Leprosy, at the time of Jesus, was far worse than any other ailment.
The GRACE OF GOD for January 10th, 2013
Jesus brings glad tidings to the poor!
The GRACE OF GOD for January 9th, 2013
It is not that God has to intervene every time something annoys me…
LISTEN, The Richness of Christmas Day and Christmas Season
Grace and Glory are two central words when trying to describe the enormous richness of Christmas.
The Path to Thankfulness, in Twelve Steps
- Having a cell phone is not still having someone to call.
- Having a Facebook profile is not yet having a profile in life.
- Having many followers on Twitter does not mean you know where you’re going to yet.
- Having a lot of music around you does not mean you have reached yet harmony.
- Having lots of appliances still does not mean you know you’re more valuable than any of them.
- To have is not yet to be!
- The most precious thing you have is that you are, the most precious thing within you is being.
- And being is something you received. You did not make it. You did not purchased it.
- You started in being just receiving.
- Learning to receive is learning to be.
- Learning to receive: Do not begin by demanding or complaining, but start from knowing, listening and appreciating.
- Let us say together therefore: Thanks, God the Father! Thank you very much!
Birth not a moment of magical transformation
“How many Canadians believe that birth is a moment of magical transformation that changes a child from a non-human to a human being?” he asked in the House Thursday. “Perhaps that ancient definition made sense when leeches and bloodletting were standard medical practices, but does it make medical sense in the 21st century?”
Ultra-running and the mysterious White Horse
The long-distance runner Michael Randall Hickman, also known as Micah True, White Horse or Caballo Blanco, was a talismanic figure for ultra-runners until his recent death. He befriended an enigmatic tribe of super-athletes and inspired many to take up ultramarathons, writes friend and Born to Run author Christopher McDougall.
The mysterious thing about the disappearance last week of Micah True – better known as Caballo Blanco, the White Horse of the Sierra Madre mountains – was that for once, we knew where he was.
vía BBC News – Ultra-running: Who was the mysterious White Horse?.
Lenten Spiritual Retreat, 3 of 3, New Perspectives on Catholicism
Lenten Retreat in Lafayette, Louisiana, USA. Talk 3 of 3: New Perspectives on Catholicism
* Unconventional and a little provocative definitions can be inspiring, if used with measure. We can speak of Christian faith as a way towards sober drunkenness. As human beings we are endowed with rationality, but we should never forget that not everything that is real can be grasped by rational, deductive- and linear-like, procedures. the biblical response to the need of surpassing the somehow restricted boundaries of rationality is to be filled with the Holy Spirit–to be “drunk” with the new wine.
* A second provocative way of presenting our faith is to say that the Christian Way consist of “efficient dying.” By “dying” we understand “investing life,” and by “efficiency” we understand: making the most of our limited time on Earth.
Lenten Spiritual Retreat, 2 of 3, Your Body, your Language
Lenten Retreat in Lafayette, Louisiana, USA. Talk 2 of 3: Your body, your language.
* A notion, well-spread nowadays, on the relationship between mind and body regards the former as “software” running on “hardware” that would be the latter. This concept shares a common disregard of the human body as usable, replaceable and disposable. As a consequence, embryos are seen as legitimate sources of spare parts, and ageing is just a curse to be avoided by means of extreme technology.
* A biblical perspective brings to focal attention two facts: (1) As creatures, our value comes from the One who has created us, thus making us effectively expressions of his power, love and wisdom. While alive on this earth we are “unfinished sentences He is pronouncing.” (2) We are called, by the mystery of his redemptive love, to become dwelling of his Holy Spirit and temples of his glory.
Lenten Spiritual Retreat, 1 of 3, Neopaganism
Lenten Retreat in Lafayette, Louisiana, USA. Talk 1 of 3: Neopaganism
* In Chapter One of his Epistle to the Christian community at Rome, Apostle St. Paul presents the dark and oppressing reality of man in paganism: love for pleasure and selfishness take over and certain decline is the only future.
* A rather similar picture presents the same Apostle in Chapter Three of his Second Letter to Timothy–with an addition: in those “last days” people will regard themselves as “religious.” Their false idea of spirituality makes them regrettably blind to Christ’s splendour.
A dreamer’s fate
Quite often dreamers are badly hated, for their behaviour is a prophetic denounce of everybody else’s lack of prupose and coherence.
[Homily given in John Pall II’s Academy, in Lafayette, LA, on March 9, 2012.]
Reconstruction efforts hindered by ghosts
Numerous reports of ghost sightings have reportedly been made by residents in the city of Ishinomaki in Miyagi prefecture, home to nearly a fifth of all tsunami fatalities.
Reconstruction and repair have been put on hold in some instances due to workers’ fears that the spirits of the dead who passed away a year ago will bring them bad luck if they continue, according to AFP.
Highlighting one half-repaired supermarket, local Satoshi Abe, 64, told the agency: "I heard people working to repair the store became sick because of ghosts. People died here everywhere, here and there. The city is full of such stories."
A taxi driver, who did not want to be named, added that he was unwilling to stop in certain parts of the city that were badly damaged in the tsunami for fear of picking up a customer who is a spirit of the dead.
Meanwhile, another local woman described hearing stories of people seeing queues of people rushing towards the hills, a replay of their final moment as they attempted to escape the tsunami, according to AFP.
vía Japan's post-disaster reconstruction efforts hindered – by ghosts – Telegraph.
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Men and women have distinct personalities
Past studies have shown that men and women average similar scores on the 16PF5 – a well-known and frequently used measure of personality.
But by estimating the average difference in men’s and women’s scores on each of the test’s 15 different measures of personality, and comparing them against one another, researchers found that in fact the sexes shared less ground than previously thought.
The study showed that because men scored higher in some areas and women in others the differences between the sexes cancelled each other out when viewed as a simple average, but made for a significant gulf when added together.
The new paper “clearly rejects the idea that there are only minor differences between the personalities of men and women,” researchers said.
The study could explain why certain professions, such as engineering, are dominated by a particular sex in spite of efforts by governments to promote equality, Dr Paul Irwing, of Manchester Business School, who co-authored the paper, said.
He added: “You find far fewer women in engineering and it is normally contended that you cannot explain this in individual differences, but that is on the assumption they are small and our study shows they are huge.
“People are self-selecting into careers that fit their personality characteristics – it is the complete opposite of what people have assumed for the past 100 years.”
Dr Marco Del Giudice, who led the study, said: “Sex differences in personality are believed to be comparatively small. However, research in this area has suffered from significant methodological limitations.
“The idea that there are only minor differences between the personality profiles of males and females should be rejected as based on inadequate methodology.”
BBC News – What phantom limbs and mirrors teach us about the brain
In 1994, Ramachandran proved the theory by mapping the brain activity of a group of amputees. Using a magnetic scanner he showed that neuron activity was indeed migrating from the hand area to the face. It was a ground-breaking study.
But he believed much more could be gleaned from studying phantom limbs.
In the mid-1990s he followed the work of Italian scientist Giacomo Rizzolatti, who discovered an entirely new type of neuron that he called the mirror neuron.
Rizzolatti observed that certain neurons in the brain of a macaque monkey fired when the monkey reached out and when it watched another monkey reach out. Mirror neurons were later discovered in humans too.
Ramachandran began to apply this finding to his work with phantom limbs. If mirror neurons fired when an individual watched someone moving a limb, he conjectured, then visual perception might play an important role in creating the sensation of movement.
His next subject, Jimmy, felt that his phantom hand was always agonisingly clenched, with his phantom fingernails digging into his missing hand.
Ramachandran put a mirror between Jimmy’s arms and asked him to move both his phantom and healthy limb simultaneously, while looking at the reflection of the healthy limb – effectively fooling Jimmy’s brain into thinking his phantom was moving in a normal way.
Jimmy felt his clenched fist release almost immediately.
"This is because you are creating intense sensory conflict – the vision is telling you the limb is moving," Ramachandran explains.
"One way the brain deals with conflict is to say, ‘To hell with it! There is no arm,’ and the arm disappears.
"I tell my medical colleagues that it is the first example in the history of medicine of successful amputation of a phantom limb."
He called the treatment Mirror Visual Feedback therapy or MVF. But it wasn’t until much later that MVF was properly acknowledged by clinicians.
vía BBC News – What phantom limbs and mirrors teach us about the brain.
Ajax Dilemma Looks at Fundamental Fairness
Mr. Woodruff, a philosophy professor at the University of Texas, Austin, uses the myth of the Greek warriors Ajax and Odysseus to show how issues of justice can set off societal conflict. The Ajax quandary arises after Achilles is slain in battle, and his armor is to be given to the army’s most valuable soldier. Ajax and Odysseus compete for it.
Ajax, a courageous, loyal and hard-working warrior, demands the armor on the grounds that he has saved the lives of many comrades on the battlefield. Odysseus is innovative and articulate but not completely trustworthy; his values seem to fluctuate to suit his interests. He claims the prize as a strategist who can outthink the enemy.
The men square off in a speaking contest in front of King Agamemnon and a panel of army jurors. It is, Mr. Woodruff writes, a conflict we all recognize — that of “loyalty and brawn versus brains and trickery.” Ajax loses and his anger explodes, damaging his position in the army and destroying his life, family and reputation.
The author argues that this myth revolves around the issue of rewards, which “mark the difference between winners and losers.” He adds: “Rewards are public recognition for contributions made. They express the values of a community.” But which, he asks, do we value more: “Cleverness or hard work? Strength or intelligence? Loyalty or inventiveness?”
vía ‘Ajax Dilemma’ Looks at Fundamental Fairness – NYTimes.com.