tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-45021349450004906052024-03-07T20:32:36.770-08:00Fides et RatioA Superhighway of Ideas Where Minds Meet in Pursuit of TruthWilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17434696710611875434noreply@blogger.comBlogger56125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4502134945000490605.post-35620540314106509672015-07-04T02:15:00.002-07:002015-07-04T02:16:52.120-07:00All In Two Months' TimeAbsurdity has a precise meaning in one of philosophy's "school of
thought". And if you use it for whatever purpose, then its technical
definition dwindles and becomes one of the varied meanings of the same
word. The opposite person in the dialogue table now has to sift through
its equivocal equivalents. Unlike in the "hard" sciences, in which one
theory has an equivalent mathematical formula or set of formulae and
governed by the relationship within the limits of the terms in<span class="text_exposed_show">
a relatively closed system, in the world of vocabulary and terminology,
its use becomes very specific insofar as its relative usage is
concerned. The difficulty is compounded by the fact that the next person
may interpret it otherwise. In the third level, a third party has the
power to bend it in order to suit it along their own ideological lines.
In the end, the original intent is lost in the view of the overgrowth of
appended meaning in the series of time and space. </span><br />
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But there is a growth that is hermeneutically viable in the lapse of
history, only if it flows as a logical and natural expression of the
original intent. Activism that is synchronous with verbal voluntarism
may only lead to confusing cloud of misrepresentation that only the
handful of an elitist power may hold sway.<br />
<br />
It is really absurd
if absurdity is itself not defined as being absurd in the first place.
For how to arrive at a more complex application of the term begins with
the basic notion of what the word represents. Just as one thinker in the
Middle Ages said that all interpretation begins with the literal sense,
so it is in this process that we can truly arrive at what the word
originally means. - July 4, 2015.<br />
<br />
Why such a nagging feeling that never goes away? I don't believe it lies
in the gut, but in the upper recesses of the body - in the seat of the
modes of thoughts, in the area where such things ought to exist and has
its locus for life. It keeps on coming even when others which lie
outside it would like to surpass it, exceed it, or unseat it. But this
feeling does not go away, for it has a way of its own, where no one
knows how. It knows me more than I know it, for it came bef<span class="text_exposed_show">ore
I came and it exists before I. It knows its ways when nobody knew it
first. It is not foreign to anyone, for anyone has a knack of knowing
its own claims. Everyone has a blood of it, which goes right to the
heart, where the thinking has a depth that the mind is so weakly trying
in the grips. Why? Only the mind knows its faults and its fragility
before the face of its claims. It cannot face up to the standard of this
IT. No matter the mind evades from its pervading eyes, it only shuns
its own self, for it is it who is the fount - the key where to exist
exists. - June 24. 2015.</span> </div>
Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17434696710611875434noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4502134945000490605.post-51392010049037613952012-06-20T01:35:00.003-07:002012-06-20T01:37:43.179-07:00CRITIQUE: IS THEOLOGY RESPECTABLE AS METAPHYSICS?<br />
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The conclusion that the author has emphatically generated through the rigors of his arguments is negative: theology cannot stand intellectually as a metaphysical discipline, since it cannot satisfy the requirements of the canons of respectability as being embodied in the scientific reasoning. </div>
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Is this conclusion justifiable?</div>
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There are several observations that have to be made on different levels of the arguments proffered by the Nicholaos Jones, the author of the paper, in the hope of answering the question.</div>
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First, the paper does not treat the respectability of theological methods of interpreting theological questions in the area of hermeneutics, but the respectability of these methods in answering metaphysical questions. It is the attempt made by some epistemologists in acquiring a place for theology in metaphysics through satisfying the criteria that made scientific reasoning respectable. Of the metaphysical question where the central problem lies is the following: Does God exist? To the author, it is not falsifiable due to the reason that theology treats the existence of God as immune to refutation.</div>
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Insofar as metaphysics in its most general sense concerns itself in its understanding and explicating the fundamental questions of being and the world, there is already an overlap of theology and metaphysics. Theological investigations treat questions that concern on two domains: the temporal and transcendental as far as questions of being is concerned. Also, theology is concerned of an entity whose being is treated higher than the scientific method can measure and justify. The tendency to delimit the questions to the verifiable is to narrow the world of metaphysics as such to the sphere of experience and quantifiable.</div>
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In the history of philosophy and with the advent of empirical science, metaphysics has since been judged against the rules of verifiability, and this has shifted metaphysics toward the domain of the non-empirical.</div>
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Therefore, the definition of respectability should not be encapsulated within the margins of the methodology of science, since metaphysics does not constitute itself by this delimitation but it surpasses this constricted definition.</div>
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Secondly, modern scientific method has come to be accepted as “arbiter of respectable reasoning” and is measured according to these two frameworks of understanding its methodology and epistemology: falsificationism and evidentialism. The first framework says that “its claims about the world are falsifiable: For every scientific claim, there is a logically possible circumstance that would count as a refutation of the claim.” While, the second is “the requirement that one’s degree of confidence in the truth of a claim be proportional to the evidence one has in support of the claim.” Therefore, for theology to become “relevantly analogous” to the criteria that justifies scientific reasoning as the standard of respectability, it has to pass the test of these two frameworks of judgment. For Nicholaos Jones, the unchangeable statement that God exists in theology alone renders theological reasoning untenably disreputable. In this case, we have to go back to the first position, whereby theology does not fall within the limited view of reality that science imposes, and it may be viewed as warranted to appropriate faith as supplementing what is lacking of human rationality in its limited capacity on the condition that what extends beyond human reason is possibly true. Falsificationism and evidentialism can fall within theology's own methodological schema as far as faith has material substance to account for, as far as part of faith is subject to the time and space, but in the categories of being treated fully by theological investigation, science falls short.</div>
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Does this make theological reason disreputable, since it cannot refute the statement that God exists?</div>
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It is not illogical to acknowledge that there is a good reason to believe that there exists a difference between respectable reasoning and scientific reasoning vis-à-vis respectable reasoning and theological reasoning. Nicholaos Jones has delineated that “the canons modern scientific reasoning are constitutive of what it is for reasoning to be respectable”. However, within this sense, it is warranted to believe that the principle of respectability exceeds the canons of scientific reasoning and is not strictly identified solely to science. The content of what is intrinsically a respectable reasoning in itself is greater than science and cannot be hijacked by the two frameworks of the latter (falsificationism and evidentialism). It is helpful to understand what philosopher Dewi Zephaniah Phillips judgment that the statement in question – God’s existence – cannot be judged according to the logical categories of philosophy because religious belief has its own sense and meaning within its own domain. The philosopher’s job is to explicate the meaning of this belief. Science starts with a given that is already falsifiable, whereas theology presupposes the idea that God exists – that cannot be ruled out by any succeeding evidence – from which reasoning is applied for understanding. Reformed epistemologists have contended that there are properly basic beliefs which need no further help of arguments to buttress this conviction that we naturally hold. For example, seeing myself on the mirror does not need any argument to support the idea that I am seeing myself on the mirror. It is simply that seeing myself before me on the mirror warrants me to conclude that I believe that I am seeing myself on the mirror.</div>
<br class="Apple-interchange-newline" />Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17434696710611875434noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4502134945000490605.post-90046322954489332002012-02-21T00:24:00.000-08:002015-07-04T02:16:23.870-07:00Critique of God and Quantum Cosmology<br />
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In his essay titled Arguments From Nothing: God and Quantum Cosmology, Lawrence Cahoon, a professor of philosophy at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts has argued, in response to the recent complex theories of cosmology, that, indeed, the beginning of a finite-past universe, as we know it, and as new propositions in quantum physics suggest, might not as well be what most have expected – that the universe had been generated from nothing. In this paper, the author had brought forth two arguments: first of which, he had elaborated on a different concept of the usage of the word Nothing in relation to quantum cosmology; and second, that the position of these novel ideas, as far as these have metaphysical implications, are dysfunctional. The author was circumspect and careful to elaborate his argument on the basis of the current and sound hypothetical postulates and discoveries of physics considering that the beginning of the universe from Nothing has some religious influence.</div>
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Taking the thought of the Greek Parmenides as his initial point – “Why is there something rather than nothing?” – the author postulates that the word Nothing needs to be construed in a different light against the usual denotation, which is “in the sense of utter absence”. The proposition of Edward Tryon in 1973 of the “continuous emergence and disappearance of particles” in quantum vacuum and succeeding inflation theory and quantum tunneling has given the author a substantive ground to propose a different kind of conception of the uncaused cause, which was propounded by St. Thomas of Aquino in Christian Theology. It has been discovered that most of the content in the universe is energy (dark energy) and that space cannot be translated as nothing since it has “its own metric structure that causally interacts with mass-energy”. Therefore, the concept of Nothing is not the state of “no-thing” but in the varying degrees of determinateness.</div>
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Given the thrust of current cosmological theories and its direction to open discussions on the initial condition from which the universe came, the author, mindful of the methodological constraints intrinsic in science and its predilection “to build structure into the laws so as to leave nothing to initial conditions”, rightly said the following: “without reference to an outside, that (emergence of particles) is impossible”. Thus, for the author, considering that the “current physics claims that the ensemble of matter, physical energy, force fields, waves, particles, and spacetime, characterized by physical constants and governed by laws, started” and rightly and proper to Leibniz’s Principle of Sufficient Reason, to posit a reference on the initial condition, which current scientific consensus may consider as outside the purely physical and material grounds, is legitimate, valid, and rational.</div>
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As a point of departure from the theistic doctrine of ex nihilo but leaning more closely to the philosophical idea of Baruch Spinoza and panentheism, the philosopher-author speculated on what he termed as the Ground, the source of the physicality of the universe and whose attribute is also physicality itself. In this, he has imagined that the Ground is like a predifferentiated Being, but not entirely indeterminate or without properties as to become nothing in equivalence. It becomes the source of laws and funds, initiates, and fixes the rules and constants that hold the universe together. Against the commonly-held attributes of God in Christian Theology and in the hopes of moving away from the inherent difficulties that the classical explication of God raises in relation to natural science, the author had concurred with another author’s (Hartshorne) denial of the Ground’s omniscience and omnipotence, and its limitation in power and knowledge.</div>
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From the outset, the author has been clear of his position regarding the properties, characteristics, and attributes of what he has postulated as the Ground of Being as that which is the source of the physical world, as against the cosmological argument hinging on theistic concepts generated from religious beliefs and divine revelation. The author is faithful to his intent in preserving a cosmological argument vis-a-vis Hume’s on the grounds of the purely scientific territory, building it up on the foundations of current advancement in theoretical physics, and freeing the limitations inherently imposed on his concept of the Ground and in consideration of a highly stochastic background of reality. The question, then, is asked on just how much does this opening of a self-enclosed metaphysical horizon of the world of science is to the question of Being given that the line of thought and the trajectory of physics, and contiguously in all sciences, is directed to some higher questions, which may overlap with the categories based on religion. The author has willfully consigned to limiting himself to the verifiable and the quantitative nature of reality and recedes from looking rational answers over the terrains of faith and revelation. Does this limit our goals of inquiry, then? After all, the author has said the following: “here looms a potentially unending debate about the aims of inquiry. My only short-term defense is that the censorship of that extra step can make no obvious claim to rational superiority”. </div>
Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17434696710611875434noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4502134945000490605.post-79706550197259334422011-06-03T04:14:00.000-07:002011-06-03T04:15:32.436-07:00The Tethering Darkness<div class="post" id="post-33"> <h2><a href="http://wellasang.blog.friendster.com/2008/05/the-tethering-darkness/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to The Tethering Darkness"> The Tethering Darkness </a></h2> <div class="entry"> <p>Lately, darkness has filled me. The grappling reality of death overturns my little amount of positive and sunny disposition. With the death of Monsignor Antonio Ferreron left my mind contemplating on the existence of death. The macabre account of the cyclone that hit Myanmar early this month and the devastating 7.8-Richter-scale earthquake that leveled the Chinese province of Sichuan have all borne their mark in my mind. </p> <p>There could be no question that the pending and hovering reality of death always awaits us anytime and anyplace. It is being said often that the moment we are born, we are also dying. In the last analysis then, what becomes stable in what we called "life" is death - the nothingness. However, should it be that we are engulfed in this total absence of being one after one ceases? Is it then the case that the transitory reality of human being means that we would truly pass only in this existence and no more? But in this scheme of things, one could not limited to the asking of our existential reality per se, as if the reality of existing is all that there is. Is it not valid also to ask that behind this existing is an existence of a greater kind? Is it not that the existence we have experienced is an existence to an existence before any existing exists? By this I mean that the meaninglessness of existing because it just comes about to be that way seems to me a grave concern lying flat before our eyes. It is saying in one sense that what we have in reality is only governed by the forces controlling the universe and no more. The sole fact that there is this existence is something that somehow we are not singularly bound to the laws of nature; but that, as you and me in this world are, we participate in the reality of an existence before the universe is. I could find no better answer before the Big Bang theory happened than the theoretical and philosophical basis of a reality before time and space began. </p> <p>In this regard, the darkness of the night that is always leaving me patches of void and emptiness, which I think did not exempt anyone in this matter, since Mother Teresa, too, experienced a dark night of her soul that was even seen as more protracted than usual, does not lay me in the space of hopelessness but ushers me into the hope that, as Christians are, is tended to a goal - a goal that we all want to achieve in the end. What could be a better end than in the totality of what we have always longed for. Even the oriental idea of one with the being is a concept akin to our search of something that could pacify our restless hearts. </p> <p>The <a href="http://www.ewtn.com/library/ENCYC/B16spesalvi.HTM">encyclical of Benedict XVI</a> is indeed a food for thought if one seeks the penultimate questions of life confronting our coming ends. This ugliness of death haunts everyone from the great to the least. Even our redeemer, the Lord Jesus Christ, suffered greatly in the garden of Gethsemane, as if to say that in that moment, he was not God, he greatly embraced His nature of being a man. Needless to say, His words of supplication to the Father, as if to ward the cup from Him, is saying to us today that we, too, avoid the cup of death - that is to say, we want to stay in this world that is always alien to us. We want to enjoy the transient happiness that this life could bring. It is funny to think that man does not cease to complain of his suffering of being in this world but seeks always to remain! What could be a worse place than being besieged with fear of imminent death, with diseases of all sorts, with catastrophes of every kind, with deluge and havoc of nature, with shame and failures, with responsibilies and deadlines, with increasing prices and uncertain future, with the waning of US primacy in the world stage and economy, with the rise of Islam and the east, and with all things that could ever happen in this world. And we still cling to our hopes in this world?</p> <p>Do we then flee and seek refuge to the future because we are confronted with a barely habitable world? Or, have we found an "opium" to which we could idenfy our sighs, as Karl Marx would say about religion? Is our present living just barely living in itself because each one of us is escaping reality in our own little worlds? Is our attitude of indifference of what would be, like we could not care less if the world tomorrow ends? Some have escaped into an eschatological existence, be it in politics and religion: we put our trust into the future, which has been idealized, and rework ourselves backward by making changes in the present. This eschatological escapism is evident though subtle. This is not entirely negative in itself; since in the pattern of things, it is a given fact that reality has orientation in itself toward consequential ends. Cause and effect is a realism one could not avoid. However, this has been dramatically advanced and given priority in the way we follow and believe things. For example, we enroll in insurance policies by viewing things in practical terms on the moment of death. This may not sound bad; however, when this becomes our first priority over any spontaneous goodness that the present life could bring, then we hamper the good that is in itself possible in this present moment over and against that hoped-for goodness to come in the future. It is as if to align every thing to conform to that goal that lies beyond. It takes the slack off from therein to point it toward an orientation in the future. </p> <p>Death, then, is no exeption. The overbearing reality of death orients our goals of making most of life: "let us eat and be merry for tomorrow we will die". This is a kind of passive eschatologial escape. We do not actively draft life to suit the future. We acknowledge the future existence of death, but taking it from our consciousness by saturating ourselves in the better things of the now and here, enrapturing ourselves in the pleasure of this precise moment.</p> <p>In the realm of religion, there is no clearer fact than the mushrooming of the "feel-good" denominations. To render Jesus our Lord and Savior today and to verbalize it as accepting Him as a sole redeemer and savior does not render it invalid and valueless. However, the theological undercurrent of this kind of faith is troubling: setting out our faith through acknowledging Him in our lives is a one-time event, which has ramification of our salvation. It reads "once saved always be saved". The consequence of a voice acceding of Him as your personal Lord and Savior renders you saved and in now way unsaveable. The viewpoint here: the future salvation of a human being is re-orienting life today by structuring it through a precise-moment formula to make it saveable. There is no problem here anway, but what is untenable is the fact that from here and on it is a journey of constant and unwavering faith! The Will that you used in accepting Christ on that certain moment is the same Will that you will use in the coming days and months before death. What lies therein, in the view of Born-Again Christianity, does not matter because damnation has been salvaged by that one-time event in the past. This is an active eschatological escapism. The security of salvation is given more prominence than the virtual reality of life of persevering and enduring in faith and practice. </p> <p>In all this, the effect is confusion in a world that knows no anchorage to clear truth. The looming fact of death is now given different shades of acceptance. We have come to accept it in different ways in which we situate ourselves by the belief that we hold. Then, a question then seeks to be answered bears out: what, then, to hold? what, then, to believe? and what, then, to follow? </p> <p>When Pope Benedict XVI went to the United States in April, he met with some representatives of other religious faiths and other Christian denominations in New York. He was clear as he was referring to the reason why the apostles were successful in convincing the world to the yoke of Christ: "The ultimate effectiveness of their preaching did not depend on "lofty words" or "human wisdom" (1 Cor 2:13), but rather on the work of the Spirit (Eph 3:5) who confirmed the authoritative witness of the Apostles (cf. 1 Cor 15:1-11)." And in the later years of the growth of the nascent Chruch: "this proclamation had to be guaranteed by the purity of normative doctrine expressed in creedal formulae <span>—</span> <em>symbola</em> <span>—</span> which articulated the essence of the Christian faith and constituted the foundation for the unity of the baptized (cf. 1 Cor 15:3-5; Gal 1:6-9; <em>Unitatis Redintegratio</em>, 2)". </p> <p>Then the Pope focused the problem of the world of today: "My dear friends, the power of the <em>kerygma</em> has lost none of its internal dynamism. Yet we must ask ourselves whether its full force has not been attenuated by a relativistic approach to Christian doctrine similar to that found in secular ideologies, which, in alleging that science alone is "objective", relegate religion entirely to the subjective sphere of individual feeling. Scientific discoveries, and their application through human ingenuity, undoubtedly offer new possibilities for the betterment of humankind. This does not mean, however, that the "knowable" is limited to the empirically verifiable, nor religion restricted to the shifting realm of "personal experience. For Christians to accept this faulty line of reasoning would lead to the notion that there is little need to emphasize objective truth in the presentation of the Christian faith, for one need but follow his or her own conscience and choose a community that best suits his or her individual tastes. The result is seen in the continual proliferation of communities which often eschew institutional structures and minimize the importance of doctrinal content for Christian living."</p> <p>To which way we view the greater reality in our own little realities, and insomuch as we hold dear the Christian tenets that we have come to believe, then we do not have any other recourse than to believe in the historical unfolding of truth subsisting in the Church in which the ancient faith endures and to which Christ has given the power to teach. We could not cast aside the historicity of our faith without throwing away the Christian belief altogether. If only in the difficulty of our believing in an institutional Church we have come to terms of the gravity of not believing in Christ, then it follows then that so prized a treasure has been had in the long run. Accepting death as natural and inescapable is difficult, which is as difficult as accepting the truth in a Church marred by weakness and controversies. Death and Church run parallel to each other and each has a great relationship to follow through. Death does not become nihilistic in a person informed of his faith that the Church guards carefully. Only in the certainty of the truth taught laboriously by the Church could guarantee an eternal salvation beyond the grave. </p> <div class="addthis_container"><a href="http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=20"><img src="http://s7.addthis.com/static/btn/lg-share-en.gif" alt="Bookmark and Share" border="0" height="16" width="125" /></a></div> </div> <p class="postmetadata"> Posted on on <span class="timr">May 15th, 2008</span> in <span class="catr"> <a href="http://wellasang.blog.friendster.com/category/current-affairs/" title="View all posts in Current Affairs" rel="category tag">Current Affairs</a> </span> | <span class="editr"><a href="http://wellasang.blog.friendster.com/wp-admin/post.php?action=edit&post=33" title="Edit post">Edit</a> | </span> <span class="commr"> <a href="http://wellasang.blog.friendster.com/2008/05/the-tethering-darkness/#respond" title="Comment on The Tethering Darkness">No Comments »</a> </span></p> </div>Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17434696710611875434noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4502134945000490605.post-27403088143782553342011-05-31T04:34:00.001-07:002011-05-31T04:34:21.542-07:00Protestantism III<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: verdana, tahoma, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; "><div class="navigation" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><div class="alignleft" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; float: left; width: 247px; ">← <a href="http://wellasang.blog.friendster.com/2006/11/protestantism-ii/" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; text-decoration: none; border-top-width: 0px !important; border-right-width: 0px !important; border-bottom-width: 0px !important; border-left-width: 0px !important; border-style: initial !important; border-color: initial !important; color: rgb(102, 102, 102); ">Protestantism II</a></div><div class="alignright" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; float: right; text-align: right; width: 247px; "><a href="http://wellasang.blog.friendster.com/2006/12/the-filipino-today/" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; text-decoration: none; border-top-width: 0px !important; border-right-width: 0px !important; border-bottom-width: 0px !important; border-left-width: 0px !important; border-style: initial !important; border-color: initial !important; color: rgb(102, 102, 102); ">The Filipino Today</a> →</div></div><br /><div class="post" id="post-19" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 20px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><h2 style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; font-family: Georgia, Verdana, Arial, serif; font: normal normal normal 1.8em/normal Aria, verdana; "><a href="http://wellasang.blog.friendster.com/2006/11/protestantism-iii/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: Protestantism III" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 4px; padding-right: 4px; padding-bottom: 4px; padding-left: 4px; text-decoration: none; border-top-width: 0px !important; border-right-width: 0px !important; border-bottom-width: 0px !important; border-left-width: 0px !important; border-style: initial !important; border-color: initial !important; color: rgb(7, 81, 90); background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: rgb(189, 231, 1); display: block; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; ">Protestantism III</a></h2><div class="entry" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-bottom-width: 2px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(239, 239, 239); "><p style="margin-top: 0.7em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; ">The Age of the Enlightenment came at the hegemony of rationalism. The personalities of this age are described as one of the greatest exchange of ideas in the history of philosophy. The budding of scholars who tried to penetrate every possible question in reality had every mind of Europe gripped with confusion and in flux. The continental Europe whose exchange of ideas have been a singular source of its greatness and weakness created a traffic of development and expansion of theories, hypotheses, and exponents. The lasting effect of this will be felt until now, the Postmodern world.</p><p style="margin-top: 0.7em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; ">The Catholic Church at the time found herself defensive against the ideas of the era. The Church had been attacked from within and without, even when some of these greatest minds had been Catholics or educated in Catholic schools themselves. Yet, the Church had to encounter, and, hence, She has to respond by turning inward and find the essence that She has been born out. France had not been kind to her. After the fall of Bastille, the Revolutionary forces who toppled the monarchy the graphic representation of it was by beheading the last Bourbon monarch, Louise XVI, usurped the government and became so hostile to the Church. The Catholic religion for the first time in France had been stripped off of Her patrimony that had helped the French populace in its advancement both in the material and spiritual benefits.</p><p style="margin-top: 0.7em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; ">However, the encounter of the Church with the Kantian’s Copernican revolutionary and critical philosophy, empiricism that fell after skepticism from rationalism, the idealist thought that followed along in its wake, and the nationalist sentiments hovering over the whole of Europe made the Church conscious of Herself as ever. In one sense, the Church was made stronger in Her identity by the meeting of these solvent ideas. If She had been shaken with rationalism, which She helped foster, She, nonetheless, found the flowering of music in that age. The great masters of the day from Hadyn to Beethoven, and then to Mozart wrote voluminous musical masterpieces that would define the zenith of musical history in after years.</p><p style="margin-top: 0.7em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; ">Here is the inverse relation of the beauty of reason and the beauty of music particularly in this time. Though reason which the Church did not expunge from Her apprehension of truth had been used through those years as a test against Her during the corrosive years of the Enlightenment, She still found the another way of magnificent presentation of truth in the form of melody and musical harmony. If the world becomes hostile through philosophy, then through music it can. This is the beauty of the Church. She does not express Christ only to certain modes of presentation but exhaust every means to offer it either to let it be discovered or make it as a constant sign for the world to hear and see.</p><p style="margin-top: 0.7em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; ">The Age of the Enlightenment had been spurred in part by the coming of Protestantism. The view that disbelieving the perennial teachings of the Church could become legitimated by at least a credible person of the hour whose credentials at the very least could be the primary source of its validity. The outcry of Luther paralleled that of the fermenting ideas of the Renaissance and the growing sentiments of Europe toward its identity through national lines had given fertile grounds for pure Rationalism, whose primary characteristic was contemptuous toward religion especially Christianity, to fallout in the 18th century. Protestantism had become the vehicle of some of these ideas to prosper, and in the end, it too became its victim.</p><p style="margin-top: 0.7em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; ">This is one of the reasons why Protestantism can never be a valid religion. The validity of this religion lies in its claim to purify the Church from the filth of its doctrine, discipline, worship, devotion, and life. And, because of that, they proposed sola scriptura and sola fidei as the fundamental criteria to which all things in faith had to be measured. The effect of this is 40,000 christian denominations in the world today and counting. The unity that was always at thoughts of Paul in his admonition to the different Churches from Rome to Philippi had been rendered impossible in human terms. Notwithstanding is the 1054 schism of the Eastern Churches we now called Orthodoxy. Thus, to each and every christian in today’s world, one has to feel the gravity spiritually of Christianity’s disunited fact. If certainly Protestantism can offer to the world Christ whose teaching is one and the same, then where is it? Its legacy is a total wreck and failure due to its natural predication: confusion.</p><p style="margin-top: 0.7em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; ">Luther’s revolt against Rome could not be a cogent proposition for a renewed Christianity. Only by perfecting the Church inside can it be a valid recourse. The principles governing the Church are ancient and foundational for She drew it not from Her own accord but from Christ, the one essence with the Father and whose being is the visible truth that became man and whose teachings the Church has always protected and whose God-ness She has always proclaimed to the world. The founder did not promise the Church to be perfect in Her members. Albeit, He is inviting them to perfect themselves without cease in the world that tend to draw them against Him their master.</p><p style="margin-top: 0.7em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; "></p><div class="addthis_container" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><a href="http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=20" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; text-decoration: none; border-top-width: 0px !important; border-right-width: 0px !important; border-bottom-width: 0px !important; border-left-width: 0px !important; border-style: initial !important; border-color: initial !important; color: rgb(102, 102, 102); "><img src="http://s7.addthis.com/static/btn/lg-share-en.gif" width="125" height="16" border="0" alt="Bookmark and Share" style="margin-top: 0px; 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background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; ">November 9th, 2006 </span>in <span class="catr" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 15px; background-image: url(http://wellasang.blog.friendster.com/wp-content/themes/anubis-10/images/catr.png); background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; "><a href="http://wellasang.blog.friendster.com/category/religion/" title="View all posts in Religion" rel="category tag" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; text-decoration: none; border-top-width: 0px !important; border-right-width: 0px !important; border-bottom-width: 1px; 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font-family: verdana, tahoma, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; "><div class="navigation" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><div class="alignleft" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; float: left; width: 247px; ">← <a href="http://wellasang.blog.friendster.com/2006/11/protestantism/" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; text-decoration: none; border-top-width: 0px !important; border-right-width: 0px !important; border-bottom-width: 0px !important; border-left-width: 0px !important; border-style: initial !important; border-color: initial !important; color: rgb(102, 102, 102); ">Protestantism</a></div><div class="alignright" style="margin-top: 0px; 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padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; font-family: Georgia, Verdana, Arial, serif; font: normal normal normal 1.8em/normal Aria, verdana; "><a href="http://wellasang.blog.friendster.com/2006/11/protestantism-ii/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: Protestantism II" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 4px; padding-right: 4px; padding-bottom: 4px; padding-left: 4px; text-decoration: none; border-top-width: 0px !important; border-right-width: 0px !important; border-bottom-width: 0px !important; border-left-width: 0px !important; border-style: initial !important; border-color: initial !important; color: rgb(7, 81, 90); background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: rgb(189, 231, 1); display: block; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; ">Protestantism II</a></h2><div class="entry" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-bottom-width: 2px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(239, 239, 239); "><p style="margin-top: 0.7em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; ">Since 1517 of the pegging of the 95 theses of Martin Luther on the door of the Cathedral of Wittenberg, the western Christendom has been split into sects and denominations that up until now the evidence is quite seen vividly. One primary reason of Luther’s battlecry was on the reform of the Christian church as he saw fit. However, the reformers themselves had been divisive enough to cause in themselves differences in doctrine and discipline. The mayhem caused by the Peasants’ Revolt in Germany, by the rise of Calvinism in Geneva, and later, the coming into being of the Church of England brought about by Henry VIII’s quarrel with Pope Leo X, the succeeding founding of Anabaptism, and many others corollary to the initial dissent had led to more divisions, which has become the primary characteristic of Protestantism.</p><p style="margin-top: 0.7em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; ">This is where arguments are brought to the fore: whence the rise protestantism which seeks to purify the Church has become itself the source of weakness within the religion professed by the reformers. It seems to me that Protestantism has defeated itself from the very beginning by its very nature, which is in itself instrinsically indefensible. The doctrines of sola fide and sola scriptura now becomes a havoc for the many who seek to interpret it on the appeal of subjectivity, as based on a said impulse of the Holy Spirit. The mere fact that what defines Protestants of today is already a great question to be posed against them when, indeed, what they protested about has been in existence since the time of the Apostles.</p><p style="margin-top: 0.7em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; ">In my opinion, the Protestant reformers have failed by their temperament. Their attitude towards Rome has clouded their objectivity to root out what have been the non-essentials in the discipline of the Church. They had questioned the very existence of papacy when in fact, the office has been there even during the time of St. Ignatius of Antioch, a bishop under the tutelage of St. John, when he perfectly describes the Church of Rome as the one who presides with charity among churches. He has failed to notice that the Bishop of Rome is constitutive of the Church whose primary task it is mandated by Matthew 16. Luther failed to do his share of research and weigh things on by being constrained in the events of his day and the lure to change things in his own hands. He has become prey victim of the sovereigns of his time that only aggravated the precarious conditions, which the result is total breakdown of order in the society.</p><p style="margin-top: 0.7em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; ">On one hand, it might be considered as beneficial for the Church to experience the reformation of the 1500s. Her identity became even more defined and the changes, though at the start slow in coming, came to a head as various popes have been adamant to enforce the Council of Trent’s decrees, which would eventually condition the Church for another 400 years until the Second Vatican Council.</p><div class="addthis_container" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><a href="http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=20" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; text-decoration: none; border-top-width: 0px !important; border-right-width: 0px !important; border-bottom-width: 0px !important; border-left-width: 0px !important; border-style: initial !important; border-color: initial !important; color: rgb(102, 102, 102); "><img src="http://s7.addthis.com/static/btn/lg-share-en.gif" width="125" height="16" border="0" alt="Bookmark and Share" style="margin-top: 0px; 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background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; ">November 6th, 2006 </span>in <span class="catr" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 15px; background-image: url(http://wellasang.blog.friendster.com/wp-content/themes/anubis-10/images/catr.png); background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; "><a href="http://wellasang.blog.friendster.com/category/religion/" title="View all posts in Religion" rel="category tag" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; text-decoration: none; border-top-width: 0px !important; border-right-width: 0px !important; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-left-width: 0px !important; border-style: initial !important; border-color: initial !important; color: rgb(102, 102, 102); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); ">Religion</a> </span>| <span class="editr" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 15px; background-image: url(http://wellasang.blog.friendster.com/wp-content/themes/anubis-10/images/editr.png); background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; "><a href="http://wellasang.blog.friendster.com/wp-admin/post.php?action=edit&post=17" title="Edit post" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; text-decoration: none; border-top-width: 0px !important; 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background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; background-position: 0% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; "><a href="http://wellasang.blog.friendster.com/2006/11/protestantism-ii/feed/" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; text-decoration: none; border-top-width: 0px !important; border-right-width: 0px !important; border-bottom-width: 0px !important; border-left-width: 0px !important; border-style: initial !important; border-color: initial !important; color: rgb(102, 102, 102); ">Comments RSS</a></span></p></div><h3 id="respond" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; font-family: Georgia, Verdana, Arial, serif; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); ">Leave a Reply</h3></span>Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17434696710611875434noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4502134945000490605.post-60681556560667591292011-05-31T04:32:00.002-07:002011-05-31T04:33:06.682-07:00Protestantism<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: verdana, tahoma, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; "><div class="navigation" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><div class="alignleft" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; float: left; width: 247px; ">← <a href="http://wellasang.blog.friendster.com/2006/11/charity-a-nonconditional-issue/" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; text-decoration: none; border-top-width: 0px !important; border-right-width: 0px !important; border-bottom-width: 0px !important; border-left-width: 0px !important; border-style: initial !important; border-color: initial !important; color: rgb(102, 102, 102); ">Charity A Nonconditional Issue</a></div><div class="alignright" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; float: right; text-align: right; width: 247px; "><a href="http://wellasang.blog.friendster.com/2006/11/protestantism-ii/" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; text-decoration: none; border-top-width: 0px !important; border-right-width: 0px !important; border-bottom-width: 0px !important; border-left-width: 0px !important; border-style: initial !important; border-color: initial !important; color: rgb(102, 102, 102); ">Protestantism II</a> →</div></div><br /><div class="post" id="post-16" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 20px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><h2 style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; font-family: Georgia, Verdana, Arial, serif; font: normal normal normal 1.8em/normal Aria, verdana; "><a href="http://wellasang.blog.friendster.com/2006/11/protestantism/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: Protestantism" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 4px; padding-right: 4px; padding-bottom: 4px; padding-left: 4px; text-decoration: none; border-top-width: 0px !important; border-right-width: 0px !important; border-bottom-width: 0px !important; border-left-width: 0px !important; border-style: initial !important; border-color: initial !important; color: rgb(7, 81, 90); background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: rgb(189, 231, 1); display: block; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; ">Protestantism</a></h2><div class="entry" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-bottom-width: 2px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(239, 239, 239); "><p style="margin-top: 0.7em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; ">The founding of Protestantism saw the rupture of Christendom into fragments of denominations. This has become one of the sources of weakness and scandal in Christianity that today it has become even doubtful that union is possible. The rupture of the historic Church into many confessing churches has blurred the lines of beliefs that have held sway among Christians for 1500 years. Martin Luther may be a hero for some, but his name will continuously echo in the pages of history as one who stood for good or ill. Much in the debate about Luther centers on his personality at the crux in that part of history.</p><p style="margin-top: 0.7em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; ">The events leading up to Protestantism is very much complex. The waning years of Scholastism and the gradual developing of humanism has caught the Church in the web of factors that She herself had need of integration. The seeming antithetical nature of humanism against the Christian faith need have to be synthesized within Her innate constitution, which She herself has received from Her founder. However, the Scholastism that had become identical with Catholic theology had found fertile grounds of abuses as it was becoming spent in itself. The inherent rationalism of Thomistic thought found no favor in a world, which was in flux of changes. Here Luther found his world as like others such as Calvin, Zwingli, and others.</p><p style="margin-top: 0.7em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; ">The fomenting ideas that Scholastism had brought made a society that was dichotomized: a one class that has grown in itself that saw no meaning in the revealed religion because of continued abstraction, and theologians and priests who had become completely detached from the pew because of their continued fixation with beliefs that were far unreachable by the common people’s understanding. Therefore, it was inevitable that doubt would arise. The Church lost Her personal familiarity of Her believers in envigorating them for an existential change as a reaction to the Gospel. Indeed, the Church of the 1500s is marked by a clergy suffering from the laxity of discipline as a consequence of Christian rationalism.</p><p style="margin-top: 0.7em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; ">At the backdrop of this event lies the looming influence of humanism that has brought the great Renaissance, the flowering of other ideas that has been sidelined by Aristotlean thought. Thus, the Church was caught at the midst of Her own agency: on one side, the reduction of morality, and on the other, the onslaught of secular learning that has found fertile ground in the 16th Century Europe.</p><p style="margin-top: 0.7em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; ">Hence, Luther found distrust in the too rationalistic theology of his day and succumbed to a crisis that would recapitulate a disruption in the whole of Europe for two centuries.</p><div class="addthis_container" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><a href="http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=20" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; text-decoration: none; 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font-size: 10px; color: rgb(153, 153, 153); text-align: right; "><span class="timr" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 15px; background-image: url(http://wellasang.blog.friendster.com/wp-content/themes/anubis-10/images/timr.png); background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; ">November 3rd, 2006 </span>in <span class="catr" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 15px; background-image: url(http://wellasang.blog.friendster.com/wp-content/themes/anubis-10/images/catr.png); background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; "><a href="http://wellasang.blog.friendster.com/category/religion/" title="View all posts in Religion" rel="category tag" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; text-decoration: none; border-top-width: 0px !important; border-right-width: 0px !important; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-left-width: 0px !important; border-style: initial !important; border-color: initial !important; color: rgb(102, 102, 102); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); ">Religion</a> </span>| <span class="editr" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 15px; background-image: url(http://wellasang.blog.friendster.com/wp-content/themes/anubis-10/images/editr.png); background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; 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padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; "><span class="commentsfeedr" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 20px; background-image: url(http://wellasang.blog.friendster.com/wp-content/themes/anubis-10/images/feed.png); background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; background-position: 0% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; "><a href="http://wellasang.blog.friendster.com/2006/11/protestantism/feed/" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; text-decoration: none; border-top-width: 0px !important; border-right-width: 0px !important; border-bottom-width: 0px !important; border-left-width: 0px !important; border-style: initial !important; border-color: initial !important; color: rgb(102, 102, 102); ">Comments RSS</a></span></p></div></span>Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17434696710611875434noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4502134945000490605.post-64674533607425516942011-05-31T04:32:00.001-07:002011-05-31T04:32:20.715-07:00Charity A Nonconditional Issue<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: verdana, tahoma, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; "><div class="navigation" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><div class="alignleft" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; float: left; width: 247px; ">← <a href="http://wellasang.blog.friendster.com/2006/10/another-quagmire-a-response/" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; text-decoration: none; border-top-width: 0px !important; border-right-width: 0px !important; border-bottom-width: 0px !important; border-left-width: 0px !important; border-style: initial !important; border-color: initial !important; color: rgb(102, 102, 102); ">Another Quagmire: A Response</a></div><div class="alignright" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; float: right; text-align: right; width: 247px; "><a href="http://wellasang.blog.friendster.com/2006/11/protestantism/" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; text-decoration: none; border-top-width: 0px !important; border-right-width: 0px !important; border-bottom-width: 0px !important; border-left-width: 0px !important; border-style: initial !important; border-color: initial !important; color: rgb(102, 102, 102); ">Protestantism</a> →</div></div><br /><div class="post" id="post-15" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 20px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><h2 style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; font-family: Georgia, Verdana, Arial, serif; font: normal normal normal 1.8em/normal Aria, verdana; "><a href="http://wellasang.blog.friendster.com/2006/11/charity-a-nonconditional-issue/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: Charity A Nonconditional Issue" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 4px; padding-right: 4px; padding-bottom: 4px; padding-left: 4px; text-decoration: none; border-top-width: 0px !important; border-right-width: 0px !important; border-bottom-width: 0px !important; border-left-width: 0px !important; border-style: initial !important; border-color: initial !important; color: rgb(7, 81, 90); background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: rgb(189, 231, 1); display: block; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; ">Charity A Nonconditional Issue</a></h2><div class="entry" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-bottom-width: 2px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(239, 239, 239); "><p style="margin-top: 0.7em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; ">Is it wrong to give? Negative. I think the basic premise of the idea of giving does not stem from any condition that one attaches to it. Charity is intrinsically bound up in the command of Christ for gospel proclamation. Just as he was healing the wounded physically, emotionally, and spiritually, he did not restrict himself in any way to conditions imposed by circumstances and situations. Just when I give something to beggars does not in any way violate the rules of responsibility. The Savior did not choose the ones he healed, the ones he had given time with, and the ones he rose from death. The command to give is not something accidental where Christians find inadvertently in his following in the footsteps of the Master, but in itself is essentially a part of one’s conviction of following so.</p><p style="margin-top: 0.7em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; ">We cannot relegate the concept of giving to the realm of the abstract. However, our faith should dictate our mind to do it concretely even in our midst. Jesus Christ did not remain as a hidden God, but He manifested Himself to the Jews as to be perceived in their senses and absorb in their cognition. We find Him at the epicenter of the life of Israel, working in their midst by liberating them physically from the binds of their disease and circumstances. Heretofore, we who call ourselves Christians should do likewise. We cannot remain consigned on a spot of just looking at our crosses at a distance, but must we take it upon ourselves and follow Him wherever He may lead us.</p><p style="margin-top: 0.7em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; ">Therefore, our action of charity is an act of Christ wherever we choose to do it especially to the least of our brethren. A Christian who opts charity among other things does not acclaim himself for doing so, but by being called a Christian, he just follows the commands of the One whom he identifies himself with. "Whatever you do to the least of your brothers, you do it to me." How else can one interpret this except by doing it.</p><p style="margin-top: 0.7em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; ">However, the one who gives may be accused of irresponsibility. But I think here we should find my disagreement. Firstly, the command of Christ is non-negotiable. The Gospel addresses these commands specifically without referring to any conditions of giving. The Lord did not state that we should give only until we find it abusive already. He did not put limitations in quantity and quality. Secondly, the admonition is an invitation in the one who receives the grace of faith. Now, the grace moves the man in his subjective capacity to extend help whoever is in need. The response of a Christian is the stimulus of the grace in the heart of the believer. Whoever, whatever, and whenever is the concerned, it does not take into account as to who receives the help.</p><p style="margin-top: 0.7em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; ">The help one can give may not always be monetary. It may be in helping someone getting a job or illuminating someone in one’s prudential capacity as to the choices to be taken in a difficulty.</p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0.7em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; ">Many times we also fail to take note that giving something is a step to freedom. The liberating force of giving from the oppression of hunger and thirst is just a material example of a higher and spiritual battle each man strives to conquer. The emancipation from sin is both a temporal and spiritual warfare. That is why the Church has preferential option to caridad because giving is an act of love of God and neighbor which is antithetical to sin, the progenitor of slavery, of greed, and of hate.</p><p dir="ltr" style="margin-top: 0.7em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; ">So the next time you give, always think that you are conquering something which always invites us to act and think opposite to our true vocation as Christian.</p><p style="margin-top: 0.7em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; "></p><div class="addthis_container" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><a href="http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=20" style="margin-top: 0px; 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margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; font-size: 10px; color: rgb(153, 153, 153); text-align: right; "><span class="timr" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 15px; background-image: url(http://wellasang.blog.friendster.com/wp-content/themes/anubis-10/images/timr.png); background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; ">November 3rd, 2006 </span>in <span class="catr" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 15px; background-image: url(http://wellasang.blog.friendster.com/wp-content/themes/anubis-10/images/catr.png); 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margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; "><span class="commentsfeedr" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 20px; background-image: url(http://wellasang.blog.friendster.com/wp-content/themes/anubis-10/images/feed.png); background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; background-position: 0% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; "><a href="http://wellasang.blog.friendster.com/2006/11/charity-a-nonconditional-issue/feed/" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; text-decoration: none; border-top-width: 0px !important; border-right-width: 0px !important; border-bottom-width: 0px !important; border-left-width: 0px !important; border-style: initial !important; border-color: initial !important; color: rgb(102, 102, 102); ">Comments RSS</a></span></p></div><h3 id="respond" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; font-family: Georgia, Verdana, Arial, serif; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); ">Leave a Reply</h3></span>Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17434696710611875434noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4502134945000490605.post-10431557116766379412011-05-31T04:31:00.001-07:002011-05-31T04:31:48.078-07:00Another Quagmire: A Response<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: verdana, tahoma, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; "><div class="navigation" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><div class="alignleft" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; float: left; width: 247px; ">← <a href="http://wellasang.blog.friendster.com/2006/10/one-of-days-in-quagmire/" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; text-decoration: none; border-top-width: 0px !important; border-right-width: 0px !important; border-bottom-width: 0px !important; border-left-width: 0px !important; border-style: initial !important; border-color: initial !important; color: rgb(102, 102, 102); ">One of Days in Quagmire</a></div><div class="alignright" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; float: right; text-align: right; width: 247px; "><a href="http://wellasang.blog.friendster.com/2006/11/charity-a-nonconditional-issue/" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; text-decoration: none; border-top-width: 0px !important; border-right-width: 0px !important; border-bottom-width: 0px !important; border-left-width: 0px !important; border-style: initial !important; border-color: initial !important; color: rgb(102, 102, 102); ">Charity A Nonconditional Issue</a> →</div></div><br /><div class="post" id="post-14" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 20px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><h2 style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; font-family: Georgia, Verdana, Arial, serif; font: normal normal normal 1.8em/normal Aria, verdana; "><a href="http://wellasang.blog.friendster.com/2006/10/another-quagmire-a-response/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: Another Quagmire: A Response" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 4px; padding-right: 4px; padding-bottom: 4px; padding-left: 4px; text-decoration: none; border-top-width: 0px !important; border-right-width: 0px !important; border-bottom-width: 0px !important; border-left-width: 0px !important; border-style: initial !important; border-color: initial !important; color: rgb(7, 81, 90); background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: rgb(189, 231, 1); display: block; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; ">Another Quagmire: A Response</a></h2><div class="entry" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-bottom-width: 2px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(239, 239, 239); "><p style="margin-top: 0.7em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; ">As I was reaching for comments with regards to what I have written in my "One of Days in Quagmire", I have found that most did not understand what I have written. At most, a colleague of mine says that it was complicated as a reading. Another had commented that I should be more to the point.</p><p style="margin-top: 0.7em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; ">Firstly, as a writer of a topic one has to establish a "helipad" so to speak to make a point. A sentence topic if anyone is keen enough is the statement I made that there is in existence a uniqueness of every individual, and this is being implied by my statement, "You cannot suppress other people’s uniqueness, nor can you forego their similarities." This uniqueness can create tension because of the uniqueness itself. And, I have stated later in the same stanza that conflicts are not preventable and are bound to happen because of, well, uniqueness. And I suppose that everyone should have taken notice of the words thesis and anti-thesis, which are themselves philosophically meaningfull since we are beings that have differences, let alone similarities.</p><p style="margin-top: 0.7em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; ">In the second stanza, I have underlined the inherent problem with everyone of us. What then is the problem? It is that anyone may tend to forget that what we hear, see, and feel can have objective reality (that such a thing exists outside yourself and in my example, gossiping) and subjective reality (our own interpretation of the thing that exits and in my example again, gossiping). Taking these NOT into account (the subjective and objective), one can have the tendency to oversimplify things: like making conclusions quickly that so and so has insulted me and judge the situation against your favor. Or, again to oversimplify things by interpreting other people’s minds (like so and so is guilty of insulting me because he is a friend of this). One becomes guilty because of association.</p><p style="margin-top: 0.7em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; ">Now in the third stanza, I tried to explain that this is in no way simple since making sure everything is perfect in any interaction is an ideal thing. You cannot expect everyone to interpret a certain thing the same at all times, and our reactions vary from one to another based on our psychology or other factors at that point in time. However, consciously acknowledging this problem (tension in every interaction) may be of great help to construct for us a balanced view of life — that is why I said integrate.</p><p style="margin-top: 0.7em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; ">I also point an important factor, which can be a helping hand for everyone who has the same problem: the religious beliefs. At times, our religious beliefs would help us to explain things and overcome by some sort of explanation. One such thing is that my religious belief teaches me to love my neighbor. This is a Christian commandment that is emphasized by Christ. By so doing, I am challenged to give my foe or otherwise a chance to explain herself or himself. But if things will turn out sour, I may likely say that this is some sort of test for my faith on how God will manifest His grace on me by stretching my patience in such unhappy encounter.</p><p style="margin-top: 0.7em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; ">This and all is what I would have entailed everyone to understand. I can understand that I might be misreading my readers by thinking that they know the background knowledge that I have. I hope they will put some extra-time to read again and again. I do believe that words carry something that it represents. I do not want to delve this thing in this write-up, or else I will again be accused of being a complicated writer and incoherent at worse. No offense intended to anyone. I am open to suggestions and critiques from critics anyway.</p><div class="addthis_container" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><a href="http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=20" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; text-decoration: none; border-top-width: 0px !important; border-right-width: 0px !important; border-bottom-width: 0px !important; border-left-width: 0px !important; border-style: initial !important; border-color: initial !important; color: rgb(102, 102, 102); "><img src="http://s7.addthis.com/static/btn/lg-share-en.gif" width="125" height="16" border="0" alt="Bookmark and Share" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px !important; border-right-width: 0px !important; border-bottom-width: 0px !important; border-left-width: 0px !important; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; border-style: initial !important; border-color: initial !important; " /></a></div></div><p class="postmetadata" style="margin-top: 0.7em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; font-size: 10px; color: rgb(153, 153, 153); text-align: right; "><span class="timr" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 15px; background-image: url(http://wellasang.blog.friendster.com/wp-content/themes/anubis-10/images/timr.png); background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; ">October 18th, 2006 </span>in <span class="catr" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 15px; background-image: url(http://wellasang.blog.friendster.com/wp-content/themes/anubis-10/images/catr.png); background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; "><a href="http://wellasang.blog.friendster.com/category/friendship/" title="View all posts in Friendship" rel="category tag" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; text-decoration: none; border-top-width: 0px !important; border-right-width: 0px !important; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-left-width: 0px !important; border-style: initial !important; border-color: initial !important; color: rgb(102, 102, 102); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); ">Friendship</a> </span>| <span class="editr" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 15px; background-image: url(http://wellasang.blog.friendster.com/wp-content/themes/anubis-10/images/editr.png); background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; "><a href="http://wellasang.blog.friendster.com/wp-admin/post.php?action=edit&post=14" title="Edit post" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; text-decoration: none; border-top-width: 0px !important; border-right-width: 0px !important; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-left-width: 0px !important; border-style: initial !important; border-color: initial !important; color: rgb(102, 102, 102); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); ">Edit</a> |</span></p></div><div class="post-content" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><p style="margin-top: 0.7em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; "><span class="commentsfeedr" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 20px; background-image: url(http://wellasang.blog.friendster.com/wp-content/themes/anubis-10/images/feed.png); background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; background-position: 0% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; "><a href="http://wellasang.blog.friendster.com/2006/10/another-quagmire-a-response/feed/" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; text-decoration: none; border-top-width: 0px !important; border-right-width: 0px !important; border-bottom-width: 0px !important; border-left-width: 0px !important; border-style: initial !important; border-color: initial !important; color: rgb(102, 102, 102); ">Comments RSS</a></span></p></div></span>Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17434696710611875434noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4502134945000490605.post-28373118774180739652011-05-31T04:30:00.000-07:002011-05-31T04:31:01.847-07:00One of Days in Quagmire<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: verdana, tahoma, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; "><div class="navigation" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><div class="alignleft" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; float: left; width: 247px; "> <a href="http://wellasang.blog.friendster.com/2006/09/years-have-been/" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; text-decoration: none; border-top-width: 0px !important; border-right-width: 0px !important; border-bottom-width: 0px !important; border-left-width: 0px !important; border-style: initial !important; border-color: initial !important; color: rgb(102, 102, 102); ">Years Have Been</a></div><div class="alignright" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; float: right; text-align: right; width: 247px; "><a href="http://wellasang.blog.friendster.com/2006/10/another-quagmire-a-response/" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; text-decoration: none; border-top-width: 0px !important; border-right-width: 0px !important; border-bottom-width: 0px !important; border-left-width: 0px !important; border-style: initial !important; border-color: initial !important; color: rgb(102, 102, 102); ">Another Quagmire: A Response</a> →</div></div><br /><div class="post" id="post-13" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 20px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><h2 style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; font-family: Georgia, Verdana, Arial, serif; font: normal normal normal 1.8em/normal Aria, verdana; "><a href="http://wellasang.blog.friendster.com/2006/10/one-of-days-in-quagmire/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: One of Days in Quagmire" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 4px; padding-right: 4px; padding-bottom: 4px; padding-left: 4px; text-decoration: none; border-top-width: 0px !important; border-right-width: 0px !important; border-bottom-width: 0px !important; border-left-width: 0px !important; border-style: initial !important; border-color: initial !important; color: rgb(7, 81, 90); background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: rgb(189, 231, 1); display: block; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; ">One of Days in Quagmire</a></h2><div class="entry" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-bottom-width: 2px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(239, 239, 239); "><p style="margin-top: 0.7em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; ">You cannot suppress other people’s uniqueness, nor can you forego their similarities. The tension that exists in the dynamics between the two is one of the learning experiences one can use to ratiocinate developing relationships. For almost two years, I have had quite a lot of these things before my eyes. Though the currents of emotion can carry you down the deluge of conflicts, I can hope for no better way than to exist seeing these things to happen as they should. I believe that there are things unpreventable to happen. Everyday people engage in intrapersonal and interpersonal communication, and it is inevitable that clashes would erupt anytime. The inherent uniqueness of every individual sets in itself a pylon of difference that is in principle a mark of peculiarity. So it raises questions of antithesis if thesis is there in the beginning. What could be an antithesis, but those whose existence itself is marked of his own peculiarity as an individual.</p><p style="margin-top: 0.7em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; ">The danger of some individuals these days is to submerge this fact, which is in itself objective, into the domain of their own subjectivity without taking into account the subjectivity of other subjects surrounding them. Like for example, if I am presented with a problem of let us say gossiping, it is quite seldom for some to critically analyze and appraise the problem in question. We tend to subordinate the problem itself under our own subjective interpretation without assessing what could be other factors, which are variables of the problem in itself. The gossiping could after all be another opinion of someone else. Or, the gossiping could just be another emotional let up of someone, whose channeling of a burden inside is one’s way of ego protection.</p><p style="margin-top: 0.7em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; ">However, this sort of practical example is an ideal in itself which hopes to be integrated by every individual. We do not make heroes in just twenty four hours. If need be, even a lifetime does.</p><p style="margin-top: 0.7em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; ">Another thing that is far important for me is one’s religious beliefs. Somehow, when one is grounded with the positive tenets of one’s religion, it can mitigate potential disastrous effects of temper. More often, it palliates the ill consequence of a bad experience since the ego is open to a supernatural subsidy, which is in itself acquired by faith working through charity with hope.</p><p style="margin-top: 0.7em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; ">Nobody ever says it is easy in any way, but how can one see this if this is not made in time and space.</p><p style="margin-top: 0.7em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; "></p><div class="addthis_container" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><a href="http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=20" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; 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padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; font-size: 10px; color: rgb(153, 153, 153); text-align: right; "><span class="timr" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 15px; background-image: url(http://wellasang.blog.friendster.com/wp-content/themes/anubis-10/images/timr.png); background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; ">October 14th, 2006 </span>in <span class="catr" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 15px; background-image: url(http://wellasang.blog.friendster.com/wp-content/themes/anubis-10/images/catr.png); background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; "><a href="http://wellasang.blog.friendster.com/category/current-affairs/" title="View all posts in Current Affairs" rel="category tag" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; text-decoration: none; border-top-width: 0px !important; border-right-width: 0px !important; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-left-width: 0px !important; border-style: initial !important; border-color: initial !important; color: rgb(102, 102, 102); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); ">Current Affairs</a> </span>| <span class="editr" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 15px; background-image: url(http://wellasang.blog.friendster.com/wp-content/themes/anubis-10/images/editr.png); 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margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; "><span class="commentsfeedr" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 20px; background-image: url(http://wellasang.blog.friendster.com/wp-content/themes/anubis-10/images/feed.png); background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; background-position: 0% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; "><a href="http://wellasang.blog.friendster.com/2006/10/one-of-days-in-quagmire/feed/" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; text-decoration: none; border-top-width: 0px !important; border-right-width: 0px !important; border-bottom-width: 0px !important; border-left-width: 0px !important; border-style: initial !important; border-color: initial !important; color: rgb(102, 102, 102); ">Comments RSS</a></span></p></div><h3 id="comments" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; font-family: Georgia, Verdana, Arial, serif; ">One Response to “ One of Days in Quagmire ”</h3><ol class="commentlist" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><li class="comment alt" id="comment-3" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 1em; padding-right: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 1em; padding-left: 0.5em; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: rgb(249, 249, 249); border-bottom-color: rgb(221, 221, 221); border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom-style: solid; list-style-type: none; list-style-position: initial; list-style-image: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; "><strong style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><a href="http://wellasang.blog.friendster.com/2006/10/one-of-days-in-quagmire/#comment-3" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; text-decoration: none; border-top-width: 0px !important; border-right-width: 0px !important; border-bottom-width: 0px !important; border-left-width: 0px !important; border-style: initial !important; border-color: initial !important; color: rgb(102, 102, 102); "># 1 </a> <a href="http://www.friendster.com/user.php?uid=16473064" rel="external nofollow" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; text-decoration: none; border-top-width: 0px !important; border-right-width: 0px !important; border-bottom-width: 0px !important; border-left-width: 0px !important; border-style: initial !important; border-color: initial !important; color: rgb(102, 102, 102); ">Lorvie</a> </strong>Says: <br /><small class="commentmetadata" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><a href="http://wellasang.blog.friendster.com/2006/10/one-of-days-in-quagmire/#comment-3" title="" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; text-decoration: none; border-top-width: 0px !important; border-right-width: 0px !important; border-bottom-width: 0px !important; border-left-width: 0px !important; border-style: initial !important; border-color: initial !important; color: rgb(102, 102, 102); ">October 16th, 2006 at 5:42 am </a><a href="http://wellasang.blog.friendster.com/wp-admin/comment.php?action=editcomment&c=3" title="Edit comment" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; text-decoration: none; border-top-width: 0px !important; border-right-width: 0px !important; border-bottom-width: 0px !important; border-left-width: 0px !important; border-style: initial !important; border-color: initial !important; color: rgb(102, 102, 102); ">e</a></small><p style="margin-top: 0.7em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; ">what is in the sentence up above the moon? can we see any capital letters there? in short, what’s the blah blah all about… coherence and more to the point please. a good writer gives life to the reader and language is not substance nor substance is language.</p><p style="margin-top: 0.7em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; ">in short, what is in the “story”? all that was said can be written in just one short paragraph.</p><p style="margin-top: 0.7em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; ">page 2 please…</p></li></ol></span>Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17434696710611875434noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4502134945000490605.post-40781349904248091832011-05-31T04:28:00.000-07:002011-05-31T04:29:16.593-07:00Years Have Been<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: verdana, tahoma, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; "><div class="post" id="post-12" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 20px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><div class="entry" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-bottom-width: 2px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-color: rgb(239, 239, 239); "><p style="margin-top: 0.7em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; ">One of the things I liked most during my childhood years were my vacation days in Bohol. It looked for me like an expectation, a joyous expectation of meeting. I cannot reiterate it more than my solid identification of my place of origin. I do not particularly set off this tenth largest island of Philippines, but it seems to me that Bohol has given me something more to differentiate me. How do I say differentiation? It is in the sense that I have an origin that is rooted realistically which can be greatly constitutive of my becoming. Not on something borne out of imagination by someone who knows not their place of "coming from". It is for me of great importance that one has to look at the past, through the present, and project for the future and see how you as an individual has become as part of a larger "seeing". It is as if like the City of God of St. Augustine who sees history: past and present, and constructs the future. A future that is what you want to become, but only in Augustine’s case, a spiritual journey to the future where man meets God. This is where my wanderings in Bohol have been a great solace of memories for me. I have seen the people who themselves were characters of constant stories of my grandmother. She sees with her eyes the way the world unfolds before her. The poignant narratives of people’s idiosyncrasies, practices, habits, religious fervor, folkloric accounts, and many others seem like mythical of those accounts as they were run by incising recollection. She recounts them with levity in most and seriousness at some at times. The way I had absorbed them have kept them in my memories. So much so that the places that they were recounted hold as much vivid recollections as I would actually see them. </p><p style="margin-top: 0.7em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; ">The peculiarities of those personages who, and most of them, have gone to their rests have remained in my consciousness, but only so few have taken them by recounts already. If I were to recall them in my memory, they become so magical, as if I am not here but in another place and time. My mind would recreate a world in which I participated in the events that were once part of those characters’ lives. As if reliving them is a reminder of once glorious days devoid of modern guttering. </p><p style="margin-top: 0.7em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; ">The world that we have now has reached limitless possibilities, new currents of thought, new ways of doing things, and innovations that were previously hindered by time and space. Yet, adjunct with these revolutionary ideas and technologicaly advantage, the mere man on a corner has been continuously isolated from those pasts where communion with nature and people were a common theme governing life and living. Living in these memories of mine, I could walk hours and hours over hills and valleys; I could sweep across small glades and meadows while walking toward someone else’s abodes for chores and doing the usual errands. While my grandmother could not leave the house just easily as she would want to, we would just wait for someone to walk by peddling for some fishes or what-not’s. Salt and some "kakanin" would just come by anytime of the day. In one of these cyclic occurrences, we could engage in talks idly for a minute or two befor these peddlers depart for some other houses. Most of these talks would dwindle to certain common friends, or in a happenstance, it would turn out providential of meeting two relations whom each has not come to know until then. These sellers of sorts were from the lowlands usually, and it is common that they would usually retrace those familiar households they have been into in the past. It was as if life in the upland was not constructed to suit the demands of a structured society. It was as if man has to live by the power of his own demands, however, within the scope of limitations as specified implicity in the values of the community of which he is a great participant. No wonder, life in the hinterlands develops a more spontaneous activity. But on the other hand, one could sense, indeed, that events and life of the urban society would tend to trickle in these tranquil, rural lands. The encroachment of these influences upset these usual things. </p><p style="margin-top: 0.7em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; ">But by the time I had come of age, things grew worse for me. Realities were coming on as if by piecemeal but largely. I had only a few times of these yearly sojourns to this beloved mountain-areas. Much more so when I had to study in college. The grave reality now came right just before my eyes, greedily invoking for challenge.</p><p style="margin-top: 0.7em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; ">Times have tempered me. But not my memories of these things would I have bargained just as easily for the world that we are constantly encountering. The de-mystifying effects of this postmodern world render man in deficiency of sorts. A deficiency that falls back on nothing because it has been built on sand and dunes. A child growing on this age knows only a few of the world outside of his own. The computer age has turned man into himself, enclosing one to his own. Man now becomes prisoner of a tube where it has been synthetically constructed and structured for only an appeal for comfort but lifeless in itself. Indeed, I can say that I am fortunate that I have seen some of the best things that life that is more than the human innovations can ever offer.</p><p style="margin-top: 0.7em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; ">Life keeps on going on and on, but as a Christian existentialist, I would say that one must appreciate the beautiful things that happened in your life. An appreciation of the memories of once that glorious past of yours can help you move forward in this world full of emptiness and meaninglessness save from the point of faith.</p><div class="addthis_container" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><a href="http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=20" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; text-decoration: none; border-top-width: 0px !important; border-right-width: 0px !important; border-bottom-width: 0px !important; border-left-width: 0px !important; border-style: initial !important; border-color: initial !important; color: rgb(102, 102, 102); "><img src="http://s7.addthis.com/static/btn/lg-share-en.gif" width="125" height="16" border="0" alt="Bookmark and Share" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; 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background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; ">September 30th, 2006 </span>in <span class="catr" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 15px; background-image: url(http://wellasang.blog.friendster.com/wp-content/themes/anubis-10/images/catr.png); background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; background-position: 0px 0px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; "><a href="http://wellasang.blog.friendster.com/category/current-affairs/" title="View all posts in Current Affairs" rel="category tag" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; text-decoration: none; border-top-width: 0px !important; border-right-width: 0px !important; 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background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; background-position: 0% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; "><a href="http://wellasang.blog.friendster.com/2006/09/years-have-been/feed/" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; text-decoration: none; border-top-width: 0px !important; border-right-width: 0px !important; border-bottom-width: 0px !important; border-left-width: 0px !important; border-style: initial !important; border-color: initial !important; color: rgb(102, 102, 102); ">Comments RSS</a></span></p></div></span>Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17434696710611875434noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4502134945000490605.post-69318996611992733452011-05-31T04:24:00.000-07:002011-05-31T04:26:26.182-07:00<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: verdana, tahoma, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; "><p style="margin-top: 0.7em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; ">The recent ire that the Muslim world has exhibited in these past few days since the address of the Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, to the academics at the University of Regensburg only exhibited a grave response of a deep problem inherent within the divide between our brother Muslims’ faith and the Christians view of his religion. I think what is the most fundamental relevance and difference between these two monotheistic religions is in its own concept of God. For our Muslim brothers, God is completely transcendent. A being absolutely incompatible with our own categories. What do I mean by this? God for an Islam believer cannot be in any way characterized by any of man’s conception of God. He cannot explain God’s being by his own terms and language. God is so separated from His creation that even His own prescriptions, he is not bound to follow. Contrast this one with the concept of God among Christians in which a Christian believer believes of the Logus, who has perfectly personified Himself in Jesus Christ through Incarnation. Through HIs birth and presence temporally, perfect revelation of the unseen God becomes manifested. That is why in Christian theology, Christianity has employed the agency of reason, which is in itself a gift of God too, to explain through the best of man’s finite ability this God who has become Man. Why? This is because the Logus is reason in Himself. Jesus Christ gaps the wide breach between Creator and creature that only a God-incarnate can undo, thereby revealing not only God-made-man but reason Himself. Seemingly, this difference indeed becomes more evident in the speech of the Holy Father who underscored the relevance and compatibility of faith and reason and how faith devoid of reason can be a justification for violence.</p><p style="margin-top: 0.7em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; "><br /></p><p style="margin-top: 0.7em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px; "></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0.7em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; ">Just to make an appropriate fixed point to begin his discussion of the natural cohabitation of faith and reason and how illumination of reason with faith creates a profound culture that is inherently Western, the Pope posits an example of a dialogue between Michael Paleologus, a 15th century Byzantine emperor and a Persian scholar. Though the conversation was long as transcribed by a scholar, Prof. Khoury, the pope picked up the central theme of the interlocution that has become the source of incendiary reaction of the Muslim world: “Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman”. Though the Pope puts these words inside his speech, it does not mean that, one, this is his opinion, and two, that this should be interpreted outside from the text of the speech. Clearly, he set examples of why reason without faith is disastrous as exemplified by Europe and the West, and on the other hand, an equally nefarious effect of faith without reason can lead to blind profession of religion and confusion of interpretation.</p><div><br /></div><div><p style="margin-top: 0.7em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; ">But the majority of the media agencies have failed to note that the greater part of the speech is mostly directed to the schism of faith and reason in the contemporarry Western civilization of which the Chuch itself is suffering from within and without. That the separation of faith and reason has bred severally antagonistic approaches — a kind of nihilism against anything pertainig to faith. It should be noted that this has indeed weakened current European and Western societies where relativism is palpable from all phases of life, and where a shared common values that has been manifested, inculcated, and inculturated among Western and western-oriented nations like the Philippines has come close to extinction.</p></div><div><br /></div><div><p style="margin-top: 0.7em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; ">What sort of relevance does it make with us Filipinos?</p></div><div><br /></div><div><p style="margin-top: 0.7em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; ">The answer to that is on what influences the Filipinos have most. The grip of American and Western culture among us comes as no surprise considering our history. Sooner or later the redefinition of our values which have been cherished to some degree by our age and the generations before us may come as no later in a generation or two, taking always into account the prevalent effects of cyberspace into our homes and communities.</p></div><div><br /></div><div><p style="margin-top: 0.7em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; ">Thus, the address of the Holy Father shows a timely wisdom at this precise moment of this age and a diagnosis of insidious symptoms that have been formenting for years. What he is concretely talking about is his own insistence of returning to our roots and discover the richness of our heritage that formed us as a nation and as a Church. This is truly indispensable in a world where currents of thought comes coupling with the zeal of change. We cannot dialogue with the world if we fail to instill that which has formed and breathed our being. We cannot bridge authentic relationships of things foreign to our own if we do not know ourselves. Though the Pope has spoken in the name of his faith to redirect Europe in particular, we too as Filipinos may transpose the idea of the pope to ourselves to help us form our identity and consciousness, which we badly are in need of.</p></div><div><br /></div><div>September 26, 2006</div></span><p></p><div><br /></div>Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17434696710611875434noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4502134945000490605.post-64827861633491954662011-05-31T04:20:00.000-07:002011-05-31T04:21:08.360-07:00An Existentialist Community<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: verdana, tahoma, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; "><p style="margin-top: 0.7em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; ">We cannot often times demand that we have our views being acceded to. However, sometimes things have to be said to infuse it in the consciousness of everyone. I think we do not even have to shout it loud for others to hear. I believe that every Filipino has in him what I think is a grave reality. Probably, the most devastating that we are experiencing in this postmodern age is the apparent indifference that runs across the country. What compounds the problem is the seeming dilution of those values that have been cherished and that have become themselves symbols of our identity. Have you experienced even in our simple day to day activities that we have become reluctant to be forceful to what we usually believe as essentials of our singularity as people. We don’t seem to stop by and open up a little to some unexpected conversations that might come our way every now and then. People have become grumpy themselves when stopped to be asked how they are. It seems that talking with someone we know is a grave violation to some social conventions. Though, this is not a sufficient reason enough to justify that erosion of our values, but they signify something more serious. I can only wish there are Filipinos who can be nationally conscious. Because of some of the unholy things we usually get from televisions these days, Filipinos tend to refocus their minds to something else — entertainment. It is not that this is entirely wrong, but it might be something that we call symptoms and signs that we deny the reality by deviating into that which can occupy our minds and numb our consciousness to stop it from absorbing. Blaise Pascal call it deviation: to flee from something inherently unacceptable because it is absurd. By seeing this, we would hinder from approaching something that we do not like, thereby rendering us anxious of our embracing that thing. So we move away from it by shelling oneself to cover that absurdity. I think we as one nation at one time have experienced existentialist crisis. Filipinos have seen that something that absence of essence in our living. The alienation that Filipinos feel in this existence is what keeps us from doing the things that we do most. We have become busy nationally, but we end up aimlessly. We have not embraced that thing that divides us from accepting a fact and to move on with that fact under our consciousness. The death-consciousness does not mean that our finitude blocks our existence and to accept that hard fact. Though no fault of our own, people begin to see this death-consciousness around them by repeatedly seeing this around: the utter chaotic web of national events, scandals, shameful eventualities, horrendous cataclysmic situations, murders in large scale, and others. The perplexity of these circumstances have rendered us mortal to acknowledge the fact that we know no way out.</p><p style="margin-top: 0.7em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; "><br /></p><p style="margin-top: 0.7em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; ">September 16, 2006</p><div><br /></div><p style="margin-top: 0.7em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; "></p></span>Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17434696710611875434noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4502134945000490605.post-49019693175130989472011-05-31T04:17:00.002-07:002011-05-31T04:19:42.175-07:00The Return of a Friend<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: verdana, tahoma, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; "><p style="margin-top: 0.7em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; ">………Have you had been feeling great anxieties in life? It truly is like being to wait for someone like a medical technologist to take some blood samples from you. You don’t seem to know where the butterflies come from; but you indeed feel it flying around your insides, flapping to escape if chance there is. The days were numbered but saved me from counting it. That day approached as if from nowhere when serendipity only lies some moments away, never nearer but always closer. What an amazing thing it happened; while you were on your own thoughts, a friend but not so a friend until then came with a game card to fill some numbers, and on goes the saying "all’s well that ends well". Heaven knows not of losing someone whom one is a given friend to one. Take it amazingly — who would have thought it possible for humans anyway; such is possible only when it is made possible by Someone who indeed can do that to particular beings like Wilson and Chito………..</p><div><br /></div><div>September 13, 2006. </div></span>Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17434696710611875434noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4502134945000490605.post-67305355917629157202011-05-31T04:17:00.001-07:002011-05-31T04:17:54.537-07:00The Reason of Which Mine<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: verdana, tahoma, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; ">Oft we seem to undergo some conversational crises. What one speaks has not but all many shades of differing perception on one who hears them. If need be, one has to spend time to delicately weave each stories as to cast them properly. It’d be too unfortunate to fall into a mire of misunderstandings, whence time and effort are to be grabbed because it is necessity itself which forces them be employed. That is in itself harder than one thinks if missed interpretations have set in. So what one does has to be what he thinks can be proper at any time given situation. If silence is a must, then it must be a given and that somehow it is best to suit it as long as it can. One must then try to accept that keeping yourself to yourself is more than what one can imagine — nevertheless it has in itself some benefit. As I often think: "Silence is of benefit," must have some goodwill over matters more rough around the edges. </span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: verdana, tahoma, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; "><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: verdana, tahoma, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; ">August 15, 2006</span></div>Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17434696710611875434noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4502134945000490605.post-21117397817823326012011-05-31T04:16:00.001-07:002011-05-31T04:17:12.760-07:00The Day That Ends<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: verdana, tahoma, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; ">Ends do not delay; they come at an instant’s request. If it be known in advance, how happy would one be. But, it seems that man’s lot is lost of much of knowing when. We forlornly are sure that we do not. How bad indeed if we are without hope… it is vain in fleeting times when harrowing descent of recollection of our finitude is at our doorsteps…knocking everytime when attention does not pay a heed….thus, man is like me and man is me….pay not and I am ceased….</span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: verdana, tahoma, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; "><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: verdana, tahoma, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; ">June 6th, 2006.</span></div>Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17434696710611875434noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4502134945000490605.post-31263468320192259412011-05-31T04:15:00.000-07:002011-05-31T04:16:37.429-07:00The Day I Was Shouted<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: verdana, tahoma, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; "><p style="margin-top: 0.7em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; ">Nothing seems to be so fearsome as being unguarded at all at an event. Unfortunate it is when you are left with you beastly id. Even how much you conceal it, it will surface and resurface at the most peak of weakness. Though time and age will temper it, it will die down not so easily. However, if you believe in Christian virtue, things might be not as desperate as it might seem to suggest. Grace is essentially existent. I could be as much barbaric as I was before. Things like when you were insulted face-blank might have turned me into another Atilla the Hun at any minute; however, as much as I would think it otherwise, it was not other than gracious gift of God to sustain amidst insurmountable ego-killing scene. I could only wonder why I was at peace. </p><p style="margin-top: 0.7em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; ">I can only rely on one thing to "throw back at" if something hard hits me at the head — prayer! For me and for someone…….</p><p style="margin-top: 0.7em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; "><br /></p><p style="margin-top: 0.7em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; ">August 2nd, 2006</p></span>Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17434696710611875434noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4502134945000490605.post-39738950898809993662011-05-31T04:13:00.000-07:002011-05-31T04:14:31.566-07:00Trilogy Relationship of 1Kings 21 and Matthew 5<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: verdana, tahoma, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; ">The two chapter verses are parallel in substance owing to the fact that both are planar contrariety. The first taken from the reading of First Kings is read as injustice on the part of a lowly personage whose circumstance happens him to conflict with a ruling King. Now, the reading today appose this account during the time of the prophet Elijah with the radical commandment of the Christ in the new covenant. The juxtaposition becomes contrasting giving the narrative of the Old Testament a concrete example with that of the call of Christ for total self-dying, whereby self-sacrifice in a total adherence to Christ’s invitation for His Kingdom. Now the Psalm, which was taken from the fifth chapter, gives divine attribute-characteristics of the nature of a God who does not turn a blind eye. The just One whose essence is justice personified. Then the trio begins to map a theological mosaic of God who invites everyone regardless of accidence and person to follow Himself, though how much difficult it is, in His Kingdom and progress in the virtues in this temporal sphere, always seeking that which is not for the world and in the world, forsaking it in the hope that salvation comes to those who have conquered the race and accomplished it. In the end, whose injustice has been done shall come to him salvation.</span>Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17434696710611875434noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4502134945000490605.post-26173377011736014042011-05-31T04:09:00.000-07:002011-05-31T04:12:35.043-07:00The Hour I Lost It<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: verdana, tahoma, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; "><p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0.7em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; ">I cannot even begin asking a question if ever you have experienced losing something that is almost close to water or air, something that is dear to your heart. The pain is almost insurmountable. What is paradoxical and ironic is that it is only a thing. A thing! If you tend to look back before placing yourself after you got that thing, it would look as though it is stupendously ridiculous. Nothing could be more stupid than to think that you are plagued by a thought of a thing. But, it happened; it occurred. I cannot shake it off, it ailed me.</p><p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0.7em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; ">Oftentimes, we become wounded with the thought of a material poverty. That is the physicality of an object, which other people would find it helplessly nonsensical. However, we failed to grasp that there is a reality that lies behind the materiality, the corporeality of an object. There is a meaning behind what we usually see as such. This is what happened when I lost my USB, a universal serial bus. I left it. It pained me.</p><p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0.7em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; ">Here, the pain does not arise from the fact that the objectivity of that thing matters. However, what gives it more definition is the fact that it has something that is more precious than the copper and steel in itself. I grieved when I lost my files. The files that I had been looking forward to possessing. The words I longed to read and learn. The literature that my gaze had been directed for so long now. How did I lose it; how did I allow it to happen. Constantly, I blame myself. I have always blamed myself because of my inability to be conscious at all times and at all costs! Why did I forget it dangling on the USB port?</p><p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0.7em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; ">Have you found it silly that I had been always happy because I possessed it? My mind was feeling the security of having these things in a handy gadget. I had that almost-like contented attitude and confidence of owning things I have always wanted to hold. I felt bold enough knowing that I know I had already it!</p><p style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0.7em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; ">In this time of Lent, I have realized that God somehow used that event to let me come to terms, to hand me over to my folly. I had to learn a hard fact: nothing in the world can man hold that is more dear to him than God himself. Nothing can close in the horizon of seeing beyond what you can know - to know that the place of God comes where the knowledge of man attenuates. God lurks in the fringes of man’s unknowingness.</p><p style="margin-top: 0.7em; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.6em; "></p><div class="addthis_container" style="text-align: justify;margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><br /></div></span>Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17434696710611875434noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4502134945000490605.post-12330615715316718722011-05-25T22:47:00.000-07:002011-05-25T22:54:42.935-07:00Sundays at Work<div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 10px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font: normal normal normal 13px/19px 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', Tahoma, Verdana, sans-serif; padding-top: 0.6em; padding-right: 0.6em; padding-bottom: 0.6em; padding-left: 0.6em; "><p style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; "></p><div id=""><p style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" >When I started to work in a call center, Sundays have become ordinary to me. This means that the ordinary is defined by what we consider as usual and casual. Usual and casual further mean that there are days which we do not consider as common. The commonality here is when what we usually does and think is repeated for a number of days, and a stop is imposed to "breathe" and respite is given. The ordinary is featured by things we regularly do and think and that society is featured sometimes to give condition to this reality. There might be different shades of the way we consider things as usual and casual, but as we approach the generality of things, we find that there are common elements we are under with. One such thing is the number of days in the calendar and regularity of seasons and holidays. It seems to me that the invention of the calendar is an importance that regulated man, and in so doing, in a certain sense, has dictated man. In the ancient civilizations, like Egypt, the patterns of life is governed by the rise and fall of bodies of water, i.e. the Nile River, and in China, the celestial arrangement of stars, planets, comets, and phenomena. The Magis were foremost biblical examples of star-gazers, who took the appearances of stars as signs.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" >The number of days in a week is divided by what we have usually called the work days and weekends. What comes to mind in the former is a grueling day of toil, and the latter, a cessation and relaxation - a period in a long sentence. There is a stop, which upsets as the continuation begun. This stoppage is a necessary condition toward the word health. The progression in the realm of reality, in the area of the noumena, is a recapitulation of the condition of man's being. The reality of man is a reality of the universe. The universe seeks a balance in its various unstable processes, while man seeks to pacify his burdened heart, in his unceasing quest toward what we call equilibrium. In the vast reality of the universe, what upsets a stable noumenon demands neither gain nor loss (a condition of self-sufficiency). In man, this constant seeking is manifested in the exertion of effort in the days he gives himself to, while in the two days that follows the five, it gives man time to breathe, to cancel out the energy.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" >But, the feeling of working on a Sunday has left me feeling peaceful.</span></p></div><p style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; "></p></div>Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17434696710611875434noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4502134945000490605.post-5122401274955898992011-04-30T21:05:00.000-07:002011-04-30T21:18:20.347-07:00The Royal Wedding of a Prince and a Commoner<div style="text-align: justify;">I have had the time of watching the Royal Wedding on the 29th of April from the time that Prince William departed from Clarence House until the second kiss they made on the balcony of Buckingham Palace. I could not help noticing the kind of elements that the watchers had commented on with the event: the most part of it concerns only these - the mysterious gown, which was concealed from the public eyes, and the tiara. The ring did not take that much airtime and much less the readings and the homily given by the Bishop of London. No word was given about the significance of the wedding register being kept in the sanctuary of William the Confessor. No historical background as to why. If there might have been some explanation this was done so, it might have been said by a different anchor or guest from another network or so.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The lens of the cameras zeroed in on Catherine "Kate" Middleton. This concept that the wedding happened for the bride is somewhat misplaced. I would say that this wedding happened because both persons in their freedom had decided to declare this public within the precinct of the sacred; it is not the Church (in this case the Anglican Church) which created the marriage but a man and a woman who bring this to the ear of the Church to be validly acknowledged. The requirement of both declarations is needed to satisfy the legitimacy and validity of marriage. Nowhere did this become a unilateral act. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">It is so sorry to think that the concept of marriage has shifted much nowadays from -transcendental-social-sacramental in nature to a more utilitarian-commercial-secularistic experiment. No wonder that the dissolution of any marriages and the rise of divorce appear as something common and regular among the public ear. It is just so hard to combine what appears to be the accepted reality of some that, on one hand, royal marriages only reflects the general fact about marriages of the general population and, on the other, the symbol of stability of British Monarchy in the passage of time. Who could not help wondering that in the Victorian Era, the enduring reality of normative traditional family life was all over the House of Hanover in the 18the century, and in our time, the House of Windsor, though divorces became common only later. In one way, the British Monarchy can reflect the general realities of regular families and individuals, but at the same time, it should reflect the highest nobles, the highest aspirations of not just the British, but any persons at large. The political institution of the British Monarchy did not just happen yesterday, but it came down to us in changing worlds. It speaks of an enduring reality that helps us understand that there are some things that will remain. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The latest showcase of this marriage is always a window into the future for the Prince just marrying is a successor of the present Queen. Though he will be a mere symbolic monarchy (if things will remain as is), he will still represent the institution, the British "ancien regime", which always arrests our attention as we are enticed into living only in the present without any point of reference of the past. We do not pray and hope in an unhappy ending of the couple; we rejoice in their perpetual vow as they continue to hold on to those words spoken once and for all in Westminster. The bad thing, though, is that the church they belong had long ago condoned divorce and remarriages, which fly before the face of Jesus' very command. They have to go back to the time before Henry VIII singularly annulled his marriage with Catherine of Aragon, during which time he was still the Defensores Fidei. They have to go back listening to the teaching of marriage of the ancient Church handed to the Catholic Church of today. If they had chosen to bind themselves in the precinct of their religion, then it is but correct to say that they had relinquished their own freedom to the freedom of the one which acknowledges what they had declared. This other freedom does not judge from the arbitrariness of the same kind who wished to relinquished their freedom, but of a different kind, a kind that comes from without - a without that may bring something new, something different from what we have commonly accepted. This something from outside should be harbored through a means that channels this something new and something different. It is only but logical that we should listen to this channel through which we listen this news that comes from outside, an extraneous reality that demands and coerces us and imposes grievous ends. However, we have come to know that this extra gives love, hope, and faith. It is consoling to know that what this extra is does not leave us to our own, to the caprice of our wills, but journeys with us, walks with us, and talks with us. It dialogues with our weakness and with our strengths. Who knows us from the beginning and pulls us always and always from the pit of darkness. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">There is one thing that we know: the secularists cannot claim a total victory; they have yet to undergo the corrosive test of time. They have yet to verify their experiment and conclude from the premises. Until then, we have to hold on to what we have held so far, to the tradition that we have been handed with. In these times that our dearest beliefs have been assaulted, when we are closed in from all directions, there is only thing to do, though it is hard, very hard to follow through, but to stand as witness, to act as that news that brings gladness to others who have started to accept the ideas of the enemies. Nowhere this is more felt than in the events that we have just seen lately, the wedding of two promising individuals. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">It is our prayer; it is hope.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div>Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17434696710611875434noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4502134945000490605.post-85905419310203945252011-01-16T02:37:00.000-08:002011-01-16T02:38:39.083-08:00Annunziata<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); line-height: 16px; "><p style="font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; ">"Et ingressus angelus ad eam dixit : Ave gratia plena : Dominus tecum : benedicta tu in mulieribus. Quæ cum audisset, turbata est in sermone ejus, et cogitabat qualis esset ista salutatio."</p><p style="font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; ">So says the Gospel of St. Luke. The text was taken from its first Chapter after the account of Zachary's encounter of the same Archangel Gabriel. The contrast of the two encounters is evident: the unbelief of the priest of Aaron to the belief of the Virgin, the young woman in the prophecy of Isaiah to King Hezekiah in his stubborness. We could ask what could possibly be in the mind of the author when he recounts these events? That the disbelief of Zachary has been arrested by the consent of the woman to and through whom salvation comes; that movement from the downhill of one's disobedience is uplifted by the simple words of the seemingly naive and ignorant country girl: "And Mary said: Behold the handmaid of the Lord: be it done to me according to your word." This striking difference is held by one denominator - the common will of God - He pushes the hour actively into the history of man in that historical moment of His salvific plan: the rise of the precursor of the Gospel to give voice to that prophetic signal of Isaiah (The voice of one crying in the desert: Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the wilderness the paths of our God. Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall become straight, and the rough ways plain. And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh together shall see, that the mouth of the Lord has spoken. The voice of one, saying: Cry. Isaiah 40: 3-6) and the Word: "And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us (and we saw his glory, the glory as it were of the only begotten of the Father), full of grace and truth" (John 1: 14). The noticeable dissonance of the two texts finds its synthesis in the acknowledgment of the Baptist as he on the riverbed of the Jordan in Bethania pointed his finger to the One who came for baptism saying: "Behold the Lamb of God. Behold him who takes away the sin of the world. This is he of whom I said: After me there comes a man, who is preferred before me: because he was before me. And I knew him not: but that he may be made manifest in Israel, therefore am I come baptizing with water. (John 1: 29-31)"</p><p style="font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; ">What can we make of this Zachary in the temple? Of his situation and person, what can we gleam from him?</p><p style="font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; ">My thoughts do not pretend of a biblical scholar's, and I am simply sharing my own simple meditation from the point of a faithful. The biblical texts come to us not as a subordinate under the whim of anyone who dissects it nor an imposing master that enslaves and coerces us at the cost and expense of our freedom. The scriptures arrives as a gift and offering of God to share in His life - His triuned life. Through the Holy Writ, we are given a window into the eternal life of the three persons in one.</p><p style="font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; ">The person of Zachary finds its different expressions and forms in the movement of man in his endless search of explanation to the reality of his history. And, not just to explicate reality but toward the vestibule of understanding - the understanding of what comes to us from without; the understanding of what imposes upon us. Man is circumscribed by his own limitations, in his own limited capacities. Therefore, it is for this reason, of man's search of comprehension of things that surround him, that Kant explains that the subject is not in himself passive before the thing-in-itself but actively constructs in his mind the elements to explain the things before him, we find that Zachary could not simply connect and assimilate the outside and revealing reality of God and what was before him with the algorithm of reality he has simply come to accept and subjectively constructed: "And Zachary said to the angel: Whereby shall I know this? For I am an old man, and my wife is advanced in years. (Luke 1:18)"</p><p style="font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; ">Our knowing of things comes in direct contact to a thing not from our own. The mind that seeks rational explanation is in itself good, our constant and ceaseless restlessness to grasp the highest and the most elusive of things square with the sublime nobility of our being created by God and bearing His own imprint. This unremitting aspirant to the truth seeks to know that who is truth Himself, the logos in His countenance: "And he said: Let us make man to our image and likeness, and let him have dominion over the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and the beasts, and the whole earth, and every creeping creature that moves upon the earth. (Genesis 1: 26-27)".</p><p style="font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; ">Where did Zachary fail?</p><p style="font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; ">There is always this danger of man to surround himself with what he considers the given. The natural rhythm of life radically imposes in Zachary the limits of his view of reality. With this kind of supposition is dogmatically asserted and taken to the extreme, man encloses himself, walls himself up, which ends up limiting his horizon and his aspirations. He delimits himself to the exclusion of anything that might contradict his paradigm. Zachary which in his heart does not open himself up to that transcendent activity of the intervenor of his reality risks a fall of his own. He is a priest the dispenser and mediator of man to God, who should have better known this mystery, but could not accept that his God could work even within his own world. This was his sin, and this will be ours too.</p><p style="font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; ">This an error of our time, which Christians can easily be swayed. This positivism of our culture that accepts only the scientific method of testing and experimentation as reality and given, then we, too, are on the slippery slope of muteness. When we become dumb, we are in a state of division with our relations and with our surroundings. We are in a failure to be known, heard, and understood. Like the Tower of Babel, this points to the effects of personal sin or the sins of history.</p><p style="font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; ">To be saved, we have to let God puncture this enclosure, this hardening of our minds and our hearts to let this revelation penetrate our understanding. In the process of subordinating ourselves (shift of our common view at sometimes a great loss and pain of those things we accrue to enhance our ego) to the will of God, we surrender to Him those things that inhibit us from "going into the House of the Lord (Psalm 121)", to the joy of meeting with the Lord.</p><p style="font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; ">The all-holy Virgin.</p><p style="font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; ">Mary was kneeling when the angel visited her; she in prayer was humble before the Lord. Mary lives near the boundary of the geographical area which Israel has considered the gift of their election. She lives under the threat of the influence of the gentiles and unbelievers - Romans, Greeks, and Persians. The odds were not on her side. The circumstances and the repercussions of her Yes would have run her into the Mosaic Law, whose rigid interpretation of the local Rabbi, could get her stoned to death. While Zachary lived within the shadow of the temple, closer to the epicenter of the Jewish life, the blessed Virgin only knew too well the life of rabbinic faith in the inconsequent Nazareth; while the office of the priesthood of Zachary symbolized in its liturgical act the prayer of the nation of Israel, Mary was in her tiny room down on her knees for her personal devotion. Zachary had all the privileges attached to his being a priest, father, and man, Mary was to the eyes of all a woman, weak, and insignificant. </p><p style="font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; ">In the life of faith, salvation is seen in the eyes of the anawim, the poor of hearts, which was concretized in the remnants of Israel during the time of the Babylonian captivity of Israel. These were stripped of their political rights under the guardian of a vicar of the king of Chaldea. To these remnants, the vision of recapturing Jerusalem and their lands - thus salvation and redemption from sin in the new dispensation - was most clear and strong. Thus, the expectation of the messiah is harbored in the hearts of those who are awake - in the constant conversation day and night of the One who comes without news, in those who kept their lamps burning as they await their bridegroom. At the time of Jesus' coming, all Israel was on expectation of the rise of the messiah, but only the rarest of the few had heard it clearly. Whereas the enclosure of Zechariah of his own world isolates him of this expectation, Mary in her heart had heard it audibly. Thus, when the angel spoke to her, she knew in her heart that it has come - the way to Calvary has begun in her little village, the sign of contradiction is clearly initiated in her own space, time, and flesh.</p><p style="font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; text-align: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; ">The texts of the Annunciation finds its most credible witness and authentic interpretation in the life of the saints, in whose lives God is borne again and again, in whose lives incarnated the word addressed by the angel. The constant danger of a society that functions only by its own knowing, doing, and acting is undoubtedly on the road to its own demise and perdition. Only in the constant listening to the word of God, thus, man is able to reorient its path to the way to God, to a new of way of seeing and knowing things not from our hands but from the might hand of the Lord.</p><div><br /></div></span>Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17434696710611875434noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4502134945000490605.post-61384096926729676292010-10-11T16:50:00.000-07:002010-10-11T16:57:55.879-07:00Habbakuk-Psalm.95-2.Timothy-Luke<div style="text-align: justify;" class="fbNub show_on_presence_error" id="fbChatErrorNub"><a class="uiTooltip fbNubButton" href="http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=326007532927#" rel="ignore"><span class="uiTooltipWrap top right righttop"><span class="uiTooltipText"> </span></span></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;" id="globalContainer"><div id="content" class="fb_content clearfix"><div id="mainContainer"><div id="contentCol" class="hasRightCol"><div id="contentArea"><div class="clearfix"><div class="notePermalinkMaincol rfloat"><div class="mbl notesBlogText clearfix"><p>On this Sunday's readings, faith is subserved by the dimension of time; the immanence into which faith bears itself up requires the aspect of waiting, of anticipating, of expecting, and of suspending. Habbakuk at which time he has found himself amidst the destruction, violence, contention, and strife in the land so dear to him shows us our impatience to grasp what we long though it be noble and essential. In the quickness of our asking things to come in our own way is the inability of ourselves to stay on a specific part of history, to bridge the gap from what we do not wish to look and gaze to that of the vision of peace, prosperity, and goodness.</p><p><br /></p><p>In the life of faith, in the midst of God amidst the vicissitudes of change, of time and space in its shifting phenomena, the Psalmist commended us the joy of living in our journey in the dusty road of the "desert". We are invited to the "joyful noise to the rock of our salvation!" Within the accidental nature of living is the essential nucleus of faith, which this singularity is a radiating source of happiness. Thus, today does not pull us down to its ugly realities but that the belief which finds its completion in the tomorrow to come has come to the today and energizes us. The painful experience of the Prophet does not tarry our movement to the Lord, does not suspend us from kneeling and bowing to the Lord.<br /></p><p><br /></p><p>The question then arises as to why does one find still that unbreakable thread of joy within the seemingly pointless and endless doom and failures and frustrations? The answer is found in 95th song of the Psalm: "harden not your hearts". Essentially, in this "softening" of heart to the Lord we find that ubiquitously wondrous life that sustains us. This mildening if you were harks us back to the listening to the Word - to the kneeling to hear: "O come, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the LORD, our Maker!" The confidence one feels under the truthful Word is summed up in the words of the Prophet upon receiving the response of God: "For still the vision awaits its time; it hastens to the end -- it will not lie. If it seem slow, wait for it; it will surely come, it will not delay."In our attitude toward that which we focus our ears now gives us the strength to live that belief of which we bear. Thus, it does not matter to the person who has the eyes of faith if time and space and history plunge us into the darkest hours and vileful situations. For the Lord does not push us away, but toils with us in seemingly human way of waiting and anticipating. </p><p><br /></p><p>If in the point of view of the Prophet, one is justified in his act of faith, in the consistency and perseverance of his heart, the community receives this individuality and particularity of a personal conviction of that belief now that is shared in common in the Ekklesia, the Church. It is within the Church that the Apostle to the Gentiles in his admonition to Timothy in his second letter. In so much that the Church is large enough to include all races, nationalities, political affiliations, and gender, it finds its definite and concrete unity in the Episkopoi, the Bishop, who presides within the differences and persuasions inherent in the realities of the community. In this cathedra, the seat of the overseer's teaching, the bishop exercises his ministry in the "today" of the Church but listening to the "before" of the tradition. This traditio of the Church is summed up in the Pauline words: "Follow the pattern of the sound words which you have heard from me, in the faith and love which are in Christ Jesus". </p><p><br /></p><p> </p><p><span>It is then in the Church, in the most particular way, in the office of the Bishop, that the content of the Gospel is most heard and is shared by the faithful surrounding him. Just as Paul had instructed Timothy to "</span><span>guard the truth that has been entrusted to you by the Holy Spirit who dwells within us", so too the common faithful should stand firm of the evangelio that has been given and heard in an act of that unitas.</span></p><p><span><br /></span></p><p> </p><p>It is this faith that is objective in one way and subjective in the other that finds its expression in the Gospel of Luke. Is it not our longing itself, in the deepest part of our hearts that we vocalize what the Apostles have found in their beings: "Increase our faith!"? Amidst the uncertainties of life, we do not hinge ourselves in the prevalent dictum of a society in change. The rapidity of life's successive events and circumstances will find man confused; oftentimes we are tossed in the ravages of conflicting ideas and thoughts that challenge our cherished values. It is in only in that mustard seed of faith which gives us impulse to bring about the grand works of the Lord, the saving power of God in the world gone awry. This attitude of faith is given life in the words of the Lord: "We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty". It is this profound conviction in our hearts nurtured by that truth, which sustains us and to which our will has been anchored and our intellect is focused that we travail in the valley of tears, in the world we oftentimes desolates and is desolate. In that faith spoken as words of necessity of the Prophet to bring about the Kingdom, which finds true manifestation and image of the Church in sojourn on earth, in the unique sacramental way professed in the office of the Bishop, and in that mustard seed which is determinate beginning and source of that which gives rise to wonderful things of the Lord, that the three readings radiate from a sole source in the Triune God. Thus, we can say "Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving; let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise!"<br /></p></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><br /></div>Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17434696710611875434noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4502134945000490605.post-80921075119732173162010-06-27T06:36:00.000-07:002010-07-06T03:41:33.895-07:00Introduction to the Covenant of SinaiThe locus of the Covenant of Sinai is the handing of the Decalogue of God to Moses, or what has been commonly handed down as Ten Commandments. To better understand the event, which Judaism and Christianity has considered as the foundation of the moral life, then, let us take a look on the historical background of the Exodus of the Israelites.<br /><br />God does not abandon His people, and He had heard their cries. So, Moses was sent to redeem to save them from the oppression of the Pharaoh. With the hesitancy of Moses, God worked before him wonders using his staff. And for this, he was accompanied by his brother, who met him, while he was about to leave Midian.<br /><br />Before all Egyptians, Moses proclaimed the wonders of Yahweh and showed them His power. The nine plagues were succeeded by the death of the firstborn of the Egyptians and because of this, Ramses, the Pharaoh of that time, granted them liberty. Is it not the same that Jesus was to die to liberate us? Is the death of the firstborn son of the Pharaoh a reminder of what was to happen in the Messianic times?<br /><br />The exodus of the ten tribes was a logistical problem for Moses that he earnestly cried out to God for help. But God does not abandon His plan; He opened the sea for them to pass. For three months, they came to the wilderness of Sinai from Raphidim; and, eventually was brought before Horeb, the holy mountain of God. On this mountain, God will give them the covenant, and not just an ordinary covenant - a pact between the God and His people. Isn't this the same when Jesus had to climb up the mountain of Tabor to give the new covenant? When Jesus was illuminating with glory and with His conversations with Elijah and Moses, so Moses' face was glowing with his conversation with Yahweh upon receiving the Law. Jesus is the Law-made-Man, while Moses carried the Law for the people.<br /><br />Sinai has been called the mountain of God. "The name is now given to the triangular peninsula lying between the <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04749a.htm">desert</a> of Southern Palestine, the <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12688a.htm">Red Sea</a>, and the gulfs of Akabah and Suez, with an area of about 10,000 square miles, which was the scene of the forty years' wandering of the <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08193a.htm">Israelites</a> after the Exodus from <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05329b.htm">Egypt</a>." From the land of Egypt, Moses led the nation of Israel into the heart of Sinai; to enter Canaan directly from the south, it was risky, since they would cross the land of the Philistines (who are warlike), while at the southeast, "the less formidable <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01377c.htm">Amalacites</a> are the only inimical tribes and are easily overcome thanks to the intercession of Moses." The wandering lasted forty years. In their journey, the prophet of Yahweh brought them at the foot of the mountain (Jabel Musa or Jabel ), where God would meet them and make a covenant with them. They had prepared themselves for three days and washed their clothes in preparation of the visit.<br /><br />The Decalogue, in which the prefix deca- means ten and logos a word, has been traditionally divided into 10 precepts. "<br /><br /><p>The <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06608a.htm">Supreme Law-Giver</a> begins by proclaiming <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08329a.htm">His Name</a> and His Titles to the <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11181c.htm">obedience</a> of the creature <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09580c.htm">man</a>: "I am the <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08329a.htm">Lord</a>, thy <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06608a.htm">God</a>. . ." The <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09071a.htm">laws</a> which follow have regard to <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06608a.htm">God</a> and His representatives on earth (first four) and to our fellow-man (last six). </p><ul><li>Being the <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06608a.htm">one true God</a>, He alone is to be <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01151a.htm">adored</a>, and all rendering to creatures of the <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15710a.htm">worship</a> which belongs to Him falls under the ban of His displeasure; the making of <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07636a.htm">"graven things"</a> is condemned: not all pictures, <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07664a.htm">images</a>, and works of <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03710a.htm">art</a>, but such as are intended to be <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01151a.htm">adored</a> and served (First). </li><br /><li>Associated with <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06608a.htm">God</a> in the <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10321a.htm">minds</a> of <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09580c.htm">men</a> and representing Him, is <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08329a.htm">His Holy Name</a>, which by the Second Commandment is declared worthy of all veneration and respect and its <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02595a.htm">profanation</a> reprobated. </li><br /><li>And He claims <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13287b.htm">one day</a> out of the seven as a memorial to Himself, and this must be kept <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07386a.htm">holy</a> (Third). </li><br /><li>Finally, <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11478c.htm">parents</a> being the natural providence of their offspring, invested with authority for their guidance and correction, and holding the place of <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06608a.htm">God</a> before them, the child is bidden to <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07462a.htm">honour</a> and respect them as His lawful representatives (Fourth)."</li></ul><p>The precepts which follow are meant to protect <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09580c.htm">man</a> in his natural <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13055c.htm">rights</a> against the <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08010c.htm">injustice</a> of his fellows. </p><ul><li>His <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09238c.htm">life</a> is the object of the Fifth; </li><br /><li>the <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07462a.htm">honour</a> of his body as well as the source of <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09238c.htm">life</a>, of the Sixth; </li><br /><li>his lawful <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12462a.htm">possessions</a>, of the Seventh; </li><br /><li>his <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12776c.htm">good name</a>, of the Eighth; </li><br /><li>And in order to make him still more secure in the enjoyment of his <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13055c.htm">rights</a>, it is declared an offense against <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06608a.htm">God</a> to desire to wrong him, in his <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05782a.htm">family</a> <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13055c.htm">rights</a> by the Ninth; </li><br /><li>and in his <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12462a.htm">property</a> <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13055c.htm">rights</a> by the Tenth."</li></ul>"The Ten Commandments are precepts bearing on the fundamental <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11189a.htm">obligations</a> of <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12738a.htm">religion</a> and <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10559a.htm">morality</a> and embodying the <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13001a.htm">revealed</a> expression of the <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06608a.htm">Creator's</a> will in relation to <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09580c.htm">man's</a> whole <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05215a.htm">duty</a> to <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06608a.htm">God</a> and to his fellow-creatures."<br /><br />We are invited brothers and sisters to penetrate into the readings; we need to appreciate how an ordinary Israelite could have thought the gravity of the words of the Law. In so doing, we can appreciate how much an ordinary Jew during the time of Jesus could not help but wonder on how Jesus could ascribe to Himself the Law. We can at least appreciate the weight of the feelings of the Sadducees and Pharisees upon hearing Jesus.Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17434696710611875434noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4502134945000490605.post-6207447073666342882010-06-14T00:39:00.000-07:002010-06-14T00:43:16.103-07:00Various Thoughts at Different Times<a style="cursor: progress;" href="http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=394246307927&1&index=0">A Not Forgetful Past</a><br /><br />The first and early years of which my recollection can bring me calls to mind spaces of lands and lush green, verdant in all surrounds. This was a day in the 1980s, when the world I see is somewhat in a dream. The environment I saw was lush with green. The verdant surrounding is a dry contrast to the world I have seen now. I was standing in a bluff, overlooking the rice fields down below, while the smoke was billowing on my grandmother's house; she must have been cooking something. It rises amidst the ever thickening outgrowths of the rising coconut trees. This was around 5pm; the gathering dusk is enveloping whatever light there was as the sun was concealed from the hill facing the hillside I was standing. I was waiting for my cousin to appear right below the sloping and descending pathway; she was gathering the goats before leading them to the dual-purpose barn and dryer. In the coming days, the barangay would celebrate its annual fiesta, as the people started to buy in provisions and ingredients of the menus already planned.<br /><br />It was almost like a different world than what I have seen now. The house had been torn down, as easily as the fire could consume it in a blink of an eye. The pathway had been clogged by the overgrowths of years of neglect as the thick bushes and hedges crept into the clearing. Just the inhabitants of the place had left it, the ambience followed suit. It is as if the dead had made its abode, while the living have fled into different directions, promising to flee from it for good.<br /><br /><br /><a href="http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=385601257927&1&index=2">Genesis 30:1-2, Isaiah 49:15, Ephesians 6:4-4, and Luke 14:26 on Motherhood</a><br /><br />In the readings, our reflection opens with the book of Genesis on the account of Rachel's demand for a child: "when...saw that she bore no children, she became jealous of her sister...". She puts a consequential factor in her state: "or I shall die". This is representative of how the ancient world views the state of a barren womanhood: the gods had receded its gift on you. In one way, that retreat of grace and help is perceived as a curse, seen in a negative sense. From the mouth of Rachel, we see that it is the death of her being if she bore no genetic inheritance of her husband's family. The role of woman in the age of the ancients is fundamentally to extend the family line, or the family risked to totally disappear. But, in this case, the family had been secured genetically by the children of Leah. This is not so much of having the progeny as to the personal condition of Rachel of being barren. Also, the abundance is seen in the children among women in that time. In the Genesis account Jacob retorted in a somewhat irked manner. It was not his will that God would give none to her. We would suspect that this incessant asking of Rachel had annoyed Jacob. This is, indeed, an urgent situation for Rachel for she believes that death could come to her. In a certain sense, what the second reading is teaching us is a word of hope for the demand of Rachel: the prophet wrote: "yet though she forget, I will never forget you". What Rachel had conceived as death of her own being is answered by the loyalty of God to His own children. He knows us: a knowing of us that knows us from end to last, from the deepest longing to the flimsy, superficial wants. If we read the text before the one quoted, Zion claimed that God had forgotten her, which had to be answered by the prophet in maternal terms. This also shows that the God of Israel is a nourishing and caring deity, a God who is neither strictly father nor mother, but is both at the same time. In one being of Israel's God is both the essence of a strong paternal character that subdues the enemies and shows His power of His own commands, while at the same is a God who comes with open arms to care our needs and heal our wounds.<br /><br />The third reading from the letter of Paul to the first Christians of Ephesus is a strongly worded admonition of children to obedience that is first before the second one was given for the parents. St. Paul says to the children of Ephesus "...obey your parents for this is right" and is connected to its first cause: "this is the first commandment that has promise". The latter is the first principle for it comes from the command of God from Horeb, the mountain from which the Law has come. From the mouth of Yahweh is the cause of the Law, and from it is our own obedience. In the dynamics of the three scriptural citations, we can say that the immanent orientation of temporal situations and demands of our family can be channeled to our relationship with the Lord, who sustains us all. We may not worry what comes to us in the most uncertain circumstances, in the barrenness and sterility of our life-projects and plans for His promise in the words of the prophet Isaiah is a seal of hope, a trustworthy vow and pledge of the Giver of the Law. In the brokenness of our failures, God comes not as a father with a stern countenance but a mother with a hand that touches. We do not shrink from force and look to the ground of fear, but look our gaze up to meet His in the coming of our own salvation.<br /><br />The Gospel reverses what we normally conceives as the usual scheme of things, the paradigm of the world. Jesus demands nothing short of a central focus of discipleship: "if you come to me, without being ready to give up your love for your ....". This is fundamental in understanding our obedience of Jesus Christ, who sets limits of our earthly ideal. The Lord bisects what love we can give to ourselves and others with that of the love we can give to Him, who is the source of love itself. Does Jesus need us to forsake even ourselves to come to Him, or there is another way of explaining it? One way for sure, the Law itself is clear as to the demands of the fourth commandment: to honor the father and mother, just as St Paul was clear when he admonished the children of Ephesus; however, the fourth command serves the first three of the Decalogue. In that orientation, how we honor our parents flows from the bidding of God to honor Him first. What counts now is the obedience demanded by Jesus from us? Is this valid though he himself shows us the countenance of a human being. We need to jump, then, from looking Jesus from man to being a god, and not just a god, but the God. We need to understand that the transposition of this obedience was hard for the first disciples as they hear the words. It is not without astonishment to hear the words as first time in our ears: the command was incisive, it cuts the very fabric of our society, the garment that holds us together, and the institution of our civilization. But didn't He say that " seek first the kingdom of God and everything will be given unto you"?<br /><br />When we seek God and follow Him is a path that leads always to goodness and truth. Though the words of Jesus is hard and harsh, but what lurks within is the essence of motherhood, the countenance of a maternal demand that ushers us to a better way of understanding things and living it in reality. We do not gain the whole world, if we embrace it; we, therefore, gain it when we forsake it and lead our path to Him who gives everything: "what profits a man if he gains the whole world but loses his soul". This is the irony of life - we do not rest content of what life is imposing us, the contentment of a pacified living beyond the taint of the exacts of the Gospel.<br /><br />The dynamics of the Gospel vis-a-vis the three scriptural readings points eventually to the Church in sojourn. The Church, the spouse of Christ, bears and births Her children for Christ. In her is the nourishment of the flowing waters of redemption through Her sacraments. It is only in Her that the demands of Christ is intelligible and is shown with a face for the world to see. It is in Her saints that the acerbic taste of His commands is given life and blood.Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17434696710611875434noreply@blogger.com0