possibilities

Electing a Leader.......


i think everything posted here
are of helpful in many different ways
and in unique revelations
that really make us grow
and know each other well
and that is the beauty of it all!
we don't have to be closed doors
when something different or unique
or not compatible with what
we perceived
encounter us along the way
and shot our minds & hearts.
we need to be open in a
possibly 4 doors in our life...
the door that we know that others don't know
the door that we don't know but others know
the door that we both know and
the door that only God knows...
the danger is the door that sometimes
we forcefully want to open that is not for us
or the one we don't want to open
there lies the borderline...
it's either we don't want to
open and close ourselves
or we want to open it by force
even hurting others & ourselves...
drawing between the lines
of egoism & altruism
of vices & virtues.
no my point here is we all want to grow
everything we do here will
determined our identity
as how we build ourselves
how we matured
especially in the image
that really reflects life
not illusions and confusions...
we encounter many obstacles
within & without
and we will find ways
of managing them
that will make our journey
peacefully even in the midst
of storms or conflicts
and nothing can stop us
this is what we are trying to define
this is what we want to understand
that's why
we need to move & to grow
not to become stagnant...
and one biggest challenge is the
definition of our by-laws
and the real objectives of this group
one of this is the 12-key area
fill up and conquer all this gaps
then we'll all be in peace.

we have to draw between the lines

give us your share then...
(and it'll be obvious who will show our ways
the body of this boat/s)
seriously or not we need to be stable first.

then tell us what confuses you or us?

by all means we have to grow...
we're in this stages now
because the only constant (that never change)
is change.

smiles




...............




mission?


"power to the people..."
unfortunately it's being abused by the trapos!
if we'll continue to have those kind of cc in our communities
then we're still behind... we're still hoping... we're still in pains.
better to sling it out to goliath and let them destroy themselves...
they already have their rewards.
but again it's facing our children... that's why
we'll sacrifice for them and give them a sense of directions
in order not as much as possible be exposed to these kind of
illusions that our trapos and trashhhhhh infuse in our medias....
let's move on... all regions, all religions...
but then
we'll face educations...
we'll face gov't...
we'll face society...
a system they called
But the problem lies not in the system or laws.
It lies in the hearts of man or woman
where the system becomes the end,
the means to an end.
It is a kind of system
where progress
has been assign to a mere survival --
where people denounce
involvements, belongingness,
in place of indifference...

better make a difference
a one in a million you.... :)

again
we'll face communities...
we'll face families!!!!

we need to study more
we need a sense of direction
and it's too damn hard :(
but at least we'll try...


so what else could be our mission???


maybe we could answer the very simple "Q."

'sinO ka bA?!.'



cheers


jong






...............



"Gentle Art of Blessing"


"On awakening, bless this day, for it is already full of unseen
good which your blessing will call forth; for to bless is to
acknowledge the unlimited good that is embedded in the very
texture of the universe, and awaiting each and all.

"On crossing people in the street, on the bus, in places of work
and play, bless them. The peace of your blessing will
accompany them on their way, and the aura of its gentle
fragrance will be light to their path.

"On meeting and talking to people, bless them in their health,
their work, their joy, their relationships to God, to themselves and
others. Bless them in their abundance; their finances-bless
them in every conceivable way; for such blessings not only sow
seeds of healing but one day will spring forth as flowers of joy in
the waste places of your own life.

"When you pass a prison, mentally bless its inmates in their
innocence and freedom, their gentleness, pure essence and
unconditional forgiveness; for one can only be prisoner of one's
self image, and a free man can walk unshackled in the courtyard
of a jail just as citizens of countries where freedom reigns can
be prisoners when fear lurks in their thoughts.

"When you pass a hospital, bless its patients in their present
wholeness; for even in their suffering, this wholeness awaits in
them to be discovered. When your eyes behold a man in tears or
seemingly broken by life, bless him in his vitality and joy; for the
material senses present but the inverted image of the ultimate
splendor and perfection which only the inner eye beholds.

"As you walk, bless the city in which you live, its government and
teachers, its nurses and street sweepers, its children and
bankers, its priests and prostitutes. The minute anyone
expresses the least aggression or unkindness to you, respond
with a blessing; bless them totally, sincerely, joyfully; for such
blessings are a shield which protects them from the ignorance
of their misdeed, and distracts the arrow that was aimed at you.

"To bless means to wish unconditionally total, unrestricted good
for others and events from the deepest wellspring in the
innermost chamber of your heart; it means to hallow, to hold in
reverence, to behold with utter awe that which is always a gift
from the Creator. He who is hallowed by your blessing is set
aside, consecrated holy and whole. To bless is yet to invoke
divine care upon, to think or speak gratefully for, to confer
happiness upon-although we ourselves are never the bestower,
but simply the joyful witness of Life's abundance.

"To bless all without discrimination of any sort is the ultimate
form of giving because those you bless will never know from
whence came the sudden ray of the sun that burst through the
clouds of their skies, and you will rarely be a witness to the
sunlight of their lives.

"When something goes completely askew in your day, some
unexpected event knocks down your plans, burst into blessing;
for life is teaching you a lesson, and the very event you believe to
be unwanted will turn out well for you. Trials are blessings in
disguise, and hosts of angels follow in their path.

"To bless is to acknowledge the omnipresent universal beauty
hidden to material eyes; it is to activate the law of attraction
which, from the farthest reaches of the universe, will bring into
your life exactly what you need to experience and enjoy.

"It is impossible to bless and to judge. So hold constantly as a
deep, hallowed, intoned thought that desire to bless; for truly
then shall you become a peacemaker, and one day you
shall-everywhere-behold the very face of God."

God bless

by Pierce Pradervand



................



Rizal's `Kalinga'


Inquirer
Last updated 03:13am (Mla time) 12/30/2006

Published on page A10 of the December 30, 2006 issue of the Philippine
Daily Inquirer

IN INTERNAL exile in Dapitan, Jose Rizal set about teaching the
children and making himself useful to the local community. The outline
of a Philippine map he created has been restored. We only have a
reproduction of the house in which he lived, but we can claim that one
of Rizal's teaching aids has survived down the generations. What Rizal
set out to do in Dapitan, he always espoused in his writings: to
devote his knowledge to the building of a civic consciousness that, he
believed, was the bedrock of a positive political consciousness.

Rizal was always aware that even as he was hailed as a prophet, there
would be others who would be more than willing to be false prophets.
In his essay, "The Philippines a Century Hence," he observed: "All the
petty insurrections that have occurred in the Philippines were the
work of a few fanatics or discontented soldiers, who had to deceive
and humbug the people or avail themselves of their powers over their
subordinates to gain their ends. So they all failed. No insurrection
had a popular character or was based on a need of the whole race or
fought for human rights or justice, so it left no ineffaceable
impressions, but rather when they saw that they had been duped, the
people bound up their wounds and applauded the overthrow of the
disturbers of their peace! But what if the movement springs from the
people themselves and based its causes upon their woes?"

It is an irony of history that the man so hated by the institutional
Church of his time should have expressed what has become a central
message of the Church under a native hierarchy: what we do not need,
he might as well have said, was not Charter change but CHARACTER
change. Put another way, and with an example also dear to the hearts
of present-day Filipino prelates, what Rizal advocated in his day has
finally seen fruition in the present. For what Rizal set out to do was
the 19th century's first stirrings of the movement we now know as
Gawad Kalinga.

If the past year has been one of political failure, then it has also
been one of tremendous success for those who would put community
building ahead of politicking. Revolutionary transitional councils,
military withdrawals of support, "calibrated preemptive responses,"
and impeachment complaints decided on the basis of the numbers and not
the merits -- all these have been facets of a destructive, desperate
and, yes, degenerate political system, while what has caught the
world's imagination and respect has been Gawad Kalinga.

Indeed, if leaders of both the opposition and the administration have
found themselves acting like generals with no foot soldiers,
commanders of political forces met with indifference by the great
democratic mobilizers -- the middle -- it is because the middle has
been in the thick of efforts such as Gawad Kalinga and conspicuously
absent from the political field of battle.

But efforts to bring different social strata together, and which
strive to find a way for different economic classes to work together
and not against each other, are only a fresh start but can never be
the end-all and be-all of community involvement. And this is where
Rizal's example can inspire those who have found meaning and
satisfaction in community-building. If in the past, the
disappointments born of both Edsa people power revolts led to a
drifting away from political action, then those involved in efforts
such as Gawad Kalinga have to realize their building communities
cannot absolve them of their duty to build a better nation.

A better nation will not arise simply because houses have been built.
The empowerment and the breaking of the chains of despair and social
mistrust must lead to clean, credible elections and bring to power a
national leadership that reflects and lives up to a renewed sense of
civic virtue. The honors that have been rendered Gawad Kalinga, for
example, aren't laurels on which its volunteers should rest. They are,
instead, challenges to expand its achievements in the public sphere.

The past year has seen political divisions deepen in our society, and
yet there have been earnest efforts to close that divide, economically
and socially. As it was in Rizal's lifetime, the Filipino still waits
for those who can bridge the gap between social and political action.



............




i just want to share some infos or history of this holiday celebration
maybe this will help us to understand more the universality of this
feast...


What are the origins of All Saints Day and All Souls Day?
Are these linked with paganism and Halloween?

Both the feast of All Saints and the feast of All Souls evolved in the
life of the Church independently of paganism and Halloween. Let us
first address the feast of All Saints. The exact origins of this
celebration are uncertain, although, after the legalization of
Christianity in A.D. 313, a common commemoration of the saints,
especially the martyrs, appeared in various areas throughout the
Church. For instance in the East, the city of Edessa celebrated this
feast on May 13; the Syrians, on the Friday after Easter; and the city
of Antioch, on the first Sunday after Pentecost. Both St. Ephrem (d.
373) and St. John Chrysostom (d. 407) attest to this feast day in
their preaching. In the West, a commemoration for all the saints also
was celebrated on the first Sunday after Pentecost. The primary reason
for establishing a common feast day was because of the desire to honor
the great number of martyrs, especially during the persecution of
Emperor Diocletion (284-305), the worst and most extensive of the
persecutions. Quite simply, there were not enough days of the year for
a feast day for each martyr and many of them died in groups. A common
feast day for all saints, therefore, seemed most appropriate.

In 609, the Emperor Phocas gave the Pantheon in Rome to Pope Boniface
IV, who rededicated it on May 13 under the title St. Maria ad Martyres
(or St. Mary and All Martyrs). Whether the Holy Father purposefully
chose May 13 because of the date of the popular celebration already
established in the East or whether this was just a happy coincidence
is open to debate.

The designation of Nov. 1 as the feast of All Saints occurred over
time. Pope Gregory III (731-741) dedicated an oratory in the original
St. Peter's Basilica in honor of all the saints on Nov. 1 (at least
according to some accounts), and this date then became the official
date for the celebration of the feast of All Saints in Rome. St. Bede
(d. 735) recorded the celebration of All Saints Day on Nov. 1 in
England, and such a celebration also existed in Salzburg, Austria. Ado
of Vienne (d. 875) recounted how Pope Gregory IV asked King Louis the
Pious (778-840) to proclaim Nov. 1 as All Saints Day throughout the
Holy Roman Empire. Sacramentaries of the 9th and 10th centuries also
placed the feast of All Saints on the liturgical calendar on Nov. 1.

According to an early Church historian, John Beleth (d. 1165), Pope
Gregory IV (827-844) officially declared Nov. 1 the feast of All
Saints, transferring it from May 13. However, Sicard of Cremona (d.
1215) recorded that Pope Gregory VII (1073-85) finally suppressed May
13 and mandated Nov. 1 as the date to celebrate the feast of All
Saints. In all, we find the Church establishing a liturgical feast day
in honor of the saints independent of any pagan influence.

Now for the Halloween connection: Nov. 1 marked Samhain, the beginning
of the Celtic winter. (The Celts lived as early as 2,000 years ago in
England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland and northern France.) Samhain, for
whom the feast was named, was the Celtic lord of death, and his name
literally meant "summer's end." Since winter is the season of cold,
darkness and death, the Celts soon made the connection with human
death. The eve of Samhain, Oct. 31, was a time of Celtic pagan
sacrifice, and Samhain allowed the souls of the dead to return to
their earthly homes that evening. Ghosts, witches, goblins and elves
came to harm the people, particularly those who had inflicted harm on
them in this life. Cats, too, were considered sacred because they had
once been human beings who had been changed as a punishment for their
evil deeds on this earth.

To protect themselves from marauding evil spirits on the eve of
Samhain, the people extinguished their hearth fires, and the Druids
(the priests and spiritual teachers of the Celts) built a huge new
year's bonfire of sacred oak branches. The Druids offered burnt
sacrifices — crops, animals, even humans — and told fortunes of the
coming year by examining the burned remains. People sometimes wore
costumes of animal heads and skins. From this new fire, the home
hearths were again ignited.

Particular ethnic groups developed their own lore, which was merged
with the celebration. In Ireland, people held a parade in honor of
Muck Olla, a god. They followed a leader dressed in a white robe with
a mask from the head of an animal and begged for food. (Ireland is
also the source of the jack-o-lantern fable: A man named Jack was not
able to enter heaven because of his miserliness, and he could not
enter hell because he played practical jokes on the devil; so he was
condemned to walk the earth with his lantern until judgment day.)

The Scots walked through fields and villages carrying torches and lit
bonfires to ward off witches and other evil spirits.

In Wales, every person placed a marked stone in the huge bonfire. If a
person's stone could not be found the next morning, he would die
within a year.

Besides the Celtic traditions in place, the Roman conquest of Britain
in A.D. 43 brought two other pagan feasts: Feralia was held in late
October to honor the dead. Another autumn festival honored Pomona, the
goddess of fruits and trees; probably through this festival, apples
became associated with Halloween. Elements of these Roman celebrations
were combined with the Celtic Samhain.

With the spread of Christianity and the establishment of All Saints
Day, some of these pagan customs remained in the English speaking
world for All Hallows Eve (or Halloween, All Saints Eve), perhaps at
first more out of superstition, and later, more out of fun without any
real tie to paganism. For this reason, little ones (and some big ones)
still dress in a variety of costumes and pretend for the evening to be
ghosts, witches, vampires, monsters, Ninjas, pirates and so on,
without any thought of paganism. Nevertheless, All Saints Day clearly
arose from genuine a Christian devotion independent of paganism.


hsi.




..........




(in fairness for our public schools in philippines or culion...)

Hope in education

By Randy David
Inquirer
Last updated 04:36am (Mla time) 10/29/2006

Published on page A13 of the October 29, 2006 issue of the Philippine
Daily Inquirer

SO abiding is the Filipino's belief in education that we can think of
it as occupying almost the same place in our culture as that assigned
to religion. It is probably the only thing that makes us modern. We
have no fear of the future, and neither are we sentimental about the
past. We expect education not only to change us, but to liberate us
from everything that constrains us. As families, we commit all that we
have so our children may be better educated than us.

This modern outlook is so pervasive among our people that one must
wonder how a nation such as ours can allow itself to be governed by
the most backward-looking politicians. I think the answer to this
puzzle might be found in an examination of the dissolution of our
communities. In the wake of rapid urbanization, we failed to develop
new publics that could unite our people and keep the collective spirit
alive. Our cities are not only overcrowded; they also have no
coherence. We do not have a real polity of informed citizens. What we
have are rootless individuals with no opinions other than those
extracted from them by pollsters, and no participation in national
life other than as passive consumers of the mass media.

The situation in education starkly mirrors this absence of a unifying
national purpose. Not only has the government consigned to the private
sector a large part of its duty to provide basic education, it has
also allowed private enterprise to virtually dictate the whole
direction of higher education. The overnight proliferation of nursing
schools is but a dramatic symptom of this abdication of an essential
governmental function. It has led to so much waste not only of scarce
material resources, but also of human lives. If one wants to affirm a
dark view of the Philippine future, it is normal to refer to the
dismal state of the country's education system.

But last week, at a forum on the practice of sociology in the
Philippines, I learned something about what is happening to education
that I did not quite expect. "There is hope," my University of the
Philippines colleague Dr. Cynthia Bautista told her audience. For
nearly a year now, as part of a research team, Dr. Bautista has been
visiting public schools in the poorest and remotest areas of the
country, talking to teachers, parents and principals, and taking a
close look at National Achievement Test (NAT) scores.

The initial findings of her group indicate the impact of a social
variable in education that previous programs in education have not
highlighted. This is the role that the local school can play in
reviving or strengthening the spirit of community. The other side of
this is the amazing effect of the community's concrete involvement in
the affairs of the school on student performance.

The research shows that the infusion of additional material resources
into the school system produces the greatest impact on the performance
levels of students, that is, when a social organization of
multi-stakeholders is already active in creating an environment
conducive to learning. The introduction of a school-based management
(SBM) approach as a component of the Department of Education's Third
Elementary Education Project (TEEP) tapped into a collective energy
that I wrongly thought our communities had lost. Under the SBM, funds
for school improvement are placed directly at the disposal of the
community led by the principal or teacher in charge. When parents,
teachers and school heads band together to do what is necessary for
the sake of their children's education, everything seems possible. The
results on the ground show this in very clear terms. "I have not seen
anything more empowering than this," Bautista said.

Instead of the politician or the office-bound consultant determining
how the funds are to be used, the SBM concept puts total faith in the
wisdom and integrity of the school and its community of stakeholders.
As a result, all construction is made according to specification.
There is no corruption, no waste and no misplaced priorities. More
important, the new decentralized approach places the school at the
center of community life and activates the spirit of shared
accountability.

This approach to education reform was formally launched in 2003 in the
23 most under-resourced divisions of the public school system—from a
total of 188 divisions. It may well be today the most valuable
template for revolutionizing the country's public school system. The
test scores of students in the 8,600 TEEP schools (out of about
37,000) are the most visible manifestation of the miracle now
unfolding in Philippine education. In 2004-2005, TEEP schools were at
par with or did better than even the schools in the National Capital
Region and richer provinces. It wasn't like that at all in 2002.

The performance of the pupils of Guinsaugon Elementary School, a TEEP
school in San Bernardo, Southern Leyte tells it all. In 2002-03, their
mean percentage score in the NAT stood at 35.6. This rose to 49 in
2003-04, and shot up to 83.1 in 2004-05. A landslide buried this same
school not too long ago, but at the rate its pupils were going, those
poor kids would easily have bested the pupils of Manila's most
expensive private schools.

The biggest impediment to education, John Dewey wrote, is "the
isolation of the school from life." The school must break out of this
isolation, and "secure the organic connection with social life." This
is the basic truth about education that we are learning here. There is
hope for our country; it lies in the local school serving as a
catalyst for the REBUILDING OF OUR COMMUNITIES...!

* * *



"The Lost Tomb of Christ?"

The program (I cannot make myself call it a documentary) thrusts
directly at the heart of Christian faith, questioning the
Resurrection. The Discovery Channel will encourage credulous viewers
to believe that archeologists have discovered a tomb containing the
physical remains of Jesus Christ and members of his family.

If this claim is true-- that Jesus did not rise from the dead-- then
Christianity is a false religion. As St. Paul explained to the

Corinthians (1 Cor 15: 17-19):

"If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still
in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have
perished. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all
men most to be pitied."

...

On what basis does the Discovery Channel ask us to believe that
Christians-- who presumably will compose the greater part of the
audience for this program-- are "of all men most to be pitied?"

Here are the facts:

In a burial vault in Jerusalem, archeologists discovered ossuaries
containing the remains of several people who apparently lived at the
time of Christ. The boxes were marked with names, including Mary,
Judah, and Joseph. On one box the name was illegible, but it might
have read: "Jesus."

When this burial vault was discovered in 1980-- that's right, 27 years
ago-- the discovery drew no particular attention. There was no reason
to believe that this tomb contained the remains of the Lord's family.
Indeed there were several excellent reasons to believe that it did not.

The names on the ossuaries were extremely common ones; the tomb might
have belonged to any affluent family living in Jerusalem. But Jesus
was born into a poor family from Nazareth, not an affluent family from
Jerusalem.

Moreover, historians confirm that from the earliest days of the faith,
Christians honored a site near Calvary-- at the spot where the Church
of the Holy Sepulchre now stands-- as the place where Jesus was
interred after the Crucifixion. The tomb that is the focus of the
Discovery special is located in an entirely different part of the city.

Are self-proclaimed experts of the 21st century more likely to
identify the spot of Christ's tomb accurately than those who witnessed
the burial? That's what we would have to believe, to take this
argument seriously.

after the Da Vinci Code...

"The Lost Tomb of Christ" is the work of two men: James Cameron and
Simcha Jacobovici. Let's take a glance at their credentials.

Cameron is a successful film director, who gave us Titanic and The
Terminator. He is also a fan of science fiction, a member of the Mars
Society (dedicated to colonization of that planet), and a man who
admits that he cannot properly weigh the claims of his own program.
"I'm not a theologist," Cameron told reporters. The word is
"theologian," but Cameron isn't someone who worries about details. In
making this film, Cameron relied on Jacobovici.

"Simcha has no credibility whatsoever," the curator of Jerusalem's
Rockefeller Museum told Newsweek. Unlike Cameron, Jacobovici is not
entirely new to the business of archeological discovery; he has a
track record. In 2002, he was instrumental in preparing another
Discovery special, about what was alleged to be the tomb of "James,
the brother of Jesus."

Then as now, legitimate archeologists were skeptical about the
discovery that Jacobovici touted. Finally in 2005, Israeli authorities
exposed the "tomb of James" as a fraud, and indicted five people on
charges of forgery.

Somehow these two men-- one with no expertise whatever, the other with
a history of promoting an antiquities scam-- convinced the Discovery
Channel to invest $3.5 million in their program. Do you suppose that
you and I could convince Discovery to invest a similar sum in a
project to undermine public belief in, say, global warming?

It's difficult to avoid the conclusion that the Discovery Channel knew
what it would be getting: not credibility, but public attention.
Television sheds heat, not light, and in this case producers are
hoping to generate controversy, not to advance the cause of knowledge
and understanding.

(hsi)
holy spirit interactive

again a serious matter
sorry po..............
hope nobody will get
the pressures
and stress...

jong
Q8