on 12/29/04:
Well, it will be difficult to identify "the very first" artist, dear Hank, because I don't think the first cave artists signed their paintings :=)
Prehistoric men had their own concept of Satan. The horned god of the Greeks was Pan but he is not evil. He is the god of dreams depicted with goat horns and hooves, wearing a lynx pelt, playing a flute and dancing the Dance of Life.(He is also the cause of "pandemonium" - which is not evil in the true sense, though it could cause much disruption.) He is the Spirit of Nature and the Spirit of Life. The first cave drawings of Pan dates back ten thousand years ago.
The Celts also have their horned god, Cernunos. He strikes me as dark but not evil inasmuch as he is a guardian of the forest and is an instigator of personal transformation.
Personally, being an artist myself, I have put a face and body to Satan in my oil painting of St. Michael battling the fallen angels that will be included in my exhibit next year. I depicted Satan as a beautiful being, like all angels, but one without light.
| | Question/Answer | | FormerJesusHelper76 asked on 12/28/04 - South and SouthEast Asia What a terrible tragedy. Almost 60,000 deaths. There is nothing we can do to help relieve the pain of people who have lost relatives and friends. The scene of people praying over the dead bodies. This is so sad and so terrible. Lets all pray. Lets all find the best way to contribute to helping in the aid of all the victims of this terrible disaster.
Joe madima answered on 12/29/04:Thanks, Joe. I have friends who went to Indonesia a day before the tsunami to visit their siblings who are stationed there. We have not heard from them todate. The disaster is close to me, quite too close, because I'm also here in SouthEast Asia. In fact, the death toll could well go over 100,000. | | Question/Answer | | HANK1 asked on 12/28/04 - SATAN!
The Bible, and even secular literature, contains many references to “the Devil,” “Satan,” and “demons,” yet I have met some Christians who do not believe that there is such a thing as a real, personal Devil. I am one of these people.
What is your belief?
HANK
madima answered on 12/28/04:Personally, I believe more in the darkness within, but I don't like to "demonize" people and external forces/influences.
If I remember correctly, the word devil, or rather, "demon", has Greek and Latin origins. It derives from "daemon" - a divine force which could lead to BOTH good and bad, with the potential to destroy that is equal to its potential to create.
The "daemon" in literature is the source of inspiration of artists and writers. How an individual reacts to the "daemon" depends on his internal make-up.
If he is weak and he invokes the "daemon", then it will be his undoing. If he is strong, incorruptible and knows what he wants, then he can harness the great force of the "daemon" for creative ends that will benefit humanity.
Of course, there is a great darkness that some would classify as "pathological", the kind that leads to atrocious crimes such as genocide, but that will be too lengthy to discuss here. | | Question/Answer | | Saladin asked on 12/28/04 - A Sensible Post - at last!
Claire Foster wrote in a little book that even if a girl finds an attractive man,
"he is bound to have deep dark secrets or revolting personal habits that make him impossible to live with/take home to mum/introduce to your most caustic friends."
Well now, gentlemen, what are your deep dark secrets and revolting habits?
Tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
:)
Ronnie - 'almost a gentleman'
madima answered on 12/28/04:Dearest Ronnie,
I know all the deepest and darkest secrets of the men in my life - although I've seen to it that they'll never know mine :=)
But if I tell... they won't be deep, dark secrets anymore :=)
Happy new year to you and Gay! :=) | | Question/Answer | | excon asked on 12/24/04 - Why do you pray?
Hello Experts:
To me, prayer seems to be about whining and begging God to DO something: "Please heal this person … please bring me my soul-mate … please help my business, etc." That could lead one to think that God is holding out on us and gets pleasure watching us grovel.
When faced with very serious problems, it's apparently your custom to ask others to join together in your prayers. What is that all about? It seems as if you hope to move God through force: "God, if you don't respond to my prayers, then I will recruit, through e-mail, thousands of others to pray."
Do you think these strategies really work? If God is all knowing then why are you telling him your problems? Doesn't he already know them? If God is good then why are you asking him to change your situation? Obviously whatever happens to you is God's design and you should just trust God.
I don't pray, so I don't know.
excon
madima answered on 12/25/04:Come to think of it, I've been praying as early as I can remember, upon waking up and before sleeping each day, but no, it's never been whining and begging God to do something :=)
I've always been used to the fact that both my fathers - my biological dad and my Father "Upstairs" - know what I need, so I never had to ask. People have always told me that papa (I guess both fathers, actually) had me spoiled rotten :=)
However, being human, I like giving "reminders", though I'm perfectly sure I'll get what I want :=)
Kidding aside...I found that prayer, just like a conversation with a best friend, or with my father on earth, whom I love so much, is very comforting. It also helps in the constant "bonding" process with the Divine in us :=)
In addition, prayer, to me, is more of a thanksgiving for the blessing of the gift of life. So, mostly, the essence of my prayer is: "Thank you, Lord for this day."
When a loved one is ailing or in a very difficult situation, I do request God for healing and call on "prayer warriors" to aid me. Yet, I don't see this as "pressuring" or "coercing" God. Prayer elicits positive energies and an accumulation of such positive energies from a group of people can do lots of wonders when "focused" on a specific subject.
Of course, a person's true "healing", at times, necessitates that his suffering on earth ends. So the healing comes in his death. That, I understand. | | Question/Answer | | jeremy_hobbs asked on 12/22/04 - To all of my new friends on Answerway I wish you joy, peace and health. I hope that each one of you has the happiness that you have brought to this old geezer, who has grown to be very fond of all of you. May the New Year bring you your hearts desire. Which ever holiday you are celebrating, enjoy and know that this guy will be thinking of you. :)
Be in peace,
Jeremy madima answered on 12/22/04:Merry Christmas Jeremy and the happiest of new years! :=) | | Question/Answer | | FormerJesusHelper76 asked on 12/19/04 - Predictions, E.S.P., Etc....... Gift From God....... Hello Again Everybody,
People claim to have good instincts. People see things before things happen. Different people call this gift many different things.
For myself i believe that it is a Gift from God and that there are genuine people who have a gift of seeing things before they happen or rely more on inner voice we all have. I have had many experiances of my own and i know that it is because of an open mind and that it is a gift from God.
Have any of you have had amazing experiances with predictions or very good instincts? I would be interesting in hearing about it. Thank you in advance!
Joe madima answered on 12/20/04:I have many "clairvoyant experiences" but one of them stood out...
I was around six years old when I had this dream of going up a very long winding staircase and passing through a door. Then I found myself standing before a giant calendar that was flipping, showing the years ahead. I saw all the things that were to happen in my life, my years as a stage actress - the lead roles I will perform, my years as a professional dancer and as a journalist. I even saw the headlines of the stories I will write splashed across the front pages of the newspapers with my byline on them. (In the decades that followed, I saw them all come true.)
My parents made a special secret garden for me in a secluded portion close to our house and I spent a lot of time there in my childhood, alone with the family cats and dogs, the butterflies, the wild birds who learned to feed from my hands, the snakes and all sorts of creatures.
Many times, I would see the devas of nature among the trees, the plants and the rocks. They were so beautiful. Perhaps that's where my affinity with Mother Nature started. I would hear the voices of the spirits of nature, awake and asleep. I remembered they told me of the history of our place, how it was a great forest before the people came, they told me of the history of the trees and the marshes that existed there long before.
When I was older, I fell in love with the river and then the sea, though at the time, I have never known how to swim - yet. My parents have always been afraid of the sea. Then I had this dream of treading alone in the midst of the great ocean, with the warm waves lapping around me. But when I submerged, I found I could breathe in the water and the sea had a voice which I could hear. The voice told me the waters will never harm me.
Not long after, I had my first deep dive in the wake of a storm. I could have drowned then and in the many dangerous dives I did in the years to follow, even after I became a licensed scuba diver. But I was "protected".
I had the same sense of "protection" in exploring the wilderness, in caving, canyoneering and in mountain climbing. Many of my companions ended up with broken limbs, gashes, serious falls, some lost their sanity and some lost their lives. But I always emerged out of my "adventures" unscathed.
Some of my superstitious friends suspected I had some sort of treasured, rare "amulet" or "charm" in my person that kept me from harm from the elements of nature and from wild creatures.
But no, I just think God and His angels protect me because I never seek to harm nature and her creatures. It's just that I do not seek to harm, so I am not harmed :=)
| | Question/Answer | | arcura asked on 12/16/04 - What would you do in this situation?..........
St. Francis of Assisi was working in his garden.
A neighbor asked him what he would do if he knew the world would end on the morrow.
St. Francis replied, “I’d keep on working in my garden.”
My question for all of you is: what would you do if you knew the world will end tomorrow?
Peace and kindness, arcura
madima answered on 12/16/04:I think I'll do as Saint Francis did. Keep on working in my garden... because that, for me, will be the wisest thing to do :=)
By the way, Saint Francis is one of my favorite saints, along with St. Jude and St. Rita. He has a way with animals, even the wildest, that I wisn to have. | | Question/Answer | | Saladin asked on 12/13/04 - CHRISTMAS WARNING ...
Christmas has been canceled
and it is all your fault
because you told Santa
you had been good this year.
And he died laughing
:)
Ronnie
madima answered on 12/14/04:I'll adopt all his orphaned reindeer :=)
And we'll celebrate Christmas illegally :=)
| | Question/Answer | | Bradd asked on 12/13/04 - All Things Considered Well, it's the Holiday Season and I want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas, a Happy Chanukah, and a joyous Kwanza.
This is a fun page at AW - rarely dull and always filled with passion.
I think Jesus would have gotten a kick out of it.
And Lao-tsu, and Buddha, and Mohammed, and Joseph Smith, and Moses, and all the others.
Carry on, regardless! madima answered on 12/13/04:So, I'll take the opportunity to greet you an advance Merry Christmas, Bradd.
In my second language, we say, "Maligayang Pasko!" :=) | | Question/Answer | | FormerJesusHelper76 asked on 12/13/04 - Many People, Many Thoughts, Many Opinions and Views! Its how you interact with everybody. Its how you listen to others even though you may not agree with them. Its letting others know what you think. Many people of differernt cultures, religions, opinions and views are on this board. It is good to get to know each and every one of you.
Just would like to say well wishes and thoughts and prayers with everybody in this special time for gathering with friends and family.
Joe madima answered on 12/13/04:Best wishes to you, too, Joe! :=) | | Question/Answer | | Choux asked on 12/13/04 - Holiday Complaining I agree with Sal, let's brighten up the Board! Let this be the thread for all those who want to complain about something, especially their health! With this innovation, we who are *not interested* in a bunch of bellyaching can avoid this thread!!!
I'll start. I have had a cold for at least six weeks, probably closer to two months. I am so tired of it!!
Next:: madima answered on 12/13/04:Perhaps you place is too damp? Is there a way you can heat your room well? Take plenty of Vitamin C too...
Got a cold too, after being walloped by two super typhoons recently! I almost swam through the flood to get home!
And the latest storm, specifically, wasn't too polite this time... it got through my ceiling, my balcony, into my closets and grounded my phone...
But at least, I got the power on. And a good friend gifted me with a belly dance cd to keep my spirits up!
And know what? In one hour, I was belly-dancing on my still soggy floor! I didn't know the routine was soooo easy! I have never learned to dance from an instructional cd before! It has always been in a studio setting.
I've seen authentic Greek and Moroccan belly dancing during my stint in Dubai. I thought it's very sexy and a great workout for the abs, hip and back, but I was never interested in it until now!
Now, I can add belly dancing to my repertoire of Broadway, Polynesian, modern jazz and folk dances :=)
And because I have to empty all my wet cabinets and closets to locate those miles of grounded wiring, I managed to unearth my old dance costumes plus several bags of beads and sequins and yards and yards of gossamer materials I can use for my veil and skirt!
So, the next time I'm grounded with a cold, I can already look forward to an exciting project: I can make my exotic belly dancing costume! :=) | | Question/Answer | | powderpuff asked on 12/10/04 - More on Abortion 3 1/2 years ago, shortly before my son was killed, his girlfriend ended up pregnant and confused. There were some questions in her mind about whether or not she could or should go through with the pregnancy. My son and I left no doubt in her mind that the baby was wanted and would be cared for. My son, having strong feelings against abortion, went too far IMO in trying to convince her to have the baby. I felt he actually terrorized her in his attempts to save his child.
I talked with her a lot. I counseled her on choices she could make. I promised her that if she had the baby, I would pay all the expenses, I would be the best grandmother I could be, I would help her in any way that she needed, including providing her housing and/or taking the child if that is what she thought she needed. I wanted her to know that even if she didn't trust my son to provide for her and the baby, I would be there to support her and the child in any way she needed.
We talked for days about all of her options. We talked about her having the child, keeping the child, giving the child up for adoption, placing the child with me, allowing me to support her and the baby, and the option of abortion. I told her the decision was hers, and that whatever decision she came to, I would support her choice.
At the same time, my son was terrorizing her with anti-abortion literature and sending her graphic pictures of aborted fetuses along with horror stories of women who had gone through with aborting their pregnancies.
Eventually, after giving a lot of thought to all her choices, she chose to have an abortion. I wanted that baby as much as my son did. It was a sad day for me, but even a sadder day for her. My son stepped up his terrorism and pounded it in to her head that she had murdered his child. I think his harassment of her was criminal. She ended up in a psychiatric hospital, her relationship with my son ended, then my son was killed. Out of a desperate sense of guilt, she became pregnant again as soon as possible, and gave birth to twins 9 months after my son's death.
I did not feel angry with her about her choice until my son died and she became pregnant again. If only she would have been brave enough to carry my son's child to term, I would have had my son's child to love and continue to love as I loved my own son.
But I had to realize, my anger was purely due to selfish emotions. The choice belonged with HER. She was the one who had to either go through with carrying the child, giving birth to the child, and being responsible for what happened next, or having an abortion for carefully thought out reasons of her own. She did not chose to have an abortion simply because it would be inconvenient to have a child. There was a multitude of things she considered and thought out carefully before she came to her decision. Of course it hurt me, but I don't judge her, and I forgive her, as I am sure God also forgives her.
We do not know when ensoulment occurs. Different religions believe it happens at different times. Some people believe it happens at conception, others don't believe it happens until the fetus is viable outside its mother's body. Still others think it occurs at the time of birth. The fact is that no one knows for sure when the soul enters the body.
However, we are all human, we all make mistakes, and none of us knows everything. Our God knows how ignorant and unknowing we all are. I believe that if we make a mistake, God forgives us. I don't believe that anyone has a right to decide for someone else on matters of abortion, it should be legal, and the consequenses will ultimately be between the woman and God. It is not our place to judge and it is not our place to make those choices for anyone other than ourselves.
Abortion is a personal private choice. Legal or not, some women will decide to have an abortion regardless. If abortion becomes illegal, women will continue to have them anyway. The problem will change from a private problem to a public problem at that point. Not only will fetuses be lost, but women will die as well.
What makes any one of you think that you should be able to tell a woman she cannot have a safe and legal abortion to end a problem pregnancy? madima answered on 12/12/04:Dearest sis, it was a very difficult choice you have made and I commend you for not judging another person and respecting another woman's right to do what she wants to do with her own body.
I've seen studies which have shown that women who wanted to abort their babies who are eventually by peers, parents, religious authorities, etc. 'persuaded' into carrying on their pregnancies full term and delivering their children never get over their subconscious loathing for the "invasion" of their flesh. They never really make good mothers of the kids they initially rejected. The kids grow up to be maladjusted psychologically.
A mother who never wanted her baby in the womb will not want it when it is born. And the baby will know it, before and after its birth.The trauma may not be obvious but it will always be there, even if the mother gives up the child for adoption.
I've personally known women who were impregnated because of date rape and incestous, abusive relatives. They were "coerced" by the church and other pressure groups to forego their plans of abortion. They ended up abusing the kids they never wanted in the first place. All of these kids ended up as criminals and a couple killed themselves.
Nobody can tell anyone whether she should abort her baby or not. Nobody has that right to. It is only the woman who carries the child who has the right to make the ultimate choice. It is, after all, her body. | | Question/Answer | | HANK1 asked on 12/11/04 - THIS MIGHT BE TOO PERSONAL!
If you were on your death-bed and you knew you had only 15 minutes to live, what would you say to God ... if you believed in God? (As I said, the answer to this question might be too personal)
HANK
madima answered on 12/12/04:Dear Hank,
Fifteen minutes is actually too long because I have only a few words to say to Him :=)
I'd say: "Thanks so much for such a beautiful, extraordinary life!" | | Question/Answer | | HANK1 asked on 12/11/04 - THE PERFECT PERSON!
If I was a perfect person in the eyes of God and Jesus, what questions would you ask me? Would you consider me immortal since my salvation would be guaranteed?
HANK
madima answered on 12/12/04:Dear Hank,
I believe that if you are perfect in the eyes of God and I'm imperfect, then there is no question I can ask of you :=)
If you are perfect, there's nothing more you can learn - from me or from anyone or anything. And being spirit who is immortal there's nothing you can really teach to those who are embodied in flesh who have more time-bound earthly/physical concerns.
If I am imperfect, I cannot learn from perfection. I can only learn from my mistakes, my imperfection.
But as myself, of course, I'm free to ask you as you are: How are you today? :=)
| | Question/Answer | | Krewton asked on 12/07/04 - Happy Birthday to me! Just turned 42 today. No question here, just a statement. I am blessed with a great wife, two wonderful kids, and the free gift of Salvation from Jesus himself. Pretty good life thus far eh? madima answered on 12/08/04:May this be the happiest birthday of your life! :=) | | Question/Answer | | Saladin asked on 11/24/04 - Your thoughts and prayers, if you can ...
Gay has suddenly been taken ill.
It might just be something temprary, perhaps gatric flu, etc., and she might be fine in the morning.
But she is suffering tonight and having a hard time of it. I am making her as comfortable as possible and if she is not better in the morning I will have her admitted to hospital. She is frightened.
If you can find it in your heart to think of her in your prayers for the next few days, I will be most grateful.
Ronnie
madima answered on 11/25/04:Dearest Ronnie,
Don't worry. Gay, you and your family are always in my prayers. | | Question/Answer | | Saladin asked on 11/21/04 - Smack Down ...
I can't remember who said it and I am not interested, so don't anyone confess, and don't anyone tattle-tale, BUT someone smacked down - I mean SMACKED DOWN Clete for offering his opinion in a question that asked for an opinion by telling him that, and I quote,
"THIS IS AN AMERICAN SITE ..... "
I was disgusted that anyone would think that AW was AN AMERICAN SITE because I know it has experts from
Scotland
England
Spain
Australia
Canada
The Potteries
The Indian Tribal Nations
and who knows where else!
That kind of argument makes me sick to my stomach.
Is this an International site with an International clientele or is it AMERICANS ONLY?
Sal - a non-American
madima answered on 11/21/04:Dearest Ronnie,
I knew the history of this site from its pre-conception... :=)
AW was made in America by two New Yorkers who have Asian origins. J is an American who spent almost all of his life in NYC but he is of Korean parentage. Vijay is an American with British and Indian parentage.
My American friends who come to this site have German and other European lineages. Some are of Latin American descent. A good number are immigrants from other parts of the globe.
As you and the others know by now, I'm from the Philippines :=) A good number of my friends here in Manila have enlisted as users and experts in other categories.
AW is an international site.
So, I think it's just fitting that we should all be open-minded and respectful of each other's cultures as well as beliefs :=) | | Question/Answer | | CeeBee2 asked on 11/13/04 - Prayer. Most of you believe that God hears the prayers of His childen and causes healing to take place.
1) What if there is no healing ever, despite many prayers?
2) What does that say about the pray-ers' faith? madima answered on 11/15/04:Hi Carol, It's been a long time... :=)
I believe that God always hears our prayers but He is wise enough to give us what we need and not what we want :=)
Death can itself be a healing, in my opinion. When one prays for a person to live and yet he dies, I will not take it against the faith of the people who prayed for him. Nor will I take it against God.
Our sickness tells us much about ourselves and our bodies. We always get sick for a reason. When we truly "listen" to what our body is trying to tell us, when we address the source of our dis-ease, that's when we are healed.
But strangely, some "need" their sickness - physical, emotional or mental -and will not want to be healed of it.
Then too, no matter how much we take care of our body, we will all die. That is our natural course, our lot as human beings.
Death ends all suffering and is the ultimate solution to one who has endured so much agony. In itself, it can be a reward. | | Question/Answer | | FormerJesusHelper76 asked on 11/12/04 - Healing! Prayer Healing by prayer. Healing your mind, body and spirit. Do you believe that prayer heals people. Prayer is one of the most important parts of our relationship to God. Do you believe this and what is your experiances with this? Thank you in advance for sharing.
God bless!
Joe
madima answered on 11/13/04:God can heal and faith can heal :=)
My father should be a good example.
A couple of doctors have already recommended surgery for his ailment about five years ago. But he was afraid to go under the knife, especially with his heart condition and a host of other problems.
With our prayers and those from "prayer warrior" friends, he healed over time. The doctors were surprised that his body recovered naturally and he no longer needed the surgery.
And that's just one example.
I know of hundreds of healing cases, just among my friends :=)
| | Question/Answer | | FormerJesusHelper76 asked on 11/12/04 - Thought God created us by the word. How we were created in his image. Does that mean that we too also create our world around us by our thought. Does thought influence us and each other. Wheather good or bad. What do you believe?
madima answered on 11/13/04:We all have the power to create our own reality and to re-create the world we want to live in after our own fashion.
I believe that's vested in us. We were "created" to be creators in our own right, after our Maker, whom we mirror and who mirror us.
However, I see your question as more delving into the nature of human psychology than theology.
I believe processes, such as "visualization", "actualization", "affirmations", etc. (and even for that matter, "indoctrination" or brain-washing ) are just among the countless ways in which men deliberately influence their inner thoughts (and that of others) to become what they want to be.
Of course, some factors in our environment are given. We cannot really choose our parents. We cannot choose the country and the socio-economic strata in which we will be born in.
But the world is full of true stories of people born in the dregs of society, among the poorest of the poor, among the most oppressed, who changed their lot because they knew they wanted to.
On the other hand, we also have the true stories of people who opted to continue to wallow in their misery because they are so much more comfortable with their "familiar" bondage. | | Question/Answer | | FormerJesusHelper76 asked on 11/08/04 - Spirit Guides! Do you believe that we all have spirit guides? If you do! Do you also believe there are ways to communicate with them? How do we become more open to the idea of being in communication with the spirit world.
Joe madima answered on 11/08/04:Hi, Joe,
I believe I have guardian angels who guide me and keep me from harm's way, with the blessings of God, their creator and mine :=)
Well... angels are spirits so....
I communicate with them first by praying to God and thanking Him for sending them to protect me and stay with me. That's the first thing I do when I wake up in the morning and the last thing I do before I sleep at night.
Sometimes I ask to dream with them and they oblige. Sometimes, they come to me in my dreaming if there is something I need to know, without my asking them.
But I open myself and my home to them. I honor them by keeping my self and my physical space clean. I stay away from negative influences :=)
If you want to be open to spirit communication, you must elevate your level of awareness. However, you must know what to exclude and what you must be receptive to. | | Question/Answer | | paraclete asked on 11/03/04 - Putting God to the Test? A lion attacked a man who jumped into the animal's enclosure and shouted "Jesus will save you!" at the big cat on Wednesday at a zoo in Taiwan's capital.
Cable TV stations showed the lion ripping a jacket off the man as he stood in a grassy enclosure that held two of the animals.
Without panicking, the man fell back on a stone ridge, and the lion then jumped at him, biting him in the arm. The lion then clawed at his trousers before retreating.
The man then calmly stood with his arms outstretched in front of the two animals.
An eyewitness, Hsu Li-jen, told cable station CTI that the man shouted "Jesus will save you" at the animals.
Guards drove the lions away with water hoses and police shot the animals with tranquiliser darts. The man, identified only by his surname, Chen, then picked up his jacket and climbed out of the pen himself. He was taken to the hospital for tests.
"He had bite marks both at the front and back of his leg," Doctor Wang Yao-ching told CTI.
Another doctor said Chen, 46, had psychological problems. "He took this dangerous action today because he imagined he heard voices," psychiatrist Teng Hui-wen told reporters, saying his case was still being investigated.
AP
This is carrying faith too far. Jesus Hmself told us not to yield to the temptation of putting God to the Test.
madima answered on 11/04/04:Honestly, I don't know what would constitute putting God to a test because I don't intend to test Him. Never did :=)
Last month, I jumped from the top of an almost 100-foot bridge into a raging river for the sport of it. That's the prelude to my body-boarding the rapids solo.
I think that could pass for the equivalent of jumping off from a good-sized temple. But I was not testing God. Before I jumped, I knew very well if I make a mistake, I'll break my neck. I'm testing my strength and my nerve, not God.
A couple of months ago, I played for hours with a Bengal tiger and emerged unscathed - even when his handler was bites and scratches all over.
Of course, that was nothing compared to what I did many years back. I walked into the cage of a full-grown 500 pound Siberian tiger when his keeper was away. (I talked the keeper's son into letting me pet and hand-feed his papa's huge cat.)
Now, the Siberian tiger, panthera tigris altaica, is the biggest cat on earth, bigger and better armed than any lion. His bite force is over a thousand pounds per square inch. He can break the spine of a one ton bull with a single bite. I knew very well that one pat from his paw and I'm gone.
But I was not testing God. I was testing myself. I knew I was doing something very dangerous that could kill me. And that makes it thrilling all the more.
More than that, I love beautiful huge, dangerous animals. I am no fool though. When I went in that cage that time and when I played with a tiger recently, I knew how to communicate with big cats though I have no degree in exotic animal husbandry. I know how to read their body language.
I also know perfectly that if a tiger, or any of those big cats, kill me, it's because I made a mistake, not because the animal is malicious, not because God willed it so. It will be my fault and mine alone :=)
Unlike that guy who went in with the lions, I'm not having a schizophrenic attack :=)
By the way... One of these days, I'll be going to Australia to attempt to ride on the dorsals of a great white. (I've already ridden a killer whale and two over 30-footer whalesharks in open water.) That's among the items in my life's "to-do" lists.
And I'll assure you, when I mount that white pointer of my dreams, I'll not be testing God :=)
All I know is that He is always gracious when I test myself :=)
| | Question/Answer | | paraclete asked on 11/03/04 - Putting God to the Test? A lion attacked a man who jumped into the animal's enclosure and shouted "Jesus will save you!" at the big cat on Wednesday at a zoo in Taiwan's capital.
Cable TV stations showed the lion ripping a jacket off the man as he stood in a grassy enclosure that held two of the animals.
Without panicking, the man fell back on a stone ridge, and the lion then jumped at him, biting him in the arm. The lion then clawed at his trousers before retreating.
The man then calmly stood with his arms outstretched in front of the two animals.
An eyewitness, Hsu Li-jen, told cable station CTI that the man shouted "Jesus will save you" at the animals.
Guards drove the lions away with water hoses and police shot the animals with tranquiliser darts. The man, identified only by his surname, Chen, then picked up his jacket and climbed out of the pen himself. He was taken to the hospital for tests.
"He had bite marks both at the front and back of his leg," Doctor Wang Yao-ching told CTI.
Another doctor said Chen, 46, had psychological problems. "He took this dangerous action today because he imagined he heard voices," psychiatrist Teng Hui-wen told reporters, saying his case was still being investigated.
AP
This is carrying faith too far. Jesus Hmself told us not to yield to the temptation of putting God to the Test.
madima answered on 11/03/04:Sorry to say this is not putting God to the test.
It's a simple case of a man having a schizophrenic attack and putting God's innocent captive creatures at risk.
Those lions could have been shot to death needlessly just because of this crazy guy.
Of course, zoo officials should have been more vigilant. But zoos, even in a supposedly affluent nation, usually have insufficient budget allocations. That is unfortunate.
I love lions and all big cats. I have played with a yearling lion some years back. | | Question/Answer | | paraclete asked on 11/03/04 - Putting God to the Test? A lion attacked a man who jumped into the animal's enclosure and shouted "Jesus will save you!" at the big cat on Wednesday at a zoo in Taiwan's capital.
Cable TV stations showed the lion ripping a jacket off the man as he stood in a grassy enclosure that held two of the animals.
Without panicking, the man fell back on a stone ridge, and the lion then jumped at him, biting him in the arm. The lion then clawed at his trousers before retreating.
The man then calmly stood with his arms outstretched in front of the two animals.
An eyewitness, Hsu Li-jen, told cable station CTI that the man shouted "Jesus will save you" at the animals.
Guards drove the lions away with water hoses and police shot the animals with tranquiliser darts. The man, identified only by his surname, Chen, then picked up his jacket and climbed out of the pen himself. He was taken to the hospital for tests.
"He had bite marks both at the front and back of his leg," Doctor Wang Yao-ching told CTI.
Another doctor said Chen, 46, had psychological problems. "He took this dangerous action today because he imagined he heard voices," psychiatrist Teng Hui-wen told reporters, saying his case was still being investigated.
AP
This is carrying faith too far. Jesus Hmself told us not to yield to the temptation of putting God to the Test.
madima answered on 11/03/04:Sorry to say this is not putting God to the test.
It's a simple case of a man having a schizophrenic attack and putting God's innocent captive creatures at risk.
Those lions could have been shot to death needlessly just because of this crazy guy.
Of course, zoo officials should have been more vigilant. But zoos, even in a supposedly affluent nation, usually have insufficient budget allocations. That is unfortunate.
I love lions and all big cats. I have played with a yearling lion some years back. | | Question/Answer | | FormerJesusHelper76 asked on 10/18/04 - Lifes Animal Miracles! Is it not amazing what some of our animals will do to save their owner? Do you believe that animals can sense a lot more then what some humans can? Have any of you have any amazing stories of miracles?
Thanks in advance!
Joe madima answered on 10/19/04:Dear Joe,
I have been brought up by generations of cats. From the time I was in the cradle, a feline matriarch was my full-time nanny. They inspired me to draw, to paint, to compose songs and poetry. Even up to now, some of my deceased pets visit my dreams to warn me of danger.
To this day, my parents keep a dozen cats and a dozen dogs and my love of cats (and their love of me) has extended to the biggest and wildest members of the family - panthera tigris and panthera leo - tigers and lions :=)
Animals do sense a lot more than what humans can. That is a fact. Cats - domestic and wild, for example, are consummate readers of nonverbal signs - facial expressions, body movement, attitudes and emotions. They have to, because there's no other way they can communicate with their humans (on whom they depend) - if they are domestic. In the wild, as apex predators, they have to "read" their prey to succeed in making their kills and survive.
My cats know how to "heal" me when I'm sick. I was sickly as a child and my felines will always drape themselves over my belly, if I have an ache there - or over my heart, if I'm harboring resentment or negative emotions and trying to take them to bed.
Animals gift us with unconditional love. | | Question/Answer | | HANK1 asked on 10/09/04 - FUNERALS!
Why wouldn't a person attend the funeral of a loved one?
HANK
madima answered on 10/11/04:Dear Hank,
First of all, allow me to say I'm very sorry for your loss.
I've never been afraid of dying myself, having faced death more than once, but it's different when a loved one dies.
I did not attend the funeral of two very close friends because it was their wish. They specified they wanted me to remember them the way they were. And I complied.
Both suffered from long bouts with terminal illness that changed the way they looked.
One was a pretty, cherubic girl who never knew how to put colors on her face. I remembered putting make up on her when we served as ushers for a grand affair and helping her choose her cocktail dress. By the time she died, she had lost most of her crowning glory from chemotherapy and became a ghost of her former self. I honored her wishes because I wanted to remember her the way she looked when we first met.
The other was a dashing guy who was like a brother to me but who has wasted away from lung cancer when he died. I don't want to remember him in a box. I want to remember him the way he looked when I set him up on blind dates with a couple of my friends.
Somehow, I believe attending the funeral is more for closure of our own grief, not for our deceased loved ones, really. When they have passed over, they are in peace.
As they say: when we are born, we cry while all around us smile. When we die, we smile while all around us cry. | | Question/Answer | | ROLCAM asked on 10/04/04 - List your own practical engagements. These are the requirements:-
1)Defending the dignity of each and every person and family, and especially those most in need such as the poor;
2)Creating a distinct and proper relationship between politics and religion;
3)Forming a truly ecumenical and inter religious dialogue; and
4)Bringing about a culture of solidarity in a all countries truly open to the world.
Would you care to suggest some practical engagements
that would bring the above four items into the
real world.
ROLCAM.
madima answered on 10/04/04:Hi, Roland,
To fulfill these four, one must start with the very basic single unit, I believe.
The self.
A man has to establish his own sense of dignity before he can hope to have the capability to defend the dignity of others.
He needs to have the ability to distinguish between politics and religion before he can hope to expect that in others.
He need to have respect of the faith of other people and a truly open mind before he can even start thinking about number three and four :=)
The huge wave - the great storm in the ocean ... everything starts with just the tiniest of ripple :=)
If a man wants to reform society, the only way he can start is with himself. | | Question/Answer | | FormerJesusHelper76 asked on 09/30/04 - Please Pray! For My wife and her challenges in life with her decisions in career, and family. Her challenges with her very controlling family. My challenges in dealing with this crazyness. Please pray for me to have patience even though i know the control and interfering ways will always be there. Please pray for peace and understanding and for Gods will to be done in all situations. God bless!
JH madima answered on 09/30/04:Dear JH,
My prayers are with you, your wife and your family.
God bless you all. | | Question/Answer | | paraclete asked on 09/29/04 - For the modern person, a few extra commandments Thou shalt not teleport within sight of technologically-inferior species.
Thou shalt not fast-forward through the commercials.
Thou shalt not have misplaced priorities.
Thou shalt not align yourself with the dark side of the force.
Thou shalt not buy stuff made in sweat shops unless it's really trendy and just to die for.
Thou shalt not drive old clothes to Goodwill in the Jag.
Thou shalt not max out the plastic.
Thou shalt not order anchovies on half the pizza.
Thou shalt not practice bagpipes in an avalanche zone.
Thou shalt not knowingly eat tofu.
Thou shalt not drink pasteurized beer.
Thou shalt not allow yourself to become excited while discussing mutual funds.
madima answered on 09/30/04:Sorry to say I'm a number 1 violator of the 10th commandment. I LOVE tofu!!!!! I indulge on it knowingly in all its forms - from the simplest fried dish to the ones garnished in the most exotic sauces! Yummy!!!! :=) | | Question/Answer | | Saladin asked on 09/23/04 - Grief and the Christian
Should Christians grieve when loved ones die, considering the promise that we shall meet again beyond this vale of tears?
Please say why you think they should, or should not grieve.
madima answered on 09/24/04:Yes, Ronnie, not just Christians, but every human being. When pain and sorrow hits you, it hits you in the now. You don't think of tomorrow.
Two days ago, I was talking to a colleague, advising him on his career. He was a good journalist, a good friend.
Shortly after midnight yesterday, he rode the bus home. Several men held him up, they grabbed the Nokia phone that the company lent him for his gadget review then repeatedly stabbed him in the throat. It was such a senseless death.
Tonight, I am going to his wake. His parents are abroad. He is the eldest of ten children and he's only in his twenties.
I am still in shock, I guess.
Please say a prayer for the repose of his soul. His name is Jose Luis Villanueva.
| | Question/Answer | | kindj asked on 09/23/04 - Taking a few days off I've decided (in about the last 15 minutes) that it's time to take a break. Sleep has not been my friend in the last two or three weeks, and it's taking it's toll on me and my overall attitude towards just about everything. May come back Monday, may be a week or so--whenever it passes this time.
"'Scuze me while I tend to how I feel
These things return to me that still seem real"
--Metallica
DK madima answered on 09/23/04:Have a nice vacation, dear DK! :=)
The chef I told you about is also on vacation! But don't worry, I'll find him when he reports back for work! :=)
I need a lot of sleep too - been overwhelmed by deadlines in the past few days since I came back from my last trip! :=)
But I still have miles and miles to go before I sleep...
Sweet dreams!!!!! :=) | | Question/Answer | | queenybee asked on 09/23/04 - IS IT CHRISTIAN TO SMACK YOUR CHILD? Just curious what you all feel, as I had my son and his wife visiting from Norway and they have just had a baby and we got onto the subject of discipline and they both said "they are dead against smacking",what do you all feel?
I said God tells us to smack our children and they said that is open to interpretation,interesting.
all the best from Scotland
brenda madima answered on 09/23/04:Hi, Brenda,
I wouldn't even think of smacking my pet cat or dog. And definitely, not an exotic animal (most of them have long memories for injustice and will get back at you sooner or later, and so they become very dangerous).
So, I will never think of smacking a human child as a form of discipline.
I was never smacked or spanked as a child. My parents, who are very religious, never believed in resorting to being physical to modify or improve behavior.
I believe they are right. The result speaks for itself.
| | Question/Answer | | CeeBee asked on 09/22/04 - Saying no to children One of the hardest things to do is to say no to someone you love, especially if that someone is your child. Do (or did) you have a method/system to forestall problems in stores and restaurants when you say no to your child?
Chicago Tribune
VOICE OF THE PEOPLE (LETTER)
Learn to say no to your kids and mean it
from Mil Misic
Published September 22, 2004
Huntley -- We recently returned from the grocery store where we had our eardrums shattered by the wailing of one child, whose mother had said "no" to him about something he wanted from the shelves. Thank goodness, I thought, at least she stuck to her guns. We need more of this.
I remember one time when we were shopping to the accompaniment of the screams of another small child sitting in the grocery cart. No matter where we went, even skipping an aisle or two in order to escape the din, there they were again. The child kept screaming. I heard the mother say in a pleading voice with no authority whatsoever, "Oh honey, give me a break." That was it. Nothing like, "Be quiet," or even trying to shush the child.
Another time a child was asking for a box of cookies. The mother said "no." Later on we saw that child in the cookie aisle by himself, having escaped from his mother. He took a box of cookies from the shelf, opened it and took out a cookie and was eating it when she returned to find him. What did she do? She closed the box and put the opened box of cookies back on the shelf. What did the child learn from this?
When our children were small, they enjoyed going shopping with us to all the stores: grocery, hardware, Wal-Mart, Kmart, etc. They just enjoyed going with us and they knew that no amount of nagging would help them obtain what they were wishing for.
They knew we meant no in a matter-of-fact voice when we said it and were not wishy-washy about it. They also knew if they acted up in the store, they were left behind the next time we went shopping. One of us stayed home with them.
That goes for dining out in restaurants too. Today we see children running up and down in the spaces between tables with not a word from their parents. We witnessed a man with three small children the other day in a restaurant. One child sat quietly eating his food, one was up and walking about and the third was having a hissy-fit over something that he had ordered and now refused to eat. I could only watch in dismay, sympathy and a little anger as the father tried helplessly to discipline the three of them. I think I overhead him say something to the effect, "Just wait until I tell your mother how you behaved." How sad that he had no further control over the recalcitrant one except to threaten him with what his mother would say or do to him upon arrival home.
I remember when I went shopping as a child with my parents--either both of them or one at a time. We were not tempted by the vast array of goodies and toys because there were no stores like the supermarkets of today. We stood beside our parents on one side of the counter near the front of the store. My mother told the grocer what she wanted and he went down the aisles behind the counter and picked them up for her and placed them on the counter before her.
If we were well-behaved (and most of the time we were), the grocer would give us a jawbreaker or a pack of gum. When he mentioned how well behaved we were, we swelled with pride, as did our parents.
The Sept. 13 issue of Newsweek magazine featured a story about "The Power of No," which should be a must read for all parents.
Copyright © 2004, Chicago Tribune madima answered on 09/23/04:I remember that people say I was spoiled rotten as a kid because I'm an only child, but when my parents say no, I don't answer back or throw a tantrum.
I remember one particular instance when I yearned to have a very huge, very expensive doll's house in a plush shop. I wanted it badly because it was so beautiful. Actually, it looked more like a collector's item than a child's toy, so it was priced accordingly.
I'm used to getting my way (even now) and I don't normally ask for things. My parents always anticipate my needs. Usually, I never had to ask. In the rare instances when I do, my parents almost always comply.
So I was taken aback when my papa said "No". But he explained it very well to me. I don't need such an expensive toy which I will soon outgrow. I am gifted as an artist and can make a more beautiful doll house by myself which will last "forever". He and mama offered to help me.
Well, I've always been good at creating things with my hands and he put forth the biggest challenge for me. I didn't know carpentry, but papa made the basic structure for me. I made the design and all the miniature furniture from scraps.Mama supplied me with bits of colorful fabric for upholstery and curtains, as well as other raw materials for the mini appliances, accessories and the like.
In short, it became an art project which occupied me for one whole summer and the end product turned out to be magnificent...By the way, that doll's house is still displayed in my parents' home to this day :=)
| | Question/Answer | | revdauphinee asked on 09/22/04 - ik baaaack! Just got home ran from Ivan then had car problems and couldnt get home !well all is ok now my home is ok just lost a few shingles from the roof praise God !wanted to let everyone know there are still good folks in the world !My car broke down in Birmingham Alabama on my way back and I was lucky enough to pull of the highway real close to a service station where a guy was working on cars .would y'all believe he fixed my vehicle and when he heard I was headed back to the coast he refused to accept any payment !I pleaded with him to at least take something but he wouldnt !How about that for an angel !stupid me I was so stressed out i didnt get his name but he will never be forgotten,there is a special place in heaven for people like him!I intend to write his local paper comending him and if he reads it he will know who I am refering to .anyway after 16 hrs on the road im bushed so ill try and catch up here when I get rested !love to all
Dorothy madima answered on 09/23/04:I'm so glad to know you're safe, dear Dorothy! :=)
There's only one way to repay the stranger who was kind to you. Be just as kind and as helpful to a stranger when you meet one who is in need in the future.
And then, your debt shall be repaid in full :=)
I'd like to think... I've repaid my debts in the same way... and there are many :=) | | Question/Answer | | HANK1 asked on 09/22/04 - CARNAGE!
The insurgents in Iraq (I call them BARBARIANS) are still beheading Americans. They saw someone's head off and then yell, "Praise Allah." Who is this Allah fella?
Some non-Muslims allege that God in Islam is a stern and cruel God who demands to be obeyed fully. He is not loving and kind. (This is one premise!)
Nothing can be farther from the truth than this allegation. It is enough to know that, with the exception of one, each of the 114 chapters of the Quran begins with the verse: "In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate." In one of the sayings of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) we are told that "God is more loving and kinder than a mother to her dear child." (This is another premise!)
Which PREMISE do you 'vote' for ... and why?
HANK
madima answered on 09/22/04:Number two, dear HANK.
I have lived with Muslims, I have loved a Muslim once and I always had Muslim friends up to now. I know they are peace-loving people.
Once, I even considered converting to Islam when the Catholic priest my Muslim ex-boyfriend and I approached for his conversion told us he can't baptize my bf or else all three of us will be killed.
As I said, they are a peace-loving people... unless extremist fundamentalist imams "brainwash" gullible believers into doing crimes of violence and hate against what they perceive to be enemies of their faith... unless other political agendas and vested interests come into the picture.
Then you end up with horrible atrocities that you see in my country and in the Middle East.
| | Question/Answer | | Liz22 asked on 09/22/04 - Believing in Miracles? Miracles in my lifetime have been many, unexplained even from physicians
Do you as a Christian believe in miracles? madima answered on 09/22/04:Sure :=)
My life is a miracle :=)
Or rather, my lives...
Every moment that I live, every breath that I take is a miracle. | | Question/Answer | | Liz22 asked on 09/22/04 - Believing in Miracles? Miracles in my lifetime have been many, unexplained even from physicians
Do you as a Christian believe in miracles? madima answered on 09/22/04:Sure :=)
My life is a miracle :=)
Or rather, my lives...
Every moment that I live, every breath that I take is a miracle. | | Question/Answer | | HANK1 asked on 09/22/04 - RESIDENCE!
Where in this goofy world of ours do you live? I live in the United States ... in the MidWest!
HANK
madima answered on 09/22/04:I live in the Pearl of the Orient Seas, half a world away from you, in Southeast Asia ... Manila, Philippines :=) | | Question/Answer | | HANK1 asked on 09/22/04 - VIGILANTE JUSTICE!
Would you rather have VIGILANTE JUSTICE or a POLICE STATE?
HANK
madima answered on 09/22/04:Dear HANK,
I'd rather be free, if you'd ask me. I mean really free, not just be given a sham democracy.
I have known what it's like to live with both vigilante justice and a police state.
I was a "martial law" baby, so I grew up in a police state. The Philippines was under martial law for almost a decade and a half.
Even so, in many of our areas, where there are religious and economic conflicts - then and now, it is vigilante justice that rules. Tycoons, politicians and religious groups, each maintain their own private armies.
And while we are classified as a democratic country, the justice of the gun is recognized in the South of the archipelago, which has been torn by generations of religious conflict and in the North of our capital city, where politicos murder each other for supremacy. | | Question/Answer | | CeeBee asked on 09/21/04 - Influences outside the family Several of you expressed concern about outside influences that challenge and disrupt the hard work that parents do while raising their children. It is said that it takes a village to raise a child, but sometimes parents don't welcome parts of that village. What are some bad influences (easy to name), and (now, the hard part) what can parents do constructively to counter those influences? madima answered on 09/22/04:TV is not a good influence, as well as violent and pornographic movies and at present, unfiltered internet content. There's also drugs and bad influence coming from one's peer group, irresponsible teachers and role models.
How can parents counter these influences?
Perhaps I should cite my case, dear Carol because my parents exerted somewhat "extraordinary" measures to restrict disruptive and "unwanted" influences.
However, papa and mama were both full time parents to me and I'm an only child. They restricted the access of other people to me in my formative years. The only kids - and there were less than a handful - who were allowed to play with me, were hand-picked by my parents and playtime was always supervised. Most of the time, it was my parents who were my playmates and full time company.
I was not given access to television but was given unlimited access to books, painting and drawing materials, selected movies, toys and all the family pets. Papa escorted me to the public libraries and took me to see the circuses and the theater festivals. Mama made a secret garden just for me. Somehow, they always managed to devise countless "enriching" activities for me and I never really knew the meaning of the world "loneliness".
In my experience, the most crucial time is the formative years of a child. Once the basic values are instilled, once the sense of security and confidence and love is established, nothing much can sway an individual through puberty, adolescence and adulthood. She is insulated even from harmful influences emanating from her peer group and the rest of the world.
| | Question/Answer | | ethical_reason asked on 09/17/04 - beatitudes: at what stage of growth are you at The beatitudes are listing a gradient of growth, where are you?
Just curious. madima answered on 09/17/04:I think I'm just beginning to struggle near the threshold of number one: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." I don't even know if it's possible to make it.
Given my temperament, my interests and my competitive profession, humility is an extremely difficult - if not unfeasible virtue to cultivate.
If you have access to power as a journalist, even if it's just limited in your own circle, in your own country (even if it's a Third World country), temptations can be very great.
If you see your name on the headlines most days and you know you have to compete with others (who are just as "visible" in your rival broadsheets) for the ears and the confidence of the nation's decision-makers, economic managers, businessmen movers and shakers...If you know you can make or unmake reputations, pull down the stock prices of mighty companies or boost them... humility is never easy... | | Question/Answer | | Saladin asked on 09/17/04 - Question
How do angels fly?
madima answered on 09/17/04:Spirits can fly like no bird can, I believe.
And angels are pure spirits :=)
So they soar and glide in the wings of your thoughts...
In my paintings, I always depict angels with outspread wings. When I need warmth or protection, I ask God to let His angels stand over me and enfold me in their pinions...
But in my dreaming, the angels who visit me aren't always winged :=)
And still they fly... | | Question/Answer | | hOPE12 asked on 09/17/04 - To blame or not to blame! Hi,
I live here in Florida, near Miami. It is a little town called Dania. We are now watching to see what Jeane will do this weekend and early part of next week. Wow! this year has been a rough one.
Has anyone heard from Dorothy yet? These poor people in the pan Handle of Florida are in bad shape. one 12 year old got crushed when the family trailer was blown to bits by Ivan. I personally feel that the parents of that child should be brought up on charges because they were told to evacuate and did not listen. If they had evacuated then they still would have lost their trailer but their daughter would still be alive.
What do you all think? Is it the parents fault for not evacuating when the authorities told them to? As a Chrisitian, what would you have done? Does God hold those parents responsible according to the scriptures? Should they have listened to the warning the authorities gave?
I look forward to hearing from you all.
Take Care,
Hope12 madima answered on 09/17/04:Hi, Hope! Last time I heard from Dorothy was two days ago. She has gone to W. Va. to get out of Ivan's path and I believe she's safe.
I don't think anybody has a right to judge the parents of the 12 year old who was killed. In the face of the raw wrath of nature, one reacts based on basic survival instincts. One does not even have time to think.
Many underestimate the force of Nature. And in the face of danger, a good number of people would rather hang on to their home where they feel "safer" or seek to protect it for as long as they can rather than flee.
One of my friends was home with her parents during a violent volcanic eruption here. Their house was at the foot of the volcano. Authorities told them to flee but that was all. No other help was offered. Her old folks refused to desert their home and all their animals. My friend can't abandon her folks either though they told her to go.They were almost killed, all of them. But there was no way they would have budged. And I can't blame them. Under the circumstances, I would have done the same if my parents refused to leave.
Take care, Hope! | | Question/Answer | | Saladin asked on 09/15/04 - A favorite hymn
One of my favorite hymns is,
Let us oft speak kind words to each other,
At home or where'er we may be,
Like the warbling of birds on the heather,
The tones will be welcome and free;
They'll gladden the heart that's repining,
Give courage and hope from above;
And where the dark clouds hide the shining
Let in the bright sunlight of love.
Oh the kind words we give shall in memory live,
And sunshine forever impart;
Let us oft speak kind words to each other,
Kind words are sweet tones of the heart.
Like the sunbeams of morn on the mountains,
The soul they awake to good cheer;
Like the murmur of cool, pleasant fountains,
They fall in sweet cadences near.
Let's oft, then, in kindly-toned voices,
Our mutual friendship renew,
Till heart meets with heart and rejoices,
In friendship that ever is true.
—Joseph L. Townsend
Do you have a favorite hymn that helps you to remember Christian behavior when the going gets tough?
madima answered on 09/15/04:Not a favorite hymn, dear Saladin, but a favorite stanza from a poem, though I can't remember the author off the bat.
It does not really help me remember Christian behavior but it reminds me that I, and no other, am in charge of my behavior and my destiny :=)
"It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishment the scroll,
I am the Master of my Fate,
I am the Captain of my soul." | | Question/Answer | | STONY asked on 09/15/04 - A PRAYER FOR THOSE IN BREVARD COUNTY... MOST OF THE ELECTRICAL WORKERS HAVE LEFT FLORIDA ALREADY AND BREVARD COUNTY STILL HAS MANY THOUSANDS OF FOLKS W/O POWER. I KNOW HOW MISERABLE IT WAS HERE, BREVARD COUNTY SITS ON THE OCEAN AND GETS ALL THE REFLECTION OF THE SUN OFF THE WATER. madima answered on 09/15/04:I shall include the people of Brevard county in my prayers, dear Tony. | | Question/Answer | | revdauphinee asked on 09/15/04 - hI ALL Just wanted to let you know im in west Virginia running from Ivan please pray i have a home when i get back!
madima answered on 09/15/04:My prayers are with you, dear Dorothy. | | Question/Answer | | FormerJesusHelper76 asked on 09/14/04 - Question? I always here Mind, Spirit and Soul. I would like to know the difference between the Mind, Spirit and Soul. Please describe each one, and what they mean and what they are for. Thank you everyone.
Joe
madima answered on 09/14/04:For me, the mind is the domain of the Ego - the endless babbling of the mind is actually your rational self speaking. While it is a repository for knowledge, as the part of you that is bound most closely to the corporeal, its concern will definitely be focused on survival and self-preservation. Survival of the body, that is.
The Spirit, I would align with the subconscious, the realm of the Shadow, the one that holds the most creative and the most destructive aspects of the self. As the first part of you that is removed from the flesh, it can afford to be more concerned with true wisdom and enlightenment.
The Soul is the purest essence of a person, the part that can access the superconscious, the highest level of knowing. | | Question/Answer | | FormerJesusHelper76 asked on 09/14/04 - IMAGINE! We are taught in the bible not to imagine about the heaven and what it could look like or what it is like. Yet at the same time we are taught to focus and draw our attention on the world that is unseen. What are your thoughts?
There was one pastor that actually talked about heaven and that described how it would be. He said that it is not like what most people think that our spirits will be floating around and that we do not actaully have bodies. He said on the other side we will be given new bodies real bodies that inbody our soul/spirit. That we will be given perfect bodies. What are your thoughts on this idea!
Joe madima answered on 09/14/04:I've always thought that heaven - and hell - are on earth.
Others speak of both as levels or planes of consciousness that you can access by choice.
When I'm happy, and most of the time I am, when I feel blessed, even though nothing else seems to go right around me, I feel I'm in heaven. All is perfect and I could not be in want. | | Question/Answer | | FormerJesusHelper76 asked on 09/14/04 - Judgement! I have been reading many different books about many different and possible views and ideas about the Other Side. People talk about Jesus being the Judge or God being our only judge. What do you think about the idea that God does not judge us and not even Jesus judges us, but when we get to the other side and have a life review that we ourselves in our true form judge our own selves? Do any of you agree this is a possibility that our judgement of our life and ourself is our own?
Thank you in advance!
Joe madima answered on 09/14/04:I nearly died twice.
I have seen my own "life review" in a near-death experience. And while I have beheld the "Great Light" at the end of the tunnel, I was not judged. At least, I don't recall being judged.
I guess, I made my own judgement about my life then - and decided I have yet too much to learn, too many things to do - and give back.
I'd like to think that's why, I was graciously "returned" for some more years extension on this good old earth :=)
But of course, this is only the experience of one woman among so many. And the experience I had was only a dry-run.
I have not completely crossed over to the Other Side.
Otherwise, I won't be talking to you now :=) | | Question/Answer | | FormerJesusHelper76 asked on 09/14/04 - Reincarnation! Does anybody believe in reincarnation? There are many people who suggest that at a certain time of history that reincarnation was actually taught about and included in the bible. Is this true? What are your thoughts on this subject?
I will say that i often thought of these questions and actually asked for answers in my own spirit and awareness. I do believe personally that in some circumstances and situations that reincarnation is a process some spirits go through.
Thank you for your thoughts and opinions in advance!
Joe madima answered on 09/14/04:Hi, Joe! I don't remember reincarnation ever being part of the Christian dogma though I know it has always been a part of the Eastern religions, particularly Hinduism and Buddhism.
I don't think you'll find reincarnation in any Christian Bible.
So, what are my personal thoughts on the subject?
Although I'm a Catholic, I've stated many times before that I'm not dogmatic and have been exposed to many belief systems. In fact, I've always been open to them.
I prefer to think that I had many past lives before - some of them I have already seen in altered states of consciousness, such as the dreaming and in the "life review" that passed before my eyes in a near-death experience. I have seen at least five of my "past lives" in detail, I guess :=)
The eerie sense of "familiarity" I get when visiting strange places and meeting people whom I'm seeing for the first time also makes me suspect they have been entangled in my lives before.
I also feel so strangely "at home" in the temples of the Eastern faiths though both my lineage from the paternal and the maternal sides had been strictly, unflinchingly Catholic.
In my last trip to Macau, I was amazed at how moved I was as I beheld the golden image of A-ma, the goddess of the sea, in her Taoist temple... I also experienced the same feelings as I stood before Buddha in his temples in Bangkok... before Khrisna, Ganesh and Kali in the Hindu shrines of Asia...
The feeling of the heart and soul opening up, the sense of affinity of the whole being, is the same feeling I get when kneeling before the exposed Blessed Sacrament... the same feeling that possesses me when I'm alone with Mother Nature in all her wildness.
Deep within, I feel that this is not the first life given to me and certainly, it will not be my last.
But of course, this is purely my personal thoughts :=) | | Question/Answer | | Laura asked on 09/13/04 - Gluttony! I was wondering just exactly what God would consider gluttony. The world today is so stuck on "thin", but has it always been that way? I see beautiful pictures of women of times past portrayed as anything but thin. Yet they are still beautiful. Do we place too much importance on "thin"? I know many people who are overweight and stressed about it all the time, which in turn brings down their self esteem. God bless. Laura madima answered on 09/14/04:
When I paint nudes, I prefer to do figures who tend to have good if not more generous, Rubenesque proportions :=) It's not exciting for the paintbrush to follow the lines of women who look like famine victims.
Being thin is not necessarily being healthy. Nor is it a must for being aesthetically pleasing.
But anything in excess is not good, either, I guess that's why God spoke against gluttony.
Excessive eating is not good for the body because you need only so much fuel to function. The surplus just becomes fat - excess baggage that will give you all sorts of cardiac and physical problems from thereon.
Personally, being thin is not important to me. But being healthy is.
| | Question/Answer | | CeeBee asked on 09/13/04 - Living in the Now I am owned by four cats. I watch them as they sit motionlessly and stare at nothing, and wonder what they are thinking. Unlike us, cats don't regret the past ("Darn, I shouldn't have jumped up on the dining room table last night while they were eating") nor do they worry about the future ("I sure hope she remembers to feed me tonight before she goes to bed"). Cats live in the moment. They luxuriate totally in that pile of clean clothes I just brought up from the dryer, and have an entire vacation all afternoon while sitting in the big sunny window that looks out onto the back yard. Would that we too could be like cats - have no regrets, no worries, just live in the Now. That is how I think of Paradise - living forever at peace in the Now.
What do you do that totally absorbs your attention, that allows you to live in the Now? madima answered on 09/14/04:I have NEVER allowed any creature in this earth to own me, except my cats! :=)
But I beg to disagree on some points, dear Carol.
One of my fave cats bore a lifelong grudge against my papa for swatting him with a magazine once when he was but a kitten. He could never be coaxed into papa's lap again.
Another magnificent tom loves to show he's partial to me by laying offerings of dead birds, mice and lizards at my feet - and only mine :=)
Worries? When I moved out of my parents' home and had to leave behind my fave feline, he would not eat for days and days as if he was fraught with worry about my fate in the big bad city.
Ahhhh! I miss my cats badly... the big and the small! My Persian and my Siamese kitties... as well as one Bengal tiger and another Siberian...
But what is it that totally absorbs my attention and allows me to live in the now? Reading and writing and painting, I guess...
But it is when I am diving in the blue depths of the ocean, embraced by the eerie silence broken only by the sound of my breathing, when I'm alone in the wilderness or walking through the mist that crowns the mountain peaks that Time ceases to exist.
Then I care no more about living in the now, or having lived in days gone by. And it comes to me that I would not even care about dying just to be in the embrace of such beauty that no one and nothing can take away :=) | | Question/Answer | | Bobbye asked on 09/13/04 - RONNIE BRAY! "A donde? A donde? A donde, mi amigo?"
Where? Where is Ronnie Bray since his move across country? Has anyone heard from him and Gay? Thanks. Bobbye madima answered on 09/13/04:Hi,Bobbye!
Please don't worry, Ronnie and Gay are ok. I just got an email from him :=)
| | Question/Answer | | Bobbye asked on 09/13/04 - RONNIE BRAY! "A donde? A donde? A donde, mi amigo?"
Where? Where is Ronnie Bray since his move across country? Has anyone heard from him and Gay? Thanks. Bobbye madima answered on 09/13/04:Hi,Bobbye!
Please don't worry, Ronnie and Gay are ok. I just got an email from him :=)
| | Question/Answer | | STONY asked on 09/12/04 - HALLELUIAH!! ALMOST 6 DAYS AND 12 HOURS TO THE MINNUTE POWER WAS RESTORED IN MY NEIGGHBORHOOD YESTERDAY. 9 SERVICE SHOWED UP AND IN LESS THAN AN HOUR THEY HAD CHANGED OUT THE BLOWN TRANSFORMER. SO, IF YOU COME TO VISIT ME NOW YOU'D BETTER BRING A SWEATER BECAUSE I HAVE THE AIR CONDITIONER SET TO KEEP A BEER COLD WHILE IT SETS ON THE TABLE. IN A FEW DAYS WHEN I FEEL BETTER AGAIN I MAY CUT IT BACK LONG ENOUGH TO LET THE ICE CRYSTALS FORMING ON THE WINDOW TO MELT!! THANK YOU JESUS, THIS HAS BEEN A MISERABLE WEEK. IN FACT IN 30 YEARS I'VE LIVED IN FLA. THIS IS THE WORSE STORM I'VE EVER SEEN.
BEAR IN MIND THAT ANDREW DID NOT HIT CENTRAL FLORIDA. madima answered on 09/12/04:It's good to know that everything's ok with you now. :=)
I'll not forget to bring a sweater when I visit you - which I hope to be soon, though my next visit to the US has been postponed - again.
Take care! | | Question/Answer | | ethical_reason asked on 09/11/04 - Being a hypocrite Why do you believe that being a hypocrite is bad?
If I insult people, but I state matter of fact-ly that it is wrong to insult people, does it make my statement any less valid?
Is something true whether or not the source is pure?
What's up?
madima answered on 09/11/04:Being a hypocrite to me is simply unethical.
You just don't say something is against your ethics to project virtuosity then turn around and do what you say is wrong.
It follows that a person who can't be ethical, can't be credible. And so, he can't be trusted either.
I've always believed that truth is subjective, however. Our perceptions are always "colored" by countless things - our individual as well as cultural differences and our self-interests, among others.
What is "true" for me may not be true for you or for others. Truth may not even have anything to do with the purity of its source but with the "purity" of the perception of the one who chooses to see it.
But as one philosopher said, we should be careful about the lies we utter because eventually, they become the truth about us. | | Question/Answer | | paraclete asked on 09/10/04 - Interesting comment? Here's a famous comment you might like to reflect on.
"I've noticed that everyone who is for abortion has already been born"
Ronald Reagan madima answered on 09/10/04:Well, pardon me and may the good president rest in peace... But both pro-abortionists and anti-abortionists who have already been born had no choice at all, really :=)
We... all of us...had never asked to be born.
It is not an issue of choice. | | Question/Answer | | Chouxxx asked on 09/09/04 - God's Name I'm confused about what is the relevance of "God's name". Why?
Why does Elliot spell God's name G-D, or is that God's name?
Why the conversation about whether God is Lord, or King or somwthing else or his real name????
Thanks a lot for answering.
Choux madima answered on 09/10/04:From what I know, power - and life - is vested on whatever is named. That's why man was given the ability to name living creatures.
When you name something, you acknowledge its existence. And interestingly, the act of naming individuals is a sacred rite among a number of cultures.
However, I remember some (I can't remember who among the philosophers and theologians said it, at this moment) maintain that the true name of God is part of the "Unknowable". Not even His angels knew His real name. It was also implied that to know His name is to have access to tremendous powers.
But if you ask me, His real name does not matter although in my mind, I call Him "Father" and "Lord". What matters most is that you believe.
| | Question/Answer | | Saladin asked on 09/09/04 - One minute to live
If you had one minute to live and were granted an open microphone to broadcast a final message to all the world, what would your message be?
madima answered on 09/10/04:If I have only one minute to live, I don't think I'll waste my time on lip service :=)
I know enough that few among the peoples of this world will listen to messages they don't like to hear, anyway...
Sadly, unless you are someone with one finger poised over a button that will blow up the earth and everything in it, few will lend you their ears in that immediate time span.
I'll rather spend that most precious one minute in silence, alone with myself. | | Question/Answer | | Saladin asked on 09/09/04 - One minute to live
If you had one minute to live and were granted an open microphone to broadcast a final message to all the world, what would your message be?
madima answered on 09/10/04:If I have only one minute to live, I don't think I'll waste my time on lip service :=)
I know enough that few among the peoples of this world will listen to messages they don't like to hear, anyway...
Sadly, unless you are someone with one finger poised over a button that will blow up the earth and everything in it, few will lend you their ears in that immediate time span.
I'll rather spend that most precious one minute in silence, alone with myself. | | Question/Answer | | hOPE12 asked on 09/08/04 - Hello Everyone: I just wanted to take a moment to let you all know my family and I are fine. We just got our power back and helping some of our neighbors whose trees and other things that were damaged. Now we are just waiting to see what Ivan will do.
I hope all that live in Florida and up the East Coast are okay. Just wanted to let you all know this. We were under a mandatory evacuation and had to go to the shelter. We were there for a few days and it was hard to sleep. I was on earlier but just too tire to type so I came on now just to let you all know we are fine, thanks.
Take care,
Hope12
madima answered on 09/09/04:It's good to hear that.
Take care.
And God be with you. | | Question/Answer | | ROLCAM asked on 09/08/04 - Do you believe this without reservation? "The things which are impossible
with men are possible with God." madima answered on 09/09/04:I believe a bit differently, I admit :=)
I believe nothing is impossible.
Not if a man wants it badly enough.
Especially not if he believes God is on his side. | | Question/Answer | | Saladin asked on 09/06/04 - Is this a Christianity principle?
Can a Christian know he/she is a Christian without the sayso of other Christians, or can only a Christian recognize another Christian?
Why, or why not, you agree/disagree with this?
madima answered on 09/06/04:I don't think you need a Christian to tell you that you are a Christian or recognize your Christianity.
Being a Christian is simply believing in Christ.
A person ought to know what he believes in.
If he does not know himself, no one ever will. | | Question/Answer | | FormerJesusHelper76 asked on 09/06/04 - Witnessed An Accident Very scary. On the way home the traffic opposite of me. Actually seen the accident as it happened. Did not look good at all. Two trucks. Both looked like they jack kniffed and one trailer rolled over and hit the barrier. I imagine that many many cars were involved as well. The speed limit is 100 km/h. It was a very scary thing to witness. Do not know the extent of injuries. Just have your prayers and thoughts on all who were involved.
Joe madima answered on 09/06/04:Trust that my prayers are with them, Joe.
I have seen enough ugly accidents and deaths on the road, being on the road most of the time - if not on the air or on the sea. | | Question/Answer | | Pamela asked on 09/01/04 - Prayers answered My older daughter is still winning her battle against cancer. Recent tests show no sign of the cancer coming back.
My younger daughter has developed a serious health problem - kidney stones cause by long term high calcium levels which had not been found previously as it only made her lethargic but not caused any other noticeable symptoms.
After removing 3 of 4 parathyroid glands the doctors found her calcium levels were still high. As my husband had a fifth parathyroid gland removed about 13 years ago, doctors figured my daugther may have inherited a fifth gland too- located in her elsewhere. They have have just found where it is - behind her left ear and intend to remove it next week. It means the calcium levels will return to normal - no more kidney stones. Im sure you agree that is reason to be thankful. Ive spent many hours praying for my two lovely daughters and God has answered my prayers. madima answered on 09/02/04:Great to hear that! I'll include you and your daughters in my prayers. May God grant your daughters complete healing. | | Question/Answer | | johnh1234 asked on 09/02/04 - If we are mere mortals we are all guilty of sin. Is there such a thing as acceptable everyday sin? I know that I cuss am I cursed to meet some sort of devil? Just curious.
John madima answered on 09/02/04:Hi, John.
To be human is to sin.
I guess, all sins, petty or great, are "unacceptable", that's why they are categorized as such.
However, they are not "unforgivable" before the eyes of God, who is all-merciful - for as long as you recognize them as sins and repent.
That makes all the difference :=)
| | Question/Answer | | Bradd asked on 09/02/04 - The Lord's Prayer Have there ever been so few words that say so much? I guess there's something like it in Hinduism or some ancient Babylonian myth or some other mythology, but never quite in the same way as in this small piece of Christianity.
Along with the Beatitudes, it is as perfect as prayer can be. Some of Jesus' sayings may have been interpolated later into the story, but all scholars agree this is original with that strange, mysterious wandering preacher from Galilee.
"Our Father" - what could be more universal, more heartrending?
"Who art in heaven" - that place of ultimate goodness we all yearn for.
"Hallowed be Thy Name" - we are all prey to a need, the need to adore.
"Thy Kingdom Come" - THY kingdom, not always the kingdom many of us seem to be seeking.
"Thy Will Be Done" - Thine, not mine.
"On Earth as it is in Heaven" - Someday, Lord, someday.
"Give Us This Day, Our Daily Bread" - What more could we possibly need? Yet, we keep trying for more...
"And Lead Us Not into Temptation" - We do that so well all by ourselves.
"But Deliver Us From Evil" - Help us, Lord, help us. And let us help each other.
It is not only the perfect ethic, it describes the perfect way to live. The Lord's Prayer is beautiful and good. Jesus gave us a hint of the Divine with this and, like all truly profound things, its simplicity touches all of us - the great and the ordinary. It is the ultimate leveler.
madima answered on 09/02/04:Hi, Bradd. Indeed, the Lord's Prayer is a complete prayer – if not the most complete. But if I may add, it seems the most important word in the prayer has been left out: "Amen".
They say that "Amen" is one of the most powerful words in prayers and in the sanctification of God's name. It comes from the same Hebrew root word for 'believe' and so is often translated as 'let it be so', or 'I believe'.
It might also interest you to know that some healing groups use the Lord’s Prayer to activate the seven subtle energy centers in the human body, each corresponding to the seven churches named in St. John’s Book of Revelations… (But then, belief in the energy centers belong to the ancient Hindu kundalini system – with equivalents in other Eastern religions.)
| | Question/Answer | | ethical_reason asked on 08/21/04 - Yo, I'm back from my, erm... trip
;)
Anyhow,
How's things?
madima answered on 08/21/04:Hope you had a great time in your trip.
I've just come home from one trip the other day and will leave again tomorrow :=)
I had a great time playing with the Bengal tigers - the personal pets of a very powerful politician whom I visited.
I was almost constricted by my host's 7-foot Burmese phyton though. The keeper did not tell me he had just been fed before he was draped round my neck! :=)
But I was quick enough to slip out of his embrace before he could throw a loop! Naughty snake!
And I was so smitten with a feisty yearling tiger named Tom and he was so smitten with me, I almost kidnapped him.(Sigh!)
Tom would have been very willing to be kidnapped, although there's no way I can keep a soon to be 400 pound cat in my 50 square meter condo in Manila. And I don't know where I'll get the cash to feed him his required 20 pounds of meat a day! :=) | | Question/Answer | | ROLCAM asked on 08/21/04 - Often have i wondered
How very often have i wondered,
The purpose in life for me;
Was it simply because of random chance,
That my being came to be?
There must be more to reality,
Than just life and death on Earth;
Followed by Heaven for selected ones,
Fortunate enough to have gained "rebirth."
What do you think of this short poem?
ROLCAM. madima answered on 08/21/04:I have first wondered about the purpose of my life and why I came to be when I was five or six :=)
I had my answer when I was eleven.
I think Heaven and Hell are on earth. We don't need to die to have a taste of both.
I've never thought of heaven as a place for the "selected" ones.
In my short experience, I can say one gains heaven on earth by choice.
You can choose to be thankful for what blessings were given you.
You can choose to be happy.
You can choose to love even when hatred abounds.
You can choose to make the most out of your life.
It's all a matter of choice :=) | | Question/Answer | | ROLCAM asked on 08/21/04 - A New Perspective. Four Commandments
1.
Honor thy parents – one and all –
For in each their own way, they did sacrifice for you.
2.
Steal not – anything –
Neither life nor property, nor effort
Nor a just reputation from anyone.
3.
Share your abundance – in material and knowledge –
With the haves and the have-nots,
To help pave the road for all.
4.
Seek the Truth – Teach your Truth –
Constantly and fervently,
But with an open mind to the Truths of others.
Please install these four Commandments in your
daily living.
ROLCAM. madima answered on 08/21/04:Thanks, Roland :=)
I have :=) | | Question/Answer | | HANK1 asked on 08/18/04 - JUST WONDERING!
Could a God-fearing Christian be a close friend of an atheist? An agnostic?
HANK
madima answered on 08/20/04:Sure, HANK, why not? :=)
Friendship has no faith, color, or prejudice of any sort. That's why it's friendship.
Friendship is a voluntary, personal choice that an individual makes. You call someone a friend because you love and trust him or her, despite whatever "differences" lie between you.
And God said love your fellow men as you love yourself. He did not say love only Christians and no one else. | | Question/Answer | | HANK1 asked on 08/20/04 - LET'S BE HAPPY ... AT ANY AGE!
The desire for fullness of life and longevity is inherent within all of us. God did not create mankind to die, but to live. Only the entrance of sin caused death to become a part of one's existence. And, Christ came to overcome that problem, so that all may live not only in the here and now, but for eternity. (John 3:16)
Just a thought!
HANK
madima answered on 08/20/04:Dear Hank, I've always chosen to be happy from as far as I can remember :=)
I think of my life as a gift, but death, I believe, is also a gift.
In the figurative sense, I feel we die to ourselves each day in order to be reborn. In the physical sense, death to me is a respite - and a reward, as an end of suffering. I've never really thought of dying as a curse of men for his sins.
I have faced death twice and I have undergone the near-death-experience. After having personally "seen" what lies beyond and having found it beautiful, I could never be afraid of dying again. | | Question/Answer | | Chouxxx asked on 08/17/04 - "stupid girl mentality"... Social scientists have long been puzzled why at around age 12, most women give up on themselves and chose to seek their identity through men and getting approval. I'm too busy now reading, so why don't some of the Board members give their opinions? madima answered on 08/18/04:It shouldn't be puzzling, dear Chou. For many, age 12 is a transition stage, the start of courting behavior, as females become sexually mature and capable of reproduction.
Of course, girls may become women much earlier these days, with some getting their first menstrual periods by age nine.
It's not identity-seeking behavior, I think (that happens after the formative stage of the personality, around seven, the age of reason).
I'd say it's instinctive mate-seeking behavior as females come in estrus for the first time in their lives :=) | | Question/Answer | | MaggieB asked on 08/16/04 - "mean girl mentality" in American society The following is a article of which I copied from a news column. Why do you feel these young women are acting as they do? Is it because of "radical femenine groups" or just wanting to be equal physically, mentally, intellectually to the gender of men?
...A military watchdog believes the radical feminist agenda has resulted in what she calls a "mean girl mentality" in American society, and for that reason, it should come as no surprise that a female soldier is enmeshed in the Abu Ghraib prison controversy. A military tribunal at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, is determining the fate of U.S. Army Private Lynndie England, who faces up to 38 years in prison if convicted of all charges. Photographs appearing in the worldwide press included some shocking images of England, posing with debased Iraqi prisoners. While some suggest the female soldier has been particularly vilified for her part in the scandal because she is a woman, others insist she is an aberration who, like the other soldiers involved, strayed far outside typical U.S. military discipline. But Elaine Donnelly of the Center for Military Readiness says England is merely a product of a feminist-influenced, "male-bashing" society and liberal social engineering. "It kind
of underlies everything about feminism that one way to beat men is to literally beat them, to be stronger than them, to demean and humiliate them," Donnelly says, "and I think that's why it caused such a stir worldwide, and why the United States military is paying a price right now for it." The CMR spokeswoman says cultural degradation has occurred in both military and civilian society as a result of this feminist mentality, "the culture of girls being tough and beating up other people." [Chad Groening]
MaggieB madima answered on 08/16/04:Dear Maggie,
I don't feel it has anything to do with feminism. I'd say it should probably be traced to hidden aggression - or should I say, sublimated violence in each of us which has nothing to do with gender differences, conflict between the sexes or gender attitudes.
If you look into the psychology of violence across the sexes, across cultures, across generations, women have actually been no less brutal than men when they commit heinous crimes.
Even before the word feminism was coined and before it came about as a concept, there had been records of women committing abominable crimes not just against men but other women and children.
The female criminal "ability" may have been "limited" by her physical strength, but nonetheless, there have been early records of women butchering their lovers' bodies, mutilating and cutting off genitals, etc. though the favored mode during the medieval period was of course, poisoning.
In my traditional Filipino culture, there is no real need for 'feminism' because we are a matriarchal society, (unlike the US, which is basically a patriarchal society). Here, women are held in very high regard. She rules the home, makes the decisions and holds the purse strings. Nevertheless, both men and women in this society have still committed brutal crimes like those I mentioned above.
And add to all these the fact that war brings out the best - and the worst, in any human being, be they man or woman. | | Question/Answer | | FormerJesusHelper76 asked on 08/16/04 - Pray Please Please pray for my Grandmother. She is in the hospital with Bronchial anomonia, and Emphaseema. Thank you.
Joe madima answered on 08/16/04:Dear Joe, I will keep your grandmother in my prayers and ask for her complete healing. | | Question/Answer | | CeeBee asked on 08/15/04 - "Suffering is part of God's plan" -- This is a quote from the Pope, during his visit this weekend to Lourdes. I'm sure we experts have batted this subject around before (I didn't bother to dig into the archives...), but I just don't agree with the Pope. I don't believe suffering is part of God's plan. I believe God created/creates only perfection, and does not want His creation to suffer.
I have my own opinion on the source of suffering, and I know each of you does too. I guess my question is not so much about suffering itself but more why would the Pope say that. Is it semantics in that he means God uses our suffering in His plan - uses our suffering as an opportunity for us to grow in love for Him and love for each other? Or does the Pope believe that God causes suffering?
Help me with this!!! madima answered on 08/15/04:Hi, Carol,
If you ask me, I don't believe God wants us to suffer. He is a benevolent God.
However, suffering is part of the package of our life on earth. In the material plane, we who have physical bodies, hunger, we sicken and die. Hence, suffering is a fact of life. Our lives.
Sorry to say I have no access to read the Pope's mind. He still has my respect as the supreme head of the Catholic Church on earth. I know that ifever I would have the chance to go on a pilgrimage to the Vatican, I'd love to have his blessing. But I have always known I don't have to believe in what he says :=)
Interestingly, this line: "suffering is part of God's plan", is one of the favorite lines I have seen since the dawn of Christianity, and not just with the Catholic Church.
I think most religious leaders conveniently use the line because they have no other recourse. Believers look to the church to alleviate human suffering, to offer a panacea, which of course, it does not have.
If believers (especially the submissive and passive ones) are convinced that the suffering is the will of God, somehow, religious leaders and even psychologists think THAT makes the suffering easier to bear.
If you will observe, many cultures are fatalistic. Reinforcing the belief that suffering is dictated by Fate and substituting the premise with "God", somehow expiates not just the believer-followers, but also the leader of the church.
And so, the believers sweetly surrender to their suffering - most of the times. Others, who are not so fatalistic, do rebel and dissociate themselves from God or organized religion. | | Question/Answer | | FormerJesusHelper76 asked on 08/15/04 - Politics: Christianity. Do you believe that politics and voting is a duty we need to complete as individuals? Some people believe that Christanity or religion have nothing to do with politics. Some people believe that The laws of the land and moral issues of this world have nothing to do with politics. I think it has everything to do with voting and politics. I believe how we vote and who we vote for and etc... actually effects the laws and how we live our lives, what is moral and what is not. What do you think?
Love to hear all your opinions and thoughts and followups if needed. Everybody gets 5 stars. Everybodys opinion is important and i think its important that we all share it, learn what each other thinks and share our thoughts with others. No matter what we do or do not agree with.
Lets all get along.
Joe madima answered on 08/15/04:Hi Joe,
I think voting is a choice, not a duty, and I have opted never to vote because from the start, I haven't seen much sense in it.
I was born in a martial law regime and grew up under a dictatorship. My grandfather on my father's maternal side was a politician and my father loathed the dirtiness of politics. That's the kind of political environment that I grew up in, so I have always preferred to be apolitical.
Here in my country, politicians use the church and vice versa. Businessmen use politicians and the church too, and vice versa.
In my dealings with politicians as a journalist, I've seen most of them are amoral and I've never seen one who has not yielded to corruption.
The current president of my country has been my source of news information while she was still in the trade department and I was covering the trade beat. I know her personally and I know she is corrupt. That's why I never voted for her.
Whoever gets to be in a position of power loses their sense of morality unless he or she is a saint (in which case he or she will never win in an election anyway, or will never be interested in a position).
I never saw a connection between Christianity and the state - my state - except of course, that it's convenient for them to use each other.
And what's one vote? Here, the deepest pocketed candidate wins. Votes are bought openly, ballot boxes are stolen and switched, rival canditates and people protecting the ballot are murdered.
That's why I never wasted my time voting :=)
| | Question/Answer | | paraclete asked on 08/12/04 - What is the appropriate amount to give to God? Following up on my last posting, we should ask the question what is the appropriate share of our income to give to God?
The Old Testament required a tithe, a tenth of all income, but is that the correct interpretation? And to what extent does this apply to the Christian? You cannot find anywhere in the New Testament where the tithe was confirmed.
Is there a different standard for the clergy? Should the Aaronic tithe be expected of the clergy? madima answered on 08/12/04:I don't believe God needs money, being God. A pure spirit has no use for the material.
Money was invented as a currency of trade and exchange by humans not by God. I don't think God requires a "share" of that.
God Himself gave us intellectual, emotional and spiritual capital, so I believe that blessing should be given back in kind, not in cash.
Whenever I give love to my fellowmen, I give back to God what He has given me.
He said: Whatever you do unto your brethen, you do it unto me. | | Question/Answer | | Itsdb asked on 08/10/04 - Boundaries On Choux's 'Sex and Religion and Gov't' question, I stated my belief that we still need boundaries. The distinguished Aton raised the issue of "Who decides what the bounderies are, and who chooses those who set the boundaries?" So in honor of your inquiry my friend, I'm throwing it out for discussion.
Are boundaries a problem, or are they necessary? Who should decide what those boundaries are? Are we obligated to live within the boundaries set by others, or as one commented "in a free society, I'll set my own?"
I have no particular issue in mind, just the who, what, where and why do we draw the line, if indeed there needs to be a line? madima answered on 08/10/04:I believe it's the individual who sets the boundaries. He is supposed to know where they should lie by his conscience and common sense.
The boundaries are pre-set in sexual taboos, such as incest.
The incest boundary is actually instinctive -unless there is something very wrong with the brain, or the psychological make-up, of a family member.
| | Question/Answer | | STONY asked on 08/09/04 - IN LIEU OF ATON'S RESPONSE... TO MY QUESTION ON PROTECTING YOUR SPIRIT; WHAT I POSTED WAS THE REVERSAL OF EVERY CURSE LISTED IN DEUT. CH. 28. YOU MIGHT ASK, WHY IS THIS HAPPENING TO ME? A GOOD CHANCE IS IT HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH YOU TO START WITH. EVERYONE KNOWS THE VERSE ABOUT HOW GENERATIONAL CURSES GO TO THE 3RD AND 4TH GENERATION. BUT, THE BIBLE ALSO SPEAKS OF CURSES GOING TO THE 10TH GENERATION. THE MATHEMATICAL PROBABILITIES OF A 10TH GENERATION CURSE IS SOMEWHERE ABOUT 1900. SOMEONE IN YOUR GENERATIONAL LINE WITHIN THOSE 1900 PEOPLE COULD HAVE DONE SOMETHING THAT VERY MUCH DISPLEASED GOD AND THE TROUBLES ARE WORKING THEMSELVES DOWN TO YOU. JESUS SAID, "BE NOT DISMAYED" GENERATIONAL CURSES CAN BE BROKEN IN SOLEMN PRAYER AND USUALLY ON YOUR KNEES. THANK YOU ATON FOR CAUSING ME TO DIG DEEPER AND PRESENT THE WHOLE PICTURE. madima answered on 08/09/04:Hi, Tony. Personally, I don't believe in generational curses. As I told you before, I refuse to allow myself to be touched by negative energies - that's why they usually don't :=)
I've always believed that we are the masters of our own destiny and even if we get trapped in a vicious cycle, we can break free of our own free will.
But my father believed in generational curses and had a healing done for this sole purpose.
The Charismatic movement of the Catholic Church here has a "family tree" healing rite which breaks curses up to the 10th generation. However, it is said that this generational healing is traced to Protestant teachings and has no Catholic roots.
The Divine Mercy Chaplet (which is included in my daily prayers) contains the family tree healing. It is recited just like the Holy Rosary with an invocation substituted for the Hail Mary beads:
"For the sake of the sorrowful passion of Jesus, Father have mercy on me and my Family Tree, grant forgiveness, healing and salvation upon us." | | Question/Answer | | HANK1 asked on 08/09/04 - IN RE: MY WIFE, CAROL:
* This doesn't need answering!
Carol will be going to Barnes Hospital in St. Louis in three days (Thursday) to get another Catscan. She has five lesions on her liver ... as some of you may remember ... and we need to see if they have changed in appearance in three months. (This is usually typical of lung cancer) She still has her two tumors in her middle chest area but they're 'resting.' In short, she's going to get a body scan!
All prayers appreciated ... of course!
HANK
madima answered on 08/09/04:I shall include Carol in my prayers and ask for her complete healing. And you, too. Take care. You need to be in the best of health yourself. She needs you. | | Question/Answer | | sapphire630 asked on 08/09/04 - Sins of the father The 'sins' of the father (mother) on the son (daughter)
What seems evident to me is how you see
parents with a negative attitute
parents abusing each other or their kids
parents with a drug or alchol problem
bigotry, etc....
I have known so many people that swear they will grow up to be the total opposite of the abusive parent, yet once they grow up they end up on drugs or an alcholic and abuse their significant other and children. They repeat the very things they swore they would NEVER do because they do not know how to break the cycle or they get so caught up in denial that they ARE doing that very thing.
Do you think this could be considered a generational curse in a sense?
madima answered on 08/09/04:Not a generational curse really, I would reckon.
It's more like choosing to live in the comfort of the most familiar - though the most familiar may be abuse, addiction or violence.
The individual born to an abusive family has a "template" of abuse in his mind. He can choose to "follow the script" of his parents or do the exact opposite, make a "counter-script" of his own.
Of course, those who cannot break the vicious cycle may swear to high heavens they will never be like their parents, but if they are born with other disadvantages on top of that and they have no strength of will or personality to climb out of their hole, how can they?
If they are born to an abusive poverty-stricken home and on top of that they have no education, no drive to advance, no entrepreneurial spirit, they are likely to stay in the dregs of society. So, they will marry one of their kind and produce a new generation of abused kids.
I believe that the sins of the father will not visit on the son, if the son has enough strength not to fall on the stumblingblock of his father. | | Question/Answer | | CeeBee asked on 08/08/04 - Here's some ammunition for parents who are careful which movies their kids see --
from http://www.lifestorywriting.com/brownies.htm:
Brownies With a Difference
Many parents are hard put to explain to their youth why some music, movies, books, and magazines are not acceptable material for them to bring into the home, for their youth to see, or hear.
One parent came up with an original idea that was hard to refute. He listened to all the reasons his children gave for wanting to see a particular PG-13 movie. It had their favorite actors. Everyone else was seeing it. Even church members said it was great. It was only rated PG-13 because of the suggestion of sex. They never really showed it. The language was pretty good. They only used the Lord's name in vain three times in the whole movie. The video effects were fabulous and the plot was action packed. Yes, there was the scene where a building and a bunch of people got blown up, but the violence was just the normal stuff. It wasn't very bad.
Even with all these explanations for the rating, the father wouldn't give in. He didn't even give them a satisfying explanation for saying "No." He just said, "No."
It was a little bit later that evening, that this same father asked his teens if they would like some brownies he had prepared. He explained that he had taken the family's favorite recipe and added something new. They asked what it was. He calmly replied that he had added dog poop. He stated that it was only a little bit. All the ingredients were gourmet quality. He had taken great care to bake it at the precise temperature for the exact time. He was sure the brownies would be superb. Even with all the explanations of the perfect attributes of the brownies, the teens would not take one.
The father acted surprised. There was only one little element that would have caused them to act so stubbornly. He assured them that they would hardly notice it if at all. They all held firm and would not try the brownies.
He then explained that the movie they wanted to see was just like the brownies. Satan tries to enter our minds and our homes by deceiving us into believing that just a little bit of evil won't matter. With the brownies, just a little bit makes all the difference between a great brownie and a totally unacceptable product.
He explained that even though the movie people would have us believe the movies which are coming out are acceptable for adults and youth to see they are not. Test your movie and see. Would you be comfortable taking Christ with you to see the movie? Now when this father's children want to do something or see something they should not, the father merely asks them if they would like some of his special dog poop brownies and they never ask about that item again.
This is CeeBee again. Should children be raised with this kind of (loving, I hope) overseeing and limitations, or should they be given freedom and choices, but always with the lines of communication open between parents and children? madima answered on 08/08/04:Hi, Carol! I think on this one I shall beg to disagree, but then, it also depends on the mental and emotional make-up of the individual child.
My parents always allowed me to see everything I wanted to see in the movies when I was little - violence, sex, etc. - but they were always there beside me each time, to answer my questions. (As they were always there to carry me to church and pray with me.) :=)
They believed censorship will only serve to pique my interest even more. The lure of the forbidden is often so much stronger. They also thought that it is better that as early as possible, I see both evil and good with my own eyes, so I could learn to distinguish one from the other.
I remembered relatives and other people criticized my parents for being "too modern" and "too liberal". But it did me no harm.
And because there were no mystifying "adult secrets" for me, I never yielded to peer pressure.
I started performing professionally at a young age and practically grew up the theater (you should know the "amorality" of this sub-culture). But I was never tempted to experiment with drugs, sex and alcohol when all of my peers, stage partners, directors, production staff, were engaging in them openly.
Even the kind of circle I move in now as a journalist reeks with lots of temptations, vice and corruption. And yet, I feel I have to thank my parents' upbringing for shielding me from the evils of the world.
Of course, I'm still human. I have my lapses, but not very major ones (so far) and not in those departments. I guess once you have insulated someone well enough in childhood, you can throw her into the fire and need not worry. :=) | | Question/Answer | | Chouxxx asked on 08/08/04 - Life Elsewhere in the Universe This morning, I saw a "crawl" at the bottom of a Sunday morning political talk show that said we are very close to discovering life other than on earth. Would this discovery have any effect on your Christian views? madima answered on 08/08/04:No. I won't be jealous that God created life elsewhere! :=)
I think He should have, too. It'll be lonely to think that planet earth is the only inhabited heavenly body in all of the universe.
And in fact, I'll be VERY delighted to behold other life forms and interact with intelligent beings originating outside of the earth - if they can be found! :=) | | Question/Answer | | ATON2 asked on 08/07/04 - Not a question. No question here, just to explain the double ratings. My new computer needs to be whupped into shape; ...it stops dead on submissions and, in my impatience I usually end up hitting the submit button twice. For you 5-star recipients it is an undeserved bonus...and for you 2-star recipients an unwarrented punishment. Just ignore the duplicate ratings :) :) madima answered on 08/07/04:No answer here, either :=)
I'm having the same problem lately, but with my answers - so I end up with "twins" each time. I'm on a DSL connection :=)
Hope it does not happen again when I hit the submit button now! :=) | | Question/Answer | | STONY asked on 08/06/04 - DO YOU CHRISTIANS KNOW HOW TO PROTECT YOUR SPIRIT? I WILL NEVER AGAIN CONFESS "I CAN'T." SEE PHIL. 4:13
" "LACK." PHIL 4:19
"FEAR." 2TIM 1:7
"DOUBT AND LACK OF FAITH." ROM. 12:3
"WEAKNESS." PS. 27:1
"SUPREMACY OF SATAN ON MY LIFE." 1 JN. 4:4
"DEFEAT." 2 COR. 2:1
"LACK OF WISDOM." 1 COR. 1:30
"WORRIES AND FRUSTRATIONS." 1 PT. 5:7
"SICKNESS." MATT. 8:17
"BONDAGE." 2 COR. 3:17
"CONDEMNATION." ROM. 8:1
"LONLINESS." MATT. 28:20 & HEB. 13:5
"CURSES OR BAD LUCK." GAL.3:13-14
"DISCONTENT." PHIL. 4:11
"UNWORTHINESS." 2 COR. 5:21
"CONFUSION." 1 COR. 14:33
""PERSECUTION." ROM. 8:31
"DOMINATION OF SIN OVER MY LIFE." ROM. 8:2 PS.103:12
"INSECURITY." PR. 3:24 & 26
"FAILURE." ROM. 8:37
"FRUSTRATION." ISA. 26:3
"FEAR OF THE FUTURE." 1 COR. 2:9-10
"TROUBLES." JOHN 16:33
THERE WAS NEITHER TIME OR ROOM TO CUT & PASTE ALL THESE SCRIPTURES SO THE GROUND WORK IS LAID BEFORE YOU.
ALL YOU NEED DO IS READ IN YOUR BIBLE. madima answered on 08/06/04:Dear Tony, I protect my spirit by prayers. For me, the prayer habit is the best shield. And I refuse to allow myself to be touched by negative energies. What you don't allow in your heart cannot touch your soul! :=) | | Question/Answer | | STONY asked on 08/05/04 - ONE MORE FOR YOUR FUNNYBONE...
Painting Job
There was a tradesman, a painter called Jock, who was very
interested in making a penny where he could, so he often would thin
down paint to make it go a wee bit further. As it happened, he got
away with this for some time,but eventually the Baptist Church
decided to do a big restoration job on the painting of one their
biggest buildings.
Jock put in a bid, and because his price was so low, he got the
job. And so he set to erecting the trestles and setting up the
planks, and buying the paint and, yes, I am sorry to say, thinning
it down with turpentine.
Well, Jock was up on the scaffolding, painting away, the job nearly
completed when suddenly there was a horrendous clap of thunder, and
the sky opened, the rain poured down, washing the thinned paint
from all over the church and knocked Jock clear off the scaffold to
land on the lawn surrounded by telltale puddles of the thinned and useless paint.
Jock was no fool. He knew this was a judgment from the Almighty, so
he got on his knees and cried: "Oh, God! Forgive me! What should I
do?"
And from the thunder, a mighty voice spoke...
"Repaint! Repaint! And thin no more !!!!"
madima answered on 08/06/04:Thanks, Tony, for making me laugh as usual! :=)
I actually use a lot of turpentine for my paintings, but I add almost equal portions of linseed oil!
Can't put in pure pigment straight from the tube for my angel canvases! Too expensive! Besides, I feel the impasto technique doesn't suit me when it comes to painting angel faces.
But God isn't angry with me, I'm sure! In the first place, He saw to it I'll be well-sponsored for my first art exhibit! :=) | | Question/Answer | | HANK1 asked on 08/06/04 - TRUE OR FALSE?
People have changed more than the business organizations upon which they depend. The last fifty years have seen the rise of a new breed of individuals, yet corporations continue to operate according to a logic invented at the time of their origin, a century ago. The chasm that now separates individuals and organizations is marked by frustration, mistrust, disappointment, and even rage. It also harbors the possibility of a new capitalism and a new era of wealth creation.
True OR False?
HANK
madima answered on 08/06/04:
Dear Hank, I feel this Q will be more at home on the business and finance board, but if you ask me, I'll say False, anyway.
>People have changed more than the business organizations upon which they depend.
Business organizations ARE people. The way an organization "behaves" is characterized by the behavior of the people who make up its ranks, its management and executive committees as well as its stockholders. If business organizations change, it's because people have changed. You can't ever separate one from the other.
>The last fifty years have seen the rise of a new breed of individuals, yet corporations continue to operate according to a logic invented at the time of their origin, a century ago.
I have covered the business beat for only less than a decade, though I've done an extensive study of family corporations (famcors) in my country (the oligarchy controls over 50 per cent of the economy) and have interviewed at least three generations within such individual famcors.
The logic of corporations is simple: make money. Any person who engage in business or gets involved in a business or a corporation has the same logic.
Of course, lately, such paradigms like "adding shareholders' value" have been dangled. But it's still the same: Make money and continue making more money.
"New breed" of individuals? Not really, I think. The third and fourth generations are just as "driven" by making money as the first generation although the former do have more "tools" at their disposal. These include better education, global exposure, electronic commerce and liberalized trade (though most of the tariff and non-tariff barriers are still in place in most industries).
In short, the "essence" of the individual, their basic premise for getting in the business is still the same, though they may have more tools and a different approach.
>The chasm that now separates individuals and organizations is marked by frustration, mistrust, disappointment, and even rage.
Some mores have changed, but that is because the individuals who run the corporations have changed.
In Japan, even among the sogo-soshas, it has been observed that seniority and loyalty to the company had been eroded. But they say that's because many young executives have been educated in the West - where individual advancement is esteemed over corporate loyalty. Many investors from the West have also began sitting on the boards of these traditional firms, injecting their own values in the Eastern corporate culture.
Among famcors, the "deterioration" that often leads to their downfall is a form of "dilution".
In the first generation, it's the patriarch who deals with his children in running the family enterprise. By the time the corporation is run by the second generation, it's brother dealing with brother. In the third generation, it's cousins dealing with cousins. The level of involvement, as well as the unifying force, could not be the same. You don't treat your cousin like your father.
Indeed, there could be a new era of wealth creation, but that's because of the borderless economy and electronic commerce.
However, the premise for the people who are in corporations, the very reason why most corporations exist (even non-profit firms need cash to survive and execute their mandate) remain the same and will do so to the end: make money.
| | Question/Answer | | HANK1 asked on 08/06/04 - TRUE OR FALSE?
People have changed more than the business organizations upon which they depend. The last fifty years have seen the rise of a new breed of individuals, yet corporations continue to operate according to a logic invented at the time of their origin, a century ago. The chasm that now separates individuals and organizations is marked by frustration, mistrust, disappointment, and even rage. It also harbors the possibility of a new capitalism and a new era of wealth creation.
True OR False?
HANK
madima answered on 08/06/04:
Dear Hank, I feel this Q will be more at home on the business and finance board, but if you ask me, I'll say False, anyway.
>People have changed more than the business organizations upon which they depend.
Business organizations ARE people. The way an organization "behaves" is characterized by the behavior of the people who make up its ranks, its management and executive committees as well as its stockholders. If business organizations change, it's because people have changed. You can't ever separate one from the other.
>The last fifty years have seen the rise of a new breed of individuals, yet corporations continue to operate according to a logic invented at the time of their origin, a century ago.
I have covered the business beat for only less than a decade, though I've done an extensive study of family corporations (famcors) in my country (the oligarchy controls over 50 per cent of the economy) and have interviewed at least three generations within such individual famcors.
The logic of corporations is simple: make money. Any person who engage in business or gets involved in a business or a corporation has the same logic.
Of course, lately, such paradigms like "adding shareholders' value" have been dangled. But it's still the same: Make money and continue making more money.
"New breed" of individuals? Not really, I think. The third and fourth generations are just as "driven" by making money as the first generation although the former do have more "tools" at their disposal. These include better education, global exposure, electronic commerce and liberalized trade (though most of the tariff and non-tariff barriers are still in place in most industries).
In short, the "essence" of the individual, their basic premise for getting in the business is still the same, though they may have more tools and a different approach.
>The chasm that now separates individuals and organizations is marked by frustration, mistrust, disappointment, and even rage.
Some mores have changed, but that is because the individuals who run the corporations have changed.
In Japan, even among the sogo-soshas, it has been observed that seniority and loyalty to the company had been eroded. But they say that's because many young executives have been educated in the West - where individual advancement is esteemed over corporate loyalty. Many investors from the West have also began sitting on the boards of these traditional firms, injecting their own values in the Eastern corporate culture.
Among famcors, the "deterioration" that often leads to their downfall is a form of "dilution".
In the first generation, it's the patriarch who deals with his children in running the family enterprise. By the time the corporation is run by the second generation, it's brother dealing with brother. In the third generation, it's cousins dealing with cousins. The level of involvement, as well as the unifying force, could not be the same. You don't treat your cousin like your father.
Indeed, there could be a new era of wealth creation, but that's because of the borderless economy and electronic commerce.
However, the premise for the people who are in corporations, the very reason why most corporations exist (even non-profit firms need cash to survive and execute their mandate) remain the same and will do so to the end: make money.
| | Question/Answer | | ROLCAM asked on 08/04/04 - Do you have a problem series # 1. With religions generally ? madima answered on 08/04/04:No. I don't mind what other people believe in, for as long as they don't attempt to coerce me to believe in what they believe in.
I respect other people's faiths, so I expect them to respect mine.
But as a subject of study, religions fascinate me. I feel that they show the workings of the mind of the believer, more than the gods that people worship.
More than anything, religions delve with man's diverse perceptions of his personal/cultural world, the universe and the spiritual realm. | | Question/Answer | | Liz22 asked on 08/03/04 - Need Prayers! Hello experts, just got back from the ER, my son had his had his friend over who's name is Jerod well, when Jerod was going home on his bike he ran right out into a Truck, the truck was going 45miles per hour, the driver didn't see him for he was looking at the other side of the street for a house number he was suppose to Moe
their lawn, well I heard screams and most of the neighbors were afraid to go out to Jerod
whom is a small child because they thought he was dead, but I did and held pressure to his open skull he lost a lot of blood, and they moved him to a better hospital in Grand Rapids Michigan. I am asking you for your Prayers that this child will come home he is only twelve and to drive with care never knowing a child could be near, and lets learn to never take life for granted, one minute a love one is laughing the next they are in the Trauma Unit fighting for their life. Love one another, never take life for granted.
Thank all of you, and I will fill you in tomorrow night as for now, we need Prayers for this little boy.
Thank you. madima answered on 08/04/04:I shall include Jerod in my prayers, dear Liz, and ask that he be healed. | | Question/Answer | | Pete_Hanysz asked on 08/03/04 - Touched by God?
How is one able to tell the difference between the work of a man inspired by the "Holy Spirit" & the rants of an unsound mind.
David Koresh for example.
Pete
madima answered on 08/03/04:Glad to meet you Pete :=)
I think a discerning mind could easily tell the difference between the two by the effect each of them create on the audience.
The work of a man inspired by the Holy Spirit should inspire whoever reads or hears it and increase his/her wisdom. An inspired work enlightens.
The rants of an unsound mind will be very disturbing to a discerning reader or listener, no matter how grandly it was put or how eloquently and passionately it was delivered. It will always betray the inner chaos, the delusion and the untruth where the thoughts originated.
In other words, it should be like the difference between day and night, darkness and light. | | Question/Answer | | kindj asked on 08/02/04 - I think I answered my own question Earlier today, under the question that had to do with a "wake up call" for America, I posted in a follow-up that I wasn't sure if Iraqi Christians (assuming there were any) had the freedom to practice their faith openly and worship freely. My follow-up read:
>>Under Saddam's regime, did Iraqi Christians (I'm assuming there were some) have the right to freely and openly worship and practice their faith, or were they persecuted and killed as in so many other countries?<<
I just found this a minute ago:
Religious Freedom Commission: 12 Nations of Particular Concern
October 2, 2002
Commission Recommends 12 Nations for Designation As 'Countries of Particular Concern'
The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, an independent federal agency advising the Administration and Congress, today recommended that the Secretary of State designate Burma (Myanmar), the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, India, Iran, Iraq, Laos, Pakistan, People’s Republic of China, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Turkmenistan, and Vietnam as “countries of particular concern” (CPCs) under the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 (IRFA).
Can anyone verify the accuracy of this? Were, in fact, Iraqi Christians allowed to exist under Saddam, openly and without fear?
DK
madima answered on 08/02/04:Hi, DK,
I have not been to Iraq, but I think I have enough reason to assume that there are Iraqi Christians who can never practice their faith openly.
I have lived for almost a year in a "supposedly" more liberal Muslim territory - Dubai, United Arab Emirates, during a professional dance stint in the 90's.
It's classified as an "open city" but even in there, even as Christian churches are allowed, local Muslims cannot readily convert to Christianity.
I know because my ex-boyfriend is a local, Dubai-born but American-educated Muslim. He proposed marriage and wanted to convert to Christianity. We went to the Catholic Church in the city and the parish priest, an Indian national, freaked out when my boyfriend told me he wants to be baptized and married in the church. The priest feared for his life and ours! His advice was for both of us to get out of that country.
At AskMe, in 2001, I had a Muslim asker who claimed he's from Iraq. He yearned so much to be baptized as a Christian but feared, not just for his life, but for those of his whole clan. He wanted to be baptized in secret but knew he faced an extraordinarily high risk. And he could find no priest willing to risk his neck. Our communication was cut off though and I never knew if he was able to leave his country.
I had been to China several times but my visits had been too short and confined to the hotels where we had our coverages. I'll be back there for a 3-day coverage this August 27.
I'm also scheduled to visit Vietnam within the year. Perhaps I can tell you about the real state of religious freedom there after my trip. | | Question/Answer | | HANK1 asked on 08/01/04 - THE MIND OF GOD! For many, many months, I've been reading scripture, posting questions, answering questions, reading comments, reading clarifications and posting same! I feel that it's time to allow our brains to work overtime and try to get INSIDE the brain of God. This will take us to a higher level of understanding re: how we can live Utopian lives. Any suggestions re: how we can proceed?
(Really THINK about this question before answering. THANKS!)
HANK madima answered on 08/02/04:Dear Hank, I believe you don't have to know the mind of God. Not even His messengers, the angels, are supposed to know His mind (and for that matter, His name). That, I think, is not the goal.
The first key is to know thyself.
It is hard enough for most individuals to know the workings of their own minds. How much more of the Unknowable?
If your mind cannot even grasp what is in the microcosm how do you expect to understand the macrocosm? You cannot run before you walk.
As they say, every man at the beginning of his life, dreams about changing the whole world. But towards the end, on his death bed, his ambition becomes more realistic and he yearns only to change his own self.
Let us not forget. The great wave that sweeps the ocean begins with the tiniest of ripples. | | Question/Answer | | Chouxxx asked on 07/31/04 - Pope's Comments To Women Yesterday Yesterday, the Pope made some comments regarding his opinion on Feminism and Women. He said that, darn it, I forgot, does anyone else remember? Little help here, if you can. I have some retorts.
Thanks, Choux
madima answered on 07/31/04:Hi, Choux! If I remember right, he said women should not compete, or try to outdo men.
Essentially, he said something to the effect that men and women each have their own distinct roles, separate from each other. The gender differences should be respected but "women should not attempt to be men" in destructive competition - or something of the sort.
Also, if I remember it right, he issued no direct pronouncement condemning women's prioritizing career over home and family and said governments/employers should not be biased against working mothers. On the other hand, they should not ostracize women who chose to be full-time mothers. However, his overtones made it clear that he find "competition: between the sexes tend to be "destructive".
Of course, he expressed strong opposition to homosexual marriage and was concerned that feminism leads to too much openness in both homosexual and heterosexual relationships.
He also voiced the Church's usual opposition to women being ordained as priests on the reason that Jesus Christ only chose males for his apostles.
The Catholic Church does not really frown on feminism - based on Saint Thomas Aquinas concept. This 12th century Dominican's scholastic theology was the dominant influence on Catholic thought well into the twentieth century. In Aquinas' theology, "feminism" means that "woman is created in the image of God. Like man, she is created for the purpose of knowing, ultimately knowing God".
However, you don't need to point out the flaws of the papal pronouncement to me, dearest Mary Sue :=)
Of course, I'm Catholic. But personally, I don't buy into the Church's meddling with the life and role choices of individuals - the Catholic Church or any other church for that matter.
As I've declared earlier, I believe in God but I'm not dogmatic. Never had been. I believe such things as my role choice, my sexual and career preferences and what I do about them is my own responsibility.
For one thing, my career as a journalist and as an actress made me compete with men in the same field - for billing and byline, etc. Even the sports I chose, such as mountain climbing, always pit me - mentally and physically, against men. My father brought me up that way. After all, he wanted me to fulfill all his dreams and beat all his accomplishments. He sees nothing wrong with a woman competing with a man.
And I make no bones about it. I simply love it when I win! And I see to it that I do!:=) | | Question/Answer | | HANK1 asked on 07/31/04 - LISTEN AND LEARN!
In the New Testament, James warned against speaking carelessly: “Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, for man’s anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires” (Jas. 1:19 ).
Is this good or bad advice?
madima answered on 07/31/04:Anger clouds one's judgment and enables one to say and do things he will surely regret afterwards.
Being quick to listen enables you to fully understand what another human being is trying to communicate, before you jump to conclusions.
Being slow to speak enables you to consider every word that comes out of your lips, to be sure they will not hurt others.
Being slow to anger shows confidence in the self, a stable personality and sense of maturity, I believe. | | Question/Answer | | HANK1 asked on 07/31/04 - ABOUT FOOLS!
“Fools show their anger at once, but the prudent ignore an insult” (Proverbs 12:16, NRSV).
Is this good or bad advice?
madima answered on 07/31/04:Good advice for me.
Why waste your time returning venom for venom? Negative energies do not do good for our bodies, mind and soul.
The wise - and the prudent - knows in his heart what is true about himself, so if another person tries to provoke him with an untruth because of envy, spite, malice, or simply for lack of anything better to do, why bite the bait? | | Question/Answer | | HANK1 asked on 07/29/04 - REQUEST:
Ask me a question ... any question ... personal or otherwise! I'll give you a Christian reply! (Please use this Board when doing so. No private nor health questions, please!)
HANK
madima answered on 07/30/04:Inasmuch as you said any Q, personal or otherwise... Honestly, if I were to ask you a Q, dear HANK, it will not be about Christianity at all.
I've always been curious as to what state in the US do you inhabit, what newspapers you wrote for and what beat you covered :=)
But should it be ok for you to satisfy my curiosity, I'd prefer that you post it to me in private. If not, I'll understand. :=)
My best regards to you and Carol. :=) | | Question/Answer | | STONY asked on 07/29/04 - TO MASSAGE YOUR FUNNY BONE... Subject: Parrot
A woman went to a pet shop & immediately spotted a
large, beautiful
parrot. There was a sign on the cage that said $50.00.
Why so little," she
asked the pet store owner. The owner looked at her and
said, "Look, I
should tell you first that this bird used to live in
a house of
Prostitution, & sometimes it says some pretty vulgar
stuff."
The woman thought about this, but decided she had to
have the bird anyway.
She took it home & hung the bird's cage up in her
living room & waited for
it to say something. The bird looked around the room,
then at her, & said,
"New house, new madam."
The woman was a bit shocked at the implication, but
then thought "that's
really not so bad." When her 2 teenage daughters
returned from school the
bird saw & said, "New house, new madam, new girls."
The girls & the woman were a bit offended but then
began to laugh about the
situation considering how & where the parrot had been
raised. Moments
later, the woman's husband Keith came home from work.
The bird looked at him & said, "Hi, Keith." madima answered on 07/29/04:Now, that's funny! Thanks, STONY! :=) | | Question/Answer | | Laura asked on 07/29/04 - Helping out family One of our children is in a real financial pinch. An unexpected loss of part of her income has forced her to seek help from us. I don't mind at all, but I have a question. If helping her means that we have to give less at church on Sunday, do you think God minds? God bless. Laura madima answered on 07/29/04:
Dear Laura, I honestly believe God will not mind if you give less to the Church because you are helping your daughter. I think He will have reason to mind if you give to church and fail to help your daughter. He is, after all, a merciful God.
God bless you.
| | Question/Answer | | paraclete asked on 07/28/04 - The Problems of Thinking
It started out innocently enough. I began to think at parties now and then to loosen up. Inevitably though, one thought led to another, and soon I was more than just a social thinker.
I began to think alone - "to relax," I told myself - but I knew it wasn't true. Thinking became more and more important to me, and finally I was thinking all the time.
I began to think on the job. I knew that thinking and employment don't mix, but I couldn't stop myself.
I began to avoid friends at lunchtime so I could read Thoreau and Kafka. I would return to the office dizzied and confused, asking, "What is it exactly we are doing here?"
Things weren't going so great at home either. One evening I had turned off the TV and asked my wife about the meaning of life. She spent that night at her mother's.
I soon had a reputation as a heavy thinker. One day the boss called me in. He said, "Skippy, I like you, and it hurts me to say this, but your thinking has become a real problem. If you don't stop thinking on the job, you'll have to find another job." This gave me a lot to think about.
I came home early after my conversation with the boss. "Honey," I confessed... "I've been thinking..."
"I know you've been thinking," she said, "and I want a divorce!" "But Honey, surely it's not that serious."
"It is serious," she said, lower lip aquiver. "You think as much as college professors, and college professors don't make any money, so if you keep on thinking we won't have any money!"
"That's a faulty syllogism," I said impatiently, and she began to cry. I'd had enough. "I'm going to the library," I snarled as I stomped out the door.
I headed for the library, in the mood for some Nietzsche, with an AM station on the radio. I roared into the parking lot and ran up to the big glass doors...they didn't open. The library was closed.
To this day, I believe that a Higher Power was looking out for me that night.
As I sank to the ground clawing at the unfeeling glass, whimpering for Zarathustra, a poster caught my eye. "Friend, is heavy thinking ruining your life?" it asked. You probably recognize that line. It comes from the standard Thinker's Anonymous poster.
Which is why I am what I am today: a recovering thinker. I never miss a TA meeting. At each meeting we watch a non-educational video; last week it was "Porky's." Then we share experiences about how we avoided thinking since the last meeting.
I still have my job, and things are a lot better at home.
Life just seemed...easier, somehow, as soon as I stopped thinking.
I know I have been experienced the problems of thinking lately have you? I keep praying Lord what on Earth am I doing here ?
madima answered on 07/28/04:Thanks for the educational story, Brian :=)
However, this strikes me more as being in the realm of psychology than being in the realm of religion.
Thinking - "cerebral" thoughts, as we know it, is the voice of the conscious mind, the voice of the Ego.
It is this kind of "thinking" that higher consciousness "practitioners" seek to "quiet" down, to find the silence "within", so that they can get to listen to the voice of the inner soul - the voice of the Authentic Self.
The latter is the voice of the "Other", the "Id", the subconscious self, the Shadow, which holds all your sublimated memories and thoughts, the "dark" side of your self, the most destructive and also, the most creative.
Usually, you can only hear the voice of the Shadow Self, the Authentic Self, when you are not being nagged by the insecurities and selfish desires of the Ego. Hence, you can "hear" more clearly in the state of the dreaming, which is an altered form of consciousness.
Many religious personages "demonized" the dreaming from time immemorial precisely because of the unknown and potentially dangerous nature of the Shadow Self.
But philosophers maintain that in a showdown between Ego and Shadow, God always take the side of the Shadow because it is the side of the Truth.
Just my thoughts :=)
| | Question/Answer | ROLCAM asked on 07/27/04 -
NOT FORGETTING MY FRIENDS !!A GOOD STORY.
During the waning years of the depression in a small Idaho community, I used to stop by Mr. Miller's roadside stand for farm fresh produce as the season made it available. Food and money were still extremely scarce and bartering was used extensively.
One day Mr. Miller was bagging some early potatoes for me. I noticed a smallboy, delicate of bone and feature, ragged but clean, hungrily appraising a basket of freshly picked green peas.I paid for my potatoes but was also drawn to the display of fresh green peas. I am a pushover for creamed peas and new potatoes. Pondering the peas, I couldn't help overhearing the conversation between Mr. Miller and the
ragged boy next to me.
"Hello Barry, how are you today?"
"H'lo, Mr. Miller. Fine, thank ya. Jus' admirin' them peas ... sure look good."
"They are good, Barry. How's your Ma?"
"Fine. Gittin' stronger alla' time."
"Good. Anything I can help you with?"
"No, Sir. Jus' admirin' them peas."
"Would you like to take some home?"
"No, Sir. Got nuthin' to pay for 'em with."
"Well, what have you to trade me for some of those peas?"
"All I got's my prize marble here."
"Is that right? Let me see it."
"Here 'tis. She's a dandy."
"I can see that. Hmmmmm, only thing is this one is blue and I sort of go for red. Do you have a red one like this at home?"
"Not zackley ... but almost."
"Tell you what. Take this sack of peas home with you and next trip this way let
me look at that red marble."
"Sure will. Thanks Mr. Miller."
Mrs. Miller, who had been standing nearby, came over to help me. With a smile she said, "There are two other boys like him in our community, all three
are in very poor circumstances. Jim just loves to bargain with them for peas, apples, tomatoes, or whatever. When they come back with their red marbles, and they always do, he decides he doesn't like red after all and he sends them home with a bag of produce for a green marble or an orange one, perhaps."
I left the stand smiling to myself, impressed with this man. A short time later I moved to Colorado but I never forgot the story of this man, the boys,
and their bartering.Several years went by, each more rapid than the previous one. Just recently I had the occasion to visit some old friends in that Idaho community and while I was there I learned that Mr. Miller had died. They were having his viewing that evening and knowing my friends wanted to go, I agreed to accompany them.
Upon arrival at the mortuary we fell into line to meet the relatives of the deceased and to offer whatever words of comfort we could. Ahead of us in line were three young men. One was in an army uniform and the other two wore nice haircuts, dark suits and white shirts .. all very professional looking.
They approached Mrs. Miller, standing composed and smiling by her husband's casket. Each of the young men hugged her, kissed her on the cheek, spoke briefly with her and moved on to the casket. Her misty light blue eyes followed them as, one by one, each young man stopped briefly and placed his own warm hand over the cold pale hand in the casket. Each left the mortuary awkwardly,wiping his eyes.
Our turn came to meet Mrs. Miller. I told her who I was and mentioned the story she had told me about the marbles. With her eyes glistening, she took my handand led me to the casket.
"Those three young men who just left were the boys I told you about. They just told me how they appreciated the things Jim "traded" them. Now, at last,
when Jim could not change his mind about coloUr or size ... they came to pay their debt."We've never had a great deal of the wealth of this world," she
confided, "but right now, Jim would consider himself the richest man in Idaho."
With loving gentleness she lifted the lifeless fingers of her deceased husband Resting underneath were three exquisitely shined red marbles.
Moral: We will not be remembered by our words, but by our kind deeds.
Life is not measured by the breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath.
Today .. I wish you a day of ordinary miracles
......... A fresh pot of coffee you didn't make yourself
......... An unexpected phone call from an old friend
......... Green stoplights on your way to work
........ The fastest line at! the grocery store
.......... A good sing-along song on the radio
......... Your keys right where you left them
They say it takes a minute to find a special person,
An hour to appreciate them,
A day to love them,
But an entire life to forget them.
Send this to the people you'll never forget.
If you don't send it to anyone, it means you are in too much of a hurry, and that you've probably forgotten your friends.
ROLCAM.
madima answered on 07/27/04:Beautiful story! Thanks so much, ROLCAM! :=) | | Question/Answer | | HANK1 asked on 07/26/04 - DO YOU BELIEVE IN LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT ...
... or do you want me to walk by again?
HANK
madima answered on 07/27/04:Sure I do! :=)
What others label as "love at first sight" is really Eros, my favorite, primary lovestyle. It is a highly idealistic love based on physical attraction, but it's not really "love at first sight" at all, though it hits the "victim-lover" as one, or it "feels" like one.
And actually, it is not just premised on physical attraction, but on concepts and perceptions long ingrained in the subconscious mind of an individual.
An erotic lover already has a "perfect" physical love ideal instilled in her mind during her formative years. So when she sees "someone like you walking by", she does not really love on impulse. If the love object seems to "fit" into the pre-formed ideal, she responds and "falls" in love "instantly". But not, if he doesn't.
Eros has been much maligned because it's the stuff that Hollywood box office romances are made of. It's also the stuff of Broadway and newspaper headlines, etc. It's a very "dramatic" kind of love style that when spurned or "destabilized" can easily transform into mania or obsessive love - even fatal attraction :=)
Also, Eros is almost impossible to sustain. The best way to kill Eros is to marry the beloved. You get to see that your idol has feet of clay and you "fall" out of love.
The best way to keep Eros burning high is to keep the relationship unconsummated, as was the case of Dante with his Beatrice. No one is more desirable than the one so close to you whom you know you can never have. | | Question/Answer | | paraclete asked on 07/26/04 - Here's an interestin thought. The harder it is to prove something the more important it is. If you can define it easily or prove its existance easily, it probally isn't that important.
What do you think? madima answered on 07/26/04:Hi, Brian. The fact that you can define something and prove it exists easily does not make it unimportant, I believe.
How significant something is depends on how significant do you perceive it is in your own life. Perception is always an individual issue. What is extremely significant to you will be utterly insignificant to another - and defining or proving the issue, its rightness or wrongness, has nothing to do with it at all.
For instance, you can define "love" easily. Humans have given billions of definitions of the word "love" through the ages. Of course, the meaning of love has never been the same for each man.
For that reason, some will tell you the existence of love can easily proven but precisely for the same reason, some will say it is hard to prove if someone loves you. Our individual "love codes" vary and depends on so many things, among them the way we are brought up, the way love is perceived by our role models and peopel significant to us, by our culture, etc.
Nonetheless, love both as a concept and as an emotion, has always been and will always be important - I'd say for most,if not for all.
And I'd say the same is true with the concept of God. | | Question/Answer | | HANK1 asked on 07/25/04 - SPIRITUALITY:
When was the last time you leapt out of bed in the morning, excited about the day ahead? How about the last time you stopped to smell the flowers? Danced in the rain and jumped in puddles? Or felt totally at peace in your world?
HANK
madima answered on 07/25/04:Today! :=) I always do. There's a lot to be excited about life. Can't wait to see what my day's story will be like, what will unfold, whether I will make it to the banner headline or not :=)
After that, I'm excited about how my next canvas will turn out. I have a full year to complete fifty canvases for my first art exhibition. I have done 20, so far. And if you don't know it yet, around half of those canvases will be of oil paintings of angels :=)
Outside of these, I have runs, climbs and treks and dives to plan. Have to go back to the gym and the dance school - and the theater, too, if I have time. But first, I have to see about the couple of international trips next month.
I smell the flowers everyday - I have a lot of them on my windowsill :=)
And probably, I'll be dancing in the rain again this evening, when I go out of the press office. It's the rainy season here! :=) | | Question/Answer | | HANK1 asked on 07/24/04 - HOW DO YOU SPEAK TO AN ANGEL?
... that's the question!
HANK
madima answered on 07/25/04:Seriously? Dear Hank, I thought you don't normally use the messenger and go direct to the Maker, you said so in this board a couple of months before :=)
But if you ask me, the prayer to my guardian angel is part of my first prayer for the day and my last prayer for the night.
Well, not exactly "prayer to". Others will tell you not to "pray to" the messenger, you can only pray to God. But you can "pray for" angelic intercession, so they can carry your prayers to God.
I ask the angels to pray with me as well.
I speak to my angels, the same way I speak to my best friend. Because after all that's what I feel they are.
And if you will ask: Do "they" speak to me? I shall honestly tell you, yes.
But that's another story :=) | | Question/Answer | | HANK1 asked on 07/22/04 - FRIENDSHIPS: If you can identify yourselves with people, show confidence in them, cherish and consider them as being honest, perhaps this will help you survive morally and ethically. Give no thought to self-love!
Can this method of community indulgence allow you freedom from societal chaos and help you to shape for yourself a new personality if your present one is quite lousy?
HANK madima answered on 07/22/04:Dear Hank, I believe that a man can only afford to have that kind of "community indulgence" if he has enough healthy self-love to begin with.
You cannot really love others unless you love yourself. You cannot accept others unless you accept your self first and foremost. Your sense of Self is the root of awareness and the template on which your dealings with others and the whole world is based.
Remember, Jesus said: "Love thy neighbors as thy self." He never said love thy neighbors more than thou lovest thine self. Nor did he say, love only thy neighbor not thine self. If you have no regard for yourself, how can you be expected to have regard for others?
Ultimately, to set others "free", you must first be free. The blind cannot lead out the blind. | | Question/Answer | | paraclete asked on 07/19/04 - Ok the gloves are off who are you? Our worthy non-secular humanist and non-Christian made the following remark
"I AM THE ONLY ONE WHO PRESENTS MYSELF AS I REALLY AM"
This begs the question, who are the rest of you? Is this a grotesque masquarade ball? You can certainly find out who I am by following the links, but who are the rest of you. Most of you are totally anonymous, fully protected in you virtual cocoons. madima answered on 07/19/04:I am what I wish to be, dear Brian :=)
But I like to think I know myself and one thing I know is that I am many people and yet am one. I present all my faces, all my personas - archetypes, if you please, to the world because "they" are all part of me. I am them and they are me.
However, my real name is known to at least 20 AW old-timers, along with my other expert identities. A handful of them know me in person, including both founders of this site :=)
There is ONE and only one place in this AW site where the real names of some people are displayed and my real name is there also, along with a few others. Anyone can find it, if they know how to look :=) | | Question/Answer | | HANK1 asked on 07/18/04 - A GOOD ENDING!
Utopia is an ideal state where all is ordered for the best of mankind as a whole, and evils such as poverty and misery do not exist!
Are you capable of living in Utopia? (No philosophical or psychological answers, please. Just think about the above and let me know if you qualify to live in this ideal state ... or why you would get bumped the first day you take up residence!)
HANK
madima answered on 07/18/04:I chose to live in my own Utopia right now, dear HANK :=)
I always had the ability to "open" my mind to all kind of experiences that I seek to enrich my life - if I want to. I can be as close to anyone and anything as I can, if I please, I can assimilate, empathize and sympathize.
But on the other extreme, I have the ability to detach myself from things and people if I want to, to use my second and third attention. Nothing and no one can touch me if I so will it.
Poverty, pain and misery abound everywhere about me but I chose not to let these things hinder me.
I've always believed that Utopia is an ideal state we create for ourselves.
I know I am capable of living in Utopia because I make my own Utopia but I don't know about the others :=) | | Question/Answer | | CeeBee asked on 06/25/04 - Do you have a favorite pew or seat? Worshipers find the perfect spot
Week after week, many regular churchgoers return to the pew they call their own
By Shia Kapos
Special to the Chicago Tribune
Published June 25, 2004
Every Sunday finds Mary Johnson in the same seat at Emmanuel Baptist Church: the fourth pew, next to the aisle closest to the north wall.
She's been sitting there for 27 years. Twenty years earlier, when she attended a different church, she sat in a similar spot.
By now she can't quite remember how it was she chose this particular pew. But she isn't about to change her habit.
"It's comfortable. It's the best place for me," said the 83-year-old Sunday school teacher and former U.S. Postal Service employee, adjusting herself recently on the soft red cushion in her South Side church.
In churches nationwide, worshipers like Johnson can be observed taking the same pew week after week. They sit up front so they can see and hear. They sit in back because they don't want to bother anyone--or they want to make a quick exit.
And woe to the poor fair-weather visitor who doesn't see that invisible "reserved" sign.
In his early days at St. Peter's Episcopal Church on Belmont Avenue, Rev. James Dunkerley remembers there was a woman in her 70s who had been sitting in the same spot since she was a little girl.
"One day, a man sat in her pew. There was no one else in the church and she went right behind him and told him, 'You're sitting in my pew.'"
"Of course he moved," Dunkerley said.
Up until the mid-1900s, it was common for regular members of a congregation to pay the church to sit in a specific seat or pew, a practice called "pew rent." Some churches listed the family's name on the pew and also marked where the free and visitor seating was located.
Today, although seating is open, many regular churchgoers still flock to the same spot every Sunday. Sociologists who study behavior say it's not a particularly churchly phenomenon--just human nature.
"It's all about nesting and feeling comfortable in a familiar place," said Northwestern University sociologist Bernard Beck. "It's the same question you might have about students. What makes them sit in the front or the back of the classroom or sit where they do in a movie theater?"
Interviews with a variety of Chicago worshipers from different denominations indicate most people sit where they do for reasons of comfort. That's why Johnson likes her spot in the front of the church.
With a full view of the congregation and minister, "I can see and hear everything," she said.
Betty O'Toole, 72, has been sitting in the same area--the third, fourth or fifth row on the right side--at Old St. Patrick's Catholic Church in downtown Chicago for about 20 years.
"I'm short so I like to sit up front so I can see," said O'Toole, adding that it also makes it easier for her and her husband to volunteer as Eucharistic ministers. "If we don't sit up front we've got to truck up from the back of the church."
Other parishioners find they feel more comfortable in the back pews.
"I was late enough over the years that I didn't want people to notice," said Tim Gunning, 75, who sits in the second row from the back at Old St. Pat's. Now, more than a dozen years later, he still sits in the same spot, even though he usually makes it to church on time.
"I'm arthritic so I wait for the crowd to go by before I get up....I enjoy seeing people as they leave. I like the people-watching," he said.
Sitting toward the rear also allows for quick getaways.
"When I had young kids, we sat in back so we could exit quickly and not disturb anyone," said Elaine Sakellarion, 72, of St. Timothy's Catholic Church on the Northwest Side. "It just became habit."
Clergy are both amused and heartened to see the same faces in the same spots each week.
"There's a saying about getting to church early before all the best seats in the back are taken," said Rev. John Adamcio of Holy Trinity Cathedral of the Orthodox Church in America on the West Side.
He and other church leaders said the parishioners who sit closest to the pulpit tend to be those who sit in the same seats week after week.
Beck, the sociologist, said there are four basic reasons for the behavior: practicality (you want to see and hear clearly), comfort ("I'm used to it so why change"), territorial instincts (sitting in a favorite spot week after week all but marks it as your own) and status.
"Some parishioners might see those who sit up front as being more pious and those skulking in the back as less so," he said.
Parishioners and priests know there's a dark side to the pew positioning. They've heard stories of voices raised, but it's not anything they like to discuss. "It's church after all," said one woman who didn't want to talk about the tiff she saw over a cherished seat.
"People can get pretty possessive," Adamcio said. "We are creatures of habit. We like consistency, and where we sit each Sunday lends to that."
For her part, Mary Johnson said she won't interfere if a visitor who doesn't know better takes "her" seat. But if it's a fellow parishioner?
"Well," she said, smiling, "I don't mind stating my opinion."
Copyright © 2004, Chicago Tribune madima answered on 06/25/04:I always sit in the first row, nearest the aisle :=)
I like being physically close to the altar :=)
My father has always favored the first pew himself and when I was little, I discovered it had a great advantage! I can see the details of the priest's vestments and the elaborate designs on the golden tabernacle. I can inhale the fragrance of the incense and the flower offerings - among other things.
Anyway, I'm used to having the first seat in front even in class from the time I was a kid. My family name begins with "A", so I'm always number one in the seating arrangements.
But actually, I prefer not being limited by the confines of church walls. My church has always been the wilderness, the canyons, the mountains and the seas. I love praying alone, embraced by Mother Nature. I feel closer to God that way.
And there's no seating arrangement :=) | | Question/Answer | | Palanquin asked on 06/16/04 - Where are the experts? Where are the real Christian experts in this chat room? madima answered on 06/20/04:You are a real Christian expert! :=)
Welcome back, Ronnie! :=)
Good to see you again. :=) | | Question/Answer | | paraclete asked on 06/13/04 - In the interests of keeping the flow going? Just to keep us active while we await the return of our more prolific posters.
GOD'S EMAIL
One day God was looking down at Earth and saw all of the evil that was going on. He decided to send an angel down to Earth to check it out. So He called one of His best angels and sent the angel to Earth for a while. When she returned she told God, yes it is bad on Earth, 95% is bad and 5% is good.
Well, He thought for a moment and thought maybe He'd better send down a second angel to get another point of view. So God called another angel and sent him to Earth for a time too. When the angel returned he went to God and told him "Yes, the Earth is in decline. 95% is bad and 5% is good." God said this was not good.
So He decided to send e-mail to the 5% that were good. He wanted to encourage them, give them a little something to help them keep going.
Do you know what that e-mail said?
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Oh, you didn't get one either, huh? Bummer. madima answered on 06/14/04:I got mine yesterday. It said: Proceed with present mission until further notice :=) | | Question/Answer | | paraclete asked on 06/14/04 - what happened to the discussion forum? on one of my rare visits to the forum, I observe its been entirely cleaned out. I would have thought they would have purged the old postings on the Q&A too madima answered on 06/14/04:Jeez! Indeed yes! It's been swept clean! Empty!
I just took a peek right now, after I saw your posting. There must have been a handful of discussion topics there, with responses ranging from five to over 20. But if I remember right, some postings were... very personal. There were some very nasty remarks made too.
But perhaps it's time to start on a clean slate.
We can always start anew.
Each day is always a fresh beginning. | | Question/Answer | | STONY asked on 06/11/04 - ARE YOU ANYWHERE NEAR MATBALGAN? I HAVE A FRIEND IN THE PHILIPINES WHO IS A MISSIONARY AT THE LIVING WORD TRAINING CENTER, AND I HOPE I SPELLED THE CITY CORRECTLY. madima answered on 06/12/04:Oh Stony, I get it now! :=) You meant Catbalogan City! :=) It's in Samar, in the Visayas region, the smallest of our island groups. It's a little over an hour's flight from Manila.
I've been there twice and I have a friend from there. I'll ask him if he knows about the training center this coming week. We might see each other in one of the press conferences I'm covering.
So you live in a beautiful place! I've always wanted to see Florida and from there, have some dives at Bimini :=)
My boyfriend, who's an expert here and a New Yorker, has moved to the PGA headquarters in Florida to be a professional golfer just last year.
So the next time I visit the US, I'll be with him and who knows? Perhaps I can also drop by at Daytona Beach to see you in person? :=)
Have a great day! And keep in touch! :=) | | Question/Answer | | ROLCAM asked on 06/11/04 - Be a do-er !! In the Christian context what do you
understand by this phrase:-
"Be a do-er". madima answered on 06/12/04:I always pray for help but from the very start, I've always known that the best hand I can get is the one at the end of my arm :=)
So, whenever I stumble, I call on God. But at the same time, I work hard to get back on my feet by my own power :=) | | Question/Answer | | ROLCAM asked on 06/11/04 - Who can you trust? In the Christian context what do you
understand by this question:-
Who can you trust? madima answered on 06/12/04:First and foremost, I trust myself.
That way, it will be more reasonable for others to find me trustworthy.
And in turn, I will be able to trust them completely.
I believe it's a version of Jesus Christ's basic Golden Rule. :=) | | Question/Answer | | ROLCAM asked on 06/11/04 - I believe in protection!! I’m putting God’s armour on.
Have you got yours on ? madima answered on 06/12/04:Yes, I always have mine on :=)
But dear Rolcam, you must remember that you cannot be protected against the experiences that you need in order to learn from your life on earth.
Despite God's protection, bad things do happen to good people. Life never runs smoothly.
But with God's protection, somehow, you know that you will overcome whatever difficulties are thrown your way.
And of course, God also expects you to take responsibility for your destiny. God always helps those who who help themselves. | | Question/Answer | | ROLCAM asked on 06/11/04 - A believer in faith !! If you have faith as small as a mustard seed.
Would this be sufficient?
madima answered on 06/12/04:It's enough to nourish your soul. It can grow. Everything big starts from something small.
But I agree with drgade. It will not be enough to satisfy you. Men are not so easily satisfied. They are in want all the time. For them, for us, nothing is ever enough. | | Question/Answer | | paraclete asked on 06/11/04 - Just so you know this has absolutely nothing to do with Christianity. Five stars for those who can tell me what it has to do with?
Why is it considered necessary to nail down the lid of a coffin?
Why don't you ever see the headline "Psychic Wins Lottery"?
Why doesn't glue stick to the inside of the bottle?
Why is it that doctors call what they do "practice"?
Why is the man who invests all your money called a broker?
Why can't they make the whole plane out of the same substance that little indestructible black box is?
Can fat people go skinny-dipping?
If a person with multiple personalities threatens suicide, is that considered a hostage situation?
If a cow laughed, would milk come out her nose?
So what's the speed of dark?
How come abbreviated is such a long word?
Since light travels faster than sound, isn't that why some people appear bright until you hear them speak?
Ever wonder what the speed of lightning would be if it didn't zigzag?
If it's true that we are here to help others, then what exactly are the OTHERS here for?
A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a Train stops On my desk, I have a work station..
If Fed Ex and UPS were to merge, would they call it Fed UP?
If quitters never win, and winners never quit, what fool came up with, "Quit while you're ahead"?
Do Lipton employees take coffee breaks?
What hair color do they put on the driver's licenses of bald men?
Should women put pictures of missing husbands on beer cans?
Why do people seem to read the Bible a whole lot more as they get older ... they were cramming for their finals!
Why do they put pictures of criminals up in the Post Office?
What are we supposed to do . . . write to these men?
How much deeper would oceans be if sponges didn't live there?
Clones are people two.
If a man says something in the woods and there are no women there, is he still wrong?
If you can't be kind, at least have the decency to be vague.
I went for a walk last night and my kids asked me how long I'd be gone. I said, "The whole time."
After eating, do amphibians need to wait an hour before getting OUT of the water?
Why don't they just make mouse-flavored cat food?
If you're sending someone some Styrofoam, what do you pack it in?
I just got skylights put in my place. The people who live above me are furious.
Why do they sterilize needles for lethal injections?
Is it true that cannibals don't eat clowns because they taste funny?
Isn't Disney World a people trap operated by a mouse?
Whose cruel idea was it for the word "lisp" to have an "s" in it?
Why can't you find fresh sardines in the fish market?
Why do so many old people eat at cafeterias?
Why does Wendy's have square hamburgers?
Why does an "X" stand for a kiss?
Why does the word "Filipino" start with the letter F ?
Why are the copyright dates on movies and television shows written in Roman numbers? madima answered on 06/11/04:Hmmmm... let me see... It's about the fun of philosophical pun? :=)
Whatever.... I had a good laugh over it! So I think I should be the one giving you the five stars!!! :=)
| | Question/Answer | | HANK1 asked on 06/11/04 - PEOPLE!
Is it realistic to trust people in 2004?
HANK
madima answered on 06/11/04:I find it's still realistic to trust people at this time - if you use good discernment.
But if I go out on an adventure where I know I will have to entrust my life to somebody, like when choosing a climbing partner or a dive buddy, I don't trust readily.
That's the reason why I'd prefer to go solo when I can get away with it :=) | | Question/Answer | | HANK1 asked on 06/10/04 - GOD!
Describe the PHYSICAL characteristics of GOD.
HANK
madima answered on 06/11/04:Dear HANK, He is a spirit, so He is not supposed to have a physical body, though He can manifest to His prophets and to visionaries in whatever form He wants.
And of course, men can give Him physical form in their minds - "customized" to their own beliefs.
To most Christian fresco painters, God looked like the quintessential patriarch, up in the clouds, with His entourage of angels.
For my part, when I conjure His image in my mind, I always see a great Light and I feel so loved. | | Question/Answer | | HANK1 asked on 06/10/04 - WISDOM:
I just coined a phrase while writing an essay this a.m. The phrase is: "Eat my wisdom!" Is it an original?
HANK
madima answered on 06/11/04:I guess you've coined an original! :=) So far, the closest I can recall is "Eat your heart out" and "Eat your words" - after that poetic line: "He ate and drank the precious words..." | | Question/Answer | | Laura asked on 06/10/04 - Hanks post on wisdom inspired me to post this This is NOT a positive spin on the Bible at all. It puts the Bible down and makes the Word out to be rediculous. Do others agree with this author??? If so, why? God bless. Laura
THE BIBLE AND HUMANITY'S SEARCH FOR KNOWLEDGE
by Gene Kasmar
A number of bills in various state legislatures and the United States Congress seek to help increase and facilitate the knowledge of our young students through education funding increases and other teaching improvements. However, these lawmakers, and the general public as well, aren't always aware that the pursuit of knowledge is CONTRARY to Biblical teachings.
The "Holy" Bible cautions AGAINST knowledge throughout. Some typical warnings (emphasis added) include: "For what hath the wise more than the FOOL?..."(Eccl 6:8); and "...If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a FOOL, that he may be wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God..." (1 Cor 3:18-19 and Job 5:12-13); and "...Knowledge PUFFETH up...And if any man think that he knoweth ANY thing, he knoweth NOTHING yet as he ought to know." (1 Cor 8:1-2); and "Beware lest any man SPOIL you through philosophy...after the tradition of men and the rudiments of the world..." (Col 2:8).
The Bible tells us that increased knowledge just brings grief and anguish, as in, "For in much wisdom is much GRIEF: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow." (Eccl 1:17-18); and "...how dieth the wise man? as the FOOL." (Eccl 2:16); and "...thy wisdom and thy knowledge, it hath PERVERTED thee..." (Isaiah 47:10).
The Bible would have readers believe that FEAR of the Lord was the proper path to knowledge. Passages that attest to this include: "The FEAR of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom..." (Psalms 111:10 & Job 28:28) and "The FEAR of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge..." (Proverbs 1:7 & 9:10).
The Biblical god FRUSTRATES the gathering of knowledge in: "I shall destroy the wise men out of Edom, and understanding out of the mount of Esau." (Obadiah 1:8); and "He disappointeth the devices of the crafty, so that their hands cannot perform their enterprise. He taketh the wise in their own craftiness..." (Job 5:12-13); and "God leadeth counsellors away spoiled, and maketh the judges FOOLS....He removeth away the speech of the trusty, and taketh away the understanding of the aged....He taketh away the heart of the chief of the people of the earth, and causeth them to WANDER in a wilderness where there is NO way....They grope in the dark without light, and he MAKETH them to stagger like a drunken man." (Job 12:17-25).
Knowledge is hindered in: "...the wisdom of their wise men shall perish, and the understanding of their prudent men shall be HID." (Isaiah 29:14); and "I will make DRUNK her princes, and her wise men, her captains, and her rulers, and her mighty men: and they shall sleep a perpetual sleep, and not wake..." (Jeremiah 51:57).
Knowledge is punished in: "For it is written, I will DESTROY the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. Where is the wise? Where is the scribe?...hath not God made FOOLISH the wisdom of this world?... wisdom knew not God....Because the foolishness of God is WISER than men....not many wise men...are called: God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to CONFOUND the wise..." (1 Cor 1:19-27).
The Biblical God also takes pains to limit knowledge in: "For the priest's lips should KEEP knowledge, and others should seek the law at HIS mouth: for he is God's messenger." (Malachi 2:7).
Paul admits to secrets and hidden wisdom in: "But we speak the wisdom of God in a MYSTERY, even the HIDDEN wisdom...Which NONE of the princes of this world knew..." (1 Cor 2:6-8); and "...we speak, NOT in the words which man's wisdom teacheth...the natural man receiveth NOT the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned." (1 Cor 2:13-16).
Anti-intellectualism reaches new heights when we read that religious "faith" is superior to knowledge or wisdom. Typical Bible passages that promote that view include: "For it is written, I will DESTROY the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent....hath not God made FOOLISH the wisdom of this world? ..." (1 Cor 1:17-23); and "...when I came to you, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom...your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God." (1 Cor 2:1-5).
"Faith" is the very antithesis of knowledge, yet the Bible elevates it ABOVE knowledge in: "For I know nothing by myself...the Lord...will bring to light the hidden things of darkness....We are FOOLS for Christ's sake, but ye are wise in Christ..." (1 Cor 4:4-10); and "...in simplicity and godly sincerity, NOT with fleshly wisdom, but by the whim of God..." (2 Cor 1:12); and "Now faith is the substance of things HOPED for, the evidence of things NOT seen." (Hebrews 11:1).
Interestingly, although the word "faith" occurs several hundred times in the New Testament, it only occurs twice in the whole Old Testament. The reader might also wonder concerning the efficacy of "faith" over knowledge after reading: "...though a man say he hath faith, and have not works, can faith save him?.... faith without works is DEAD....Ye see then how that by works a man is justified, and NOT by faith...so faith without works is DEAD also." (James 2:14-26).
According to the creation accounts in the Book of Genesis, the desire for knowledge proved to be Adam and Eve's downfall. That little tale begins when God tells Adam (Eve had NOT been created yet!), "...of the tree of the KNOWLEDGE of good and evil, thou shalt NOT eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." (Genesis 2:16-17). After eating of the fruit, "...the eyes of them both were opened..." (Genesis 3:7). They did NOT die as God threatened, but they frightened God into realizing, "...Behold, the man is become as one of US, to KNOW good and evil: and now, LEST he put forth his hand, and take ALSO of the tree of life, and EAT, and live for ever..." (Genesis 3:22-23).
Besides restricting knowledge from people, Jehovah also constantly DECEIVES people as in: "O Lord, why hast thou MADE us to ERR from thy ways?" (Isaiah 63:17); and "...Hear ye indeed, but understand NOT; and see ye indeed, but perceive NOT. Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; LEST they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and convert, and be healed." (Isaiah 6:9-10); and "Then said I, Ah, Lord God! surely THOU hast greatly DECEIVED this people and Jerusalem...saying, Ye shall have peace..." (Jeremiah 4:10); and "...wilt God be altogether unto me as a LIAR, and as waters that fail?" (Jeremiah 15:18); and "O Lord, thou hast DECEIVED me, and I was DECEIVED..." (Jeremiah 20:7); and "If the prophet be deceived when he hath spoken a thing, I the Lord have DECEIVED that prophet..." (Ezekiel 14:9); and "Wherefore I gave them also statutes that were NOT good, and judgments whereby they should NOT live; And I POLLUTED them in their own gifts..." (Ezekiel 20:25-26).
The deceptive biblical God continues to confound and frustrate the search for knowledge in the New Testament also. Examples include: "...Jesus answered and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast HID these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes." (Matt 11:25-26 and Luke 10:21); and "...unto them that are without, all these things are done in parables: That seeing they may see, and NOT perceive; and hearing they may hear, and NOT understand..." (Mark 4:11-12); and "...Jesus himself drew near, and went with them. But their eyes were HOLDEN that they should NOT know him." (Luke 24:15-16, and the similar John 20:14 and 21:4); and "He hath BLINDED their eyes, and hardened their heart; that they should NOT see with their eyes, NOR understand with their heart..." (John 12:40, Matt 13:14-15, and Acts 28:25-27); and "For this cause God shall send them strong DELUSION, that they should believe a LIE..." (2 Thess 2:11-12).
Should ANY "Bible Believing" American citizen or lawmaker even think about countermanding the mandate and decrees found throughout the "Holy" Bible on this issue? Or should they, instead, take a common sense and rational stance on the otherwise grave risks associated with NOT facilitating and increasing our youths' knowledge and wisdom?
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This article is Copyright © 1997 by Gene Kasmar, the author of ALL the Obscenities in the Bible. So long as profit is not the motive, and this copyright notice is always included, this material may be reproduced and distributed widely in electronic and printout form.
madima answered on 06/11/04:This author is a complete example of how a fool can take words out of context to suit his misinterpretation of the scripture.
On the other hand, I suspect he's not really a fool but someone with an agenda all his own. I'd go further to say he should belong to that class of propagandists who want to foster ignorance to handicap the youth, the future voters and powerful consumers of a nation - to make them malleable to certain vested interests.
However, I do feel that the Bible cautions against knowledge without enlightenment. There is a truth in the saying: The more you know about less and less.
I found that if you are infected with the hunger to know about things, the more you study and absorb knowledge, the more you realize that there is so much more to learn. So much, that your whole lifetime will not suffice to learn all that you need to know.
For example, it is folly to say that after you get three post-graduate degrees in a subject, you know EVERYTHING about the subject. Something is always being discovered, knowledge is constantly being modified, added to or eliminated. Nowhere do you see it more than in such fields as Information Technology, where one solution reaches obsolescence in three months or less.
Same is true for knowledge about your Self. Many men have spent all their years seeking to unravel the mysteries of their emotion and motivation and at the end of their lives they realize that they have made but the tiniest ripple in an endless ocean - if at all.
Seeking knowledge for the sake of power and novelty, or for destructive means is the most dangerous of all, because the individual goes astray.
Of course, the reason why some men seek knowledge of God is because they want to be God. They become blinded by lust for power.
Some men become very vain once they gain just a bit of knowledge. They come to believe that they are all-wise, that they are the greatest. Hubris becomes their downfall.
Knowledge is also very "dangerous" because it brings about "death". But I believe that the death spoken of is not physical death, but death unto the self, the death of ego that facilitates transformation of the individual into someone better - or worse. | | Question/Answer | | arcura asked on 06/10/04 - Funny life in a Christian Family. Jesica Leonhart tells of this Christian family event.
Have you had any that may be similar?
My mom always had a problem with patience when it came to ketchup.
She couldn't stand how slowly it flowed out of the bottle, especially when it was just opened for the first time.
When I was about seven Mom opened a new bottle of ketchup and was doing her usual shaking of the bottle. Impatient as always, she asked me to answer the doorbell as she smacked the bottom of the bottle trying to entice the ketchup out. I could hear the "slap-slap-slap" of her palm on the bottle
bottom as I pulled open the front door to see Father Francis Early on the steps. "Is your mother home?" asked our pastor.
I nodded. "She's in the kitchen, hitting the bottle."
madima answered on 06/11/04:I've heard a good number but can't recall them off the bat :=)
But I've always been told, mostly by foreigner friends, that the name of the prince of the Roman Catholic Church here in my country is funny. And it's quite a pun, really.
He is a good man, and no offense meant. He rallied millions of the Philippine populace during two EDSA revolutions.
The great irony is, this man of God goes by the name of Sin.
And he never sought to change it. His full name is Jaime Cardinal Sin. (He has Chinese ancestry.)
At one time, he had ambitions to be a Pope.
So you can just imagine what it would have been like.
We will have a pope named Sin :=)
| | Question/Answer | | STONY asked on 06/09/04 - A BIT OF HUMOR TO START YOUR DAY....
It's all in how you look at it!
Compared with Gasoline
Think a gallon of gas is expensive?
This makes one think, and also puts things in perspective.
Diet Snapple 16 oz $1.29 ...... $10.32 per gallon
Lipton Ice Tea 16 oz $1.19 ...........$9.52 per gallon
Gatorade 20 oz $1.59 ..... $10.17 per gallon
Ocean Spray 16 oz $1.25 .......... $10.00 per gallon
Brake Fluid 12 oz $3.15 ........... $33.60 per gallon
Vick's Nyquil 6 oz $8.35 ... $178.13 per gallon
Pepto Bismol 4 oz $3.85 .... $123.20 per gallon
Whiteout 7 oz $1.39 ....... . $25.42 per gallon
Scope 1.5 oz $0.99 .....$84.48 per gallon
And this is the REAL KICKER...
Evian water 9 oz $1.49..........$21.19 per gallon?! $21.19 for WATER - and the buyers don't even know the source. (Evian spelled backwards is Naive.)
So, the next time you're at the pump, be glad your car doesn't run on water, Scope, or Whiteout, or God forbid Pepto Bismal or Nyquil.
Just a little humor to help ease the pain of your next trip to the pump...
madima answered on 06/09/04:Great way to end my day! :=) It's close to midnight here!
Thanks STONY! :=) And thank God, I don't have a car - yet! Gas is more expensive in my country than in the US - after government withdrew their subsidies! Besides, parking space costs more than my condo!
By the way, I only drink Evian here when it's served during press conferences :=)
When in the great outdoors, I just go to the nearest spring, cup my hands and drink my fill of authentic, unbranded mineral H2O! :=)
Have a great morning! :=) | | Question/Answer | | kindj asked on 06/07/04 - Persecution I engaged in an extraordinarily dangerous activity over the weekend, and count myself lucky and blessed to have survived the experience intact and still of relatively sound mind.
I was thinking.
I was thinking about Itsb's question regarding the ACLU's activities in the Granola State, aka California, and may have arrived at some conclusions.
I hear a lot of Christians in America worrying a lot about "persecution" by the gov't and by the citizenry. Initially I thought, "Yeah, they're right! We don't have to take this!! They're stepping all over our rights!" and all that other stuff.
And yes, it's true: Things that were once assumed and taken for granted are no longer so certain. The central gov't is beginning to dictate what may and may not appear in and on public (gov't owned) buildings. The tax-exempt status of the church is now in question. Even our schoolkids are (in some places) being told not to wear some Christian-oriented T-shirts.
I have fought and will continue to fight against SOME of these moves, but I had to stop and ask myself, "Persecution? Does it REALLY fit THAT bill?"
I don't think so.
When our churches (regardless of the ethnic makeup of them) are destroyed, then maybe.
When we are denied jobs because we are Christians, maybe.
When we can't shop at certain places or eat in certain restaurants, maybe.
When we are sought out and beaten and murdered because of our faith, then maybe.
When we are completely and totally abandoned and foresaken by mankind because of our choice to follow the Master, then maybe.
If and when all of these things occur, then I'll use the word "persecution."
But I'll use it with joy, for then I'll know for sure that the Day of the Lord is at hand.
And I'll remember the words of Paul:
Rom 8:35
35 Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
The answer of course, as all of you scholars know, is nothing, no one can ever separate us from the love of Christ.
And THAT'S what it's all about.
For those who are concerned about restrictions on your ability to evangelize (if "evangelize" is even a real word), understand this: Where the persecution is the greatest in the world right now, there the Christian faith is growing the fastest.
Those are my thoughts on this way-too-early-for-me Monday morning.
If I've missed the boat anywhere, somebody please let me know.
DK madima answered on 06/09/04:Hi, again, Dennis!
Don’t worry you spelled it right! :=)
It’s ok. You haven’t lived here long enough to know.
Sorry, you were frustrated with your “hunt”. You should have visited the white beaches of Palawan – beautiful scenery and beautiful people!
I’m curious if you’ve sampled “balut” – boiled day-old chick. It’s an acquired taste, though :=)
Who knows? Next time I visit the US, I might be able to bring you some San Mig :=)
| | Question/Answer | | hOPE12 asked on 06/08/04 - Difficult choice to make! Hello,
As a Christian I have always been taught that life is precious and to be saved at all cost. Well what if a friend was pregnant and the doctor told them that they must abort their unborn child because their own life is in danger? What would you do? What advice would you give your friend who is now six months pregnant? Would you advice the doctors to kill the baby to save your own life or would you just let whatever happens, happen? How does being a Christian play into this matter? What advice would you give a friend who asks what they should do? Please help me?
Take care,
Hope12 madima answered on 06/08/04:I will definitely advice my friend to listen to professional medical advice and abort her baby. And she should not be guilty about it.
I'm very sure if I were in her shoes, I will not hesitate to do the same.
She should have more guilt if she dies on her baby(who will have little chance of survival, anyway), on her husband and their other children, who all need her.
True, life is precious and must be saved at all cost. But every rule has an exception. This is one of them.
God, in His kindness, will understand. | | Question/Answer | | Toms777 asked on 06/07/04 - US Not Bound by Torture Laws? Can any Christian continue to support a government that endorses the use of torture?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3783869.stm
madima answered on 06/07/04:I've seen the link. I agree that the exemption to torture laws is indeed abominable and Christians should not support such a government.
But the problem is, amorality always exists in the highest level of governments. Heads of state always have "prerogatives" which could be inhuman and they could call on it anytime, "for the interest of the nation". The only reason we became aware of this atrocity in this case is because the media guys sniffed it out. But for every one such instance that is written up, millions more go unreported.
Of course, you and Christian American voters can choose not to vote for such a government. But then, there is NEVER any assurance that the government that will replace it will not be tempted do the same. Politicians' credo has always been: What you don't know won't hurt you.
And that holds true for all governments of the world, democratic or not. | | Question/Answer | | kindj asked on 06/07/04 - Persecution I engaged in an extraordinarily dangerous activity over the weekend, and count myself lucky and blessed to have survived the experience intact and still of relatively sound mind.
I was thinking.
I was thinking about Itsb's question regarding the ACLU's activities in the Granola State, aka California, and may have arrived at some conclusions.
I hear a lot of Christians in America worrying a lot about "persecution" by the gov't and by the citizenry. Initially I thought, "Yeah, they're right! We don't have to take this!! They're stepping all over our rights!" and all that other stuff.
And yes, it's true: Things that were once assumed and taken for granted are no longer so certain. The central gov't is beginning to dictate what may and may not appear in and on public (gov't owned) buildings. The tax-exempt status of the church is now in question. Even our schoolkids are (in some places) being told not to wear some Christian-oriented T-shirts.
I have fought and will continue to fight against SOME of these moves, but I had to stop and ask myself, "Persecution? Does it REALLY fit THAT bill?"
I don't think so.
When our churches (regardless of the ethnic makeup of them) are destroyed, then maybe.
When we are denied jobs because we are Christians, maybe.
When we can't shop at certain places or eat in certain restaurants, maybe.
When we are sought out and beaten and murdered because of our faith, then maybe.
When we are completely and totally abandoned and foresaken by mankind because of our choice to follow the Master, then maybe.
If and when all of these things occur, then I'll use the word "persecution."
But I'll use it with joy, for then I'll know for sure that the Day of the Lord is at hand.
And I'll remember the words of Paul:
Rom 8:35
35 Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
The answer of course, as all of you scholars know, is nothing, no one can ever separate us from the love of Christ.
And THAT'S what it's all about.
For those who are concerned about restrictions on your ability to evangelize (if "evangelize" is even a real word), understand this: Where the persecution is the greatest in the world right now, there the Christian faith is growing the fastest.
Those are my thoughts on this way-too-early-for-me Monday morning.
If I've missed the boat anywhere, somebody please let me know.
DK madima answered on 06/07/04:Hi, Dennis,
Persecution, like war, brings out the worst and the best in people. America, from what I saw of it in my stay there, is still a relatively "free" country, if you'll compare it with the rest of the world.
But I noticed your rating comment where you stated that most persecution takes place in China and in the Philippines...
Yes, persecution is terrible here in the Philippines, but the ones who had been persecuted for centuries up to now are not the Christians. It's the Muslim minority.
That's the main reason why the Muslim part of the country in the South became the breeding ground of militancy and terrorism. Muslims there had been persecuted by Christians for ages. They had been deprived, even of the natural resources of their lands, which had been exploited by Christians and used by the national government.
I've been to China too, several times, but have not stayed there long enough, so I can't tell you much about their situation. What my second generation Chinese friends who emigrated to Manila tell me is that there's persecution there, but not as much as before.
On a lighter note... You have NO right to tell us that you engaged in an extraordinarily dangerous acitivity over the weekend and then NOT tell, leaving us all hanging over the edge! :=) | | Question/Answer | | Liz22 asked on 06/07/04 - No part of this world? Can someone please clarify to me what Jesus meant by when he said' we are to be no part of this world?
Can anyone tell me where I can find this scripture? How could one live in this world but be of no part of it?
Thank you.
Liz. madima answered on 06/07/04:Hi, Liz. If you ask me personally, I would reckon that Jesus speaks of "detachment", or rather "non-attachment" to the material world.
I see this as similar to the Hindu concept of the world as "maya" or illusion/deceit. For many religions, the world is the abode of all temptations and ills.
However, people can live in this world but take no part in its evils - although it is very difficult to do and it is impossible to "remove yourself" on a consistent basis - unless you enter a hermitage or live in an island all alone by yourself.
But because you have the gift of free will, you can consciously and subconsciously "select" the experiences that will affect you. You cannot be touched by influences that you chose not to touch you.
People of other faiths have attempted this "removal" of self from the world, some by way of extreme forms of ascetism - living in the forest, subsisting on nothing but bird dung.
Monks, not just of Christianity, but of Buddhism and other faiths, have done this.
But we can all do it on our own capacities, by refusing to be obsessed with money, property as well as the approval of people significant to us and society, by accepting both our life and our death with grace. | | Question/Answer | | XCHOUX asked on 06/07/04 - Wit & Wisdom From The Week Magazine.
"State a moral case to a plowman and a professor. The former will decide it as well and often better than the latter, because he has not been led astray by artificial rules." Thomas Jefferson
"It takes less time to do a thing right than to explain why you did it wrong." HW Longfellow
"Conventionality is not morality, Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is ot to assail the last." Charlotte Bronte
Your favorite?
Comments?
madima answered on 06/07/04:My personal fave is: "Carpe diem!" Seize the day. What use is wit and wisdom, dearest CHOUX, to a dead horse? I love to live my life to the hilt in the now. It's my only time in this world. Have a great day, yourself! :=) | | Question/Answer | | Cherab asked on 06/06/04 - What is "Fundamentalism" or 'fundamentalism'?
Fundamentalism is:
1. a movement in American Protestantism that arose in the early part of the 20th century in reaction to Modernism and that stresses the infallibility of the Bible not only in matters of faith and morals but also as a literal historical record, and:
The beliefs held by those in this movement, or:
Strict adherence to any set of basic ideas or principles.
A person can be a Fundamentalist by believing in a set of basic (or fundamental) principles that are non-negotiable without being a militant fundamentalist.
Militantism is being vigorously active, aggressive, and often combative, especially in support of a cause.
Fundamentalists are those who hold in their head a fixed set of religious teachings that they believe (rightly or wrongly) are FUNDAMENTAL to their belief system.
Militants are those who hold any such firm beliefs, but who in a spirit of warfare carry the message of their own 'rightness' and everyone else's 'wrongness' out into the camps of their enemies to do battle.
They are pugnacious, embittered, unpleasant, self-righteous, selfish, ignorant, antisocial, and deluded.
Give me a dyed-in-the-wool Fundamentalist, and I can be his friend.
But, rotten-to-the-core Militants are alienated, friendless, steeped in indifference to the feelings and beliefs of others, and unapproachable except on 'battle grounds' as armed and determined enemies, and it is from their ranks that terrorists and terrorism arises.
You will recognize them because they have their scriptures in one hand: Old Testament, New Testament, Koran, Mein Kampf, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, The Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk, Thirty Years a Watchtower Slave, etcx., and other weapons that, if they ar enot fundamentally so, become weapons of division and hatred intheir hands.
In the other hand and proceeding from their mouths are the swords of Shaitan, the separator, the divider, the destroyer, the unpleasant, and the very antithesis of all things godly and good.
Not all Militants are religious in the generally accepted sense. Anyone who picks out an enemy for his or herself and pursues them in any way, it a Militant, and as such is an enemy of mankind.
They are religiose rather than religious, self-seeking rather than generous, morose rather than happy, and dull of mind rather than inltelligent.
From their mouths there never issues words of comfort or esteem for others, for they are in the tearing down business, and not in the elevating business of raising up a humanity in need of lifting.
They are sociopathic, humorless, carping creatures, whose own profound misery must be visited on everyone who is in disagreement with their philosophy of wretchedness.
They are present on this board, and are easily identifiabl;e by their constant putting down and criicizing of others, while they make little or no positive contribution.
They are as the ancient Amalekites who picked off the weakened stragglers of the Children of Israel as they journeyed through the wilderness.
There IS a differenmce between Fundamentalists and Militants, the that difference is well worth noting, lest out with the bathwater goes the valuable baby.
:)
madima answered on 06/06/04:Yes, I agree with you. Here in the South of the archipelago where I live, we have a lot of fundamentalist Muslims, but they are not the ones who plant bombs in the Christian churches and the mass transport systems. The separatist militant group does that. These are also the ones who participate directly and indirectly in the trainings conducted by the El Qaeda.
In the same way, I am not a fundamentalist, but I guess if I get to live with our marginalized indigenous peoples over a longer period of time, if I allow myself to be carried away by my emotions, I might become militant like some of my friends did, if I witness the excessive abuses being done to these folks and to their environment first hand. | | Question/Answer | | PraiseJah asked on 06/06/04 - How about some good clean fun? > Two peanuts walk into a bar
> One was a salted.
> **********
> A jump-lead walks into a bar.
> The barman says "I'll serve you, but don't start anything."
> **********
> A man walks into a bar with a slab of asphalt under his arm and says:
> "A beer please, and one for the road."
> **********
> Two aerials meet on a roof, fall in love get married.
> The ceremony wasn't much but the reception was brilliant.
> **********
> Two cows standing next to each other in a field, Daisy says to Dolly
> "I was artificially inseminated this morning."
> "I don't believe you," said Dolly.
> "It's true, no bull!"
> **********
> Two hydrogen atoms walk into a bar.
> One says, "I've lost my electron."
> The other says, "Are you sure?"
> The first replies, "Yes, I'm positive..."
> **********
> A man takes his Rottweiler to the vet and says,
> "My dog's cross-eyed, is there anything you can do for him? "
> "Well," says the vet, "let's have a look at him"
> So he picks the dog up and examines his eyes, then checks his teeth.
> Finally, he says "I'm going to have to put him down."
> "What? Because he's cross-eyed?"
> "No, because he's really heavy"
> **********
> I went to buy some camouflage trousers the other day but I couldn't find
> any.
> **********
> I went to the butchers the other day and I bet him 50 dollars that he
> couldn't reach the meat off the top shelf.
> And he said, 'no, the steaks are too high.'
> **********
> My friend drowned in a bowl of muesli.
> He was pulled in by a strong currant.
> *********> **********
> What do you call a fish with no eyes?
> A fsh madima answered on 06/06/04:Thanks PJ! It's nice to start my day with laughter! :=) | | Question/Answer | revdauphinee asked on 06/06/04 - My Prayer
"so far today ,God Ive done ok.I havent gossiped,havent lost my temper,havent been selfish,grumpy or nasty to anyone ,havent been overindulgent in any way feel free from sin tody.Im truly thankfull for that!
"But in a few minutes,God ,Im going to have get our of bed,and from then on I'm going to need a lot of help.
Thank you in Jesus name! madima answered on 06/06/04:Amen. Same here :=)
So far, so good for me today... It's 1:30 AM here on my side of the globe, I've been a saint all weekend, stranded by the storm :=)
The street below my condo is flooded and wandering to the mall or partying is out of the question. So,I have to stay cooped up in my den, trying to finish the 5 canvases of angels I've started painting a month ago and taking short breaks, reading, writing ans surfing the net when the smell of turpentine and linseed oil becomes overpowering.
Glancing out of my window at the raging storm, I fantasize about my coming trip to Bali two weeks from now. Hopefully, it will not be raining there, so I can dive and trek as much as I please.
But in a few hours, I have a deadline to meet... many deadlines to meet, in fact. From the moment I make the first call for my first interview of the day, I'll surely need a lot of help from Upstairs! :=)
So help me, God! :=)
| | Question/Answer | | stiamo_bene_insieme asked on 06/05/04 - Writing a letter to corporations to give money for trip. Hi
I bunch from our school are planning to go to Germany next summer 2005 for World Youth Day. We are hoping to get a maximum of 40 people to go. Though there is not much left, we need funds. We started on selling a community cookbook for $15 and we kind of doing poorly and we are resorting to other means to get funds like writing a letter to big coorperations like banks and other religious organizations to donate money for our trip.
Right now we don' have much just $75 and we are looking around $25000.00. We know that this is alot but we are trying to get as many money as we can.
My question is how can I write this letter, how do I approach them, what things can I say in the letter?
Thanks
help_youth madima answered on 06/06/04:Big corporations don't usually shell out cash if they know they will not get anything out of it, by way of promoting their corporate image or offering them tax shelter - at the very least.
You'll have better chances if you can get the endorsement of the top guys at the US embassy and at the German embassy on your planned letter - if you are really bent on soliciting donations.
And it will be better if you trim down the number of people in your party. Forty is simply too much. You'll be very lucky to get ten in. Perhaps three to five people will be more reasonable.
Better appeal to your prospective donors' sense of "corporate citizenship" and "corporate responsibility". It is also important that the people in the party you are sending out are top achievers, with excellent academic track records, otherwise the companies are not likely to find any merit in bothering to sponsor them. You must include their bio data with your solicitation.
Address the solicitation letter to the President of the firm (and please see to it that you get his name right, spelling and all).
Take note that unless you or people in your group know the President personally and can hand-carry the letter (or people at the embassy are willing to deliver it to him for you), your letter is likely to end up in the trash bin. Big companies get hundreds of solicitation letters like yours every day.
Print two copies of your letter, with a copy furnished for the head of the company's Public Relations Department/Corporate Communication or its equivalent. Give the 2 letters to the PR guy. He is the cordon sanitaire. Normally, he weeds out the solicitation letters and they will go through him even if you mail or send it directly to the President.
Then, you pray. :=) | | Question/Answer | | XCHOUX asked on 06/05/04 - Ten Most Dangerous Foods What are the ten foods most likely to contain bacteria of some sort that will cause illness? These are pretty easy, so how about three examples?? madima answered on 06/06/04:I love dangerous foods - they are the most delicious! :=)
Sushi and sashimi are so yummy! Salmon and tuna sashimi, specifically. Friends of mine have contracted amoebiasis from such raw fish treats, but I haven't - yet.
I also love the raw insides of freshly caught sea urchins. They taste like crab roe :=) (Of course, others usually get an upset stomach from these - but so far, I've been lucky!)
And I love raw seaweeds with a dash of salt and vinegar, garnished with onions and tomato slices. If freshly harvested the seaweeds shouldn't give you trouble, but if they are hauled in from polluted seas or are contaminated by handling, you're at risk.
I came down with food poisoning thrice last year from consuming raw shellfish. But I haven't learned :=) | | Question/Answer | | arcura asked on 06/04/04 - History - A conflict resolved. Several centuries ago, the Pope decreed that all the Jews had to convert or leave Italy. There was a huge outcry from the Jewish community, so the Pope offered a deal. He would have a religious debate with the leader of the Jewish community. If the Jews won, they could stay in Italy. If the Pope won, they would have to leave.
The Jewish people met and picked an aged but wise Rabbi, Rabbi Moishe, to represent them in the debate. However, as Moishe spoke no Italian and the Pope spoke no Yiddish, they all agreed that it would be a "silent" debate.
On the chosen day, the Pope and Rabbi Moishe sat opposite each other for a full minute before the Pope raised his hand and showed three fingers. Rabbi Moishe looked back and raised one finger. Next the Pope waved his finger around his head. Rabbi Moishe pointed to the ground where he sat. The Pope then brought out a communion wafer and a chalice of wine. Rabbi Moishe pulled out an apple.
With that, the Pope stood up and declared that he was beaten, that Rabbi Moishe was too clever and that the Jews could stay. Later, the Cardinals met with the Pope, asking what had happened.
The Pope said, "First I held up three fingers to represent the Trinity. He responded by holding up one finger to remind me that there is still only one God common to both our beliefs. Then, I waved my finger to show him that God was all around us. He responded by pointing to the ground to show that God was also right here with us. I pulled out the wine and wafer to show that God absolves us of all our sins. He pulled out an apple to remind me of the original sin. He had me beaten and I could not continue."
Meanwhile the Jewish community was gathered around Rabbi Moishe. "How did you win the debate?" they asked. "I haven't a clue," said Moishe.
"First he said to me that we had three days to get out of Italy, so I said to him, Up yours! Then he tells me that the whole country would be cleared of Jews and I said to him, we're staying right here." "And then what," asked a woman. "Who knows?" said Moishe. "He took out his lunch so I took out mine."
madima answered on 06/05/04:You had me rolling off my chair! :=) Indeed, the power of miscommunication! :=) | | Question/Answer | | ROLCAM asked on 06/05/04 - Divergent Views ?? Lucius Annaeus Seneca "the Younger," Roman stoic philosopher, writer, and politician (4-65).
"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful."
What say you?
madima answered on 06/05/04:Not really divergent. The common people always need to believe something to make their lives worth living. The wise love to question everything. And rulers exploit both of them.
Of course, the most powerful rulers were the god-kings of ancient times, the ones who made the people believe that they were gods or the sons of the gods. The Incas did that. The Shinto religion is based on that - the Emperor being the sun god. | | Question/Answer | | arcura asked on 06/04/04 - Why does God allow things like this to happen? This is story is real!
Next time you have a bad day at work...think of this guy.
Rob is a commercial saturation diver for Global Divers in Louisiana. He performs underwater repairs on offshore drilling rigs.
Below is an E-mail he sent to his sister. She then sent it to radio station 103.2 on FM dialing Ft. Wayne, Indiana, who was sponsoring a worst job experience contest.
Needless to say, she won.
Hi Sue:
Just another note from your bottom-dwelling brother. Last week I had a bad day at the office. I know you've been feeling down lately at work, so I thought I would share my dilemma with you to make you realize it's not so bad after all.
Before I can tell you what happened to me, I first must bore you with a few technicalities of my job. As you know, my office lies at the bottom of the sea. I wear a suit to the office. It's a wetsuit. This time of year the water is quite cool. So what we do to keep warm is this: We have a diesel powered industrial water heater.
This $20,000 piece of equipment sucks the water out of the sea. It heats it to a delightful temperature. It then pumps it down to the diver through a garden hose, which is taped to the air hose. Now this sounds like a darn good plan, and I've used it several times with no complaints. What I do, when I get to the bottom and start working, is take the hose and stuff it down the back of my wetsuit. This floods my whole suit with warm water. It's like working in a Jacuzzi.
Everything was going well until all of a sudden, my butt started to itch. So, of course, I scratched it. This only made things worse. Within a few seconds my butt started to burn. I pulled the hose out from my back, but he damage was done. In agony I realized what had happened.
The hot water machine had sucked up a jellyfish and pumped it into my suit. Now since I don't have any hair on my back, the jellyfish couldn't stick to it.
However, the crack of my butt was not as fortunate. When I scratched what I thought was an itch, I was actually grinding the jellyfish into the crack of my butt. I informed the dive supervisor of my dilemma over the communicator.
His instructions were unclear due to the fact that he, along with five other divers, were all laughing hysterically.
Needless to say I aborted the dive. I was instructed to make three agonizing in-water decompression stops totaling thirty-five minutes before I could reach the surface to begin my chamber dry decompression.
When I arrived at the surface, I was wearing nothing but my brass helmet. As I climbed out of the water, the medic, with tears of laughter running down his face, handed me a tube of cream and told me to rub it on my butt as soon as I got in the chamber. The cream put the fire out, but I couldn't poop for two days because my butt was swollen shut.
So, next time you're having a bad day at work, think about how much worse it would be if you had a jellyfish shoved up your butt.
Now repeat to yourself, "I love my job, I love my job, I love my job".
madima answered on 06/04/04:That's a great one! Thanks arcura! And thank heavens I haven't done cold water diving just yet to use a hot water hose!
I've encountered jellyfish here, every time I dive - pretty, gossamer dancers pulsing before my dive mask. The one time I was stung was on the neck, when I refused to don a wetsuit because tropical waters are warm enough and the cold currents at the bottom are tolerable. When I surfaced, it looked like I had a cluster of love bites! :=)
But oh, I love my sea adventures! :=) | | Question/Answer | | excon asked on 06/02/04 - Fun, or the lack thereof.
C’mon Christians tell me the truth.
What is it that you have against people enjoying their selves. Sex seems to be a preoccupation with you people. People can’t read about it, watch it on TV, learn about it in school, and it has to be done the way the church decides it should. Drugs? Can’t do that – its way too much fun. Alcohol? Well, that’s what we use to get high with, and we shouldn’t, but we’re gonna anyway, and you can’t stop us. But we can stop you from using the drugs you like.
So, what do have against fun?
excon
madima answered on 06/02/04:I don't know about the others. But I don't allow anything to stand between me and my idea of fun :=)
I have no hang-ups about sex but I don't like getting involved with married guys and never had. My personal preference - I don't like to do unto others what I don't want to be done unto me. In all honesty, I love my father but I know I'm going to kill him if he leaves mama for another woman. So far, he has never shown any inclination to do so in all the years of their marriage.
I don't do drugs. Never did, though I don't preach to my friends who like to do it. I grew up in the theater and most people there experiment with drugs or use it regularly. But I was never tempted. I get more than enough natural high from people and things and experiences I love. Just being alone with nature is enough to elevate me to the peak of ecstasy for days. Why get high artificially when I can do it naturally without any expense on my pocket and on my body?
Same reason I've never touched alcohol. I don't need an artificial high. Besides, I'm in a tropical country. The heat here is already more than flesh and blood can stand, so why jack up my body temperature still more? I'd rather have iced water than wine anytime of the day - or night.
But if that's your idea of fun and it does not do you or the people around you any harm, why, go for it! :=) | | Question/Answer | | paraclete asked on 06/02/04 - Just a little wisdom? GREAT TRUTHS THAT LITTLE CHILDREN HAVE LEARNED:
1) No matter how hard you try, you can't baptize cats.
2) When your Mom is mad at your Dad, don't let her brush your hair.
3) If your sister hits you, don't hit her back. They always catch the second person.
4) Never ask your 3-year old brother to hold a tomato.
5) You can't trust dogs to watch your food.
6) Don't sneeze when someone is cutting your hair.
7) Never hold a Dust-Buster and a cat at the same time.
8) You can't hide a piece of broccoli in a glass of milk.
9) Don't wear polka-dot underwear under white shorts.
10) The best place to be when you're sad is Grandpa's lap.
GREAT TRUTHS THAT ADULTS HAVE LEARNED:
1) Raising teenagers is like nailing Jell-O to a tree.
2) Wrinkles don't hurt.
3) Families are like fudge...mostly sweet, with a few nuts.
4) Today's mighty oak is just yesterday's nut that held its ground.
5) Laughing is good exercise. It's like jogging on the inside.
6) Middle age is when you choose your cereal for the fibre, not the toy.
GREAT TRUTHS ABOUT GROWING OLD
1) Growing up is mandatory; growing old is optional.
2) Forget the health food. I need all the preservatives I can get.
3) When you fall down, you wonder what else you can do while you're down there.
4) You're getting old when you get the same sensation from a rocking chair that you once got from a roller coaster.
5) It's frustrating when you know all the answers but nobody bothers to ask you the questions.
6) Time may be a great healer, but it's a lousy beautician.
7) Wisdom comes with age, but sometimes age comes alone.
THE FOUR STAGES OF LIFE:
1) You believe in Santa Claus.
2) You don't believe in Santa Claus.
3) You are Santa Claus.
4) You look like Santa Claus.
SUCCESS:
At age 4 success is . not peeing in your pants.
At age 12 success is . . . having friends.
At age 16 success is . . . having a drivers license.
At age 35 success is . . . having money.
At age 50 success is . . . having money.
At age 70 success is . . . having a drivers license.
At age 75 success is . . . having friends.
At age 80 success is . . not peeing in your pants.
Pass this on to someone who could use a laugh.
Always remember to forget the troubles that pass your way; BUT NEVER forget the blessings that come each day.
and my question, how much of this can you identify with? madima answered on 06/02/04:On the contrary, I did try baptizing the family cats when I was six. And unknown to my parents, I smuggled my favorite kitty in my pocket in church. After the mass, I sneaked in the sacristy and asked the priest to bless him - officially. And it was done :=)
At least, our felines were very respectful and never chattered during prayer time. If you had Siamese cats, you know how frisky and "talkative" they can be :=)
So far, I was able to trust the family dogs to watch our food. (They were trained never to go up on the table.) :=)
But yes, I've never succeeded hiding broccoli in my milk :=) | | Question/Answer | | hOPE12 asked on 06/02/04 - Something to think about and smile! Hello Experts,
Living on Earth is expensive,
but it does include a free trip
around the sun every year.
How long a minute is
depends on what side of the
bathroom door you're on.
Birthdays are some thing everyone dreads,
but thing about it, the more you have,
the longer you live.
Happiness comes through doors you
didn't even know you left open.
Ever notice that the people who are late
are often much jollier
than the people who have to wait for them?
If Wal-Mart is lowering prices every day,
how come nothing is free yet?
You may be only one person in the world,
but you may also be the world to one person.
Some mistakes are too much fun
to only make once.
Don't cry because it's over;
smile because it happened.
We could learn a lot from crayons:
some are sharp, some are pretty,
some are dull, some have weird names,
and all are different colors....but
they all exist very nicely in the same box.
A truly happy person is one who
can enjoy the scenery on a detour.
Have an awesome day, and
know that someone
who thinks you're great
has thought about you today!..
"And that person was me.".....
Please don't keep this message
to yourself.....send it to those
who mean so much to you.... "NOW"..
Working for God on earth does not pay much,
but His Retirement plan is Great!
Take care,
Hope12 madima answered on 06/02/04:Thanks for the message, Hope12. Glad to know you're staying with us. I have a free trip around the sun every moment. The colors in my paintbox are real and they are all alive. Thanks be to God! :=) | | Question/Answer | | paraclete asked on 06/02/04 - A beautiful message my son has just gladdened my heart by reminding me God is in the little things
>Subject: This is a beautiful beautiful message...
>Don't stress about the small stuff!!
>
>After Sept. 11th, one company invited the remaining members of other companies,who had been decimated by the attack on the Twin Towers to share their
available office space.
>
At a morning meeting, the head of security told stories of why these people were alive......
>
>and all the stories were just: The 'L I T T L E' things.
>
>As you might know, the head of the company got in late that day because his son started kindergarten.
>
>Another fellow was alive because it was his turn to bring donuts.
>
>One woman was late because her alarm clock didn't go off in time.
>
>One was late because of being stuck on the NJ Turnpike because of an auto accident.
>
>One of them missed his bus.
>
>One spilled food on her clothes and had to take time to change.
>
>One's car wouldn't start.
>
>One went back to answer the telephone.
>
>One had a child that dawdled and didn't get ready as soon as he should have.
>
>One couldn't get a taxi. The one that struck me was the man who put on a new pair of shoes that morning, took the various means to get to work but before
>he got there, he developed a blister on his foot.
>
>He stopped at a drugstore to buy a Band-Aid............. That is why he is alive today.
>
>Now when I am stuck in traffic, miss an elevator, turn back to answer a ringing telephone ... all the little things that annoy me.
>
>I think to myself, this is exactly where I'm supposed to be at this very moment.
>
>Next time your morning seems to be going wrong, the children are slow getting dressed, you can't seem to find the car keys, you hit every traffic
light, don't get mad or frustrated; someone is watching over you.
>
>May that someone continue to bless you with all those annoying little things and may you remember their possible purpose.
>
>Pass this on to someone else, if you like.
>
>There is NO LUCK attached. If you delete this, it's okay.
so what do you think how many thousands are alive because God is in the little things. And if there is cynic who dares to say coincidence, I will just say when I see coincidence I see God at work
madima answered on 06/02/04:Just last week, I refused to take the Wednesday morning flight from Manila to Singapore. (I wouldn't mention the name of the airline.) I just had that unexplainable urgent feeling that I had to get an earlier flight and argued with my sponsors to re-book me ahead of the main group. That flight I was supposed to take nearly crashed and all my colleagues who were in it were badly traumatized.
That was my most recent "coincidence", so far. If I recount the others, we could go on forever :=)
By the way, before every flight, and for that matter, before each day begins and ends, I always say a prayer :=)
God and His angels are always at work :=) | | Question/Answer | | ROLCAM asked on 06/02/04 - Should the Church have a say? Should the Church have a say?
The Church is often caught between rock and a hard place when it comes to discussing issues like the economy and issues of a political nature and comes under fire from two sides. There are those who want her to be more vociferous and accuse the Church of mincing words or muffled silence.
What are your views?
madima answered on 06/02/04:I would prefer that there be a separation between the church and the state. That should be the ideal. Of course, for practical reasons, it almost always never happens.
It is to the benefit of the church to call the shots in national politics as well as business and sees to it that it has a say, directly or indirectly. And it does.
The church - every church, I believe, is just as hungry for power and money - and all the benefits, (expansion among them), that come thereof.
In my country, religion and politics - and business come together. The line of delineation blurs conveniently. One always uses the other.
In fact, the Catholic Church's meddling with politics produced two EDSA revolts and seated two lady presidents - but it did not improve the life for the masses. Not really. While our economic managers maintained THAT boosted the confidence of investors and produced growth in our gross national product, up to now, more than half of our over 80 million people live below the poverty line.
However, although over 80 per cent of our population is Catholic, meddling with politics is not confined to the majority religious group.
One Protestant denomination, the "Iglesia ni Cristo" (Church of Christ) is courted by all politicians every election time to guarantee a solid bloc of several million voters. It is the head of that church who "dictate" every candidate that its members will vote for, from the President of the country to the councilor in the local government level. Every member of that church obey the dictate, without question.
The motto of centuries ago holds true to this very day: "God, gold and glory". And in the natural order of things, the first comes as the last. | | Question/Answer | | ROLCAM asked on 05/30/04 - Comments at a Funeral. (JOKE)! Three friends die in a car accident and they go to an orientation in heaven. They are all asked, "When you are in your casket and friends and family are mourning you, what would you like to hear them say about you? The first guy says,"I would like to hear them say that I was a great doctor of my time, and a great family man." The second guy says, "I would like to hear that I was a wonderful husband and school teacher which made a huge difference in our children of tomorrow." The last guy replies, "I would like to hear them say ... Look, He's Moving!" madima answered on 05/31/04:I think, I'll say the same thing as the last guy! :=) | | Question/Answer | | Bobbye asked on 05/29/04 - PLEASE PRAY! It was just announced on national news that terrorists have taken hostages in Saudi Arabia and some are Americans. The Prince of Saudi Arabia is in the U.S. and was on the 'phone with the news media. PLEASE PRAY FOR ALL HOSTAGES, REGARDLESS OF NATIONALITY!
Thanks. bobbye madima answered on 05/29/04:I shall include all the hostages in my prayers, bobbye. Thanks for informing us. | | Question/Answer | | Cherab asked on 05/21/04 - Does God use our sorrows to help us grow?
I used to wonder why the Lord required the sacrifice of a broken heart.
Psalms 34:18
The LORD is close to them who have a broken heart; and saves those whose spirit is contrite.
I couldn't understand why He would want us to wade through sorrow. Now I believe that the very purpose of our adversities, even tests like he put Abraham through, are to break our hearts in a way that makes them open to the Lord’s light and guidance. The gospel cannot be written in our heart unless our hearts are open.
Can our most difficult adversities, even our broken dreams bring the kind of broken heart that is open to the light of Christ?
Trials do not have to crush our hearts. They can open them to the Light of Christ without destroying them.
But do we have the choice between a broken heart and a hard, closed, bitter heart. Why do your think some choose to open their hearts and others choose to close them?
Instead of turning us away from Him, our darkest hours can open our hearts to the golden light of the Lord’s love, wisdom, comfort and direction.
I don't think God piles sorrow on use, but He understands what life is like for us and watches to see how we respond to trials and will use our positive responses to bless us.
What do you think about our trials and disappointments?
madima answered on 05/21/04:Trials and disappointments are the stuff of everyday life. They serve to refine us, to make us pause and reconsider. I don’t think God will give us a trial we cannot overcome.
Everyone needs to go through the dark night of the soul before they find enlightenment. You cannot see Light without the darkness. Darkness and Light coexist in all men.
| | Question/Answer | | Cherab asked on 05/18/04 - Psychology and religion
Most Christians seem to take the view that the individual has free choice in all matters during their life time when they are of an age to be responsible for choosing from the life choices that are available to them and they are thus also responsible for the sins they commit volitionally.
However, since Sigmuind Freud, the view of psychologists has been that most choices are profoundly influenced by forces that are below the level of consciousness, and that without our knowledge they intrude their pressures on our thinking and impinge on what we once thought were conscious choices.
My questions is,
Who is right: those religions that apportion to humanity total freedom of will, or those psychologists who say that our predilictions are determined by a mental force that lurks in the antipodes of the mind, beyond conscious thought and which is solely concerned with the preservation of the self at all costs?
Who is right, and why do you say so?
madima answered on 05/19/04:In my opinion, neither is absolutely right.
The religions I know, Christianity among them (unfortunately), maintains that man is born with free will although the ego (that develops under these same religions) shackles the conscious mind and demonizes the workings of the unconscious.
It is actually the conscious mind that is most concerned with its survival. It is the ego that tries to “kill” what it thinks will be unacceptable to people and society whose approval it craves and sublimates those undesirable to its personal “myth” into the darkness of the unconscious mind – the Other, the Shadow.
You must have come across Fritz Kunkel. He believes that the ego is the devil not the shadow and said, “In a showdown, God is always on the side of the shadow, not the ego.” For all its difficulties, the shadow is closer to the creative source.
On the other hand, psychologists are obsessed with the workings of the unconscious and I don’t blame them. Even to me, the unconscious mind is so much more exciting because it holds the secret to so many things – the ability to create and destroy, the authentic self, the workings of the “collective” unconscious and the superconscious.
And yet, psychologists sometimes attribute too much to the subconscious. Even in their diligent lifelong studies, they can only skim the surface of the unconscious mind, that vast, immeasurable ocean.
I guess the reality is, the healthy individual strikes a balance between the life of his ego and his shadow, acknowledging the needs of both. The conscious mind enables one to cope with the concerns of waking life while the subconscious sorts out its issues, usually in the dreaming. Both aspects of the Self stay within their designated boundaries, in a peaceful coexistence.
If not, you’ll have another case of Jekyll and Hyde.
| | Question/Answer | | Uni-Agdistis asked on 05/18/04 - ....and speaking of angels and marriages ..... GUARDIAN ANGEL
A man was walking in the street when he heard a voice: "Stop! Stand still! If you take one more step, a brick will fall down on your head and kill you."
The man stopped and a big brick fell right in front of him. The man was astonished.
He went on, and after awhile he was going to cross the road. Once again the voice shouted: "Stop! Stand still! If you take one more step a car will run over you and you will die."
The man did as he was instructed, just as a car came careening around the corner, barely missing him.
"Where are you?" the man asked. "Who are you?"
"I am your guardian angel," the voice answered.
"Oh yeah?" the man asked. "And where the hell were you when I got married?"
madima answered on 05/18/04:Uni! You had me in stitches so early in the morning! :=)
I'd reckon that guy had a case of functional deafness to his guardian angel's voice when he married - because his wife had the looks and body of a Miss Universe!
And I bet it was St. Rafael who spoke to the Rabbi. Of all God's angels, he's the only one known to have a sense of humor.
As for the e-mail, sorry, I didn't get it either.
By the way, I think I see your angel. He's the one who led me over to see your Q. And he's more handsome than John Travolta! :=)
| | Question/Answer | | Cherab asked on 05/18/04 - Do you dare to challenge your particular religious authorities?
Peter Boyd says,
"Religious tradition is a source of information of an utterly different kind from the scientific acquisition of empirical data, or the rational development of theories to explain empirical observations.
"Tradition rests on authority, rather than evidence. It preserves the claims of some original figure of authority, without subjecting those claims to scientific testing or critical appraisal."
Is he right?
If you think he is, dare you challenge your own religious gurus and authorities, and, if so, in what ways and about what particular things would you challenge them?
(Please bear in mind that it is accepted that most religious teachings cannot be subjected to scientific scrutiny or laborotary experiemt, but they can be challenged on intellectual, scriptural, and sociological grounds.)
[Five asterisks for good taste and appropriateness to the subject of the question - less for less!]
:)
madima answered on 05/18/04:Yes, I feel Peter Boyd is right. Religion is based on faith. Science is based on palpable, empirical data.
And if you ask me if I dare to challenge particular religious authorities, I'd say yes.
I'm not dogmatic and a number of dogmas of my own church,I don't believe in. I don't expect the church to be perfect. But I believe in God.
However, the areas where I challenge the authorities of my church are those where I feel there's an infringement on individual free will such as the use of contraceptives, abortion, divorce and homosexuality.
While I seek the counsel of the church in some matters, for the most part, it's to my conscience that I rely on to tell me what's right and what's wrong. The voice of God speaks there. | | Question/Answer | | Petesharky asked on 05/18/04 - Gay Marriage 2 Gay marriage is a choice that should be left to the participants. No one judges a straight couple who marries even if the guy is 5' tall and weighs 500lbs and the girl is a stunning beauty queen. It is not the business of the Church especially who houses so many closet homosexuals that just never knew how to handle their feelings and went into priest hood only to take out their frustrations on young boys and other priests.
What business is it of yours who gets married to who? What gives you or anyone else the right to say what is right or wrong, and to use the Bible to promote your hatred and prejudice?
Ignorant and stupid is no way to go through life.
Who are you to decide who can be happy and who can't just because you think what they are doing is wrong? I am sure I will get a load of quotes from the bible so I will post the first 2.
"Let ye who lives without sin cast the first stone."
How about
"Judge not lest ye be judged."
My oldest brother who is 14 years older than me is gay and if he came home tomorrow and said that he was getting married I would be happy for him.
Pete
madima answered on 05/18/04:Pete, I think you've given enough quotes from the Bible to answer your own question :=)
I wish your brother great happiness as well. He deserves it. Everyone does, gay or not. | | Question/Answer | | ROLCAM asked on 05/18/04 - Did you realise ?? Knowledge of angels.
We are surrounded by angels. If we stop to think about it, wherever we go, there is no more popular image in art than an angel. From the awe-inspiring cherubim and seraphim with their blinding lights and multiple wings to splendidly handsome archangels encased in glittering armour to cascades of chubby, cheeky, pink and white putti tumbling off billowing clouds in a tangle of diaphanous drapery, angels are all over the place; not only in our churches but in our homes and on the streets!
Do you know that each of us has a guardian angel?
madima answered on 05/18/04:You are most welcome, ROLCAM, :=)
Most of the angels' names end it "El" but not all. "El" means light. Angels are beings of great light. The Light is of course equated with God, so others translate the suffix "el" as "of God".
For example, the name Michael is roughly translated to mean "who is as God" because among the angels, he is the one who most resemble Him; Uriel is "the fire of God" Baraquiel is "the lightning of God" Rafael, "the medicine of God" because he is a great healer.
But some angels' names do not end in "El", like Metatron. | | Question/Answer | | ROLCAM asked on 05/18/04 - More about angels. !! How much do you personally know about them?
Are you personally conscious that they are more than
messengers?
Do you feel protected in any way by your guardian angel?
ROLCAM. madima answered on 05/18/04:Not as much as I would want to know, unfortunately.
As far as I know, there are 3 hierarchies of angels, each with 3 choirs. Those in the first 2 hierarchies - the seraphim, the cherubim, the thrones, the dominions, the virtues and the powers - really don't have much to do with men. The principalities take care of nations and groups of people and the earth. The archangels "supervise" the angels - the choir of angels whom God sends down to men as His messengers.
Among countless other things, angels bear the gift of God's love and knowledge.
I dream of angels often and I feel their presence constantly. I rely on my guardian angel to protect me every day, every moment of my life.
In fact, I feel the only reason I was able to face so much danger and survive the "adventures" I had in life is because an angel of God is always at my side.
So, I have consecrated myself to God and His Holy Angels under the rite of the Opus Sanctorum Angelorum, which has been sanctioned by the Roman Catholic Church.
| | Question/Answer | | ROLCAM asked on 05/18/04 - Did you realise ?? Knowledge of angels.
We are surrounded by angels. If we stop to think about it, wherever we go, there is no more popular image in art than an angel. From the awe-inspiring cherubim and seraphim with their blinding lights and multiple wings to splendidly handsome archangels encased in glittering armour to cascades of chubby, cheeky, pink and white putti tumbling off billowing clouds in a tangle of diaphanous drapery, angels are all over the place; not only in our churches but in our homes and on the streets!
Do you know that each of us has a guardian angel?
madima answered on 05/18/04:Yes. I've always known that since I was a child and for the 7th year now I have maintained my devotion to God's Holy Angels.
I begin each day with a prayer and an invocation to God, His Angels and my own guardian. And I close each day with a prayer of thanks.
In fact, right now, I am doing oil paintings of each of the 7 archangels - as my personal tribute. I am painting them as I "see" them in my mind.
When I'm done, I think I'll give them to my father as his birthday gift. He was named after St. Michael, the Archangel. And he is God's gift to me, my angel on earth.
| | Question/Answer | | Cherab asked on 05/17/04 - Is it time for yet another change in respect of certain matters taught in the Bible? There can be a very few Bible believing Christians who continue to believe the Bible when it comes to the question of the sun rising and setting.
It would be disingenuous to suggest that God didn't know that the earth went around the sun, but it is clear that those who wrote the Bible believed in a geocentric universe in common with the rest of the world.
Joshua 10:13
And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies. Not this written in the book of Jasher? So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day.
Habakkuk 3:11
The sun moon stood still in their habitation: at the light of thine arrows they went, at the shining of thy glittering spear.
Psalms 113:3
From the rising of the sun unto the going down of the same the LORD'S name to be praised.
Isaiah 45:6
That they may know from the rising of the sun, and from the west, that none beside me.
Malachi 1:11
For from the rising of the sun even unto the going down of the same my name great among the Gentile
The inspired Gospellers did not know they were unscientific:
Mark 16:2
And very early in the morning the first of the week, they came unto the sepulchre at the rising of the sun.
Even Jesus apparently did not know that the earth revolved on its own axis and also about the sun, for he speaks of an heliocentric universe.
Matthew 5:45
That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise
Galileo Galilei was forced to recant his discover that the earth moved around the sun, because the Christian church believed what was taught in the Bible that the earth stood still and the sun revolved around it, although you will be hard pressed to find a Christian who can tie his own shoelaces who continues to believe what the Bible teaches on that subject.
Many Christians were eventually forced to accept that Biblical creation is not scientific, although it took time, but most came around to the scientific explanation. I know some still cling to the Creationism of Genbesis 1-3, but a preponderance of believers have assigned those chapters, and others, to the "Mythical" file. amnd seem no worse for it.
With these example in mind, I ask for answers to two questions:
Question One:-
Because Christianity has to some extent had to become used to accepting alternate explanations for certain phenomena described in God's Word, the Bible, what cognisance or consideration ought Christians to give to the possibility that homosexuality is genetically determined, even if that determination is no more than a predisposition?
Question Two:-
Further, what explanation can Bible believers propose for cases of patent physiological hermaphroditism?
Full marks for answers on the point and free from insult or other abuse.
madima answered on 05/18/04:1. Most dogmatic Christians I know will not even consider and automatically cite the Bible’s prohibition against homosexuality. I think that’s to be expected. Theology is worlds apart from Genetics, dogma can never see eye to eye with science.
Personally, I have nothing against homosexuals.
I think homosexuality can be caused both by genetics and the environment that the individual is brought up in. Of course, ultimately, it’s still the individual’s choice. I have known of gays who were able to “reform” after years of undergoing intensive psychotherapy.
Anyway, I’ve come across one study years ago saying that genetics and “chemical tampering” with the fetus by way of the mother’s ingesting some type of drugs can also “predispose” her offspring to homosexuality. I can no longer remember the name of the medical journal and the author of the study, but if I remember correctly, it cited a hormone drug - “Gestex”– which is prescribed for women with amenorrhea (though it is well known that others take the drug in large amounts to abort their babies). Researchers maintained it can alter the chromosomal structure of the fetus and result in psychological deviations such as homosexuality. And that’s just one study.
2. Again, I’m not inclined to seek a religious explanation for a scientific aberration. I don't think the Bible mentioned hermaphroditism. But I will not condemn a hermaphrodite. He/she did not choose to be born as such and he/she has the right to “choose” whatever gender he/she would be happy in – if the parents or the doctors have not beaten him/her to such a choice – because they could, at his/her birth.
| | Question/Answer | | mr_internet asked on 05/17/04 - "Girl weds dog to break 'evil spell'" BBC News:
"A nine-year-old tribal girl in eastern India has married a stray dog as part of a ritual to ward off an 'evil spell' on her, Indian newspapers have reported."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/3004930.stm
My question is:
When are the judges and lawmaker going to legalize that in United States of America?
As for those who support gay marriages, do you also support marriage between adult human beings and animals? If not, why not? Why discriminate?
madima answered on 05/17/04:I don’t think American judges and lawmakers will legalize this practice, though it’s not illegal. It’s not even bestiality because no union of flesh is involved. It’s a “ritualistic marriage” in what appears to be an animistic tribe.
This may sound very alien – to say the least - to people who have not been exposed to some primitive Eastern cultures. However, I know that the practice of “transferring” one’s illness or bad luck, bad omen, or other undesirable energies to a non-human - either animal or to inanimate objects, is also being done in the West sans the dramatic “nuptials” and rituals.
This is the reason why their beloved pets die when their masters are sick, some believe. They think that the pet voluntarily “took on” the sickness of the master to save his/her life.
In the case you mentioned, the tribe believes that the stray dog will take on the burden of the girl who had the bad omen and will absorb the harmful energies into his body so she will be spared. They undergo a ritual of “marriage” before the tribe to become “one” in the eyes of the “evil spirits” who will now see the dog as the girl. The “bride” has to take good care of the dog because he pays the ultimate price. He will die in her stead.
Interestingly, marriage between man and beast – or rather the supposed “manifestations” of a god in a beast, has been part of Western polytheistic lore for thousands of years. For one thing, the Greek god Zeus mated with Leda in the form of a swan (among the many forms he took to get the women he lusted after) and she begot Helen of Troy. This also indicates that this kind of couplings have always been a part of the human collective unconscious.
I think, there is already much marriage between man and animals that we see today. When people allow their inhuman nature to subjugate what is moral and good inside them, they “marry” the beast within.
| | Question/Answer | | ROLCAM asked on 05/17/04 - Please answer. Do you love Jesus with all you heart ,body and mind ?
ROLCAM.
madima answered on 05/17/04:Of course, I do. But to be honest, not all of the time. And I think the loving has never been equal. He loves me more. | | Question/Answer | | Cherab asked on 05/14/04 - howe will thay no hoo two let in and hoo two kepp out? a cetherlic diasees is stoppin cetherlics who suprt are vot fer aborten are stim sell resach ect wile knot be givan the sakriment of the lordes supper anni moore. howe kann this bee infarced??????
madima answered on 05/16/04:I'm a Catholic and I can tell you it is impossible to enforce.
First of all, how would the priest, who administers Holy Communion, establish beyond doubt that some members of his parish support abortion or not? Even if the priest singles them out (especially in the case of public figures like politicians who will grandstand about their position), how can he justify witholding the sacrament from these individuals?
Only those excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church are not allowed to receive communion. But excommunication is a very long process and has to have the seal of the Vatican in Rome.
My friends know of a woman here who had abortion at a very young age. Now, abortion is not legal in my country, which is the only Catholic nation in the Far East and it is condemned by the church. But the woman repented, confessed and was pardoned. She received communion afterwards and has done so regularly ever since. | | Question/Answer | | Cherab asked on 05/14/04 - seryus questin
shud christians foller teh leeds of pagins in morrils an manners??????
kewruss mines want two no
madima answered on 05/16/04:I see nothing wrong with some pagan ways, especially in the respect for Mother Nature and all living things.
I've always been a Christian but I have been exposed to paganism in dealing with ethnic mountain tribes and indigenous peoples who practice pantheism and animism.
For me the difference is, when I am alone in the midst of the wilderness, at the peak of a mountain or exploring the bottom of the sea, I feel so much closer to God.
My pagan friends feel that the wilderness, the mountain and the sea are their gods. | | Question/Answer | | Cherab asked on 05/15/04 - What is Jesus teaching his followers?
And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery; and when they had set her in the midst,
They say unto him, Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act.
Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned: but what sayest thou?
This they said, tempting him, that they might have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down, and with [his] finger wrote on the ground, [as though he heard them not].
So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.
And again he stooped down, and wrote on the ground.
And they which heard [it], being convicted by [their own] conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, [even] unto the last: and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst.
When Jesus had lifted up himself, and saw none but the woman, he said unto her, Woman, where are those thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee?
She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.
..................
What lesson is Jesus anxious for his followers to learn from this syncope?
madima answered on 05/16/04:Do not judge your fellowmen. One sinner has no right to judge another.
But in God, there is always forgiveness. | | Question/Answer | | Cherab asked on 05/15/04 - The test: MENE MENE TEKEL UPHARSIN
There are people who loathe Bach and can’t stand Beethoven. It was once as popular among clever and educated people to disdain Homer and Shakespeare as barbaric as it is now proper to rhapsodize about them.
It is said that John Stuart Mill, the man with the fabulous Intelligence Quotient, read the New Testament with relish until he got to the Gospel of John, when he tossed the book aside before reaching the sixth chapter with the crushing and final verdict, ‘This is poor stuff!’
"M'sieu Honore de Balzac’s place in French literature," Eugene Poitou wrote in 1856, "will be neither considerable nor high."
An editor at the San Francisco Examiner, rejecting a submission in 1889, implied that the author did not have much of a future in belles lettres:
"I’m sorry, Mr. Kipling, but you just don’t know how to use the English language."
"Do you not know," exclaimed Samuel Taylor Coleridge in disgust, "that there is not perhaps one page in Milton’s Paradise Lost in which he has not borrowed his imagry [sic] from the scriptures?"
The Germans call this Schadenfreude — in seeing its detractors themselves reap the wrath of the critics.
Surveying the works of Mark Twain, one authority predicted in 1901 that "a hundred years from now it is very likely that 'The Jumping Frog' alone will be remembered."
Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray was said to be “tedious.”
As one critic said of Ibsen’s great play A Doll’s House, "it was as though someone had dramatized the cooking of a Sunday dinner."
Fashions and tastes are notoriously variable.
Enthusiasts for the music of Johann Sebastian Bach will scarcely need reminding that his wide popularity today is of relatively recent date.
Albert Schweitzer played an important role in the Bach revival early in the last century.
Virtually any good book on Beethoven will testify to the derision his Seventh Symphony received from contemporary critics.
It was Thomas Stearns Eliot who helped to restore John Donne and the metaphysical poets to an important place in the history of English literature.
Rudyard Kipling — he who did not "know how to use the English language" — won the Nobel Prize for Literature and then suffered a long decline in literary reputation as his political views went out of fashion.
But now, Kipling is enjoying a resurgence of critical esteem.
An entire book could be devoted to the ebb and flow of critical opinion on Shakespeare.
Leo Tolstoy’s disdain for the great playwright is well known. But he was not alone.
Of Hamlet, Voltaire said that "it is a vulgar and barbarous drama, which would not be tolerated by the vilest populace of France, or Italy. One would imagine this piece to be the work of a drunken savage."
"This is Pure melodrama," wrote George Bernard Shaw of Othello. "There is not a touch of characterization that goes below the skin."
Shaw’s opinion of Antony and Cleopatra was no higher:
"To say that there is plenty of bogus characterization in it is merely to say that it is by Shakespeare."
After seeing a performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in 1662 London, Samuel Pepys confided to his diary that it was "the most insipid, ridiculous play that I ever saw in my life."
"Shakespeare’s name, you may depend on it," Lord Byron assured James Hogg in 1814, "stands absurdly too high and will go down. He had no invention as to stories, none whatever. He took all his plots from old novels."
These knowledgable critics were weighed in the balance and found wanting of merit in placing a value on the work of others.
They are cautionary tales for any wise enough to heed and avoid these common pitfalls when the only criteria applied is an individual's limited understanding of what is really going on.
I aint nobody, but I know a someone when I see one.
I have witnessed three 'someones' on the Christianity Board. All others have been found wanting, as the scriptures says:
And this is the writing by God's hand and that was written:
MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN.
MENE: God has seen your performances and he has condemned it.
TEKEL: God has weighed your heart in his scales against ma'at and He has found you do not weigh enough to be saved.
UPHARSIN: What you had will be given to your enemies.
Saul was reprimanded by Jesus for persecuting him, but Saul had not seen Jesus, but because he had persecuted Christians Jesus counted it the same as persecuting himself.
According to Matthew's Gospel (Matthew 25:31-46), those who do kindness to others are blessed as if they had done them directly to Jesus.
Those who withhold kindeness from others, even from the lowliest of people will be condemned as if they had withheld blessing from Jesus.
How did you fare when faced with the test?
madima answered on 05/16/04:I always try to follow the Golden Rule in everything I do. I am human and am not always successful.
I do not like to think that God tests me everyday. Having been granted one lifetime on earth is enough of a test.
But if there is indeed a test, I feel that whenever I pass, I am blessed. Whenever I fail, I seek forgiveness. And being merciful, God always grants me another chance. | | Question/Answer | | ROLCAM asked on 05/16/04 - You must hear and see !! Dear Friends,
I really would like to share this site with all of you.
http://lonestar.50megs.com/fromtheheart/poweroflove.html
GOD BLESS.
ROLCAM
madima answered on 05/16/04:I've just taken a peek. Beautiful site. I wonder how you get to find all these things! Thanks so much for sharing! :=) | | Question/Answer | | HANK1 asked on 05/14/04 - F.Y.I. "AskMe is the leading provider of software solutions that enable global 2000 companies to create and manage Employee Knowledge Networks (EKNs)."
Remember AskMe as a Q/A site? Any memories?
HANK
madima answered on 05/14/04:I loved AskMe. I met the love of my life there, two soul sisters who had been communicating with me on a regular basis for the past four years up to now (I'm an only child)and countless friends.
I do remember you, as I remember so many of the experts here with us now :=) And yes, I remember answering so many questions in a day sometimes I cannot do my bread and butter work and still have to stay up late at night. I had three personas then who were listed in ten different boards.
That site taught me a lot of things. Some of those I "met" would come to me even in my dreams. It sharpened my senses a lot :=) But I came across very disturbed, abused, needy people as well, and I'd like to think I have helped them, even in the littlest of ways... Because that was the first reason I came to that site, which I "found" by accident... to help. | | Question/Answer | | Cherab asked on 05/12/04 - and in teh end all we tayke with us is watt we giv aweigh reed this farm a fiend Unconditional Love!
It was a busy morning, approximately 8:30 am, when an
elderly gentleman, in his 80's, arrived to have stitches removed from his thumb. He stated that he was in a hurry as he had an appointment at 9:00 am. I took his vital signs and had him take a seat, knowing it would be over an hour before someone would to able to see him. I saw him looking at his watch and decided, since I was not busy with another patient, I would evaluate his wound. On exam it was well healed, so I talked to one of the doctors, got the needed supplies to remove his sutures and redress his wound.
While taking care of his wound, we began to engage in
conversation. I asked him if he had a doctor's appointment this morning, as he was in such a hurry. The gentleman told me no, that he needed to go to the nursing home to eat breakfast with his wife. I then inquired as to her health.
He told me that she had been there for a while and that she was a victim of Alzheimer Disease. As we talked, and I finished dressing his wound, I asked if she would be worried if he was a bit late. He replied that she no longer knew who he was, that she had not recognized him in five years now. I was surprised, and asked him. "And you still go every morning, even though she doesn't know who you are?"
He smiled as he patted my hand and said. "She doesn't know me, but I still know who she is."
I had to hold back tears as he left. I had goose bumps on my arm, and thought, "That is the kind of love I want in my life."
True love is neither physical, nor romantic. True love is an acceptance of all that is, has been, will be, and will not be.
With all the fun that is in most e-mails, sometimes there are some that come along that have an important message, and this is one of those kinds. Just had to share it with you all.
Peace is seeing a sunset, and knowing whom to thank.
~~~~~~~
Dedicated to my Millie, whose been there too.
Kath
- - - -- - -
is ther rume in yer hearth fur this kinda love?
madima answered on 05/13/04:Ciò mostra un amore più bello. Ringraziarlo per dividere questo con noi, Ronnie
Usted es realmente tan dulce.
Maraming salamat, aking paborito. :=) | | Question/Answer | | Cherab asked on 05/11/04 - My Spiel Chequer
Eye halve a spelling chequer
It came with my pea sea
It plainly marques four my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.
Eye strike a key and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong oar write
It shows me strait a weigh.
As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the error rite
Its rare lea ever wrong.
Eye have run this poem threw it
I am shore your pleased two no
Its letter perfect awl the weigh
My chequer tolled me sew.
madima answered on 05/12/04:Luv ur sens ov hue more :=)
Aingelz r nut sooo faymuz 4 b een fan
Cherabs r kwayt zereeyuz, d lite ov no ledz ov d Elohim,
Fah low win d wans hu ber His luv, d serafim.
| | Question/Answer | | hOPE12 asked on 05/11/04 - To all: I have noticed there are those who seem to be upset with the person, Id name, Cherab.
just a bit of info. I am not sure about others but the posts made by Cherab are not of normal English the way you an I speak it. However, after a close consideration on this matter, I checked her profile and she has been a Christian for some 30 years so she could not be such a young person.
I also am familiar with the fact that just because that Cherab writes the way he/she does makes me feel he/she is not ready to allow us to really get to know them as a real person. As to Cherab being lonely, I believe that is also very possible. You see all this I feel is notonly because of loneliness but also because their wanting to meet others but he/she is too shy and afraid of being rejected by others. Someone who is not very well know does not always know what to say or how to say it. I also feel like Diana said this person is very intellegent with a very high IQ. Anyone who can write like that and keep it up is certainly not slow. I count myself as of normal intellegence and it takes me some time to figure out what Cherub is saying. So if it is hard for us to read then you know it take intellegence to keep up the front. Just my point of view.
I do however feel that until one know for sure what is going on with Cherab or even if this person lets us close to them, we need to show them love and compassion as Diana has already stated. Why? Because if a person is lonely, or shy, or just afraid of being rejected, they too need love. After all are we not on this board to help others?
Take care,
And thanks for reading my opinion.
Hope12 madima answered on 05/11/04:Frankly, I think I like Cherab.
Although I have not yet answered any of his posts and have not directly interacted with his "resurrected" persona, I have read some of his Qs and answers.
If I'm not mistaken, I think 2 of his personas are on my fave expert list, though at that time, he still spoke straight English.
I'll confess I did something like he did - or rather, one of my four personas did - at AskMe's Mental Health board.
At the time, all the experts were quarreling. Two of my askers in another board, both very troubled victims of abuse, have listed themselves as experts at Mental Health and were involved in the vicious fight. I saw no way I could break through all those very angry people, so I assumed a persona who spoke in a sort of gibberish using phonetic spelling - actually the language of Short Messaging System (SMS) or cellular phone texting, as we know it here.
That time, I attempted to inject some humor in the very tense situation. If people can laugh, they can see sense.
I also found that if I spoke in a strange language, I can force people to listen. They hate being left out, so no matter how alien and twisted the words were, they will sweat it out to decipher what I was saying :=) | | Question/Answer | | ATON2 asked on 05/06/04 - Not a question, just a warning!! :) If you haven't shot all your darts yet, better do it now. Papa ATON is leaving tomorrow for at least a month of sun, surf, and serenity. Will check in occassionally, to make sure you are all behaving. I may ever miss some of you :) :) :) madima answered on 05/06/04:Come back soon with a fabulous tan, will you? :=) | | Question/Answer | | PraiseJah asked on 04/30/04 - My daughter has cancer We have just learned that my daughter has a very rare aggressive form of cancer of the peritoneum - the serous membrane that is wrapped around the abdominal organs to prevent harm from friction. There are only 30 known cases world wide, which means that my daughter had a better chance of winning a lottery jackpot than getting this cancer.
She unlike me is a not a baptised Christian but she likes reading the Bible and believes that only God's kingdom will bring peace to the earth. And she has done this for the last two years. Some of you may believe she will go to hell when she dies because she is not baptised. This could be very soon - even with treatment as only 6 of the 30 know cases have survived it. We believe she will be raised on "the last day" or during the thousand year reign because as Paul said there is to be a resurrection of the "just" ( those who have been declared righteous by faith) and of the unjust. Acts 5:28,29.
But regardless of what you personally believe I ask that you pray for her.
Thanks. madima answered on 05/01/04:I'm including you, your daughter and your entire family in my daily prayers. Don't ever lose hope. God is merciful. | | Question/Answer | | arcura asked on 04/27/04 - Prayer request, please. On Wednesday the 28th (tomorrow) I go into the hospital for “pre op”. On Thursday Morning they are going to do some procedures on my heart installing some stents (three, I think).
This is a much less invasive work on the heart than open heart surgery, but at the age of 71 it’s more troublesome than if I were 450 or 60.
So I respectfully request your prayers for a good survival for me and steady hands and good work by the doctors and nurses.
God bless you all, my friends, with peace and kindness and His healing of mind, body, and spirit for all that can use it. Arcura (Fred Brown)
madima answered on 04/29/04:You are in my prayers, dear Fred. | | Question/Answer | | ROLCAM asked on 04/15/04 - Sharing with all including Aton2. The Jesus Sand Sculptures - Absolutely Amazing!
http://www.allthefun.com/view.php?go=1/sand.htm&mid=804421 madima answered on 04/16/04:Thanks for the link! Just took a peek! It's beautiful!
You should visit our powder white sand beaches here in the Philippines. In Boracay, Aklan, the island folk put out magnificent sand sculptures everyday.
But it was my first time today to see Jesus in sand sculpture :=) | | Question/Answer | | Itsdb asked on 04/15/04 - Any serpent handlers here? The Associated Press
"JONESVILLE, Va. - The Rev. Dwayne Long died a day after refusing medical treatment after being bitten on a finger by a rattlesnake during an Easter service at his rural church, where members believe ritual serpent-handling is a form of obedience to God, Sheriff Gary Parsons said.
"We don't anticipate any charges," he said. "That's their belief."
No one attending the service at the Pentecostal church sought medical help, Parsons said. Members believe when people die from a snakebite during a service, it is a sign that it was their time to go."
Seriously, is this just stupid and senseless or what?
Steve
madima answered on 04/15/04:Hi, Steve,
Seriously, I think it’s quite stupid and senseless.
I’ve handled cobras since I was a child (and I would have kept them as pets if I haven’t been living with my parents and they told me they’ll both die of heart attack if I put them in my bedroom). Here, we have the most poisonous cobras on earth. I love serpents for themselves, as part of God’s creation with their own place in the world and have no fear of them. But I always give them their due respect, that’s why I’m still alive and responding to you.
First of all, snakes are not evil. They don’t bite out of malice. It’s just that they are born with the bite that kills (they need it to survive in this world, get the prey that they eat and rid us of pests like mice and rats) and you always take that into consideration when you handle them.
However, even here, we have some groups who seem to attempt, not just to test their own faith but to “test” God’s benevolence by exposing themselves to unnecessary risks – which I feel is not right at all. I don’t think it’s right for man to test God.
Along this same line, the act of snake handling becomes a public exhibition of power and special favors on the part of the believers. Like they are saying, “Look I have dominion over the archetypal symbol of evil. I am special before the eyes of God.” It becomes pure ostentation.
To top it all, they do it without any knowledge of basic animal behavior. Sometimes, people wrongly believe that because they feed the animal and care for it, it will never hurt them. No matter how much love you give a serpent, it will bite because it has fangs. It’s in its nature to bite. Just as any big wild animal with claws can disembowel you, even if you reared it by hand from the time it was a baby.
We have a healer here, whom I know. His group is affiliated with the church. When he was just starting out his healing practice, his wife got very sick. They live quite close to the hospital. But he did not take her to be treated there even as she hovered between life and death. He believed God was testing his faith. He just kept on praying. His wife miraculously recovered. Still, many questioned the wisdom of his decision.
I have faith in God, but if a loved one is sick and medical help is accessible, I will pray AND seek medical aid at the same time. I believe that God helps those who help themselves.
Of course, nobody could have forced the Rev. Dwayne Long to get antivenin after he was bitten. I think it’s a universally accepted practice that for as long as a person is conscious and rational, the ultimate decision about what to do with his own body is up to him.
But from my personal viewpoint, I still feel that the way they handled serpents was more like playing Russian roulette rather than showing an act of faith. It’s a fact that you can be bitten by venomous serpents, like cobras, without them unloading any venom at all. Venom is a precious resource, so snakes don’t waste it unless you made them feel they really have to. Many poisonous snake handlers are bitten a good number of times and are not harmed at all. Then, they get complacent and are done in by the 101st bite.
So, I reiterate that considering all these, serpent handling in this particular circumstance looks more and more like it’s being done to test God rather than to show obedience to Him.
| | Question/Answer | | akenaten asked on 04/11/04 - The Passion Of Christ- Or Is That Perversion? By now everyone has heard of the film "Passion Of Christ" by Mel Gibson... NOW you get to read a review by a "true christian". A review by someone who actually puts Christ above all else in his life, and lives to be christian by example, not by stereotype.
Is this film the "true" story of Christ, or simply a perverted version created by Hollywood and Mel to line their pockets at the expense of gullible people? Are we supposed to "love" this film just to be a part of the HERD MENTALITY that we so often find accustomed to the Christian faith? In the following, one man steps forward to remind you that Christianity is about life, love, and example.
He reminds you that just because you are "told" this is the way, or shown on-screen, that you are NOT damned for eternity if you do not accept their views as "gospel". Be yourself, think, question, practice, and LEARN!
Lose the herd, people!
Perhaps THEN your credibility will improve when you "claim" to be Christian.
--------------------------------------------------------------
The Emperor’s New Clothes
Christianity, Hollywood, and The Passion of the Christ
“You haven’t seen it yet?”
Many had asked expecting my wife and I to be first in line for the latest installment of Jesus’ last hours on earth as told by none other than Mel Gibson, hunk, heart-throb and icon of the silver screen. The hype surrounding it has been incredible, impressive, a spiritual barometer deciding where each of us stands on the single, most pivotal, event in human history.
From Christian Fundamentalism’s uncontrolled weeping to Judaism’s fears of a new holocaust, everybody has an opinion, and each impression we received told us more about their beliefs than the “awesome, frightening experience” they urged us to see.
The other night, we bowed to the pressure.
I had many doubts and concerns over “The Passion of the Christ” before we ever purchased our tickets. I already knew the story in print and from the many previous versions I had seen. Ever since I could remember I have been drawn to the story of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, and I seldom let a new installment slip past me unnoticed. I am also well read on the horrors of crucifixion, the knowledge from written words alone making me queasy, asking how humanity could be so inhumane. I did not want to see “the Passion,” to have images, already burned into a very private part of my faith, brought to the surface, igniting my abhorrence to a religion’s glorifying a vicious, gruesome crime, the pinnacle of how badly one man can treat another. I had already silently felt every lash, the nails invading already mutilated flesh, the torment that could even make “the Son of God” wail in uncontrollable agony, the indignant way a human being becomes reduced to a billboard warning all passers by what happens when you don’t “just say no.”
Mel Gibson told me he brought this to the screen. He told me he held nothing back. He told me his story was accurate, Biblical, true to life, as if I would be seeing it for real. He told me this was his faith.
I expected a statement of faith. I expected it to line up with everything I had read and understood. I expected an experience that would bring to the surface my deepest, most hidden, feelings about the torture and death of one I call teacher, guide, inspiration . . . Christ!
I expected to become angry, feel helpless and sick . . . to close my eyes and weep.
I saw a movie, and felt nothing.
I felt like the child at the end of “The Emperor’s New Clothes” asking his mother why the King was naked. I sat in silence, dumbfounded by one cliché after another. As I watched one borrowed image after another, from Satan confronting another Jesus (Jeremy Sisto) in the Garden of Gethsemane. ( Jesus, Vidmark/Trimark.) to the bench full of torture devices direct from Braveheart, Pilate’s words from another telling of the story kept ringing in my ears:
“And so the King is once again our guest. And why is this? Was Herod unimpressed?” (Jesus Christ Superstar, Universal.)
My wife almost burst into laughter when Mel gave us the making of the Shroud of Turin, but I couldn’t feel the dark humor silently shaking my head in disbelief. I couldn’t even draw an emotional response from Jesus’ mother, who stoically witnessed the brutalization of her child, dressed like a nun, an occasional tear reminiscent of the Indian lamenting our trashing the environment. I could not wait to leave after the final scene, a crude rendition of Michelangelo’s masterpiece, followed by a tomb, the shroud deflating (Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, Lucasfilm) to a raised Christ with holes in his hands I could see through, (Death Becomes Her, Universal) and I agreed with my wife, that all she had experienced was a “gore fest.” (Insert slasher film of your choice)
“But it lines right up with the Bible,” many told me.
It didn’t. I could forgive the bouncing between books, even adding or taking away, but The Passion lost all biblical credibility in my eyes when the woman about to be stoned was none other than Mary the Magdalene. Mel lost all artistic credibility in my eyes much earlier, his “vision” as subtle as the hammer, his scope as original and refined as the cast nails driven home (complete with a fountain of blood reminding me of Conan the Barbarian.) He did not give me anything new. He just gave me more . . . too much more Hollywood when we really could have used less.
“It blames the Jews!” many tried to tell me. It blamed only Caiaphas, the mob only echoing what he said first. Fellow Pharisees walked out on him, calling the trial a travesty. Pilate could not silence the mob, but one word from the high priest, and the shouts were replaced by hushed snickering. Caiaphas mesmerized the mob, reminded me of a Jewish Hitler leading a well-staged rally, and when Jesus says the immortal words, “Father forgive them for they know not what they do,” a man says to the villain, “see, Jesus asks God to forgive you.” If the movie had any redeeming quality, it was this, but otherwise, Mel Gibson gave me nothing to feel but numbness, boredom and regret, my passion ignited by the audience more than the film.
A lot of things about the experience felt just plain wrong.
I’m sorry, but eating popcorn and sipping a coke while one’s “Lord, Savior, and God” is brutalized beyond recognition is just plain wrong. I did both, along with everyone else in the theater, and felt dirty. I should have felt something. Everyone said I would. I really wanted to, but then I remembered it was just a movie. And yes, a movie can be bad. What I originally thought was a spiritual barometer, had quickly become a religious litmus test, a new question for the “Christian Quiz.”
“Are you a Christian?
“Are you Born Again?
“Have you accepted Jesus into your heart as your Lord and Savior?
“Did you like The Passion of the Christ?”
Say no to any of the above, and you may as well be an atheist. Suggest that the movie did not portray the Jews in a bad light, and the other side calls you a Nazi. Mel Gibson is being vilified by one side, deified by the other, and I find it ironic that the name of his production company, “Icon,” has gone unnoticed. From where I sit, both sides are doing just that to an actor, turned director and producer, forgetting one thing they share: God/G-d is not too keen on graven images.
“You just didn’t get it,” many chided me when I gave my opinion. I got it long before I ever saw the movie. As the story goes, Jesus did this for me, each rending of his flesh one of our sins he carried to calvary. If this is all that Christianity is about, could Mel edit out one of them for me? I care too much for Jesus, what he stood for, to make him suffer because of me. I’d rather take my chances with the Almighty, carry my own “cross,” rather than add to his. My faith celebrates his ideology, tries to emulate his life; it does not cloak me in the blood of an innocent. When I want to affirm my faith, I don’t need a movie. I can always read “The Good Book.” If I want Hollywood, I have plenty of other films to choose from. I can watch the cheesy, safe, “B” flick Jesus, portrayed by Jeffrey Hunter. (King of Kings, Warner Home Video) I would rather rent Max Von Sydow’s off accent, offset by his commanding presence. (The Greatest Story Ever Told, MGM/UA Video) I would gladly pay to see Robert Powell, if I need reaffirmation of the definitive, traditional Jesus. (Jesus of Nazareth, Lionsgate/Fox) I will watch Glenn Carter over and over again and cry every time, (Jesus Christ Superstar) though my heart will always favor Victor Gerber as the heart mind and childlike soul of the Good Teacher. (Godspell, Columbia Tri-Star) I can’t even blame, James Caviezel, who did the best with what he had, but Mel Gibson’s vision now provides the other bookend to my visual experience of the Christ. While Martin Scorsese left me wanting more with The Last Temptation of Christ, a great idea made into a bad film, Mel Gibson left me wanting my money back, sorry I let peer pressure, curiosity, and hype decide against my better judgment.
In my humble opinion, Mel was the master tailor, inventing a suit that he sold to us long before we ever saw it. We are now wearing the suit and would rather be like the crowd, and hide the way we were all scammed, than to see a movie for what it really is. I, for one, will listen to another man and carry the wisdom of a child, no matter what a religion or Mel might do to him in effigy, me in the spoken or written word. I feel naked, and it is time I put my clothes back on.
Note: The above review and commentary posted courtesy of Mrbline. You can read more of his opinions and rewiews on his website, (http://hometown.aol.com/mrbline5784) and by purchasing the book "The Highway, Reflections Of A 21st Century Heretic". madima answered on 04/12/04:I try to be a Christian but when I go to a movie, I expect to see a movie, nothing more.
No one - a moviemaker the least, can vouch for the accuracy of something which happened two thousand years ago. Besides, whoever directs or makes a movie can always call on his rights of artistic license.
Here, in my country, the movie was endorsed by the Catholic church. I saw the movie. All my friends who were with me were crying and headed straight for prayers and church afterwards.
But frankly, because I have been trained in the theater, I was distracted by the techniques used, the angling of the cameras, how good the prosthetics must be to depict flayed flesh and such...
If I were to look for the truth of Christ and being a Christian, I will not look for it in a movie.
I will look for it in my heart. | | Question/Answer | | HANK1 asked on 04/02/04 - ????
What prompted Visions In Blue to use Visions In Blue as an Expert's name?
HANK
madima answered on 04/02/04:I know, dear HANK. I've known why back in December, 2000. But alas, I can't tell the board without permission. I have an "unfair" advantage over the others. :=) | | Question/Answer | | dognap asked on 10/09/03 - HOW ABOUT TOLERANCE FOR ALL? - by Bob Lonsberry BTW - I have also posted this on the Mormonism Board, but because most of you do not tread in those shark infested waters, I have duplicated th epost here. I hope you are not offended by my double post.
dognap
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Some Muslims wear sacred clothing.
So do some Jews.
The same for Native Americans and some Hindus and others.
Bits of cloth or string that are physical reminders of God and his bond with man. Sacred things, really.
Prayer shawls or beads, head coverings or aprons, medicine bags.
Things that are special to people, honorable and good things.
Things that should be respected. One would not, for example, rip the yarmulke from a Jewish man's head and mockingly fling it like a Frisbee.
Nor would you wear a yarmulke as a spoof or joke.
Certainly not as an attack on Judaism. Not as a mockery of Jews and their faith.
Yet something like that happened this weekend.
In front of thousands of people in one of America's great cities.
An act of religious desecration, bigotry and discrimination.
And the perpetrators boast of it to the press.
It was in Salt Lake City. And it was against Mormons. And somehow that makes it acceptable.
Here's what happened.
Over the weekend, Mormons gathered for what they call "general conference."
It is a twice-a-year meeting that draws tens of thousands to Salt Lake City and is broadcast around the world to an audience in the low millions.
It is a worship service. It is sacred and special to them.
And each year it is protested.
So-called Christian evangelists stand on the sidewalk outside the Mormon meetings and shout rude condemnations of the religion to the thousands who pass in and out.
It is an odd spectacle, unmatched in American society.
To think that crude protesters would stand outside a mosque or synagogue, or a cathedral or church, and harass worshippers and denounce a religion is just beyond the pale.
It is an act of indefensible religious bigotry. And yet it happens, and is often applauded and boasted of.
This column started with a mention of sacred clothing. Well, Mormons have sacred clothing, too. Like a variety of religious garments, it is worn against the skin. It is a type of underclothing.
They don't talk about it. They don't show it to people. They keep it sacred. Like virtually all religious clothing, it is a specific reminder of promises made to God.
Like virtually all religious clothing, it is precious and significant to the people who wear it.
Well, Sunday the evangelists had some. Maybe six guys, Baptist ministers, mocking the Mormons as they came out of a meeting. Shouting rude things to people coming out of church.
And they had these sacred garments. And one supposed minister of the gospel was wiping his backside with them, laughingly treating them like toilet paper as thousands who held them sacred walked by.
Can you see that being done to a prayer shawl in front of a synagogue, or a prayer rug in front of a mosque?
Wouldn't that sacrilege be publicly denounced by all decent people? He also draped them around his neck, and pretended over and over to sneeze into them. And loudly blow his nose into them. While families and children walked past.
Stop for a moment. Lay aside what you do or don't think about Mormons. But was that right?
More to the point, was that Christian?
Is that what Jesus would do?
Is that what any decent person of any faith would do?
Absolutely not. It is wrong, bigoted and un-American. No matter who it's against.
It was an affront. It smelled like the bigotry of the Klan and the Third Reich.
And yet the ministers boasted of it to reporters and posed for pictures and no one in the Utah or American religious, media or civil rights communities has condemned it.
And, oddly, two worshippers were taken away in handcuffs.
One man, dressed in his church clothes, walked past in the crowd, saw the insults and desecrations, and grabbed the piece of clothing to protect it.
He was charged with robbery and taken to jail.
Half an hour later another worshipper similarly grabbed a molested garment and attempted to take it away. He was unsuccessful and waiting police stepped in to take him into custody.
And that's the world we live in.
You are harangued for your beliefs and arrested for defending them.
And the bigotry of our society is illustrated by how selectively we practice tolerance.
Bob Lansberry
+++++++++++++++++++++++
I will add that the same kind of things oin a much larger scale happens every Easter in Mesa Arizona where the Mormons hold the Easter pageant, and many antiMormons protest is such grotesque ways that foreigners seeing them wonder why the protesters are not hauled off to jail or locked up in mental institutions. It has something to do with free speech.
You can find pictures of the protesters on the Internet and see for yourself what gross and bizarre things are happening as the sacred events of the first Easter are being reenacted in the open air at the Mesa >ormon downtown temple before thousands of Mormons and non Mormons.
These bigots would be the first to complain if the Mormons did the same thing to their worship services.
Your comments, thoughts, etc., welcomed
dognap madima answered on 10/09/03:This incident that you spoke of is abominable. How could law enforcement authorities allow it to happen? People have a right to practice their faith. Especially in America, which has always taken pride in calling itself the bastion of democracy! Didn’t Mormons go to Utah in the 1800’s to escape religious persecution? Why are they still being persecuted up to this millennium in the very land, in the very city where their forefathers had been pioneers?
Needless to say, this is very un-Christian! It should be condemned.
| | Question/Answer | | cliff_dweller asked on 10/07/03 - 1st Prayer Request I came up with the idea and Laura suggested I get it started so here it goes.
I need prayer to sustain me. I am working two jobs, at total of 15-16 hours a day and I need the Lord to provide for me rest and relaxation and time to spend with my wife as well. SO I guess what I need prayer for is that as well as my relationship with my mother in law. She is still trying to cause problems with my wife and I and my wife is blind (willingly I think becuas she wants to believe the best of her mother) to it. May the Lord open up her eyes to it. Also for me to draw closer to Him and away from the worries and troubles of this world and to focus on worshipping Him. I think that is all for now. Thank you all for your prayers. madima answered on 10/09/03:My prayers are with you, cliff_dweller.
Have faith, you will overcome all these challenges - from your job to your mother-in-law.
God be with you always. | | Question/Answer | revdauphinee asked on 10/07/03 - A plea for your prayers
my daughter who lives far away from me just informed me that her ex husband shot himself and died at 5 pm yesterday now she has the unpleasant Job of telling her 11 yr old son of this, please pray for the stregnth for her and Gods compasion for my grandson since he loved his father dearly and will not take this well .
Thanks!
to all caring folks on here we need each others prayers
Dorothy
madima answered on 10/09/03:Dearest Dorothy, I'm sorry to hear about this tragedy.
I'm including you, your daughter and grandson in my daily prayers. I'll also pray for the soul of her ex husband.
Be strong. God is with you always. | | Question/Answer | | ROLCAM asked on 10/09/03 - GOD IS EVERYWHERE !!! Please have a look at this site:-
http://www.allthefun.com/1/jesuscloud.htm
Best wishes to all,
ROLCAM. madima answered on 10/09/03:That was beautiful! I don't know how you manage to find these treasures :=)
All I know is that I wish to thank you for sharing this with us.
Best wishes to you! | | Question/Answer | | ROLCAM asked on 10/09/03 - BE GOOD TO EACH OTHER !! Please have a look at this:-
http://www.allthefun.com/1/dailysurvival.htm
Best wishes,always.
ROLCAM. madima answered on 10/09/03:Thanks for posting that, ROLCAM :=)
You made my night! (It's less than two hours to midnight here and my energy is on the wane but when I saw that website, I smiled.)
Great survival kit! (I'll remember to take it with me in my backpack anytime, wherever I go!)
Best wishes! | | Question/Answer | | Laura asked on 10/08/03 - Free Will. Society today is extremily "I" focused. Whatever pleases "me" is good. I am only concerned about "my" own wellbeing. God endowed every person with a free will. We have the freedom to choose right or to choose wrong. But in any and every instance, do we always have the right?? If not, please give examples. As always, I welcome all replies. Laura madima answered on 10/09/03:Personally, I don’t really see anything wrong with the focus on the “I” - for one who honors the Lord.
I believe that God is within each of us. Each human body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. So, if “I” honor God and His will, and He resides in me, “I” will do good and be considerate of my fellowmen.
Jesus also commanded us: “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” He did not say we should love others more than ourselves. Ingrained in this teaching is the principle of self-love. We should learn to love ourselves first before we can learn to love others. (As one philosopher asked: If I don’t love myself, who will? Yet if I love no one but myself what am I?)
Our fellowmen “mirrors” what we are. We see ourselves in them and they, in us.
In the same way, if we see God in ourselves, we must also be able to see God in others and accord them with as much love as we accord ourselves.
The right to choose between right and wrong is entirely up to us. God gave us the gift of life. It is up to us what to do with the gift. It’s just like you giving someone a present. The moment you hand over the gift, you relinquish your control of it. The recipient decides whether to cherish it or to throw it away.
Of course, we have cases of “divine intervention” and miracles recognized by the Church. But these are mostly intervention on events, not on personal will. We have cases of saints and lay people praying for the conversion of sinners and nonbelievers. But I don’t think God “twists” or prevails on the will of these people prayed for, resulting in their conversion. God may influence circumstances to “enlighten” them, but in the end, it is still their choice whether to believe in the miracles or not.
| | Question/Answer | | cliff_dweller asked on 09/25/03 - What does God want I am sure that we have all asked this question at one point or another. Everyone has a different answer. What is it that you think that God wants? How do you know? madima answered on 09/25/03:I believe God wants you to be good, to have a good life and fulfill the destiny that is best for you.
I know, because God is goodness. That is His divine essence. He created us in His image. The Creator will definitely not want to be unlike what He created. | | Question/Answer | | cliff_dweller asked on 09/25/03 - All dogs go to Heaven There was a popular movie by that title but my question is this, do you think that animals go to heaven? If you have a pet dog or cat or goldfish or goat, well you get my point, do you think that they go to heaven? Why or why not? madima answered on 09/25/03:We can't know for sure if there is until we get there and see for ourselves, but I wish there will be. Animals deserve an ethereal place for the healing, wisdom and grace they give their human companions. Even wild creatures deserve eternal happiness...
| | Question/Answer | | HANK1 asked on 09/25/03 - GOD!
Who gave God his name!
madima answered on 09/25/03:From what I have read so far, God's "true" name is part of the unknowable. Even the angels are not supposed to know it, some say.
Mystics believed that to know the true name of God is to have access to His unimaginable powers and will enable one to summon both angels and devils, among other things.
Men gave many names to God, however, according to how they perceived Him. I don't think it matters to Him, either, for as long as we love and honor Him and abide by His will. | | Question/Answer | | ROLCAM asked on 09/25/03 - I PRAYED FOR YOU TO-DAY. TO ALL ANSWERWAY MEMBERS.
----------------------------
I would like to invite you to look at this site:-
http://www.alighthouse.com/today.htm
Keep well and happy.
My best wishes to all.
ROLCAM.
madima answered on 09/25/03:Thanks for the prayer, ROLCAM. It sure helped me today :=)
I've also sent the beautiful page to my friends :=)
Best Regards to you! | | Question/Answer | | Laura asked on 08/26/03 - Mom went to heaven today Just to let you guys know that my mom went to be with the Lord at about 3PM central time today.. Thank you all so much for all your prayers for us.. I love you all.. God bless.. Laura madima answered on 08/26/03:Dearest Laura, I am very sorry for your loss. But please, don't be sad. Your mom is at peace now. Our prayers are always with you. | | Question/Answer | | Laura asked on 08/20/03 - I don't know what to say!!! I have kept trying to post to no avail.... My mom is dying....My mother in law is sick as can be!!! And we are in a predicamint!!!!! HELP!!!!!!!! We just need prayer!!! PRAY FOR US!!! LAURA!!! madima answered on 08/20/03:My prayers are and will always be with you, your mom, your mother-in-law and the people you love, dearest Laura. | | Question/Answer | | ~Seraph~ asked on 08/12/03 - Christian mysticism What is the nature and value of the Christian mystical experience?
By "Christian mystical" I mean an experience characterized by esoteric, otherworldly, insight into mysteries transcending ordinary human knowledge, as by direct communication with God and 'given' intuition in a state of spiritual ecstasy.
I know that sacerdotalists eschew mysticism because it bypasses them and their systems of control, and I know bibliolatrists also hate it because it bypasses the book they venerate as if it was God.
What is the nature, purpose, and value of God-given Christian Mysticism?
~Sephie~
madima answered on 08/12/03:Personally, I view the Christian mystical experience as one that puts our human knowing closest to the "unknowable" and should effectively bring us closer to God.
The most "accessible" mystical experience I can think of for the laity is the altered consciousness that comes to one who is in deep meditation or prayer.
In such a state, a person can sometimes reach a point of ecstasy that what others refer to the "third eye" and other "psychic centers" open - one sees "visions" of God and celestial beings, colorful lights around one's own body, around those of other creatures, one hears music and ethereal voices or even messages, one smells fragrances and senses "other" presences.
I guess that this state of ecstasy, on a much higher level, could also account for such phenomenon as levitation by Catholic saints. In others, this causes the ocurrence and bleeding of stigmatas. It is also the essence of the "visions" of the Lady of Lourdes by St. Bernadette, Lucia and her siblings' seeing of the Lady of Fatima and in more contemporary times, the apparitions of the Lady of Medjugore.
One other accessible mystical experience is via the dreaming, another altered state of consciousness. In dreams one can be "transported" to heaven - or what feels like heaven and have conversations with God, angels and saints.
While many mystical experiences have been played up/exploited in the media to sell books, create big business, generate funds and aggrandize the people who had them, I believe that the true nature of a mystical experience is akin to a miracle. It should humble the one on whom it is visited. It should enlighten him to be a better man and servant of God. | | Question/Answer | | STONY asked on 08/11/03 - A PRAYER REQUEST!! A YOUNG LADY IN MY CHURCH HAS, A SON, JAMES KELLEY, WHO IS AUTISTIC. THE PROBLEM IS HE IS
ALMOST AS BIG AS I AM AND STRONG AS A BULL.
WHAT I WOULD ASK YOU TO PRAY FOR IS GOD TO GIVE
HIM PEACE AND COMFORT IN THESE TIMES. VERY
RECENTLY HE HAS BEEN PRONE TO FITS OF VIOLENCE
THAT DISTURB HIS SPIRIT. BEING SOMEWHAT OF AN AUTHORITY ON HANDICAPPS, THIS IS USUALLY HOW IT
GOES. HANDICAP GIVES WAY TO FRUSTRATION, THEN,
FRUSTRATION GIVES WAY TO ANGER AND IN THE FINAL
ANALYSIS; ANGER GIVES WAY TO VIOLENCE AS AN
OUTLET.WHEN I WAS 30 YEARS OLD OR SO, I KNEW BE-
YOND ANY SHADOW OF A DOUBT THAT I COULD BEAT
SOMEONE TO DEATH WITH MY BARE HANDS; ALL I HAD
TO DO WAS LOSE CONTROL...I WOULD RATHER NOT SEE
THIS YOUNG MAN EVEN COME CLOSE TO THAT DRAMATIC REALIZATION IF AT ALL POSSIBLE. "DEAR GOD JUST
LET THE BOY LIVE IN PEACE WHILE HE STILL HAS
TIME." madima answered on 08/12/03:Dear Stony, I shall include James in my daily prayers, that he be given peace and comfort in this hour of need. And God bless you for caring. | | Question/Answer | | whitefawn asked on 08/08/03 - Needing Prayers! A little boy who's name is Dolten is in the ICU of the U Of M Hospital here in AnnArbor, Michigan.
Doltens problem began when he was born which caused him to become over weight, at nine years of age he has been teased and bullied by other children, for he weigh's over 200 lbs due to his heart disease.
Dolten started having head aches and vomiting, over six months now, but his step mother refuse to take him serious and made him go to bed, well, to make a long story short on this little angel's Mother finally got back custody and took Dolten to the Hospital, all in one day- Today. We have found out Dolten has a large Tumer that is cancer and water on the brain, they can't perform Surgury until they bring the water off the brain if that doesn't work no Surgery
can be performed.
When you say your Prayers tonight, please pray for this little boy, it will be a miricle if he lives.
And the power of Prayer is so strong.
With Love to all. Joy.
And may the Lord Bless all of you.
madima answered on 08/08/03:Dear Joy. I shall include Dolten in my prayers tonight and thereafter.
Blessings to you as well. | | Question/Answer | | HANK1 asked on 07/18/03 - GREAT NEWS!
Carol had her Catscan yesterday and "nothing has changed" in six months. So ... knock on wood ... she has a very, very good chance of beating this albatross. I want to thank all of you for your prayers and support. Since Carol was Stage 3 on July 28, 2001, I'm seeing a miracle happen right before my eyes everyday. This tells me that other people with cancer can survive IF you do exactly what an Oncologist tells you to do and what your primary physician relates to you as well! Prayers are powerful ... and I thank you again for yours. Let's have a great Summer everyone!
Your REALISTIC friend,
HANK
madima answered on 07/18/03:That's great to hear, Hank!
Carol and you are in my daily prayers. | | Question/Answer | | ethical_reason asked on 07/04/03 - Jesus Christ Super Star Has anyone here seen the movie or the play?
Does anyone here think it's heretical?
Does anyone think that some of the stuff in it is accurate:
*Judas being a good guy afterall, and a victim in the whole affair?
*Jesus essentially asking pilot to kill him
How about the points made:
*Mass media would have made his job easier?
stuff like that
madima answered on 07/04/03:I’ve seen the play this April, as a Lenten outreach production mounted and directed by Benedictine Sisters.
It was surely anachronistic, but it’s a rock opera and was presented as one. I honestly don’t think it’s heretical. The nuns, who should know the Catholic doctrine better than the laity, did not think of it as heretical, either. Otherwise, they wouldn't have staged it and risked excommunication.
The Jesuit priests here have also been producing this rock opera almost annually, as part of the Lenten celebration.
This is not a matter of dogma but of artistic and theatrical license. Its sole purpose is to entertain – and that was clear from the start because of its classification as a musical. People do not watch it to learn the truth about Christ or the scripture, so I feel there’s really no need to bother about the meaning behind the text of the play.
It’s nothing but make-believe.
| | Question/Answer | | ethical_reason asked on 07/02/03 - Can that which is right or wrong be known? Is ethics decided by god and known only that way?
Can ethics be known any other way that is totally seperate from God but still be right? madima answered on 07/02/03:I will not profess to be a theologian but if you ask me, I think ethics is a code of conduct decided by man depending on what he interprets to be in accordance with God’s will – that is, if he believes in a God. Otherwise, it is a guiding philosophy based on what he believes to be “good” – what will never harm himself or his fellowmen.
Ethics concerns itself with human values – what a man thinks to be right or wrong. Of course, what is right for one man may be wrong for another. One is inherently “free” to decide which and act on that decision – hence, our innate free will.
A man who loves God and is filled with His Spirit will “know” what is right by his conscience.
Complications arise because a man has to “synchronize” his concept of right and wrong – his personal ethics, with the ethics of the world he lives in –his school, his peer group, his workplace, his family, his religious affiliation, his nation and his society – each with their own versions of right and wrong.
But a man who does not believe in the concept of God may still do good if he has a sense of goodwill to his fellowmen and other creatures of the world he inhabits.
Goodwill is more of an intellectual predisposition rather than a religious one, though of course, believers tend to automatically equate “good” with “God”.
Yet if a man does good, he can never be far from God, although he may not know His name in the way people of various faiths do, or he may not have an official religious affiliation.
As for God’s decision… He has His Word, His commandments, His prophets and His messengers. But I think even theologians and scholars will admit that the mind of God is one that neither man nor angels can ever truly fathom… Hence, the Divine Mysteries… and the Unknowable.
| | Question/Answer | | Krewton asked on 07/01/03 - Is good good enough? How does one make it into the Kingdom of Heaven? By livng a just life? by being morally better than his drunken kin down the road? by going to church once a week? by givin' ole cuzin' Junior a handout when he is down? I know the answer according to God's word. I would just like to have some input from the rest of the experts here. All respones garner 5 stars. madima answered on 07/02/03:Jesus Christ said: “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.”
If you want to follow the Son to His Father’s kingdom in heaven, you abide by what He taught.
And He said: “Take up your cross and follow me.”
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