Tuesday, July 08, 2008

The Council of Jerusalem

Hi this is Ria posting under my mom's name, just to confuse you :) I'm reading the Story of the Church right now and have been assigned to choose from the many questions following each chapter, one to answer with a paragraph each week. And I picked this one partly because the youth group that I am part of is planning to reenact this council at our next meeting. So without further ado...

What dispute was settled at the council of Jerusalem?
The difficulties which culminated in the counsil of Jerusalem arose while Paul and Barnabas were preaching to the Gentiles. In the preaching of these two, the Gentiles were told that it was not necessary to be circumcised, to avoid the unclean foods, in short to observe the Mosaic law so strictly observed by the Jews. However many converts from Judaism to Christianity disagreed and when Paul and Barnabas arrived in Jerusalem a council was held. Although Scripture does not give us much of an idea of how the argument played out, we do know that the council was eventually convinced by Paul and Barnabas and declared to the Gentiles:
"...it hath seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us to lay no further
burden upon you than these necessary things: That you abstain from things sacrificed to idols and from blood and from things strangled and from fornication: from which things keeping yourselves, you shall do well."

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Resource Lists - Asia

Mount Everest

Resource Lists - Africa

Miscellaneous Resources:

Africa Map Puzzle

Study Objectives:

Country Locations
Online Map Puzzle
Capitals
Rivers
Mountains

Egypt:

Aswan High Dam
Building Big - Dams
Hieroglyphics
Rosetta Stone
Eratosthenes
Library of Alexandria

Resource Lists - Europe

General Resources:

Mountain Photos
Mountain Map
Atlases
Globes
Map Puzzles
Librarian Who Measured the Earth
TransEuropa
Heritage
Scrambled States


British Isles:

Hadrian's Wall
Firth of Forth Bridge
Channel Tunnel

France:

Lascaux Cave Paintings
Brittany
Cathedrals and Churches, World War I
Louis Pasteur
Pasteur and the Rosary
The Louvre
Versailles
Musee d'Orsay
Giverny

Germany:

German Cathedrals
Heroes of the Holocaust

Greece:

Greek Alphabet
Maps of Paul's Missionary Journeys
Site with lots of photos relating to Greece and sites along St. Paul's Missionary Journeys
Ephesus
Colossae

The Netherlands:

Windmills
Rembrandt's House
Rembrandt
Heroes of the Holocaust
Maeslant Barrier
Delta Works

Poland:


Wawel Royal Castle
Wawel Cathedral
People Buried in Wawel Cathedral
Photos
Wieliczka Salt Mines
more info
more photos
Jagiellonian University
Auschwitz-Birkenau

Turin, Italy: (we covered this at the time of the Winter Olympics in 2006)

Shroud of Turin
Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati
Saint John Bosco
Pictures of Turin
Official Website: City of Turin
Eating in Turin

Vatican City:


History of St. Peter's Basilica from Catholic Encyclopedia
Building Big - St. Peter's
Pictures from St. Peter's
Vatican Museums Online - The Sistine Chapel
Sistine Chapel
Botticelli
Ghirlandaio
Rosselli
Perugino
Mandylion
Paintings on the walls of the Sistine Chapel
Web Gallery of art
Article on the excavations under St. Peter's

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

New Geography Blog

Two of my friends and I just started a new geography blog called The Map Guys. For now I am not going post any more on this blog.

Tuesday, May 30, 2006

New stories from the Vatican Exhibit

Yesterday we (that is Electroblogster, Gus, Terri, Bernie and I) went for a last peek at the Vatican Exhibit. We were lucky enough to arrange to meet up with a friend of Grandma's who is an amazing tour guide. We spent three hours in there and we didn't even look at a whole bunch of stuff. She told us several stories about St. Gregory the Great.
Once there was a great famine in Rome, equal in destructive powers to the Black Plague that one raged over Europe. The newly elected St. Gregory begged God for mercy and to stop the famine. So the whole town did penance and after a time they all met around Hadrian's tomb. Then every single one of the many, many people gathered there saw an angel on top of the tomb, holding a fiery sword, then as everyone watched he sheathed his sword and everyone took it as a sign from God that there prayers were answered. The tomb was renamed The Castle of Angels.
Then there was the pantocrater, an icon with Jesus seated in the middle and Sts. Peter and Paul on either side of him. Jesus is clothed in red, divinity, with a blue(symbolizing humanity) mantle over, showing that he took on humanity over his divintity. He is holding a book on which are two bible verses,
I am the light of the world
and
Take and eat, this is my body
These are a very unusual combination, but also a pretty neat one.
The first is the Liturgy of the Word the second the Liturgy of the Eucharist, this is the same combination as in the Holy Mass.
Then it was on to probably my favorite part of the Exhibit, The Mandylion. Although there are many legends about the Mandylion there is one which isn't a legend which is a really cool story.
The one they have at the exhibit is only a copy of the original which was kept folded most of the time but when unfolded was a full bodied picture of Jesus. Now a copy was made, this Mandylion, The Mandylion of Edessa, and several copies were made of it, then the original disapeared. A long time later they discovered The Shoud of Turin, many chemical tests were run on it, pollen was found on it from all the places the original Mandylion was known to have been. Carbon dating tests were run on it, those were less encouraging, they said that this cloth was over 1000 years younger than it should be, but later it was discovered that carbon dating tests are off 1000 to 1500 years off if a certain kind of bacteria is on the cloth, that bacteria was found on the Shroud of Turin. The Shroud is fading, due to many pictures taken of it, but we can see the face still in the Mandylion, or in Veronica's veil, the beautiful faces are identical.
The Mandylion's frame, though quite impressive studded with gems galore is nothing compared to the actual painting. One more thing is really cool, whatever direction you are looking from He is looking at you.

I am running out of time so I am only going to post one more story, that of St. Stanislaw. He was the Archbishop of Cracow, and consequently of Poland. Now the king of Poland at that time was a really bad king, so after repeated warnings to stop his evil ways and the kings persistent wickedness St. Stanislaw excommunicated him. The king ignored it and one day decided to go to Mass at the cathedral. St. Stanislaw saw him there and told him to leave, the king refused, St. Stanislaw stopped the Mass. The king, being just a bit hasty, went up to the altar grabbed the bishop by the neck and strangled him. Then he had to run away from the wrath of the people. He fled to a monastary where he did penance for his sin, and had such a change of heart that after his death he was declared a Blessed. Now that is a really cool story.

Well I have spent enough time on the computer but expect another post from Gus shortly.

Monday, April 24, 2006

South Africa

We haven't Posted in a while because of Easter.

Here are some interesting facts about South Africa.

Capital: Pretoria
Highest point: Mafadi 11,306 feet
Lowest point: Atlantic Ocean 0 feet
Desert: Kalahari
Oceans: Atlantic, and Pacific
Rivers: Limpopo, Orange, and Vaal
Provinces:Eastern Cape, Free State, Guateng, Kwazulu-Natal, Limpopo, Mpumalanga, Northern Cape, North-West, and Western Cape
Religions: Christianity, indigenous beliefs, Islam, Hinduism
Currency: rand

Saturday, April 08, 2006

Hanseatic League

A little off topic here. Ria and Electroblogster were following the "random article" link on Wikipedia that the Mapguy discovered for us. We came upon the Hanseatic League. This group of trading cities from Sweden, Germany, Poland, Holland/Netherlands etc. created a monopoly on trade in the Baltic Sea for 400 years!! (c. 1300 - 1700)

And coolest of all is this high resolution ancient map called the Carta Marina. Check out the seamonsters and ancient names (Lappia - where the Laplanders live.) I know about Lapland because of a book I read when I was a kid called Snipp, Snapp and Snurr and the Reindeer. The three little Swedish protagonists spend a holiday in Lapland. Lapland is in Finland.

[posted by electroblogster]

Tanzania

Tanzania only became a country in 1964 when the mainland country of Tanganyika and the island of Zanzibar united. The capital is Dar Es Salaam. You can read the official website in English or Kiswahili. Tanganyika had been part of the German East Africa territory. The British got rule of it in World War I and ruled it until it became independent in 1961.

Sissal is used to make rope and twine. Sissal happens to be one of Tanzania's main crops. Yummy!

Whoaa! Wait a minute here. This is a cool country!! They have Mount Kilimanjaro, the Serengeti Reserve Park, Lions, Giraffes, Leopards, Elephants, sandy tropical beaches, HALF of Lake Victoria, and how cool is the name of that archipelago (group of islands) Zanzibar?!?!? It seems like there are lots of exotic tours that go to the Rufiji River.

There is a lot of water in this African nation. The east is on the Indian Ocean. Part of Lake Victoria (Lake Vicky for short) is in this nation. On two other borders are Lake Tanganyika and Lake Nyasa. And there is a big river running down the middle called the Rufiji River. And here is a place that will take you on tours all over Tanzania including Beho Beho. They have videos if you would like to SEE what Tanzania looks like - look out for the elephant in Beho Beho.

By the way, the country is south of the equator. They have a national park (one of those that are comprised of a little land, some islands, atols and an archipelago and a lot of water) that has 61 genera of coral alone!! That's a lot of different kinds of coral!

Zanzibar, Kilimanjaro, Tanganyika, Serengeti and so forth. These words are just plain FUN to say. I think that this Kiswahili language would be really neat to learn!

Tuesday, April 04, 2006

Mt. Kilimanjaro

This week is Tanzania, the home of the tallest free-standing mountain in the world, Mt. Kilimanjaro.

Unlike the dangerous snow-coated pile of ice and rock that is Mt. Everest, Mt. Kilimanjaro has much plant and animal life living amazingly high on it's slopes. These creatures are a trifle exotic, but what could you expect from plants and animals living on the high slopes of a mountain?

The cold, though thoroughly bone chilling I'm sure, is not nearly as severe as those chilling temperatures on Mt. Everest which pass out frost bites and worse with an eager hand.

Here is a really interesting link about Kilimanjaro.

Mt. Kilimanjaro is made up of three different volcanoes. Kibo, the youngest, is in the middle, Shira is on the west side and Mawenza is on the east.

Anyways, climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro sounds like it would be much more enjoyable than doing the same to Mt. Everest, and I intend to climb it as soon as I can.