Essay --

As a mother of a large family on a very limited budget I have questi aced the choices I make in purchasing groceries many times. I want my family to have a hearty diet, yet prices tend to be an issue every time I go grocery shopping. I wonder What is the relationship between incomes and healthy diets?thither are many other questions that need to be explored before we can truly answer the question at hand. Some of those questions include How do we regulate a healthy diet? Besides budget, what other factors influence purchasing choices? In what ways are certain foods healthier than others? Also, are healthier foods of all time more expensive and, if so, why are they more expensive? I recently visited the Mount Vernon WIC office. WIC stands for Women, Infants and children, and is a government program that provides supplemental foods, health veneration referrals, and nutrition education for low-income pregnant, breastfeeding, and non-breastfeeding postpartum women, and to infants and children up to age five who are found to be at nutritional risk. I interviewed their nutrition specialist, Carolyn, who provided me with some tasty, cheap food choices that kids like, and that are high in vitamins and nutrients. Some of the ideas she gave me were instead of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, give children celery and peanut butter, but cut up the celery and put the peanut butter in a separate container so the child can dip their food. This is a low cost, high protein pungency or light lunch that kids will have fun eating and instead of a cooked vegetable with dinner, cut up some fresh broccoli, carrots and cauliflower (or other fresh vegetables) and serve them with a low-fat dressing as a dip for an appetizer before dinner. This helps in get... ...s and having fresh vegetables as an appetizer. Low-income families are in fact at a disadvantage when it comes to eating healthy foods, but this is mostly from lack of education and not necessarily because of costs. Can low-income consumers realistically throw to buy all organic foods and get by month to month? The answer to this is probably not, but what they can do is make health certain choices when shopping. I believe that the relationship between income and healthy diets is whatever we make it. We all have to remember that what might not seem healthy to one person, might be the healthier choice for another. What it all comes down to is that eating healthy starts by just eating healthier, and changing a bad wont takes time and patience. In a perfect world all foods would be equally available to everyone but the worlds not perfect and uncomplete are people.

The Home Depot Essay -- GCSE Business Marketing Coursework

The Home memory boardIntroductionRetailing building supply stores have become a everyday retail industry sector due to increased public awareness and the need of many homeowners for the home improvement products. Back in the 1970s, long forwards warehouse stores ruled home improvement land, do-it-yourselfers shopped at home centers. These 30,000 square foot stores offered cheaper prices and wider selection of products, about 25,000 more than local hardware stores and eliminated the extra slipperiness to the lumberyard. The dependence of many of these retailers upon the homebuilding industry for much of their business has also been reduced and the warehouse tops(predicate)stores, such as Home Depot, have become more important. The littler companies in the retail building supply industry are facing economic difficulties as the industry leaders continue to dominate and warehouse super centers are becoming more evident. Company OverviewFounded in 1978, The Home Depot is the worl d largest home improvement retailer and the third largest retailer in the united States followed by Lowes Companies, Inc. At the end of fiscal year 1999, the friendship was operating 930 stores, including 854 Home Depot stores, 15 Expo Design Center stores and 2 Villagers Hardware stores in the United States 53 Homes Depot in Canada 4 Home Depot stores in Chile and 2 Home Depot stores in Puerto Rico. In addition, they operated wholly owned subsidiaries Apex Supply Company, Georgia Lighting, Maintenance Warehouse and National Blinds and Wallpaper. They approximately employed 201,000 associates at the end of the year. The company has been publicly held since 1981. In 1978 when Bernard Marcus and Arthur Blank, executives with Handy Dan Home Improvement Centers, found themselves out of work after a corporate takeover at Handy Dan. coupled by Ronald Brill another Handy Dan employee and Pat Farrah, former owner of Homeco, the worlds first home improvement warehouse, they mapped out plan for a bigger and better store catering to the needs of do-it-yourselfers.These Warehouse type stores, each averaging about 130,000 square feet, stock 40,000 to 50,000 home improvement products and are aimed in general at the do-it-yourself trade. The stores however also attract many professional-building contractors. Products include lumber, floor and wall covering, hardware, paint, plumbing supplies, and tools. Home... ...eferencesLowes Companies, Inc. Declares Cash Dividend, PR modswire, June 12, 2000In an enlargement Mode, Lowes Sharpens its Customer Focus, The Weekly Newspaper for the Home Furnishing Network, June 5, 2000 p19Lowes Companies Inc., The wall Street Journal, June 1, 2000Lowes Outlines Focus on Customers at Annual Meeting, Pr Newswire, whitethorn 26, 2000Lowes Eyes Markets for Growth, Corporate Financing Week, April 17, 2000, p3Retailing building supply industry, The value Line Investment Survey, April 14,2000, p881Lowes Annual Report, Fiscal Year 1999, functional at http//www.Lowes.com/Home Depot Annual Report, Fiscal Year 1999, Available at http//homedepot.com/Customer Service that is above and beyond, Philadelphia Business Journal, April 7, 2000 p42Were No.1 The Market Loves go through Dogs. Should you?, Fortune, March 6,2000 p446The Home Depot reports 29% Increase in First Quarter Net Earning Comparable Store Sales up 7%, PR Newswire, May 16, 2000The Home Depot Looks to Floor Industry Test Store Opens in Dallas this Summer, The weekly Newspaper for the Home Furnishing Network, March 27, 2000 p1Carving a New Niche, Do It Yourself Retailing, September 1999, p49

The Decoherence Of Measurement :: essays research papers

<a href="http//www.geocities.com/vaksam/">Sam Vaknins Psychology, Philosophy, Economics and Foreign Affairs Web SitesArguably the most onerous philosophical question attached to Quantum Mechanics (QM) is that of Measurement. The reliable (a.k.a. Copenhagen) Interpretation of QM says that our very act of conscious, intelligent, observable measurement determines the outcome of the measurement in the quantum (microcosmic) realm. The wave function (which describes the co-existing, superpositioned, states of the system) collapses following a measurement. It seems that just by penetrative the results of a measurement we determine its outcome, determine the state of the system and, by implication, the state of the Universe as a whole. This notion is so counter-intuitive that it fostered a waste debate which has been on going for to a greater extent than 7 decades now. But, could we have turned the question (and, inevitably, the answer) on its head? Is it the measurement th at brings about the collapse or, maybe, we are equal to(p) of measuring only collapsed results? Maybe our very ability to measure, to design measurement methods and instrumentation, to conceptualize measurement and so on are thus limited as to yield only the collapse solutions of the wave function? Superpositions are notoriously unstable. Even in the quantum realm they should last but an infinitely split secondment of time. Our measurement apparatus is not as refined as to capture a superposition long enough to justify the title of measurement or observation. By contrast, collapses are sufficiently stable to last, to be observed and measured. This is why we measure collapses. But in which sense (excluding longevity which, anyhow, is a suspicious matter in the quantum world) are collapse events measurable, what makes them so? Collapse events are not the most highly probable some(prenominal) of them are associated with low probabilities and tranquilize they occur and are measur ed. Ex definitio, the more probable states will tend to be measured more (the wave function will collapse more often into high probability states). But this does not exclude the less probable states of the quantum system from materializing upon measurement. The other possibility is that the collapse events are carefully selected for some purpose, within a certain pattern and in a certain sequence. What could that purpose be? Probably, the extension and enhancement of order in the Universe. That this is so tummy be easily substantiated it is so. Order increases all the time. This is doubly true if we adopt the anthropocentric view of the Copenhagen Interpretation (conscious, intelligent observers determine the outcomes of measurements in the quantum realm).

Book Review on Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe :: Robinson Crusoe Daniel Defoe Essays

Book Review on Robinson Crusoe by Daniel DefoeThe book I have chosen to do canvass on is Robinson Crusoe. Theauthor of the book is Daniel Defoe. The book was first published in1719. The publishers that published the book were Penguin.Robinson Crusoe wanted to be sailor but his family wouldnt let him.When he got older he left(p) and became a sailor. He went to SouthAmerica and bought his own cotton farm. He had to make a voyage toAfrica to get rough slaves. On the way the ship got caught in a stormand it was destroyed. When Robinson woke up, e was on a beech. All themen were dead except him. He went and got what supplies that were lefton the boat. He lived on the island for 30 years. On certain timesCannibals came and he had to fight them off.The Main pillow slip in this book is Robinson Crusoe he is thecharacter through out the book. The minor characters ar FridayRobinson Crusoe Friend and the Captain. This two minor characteraffect the plot. The relationships between the main a nd minorcharacters are, they are friends. The conflicts that the charactersface are Man vs. Man, Man vs. Nature, and Man vs. himself. The type ofwork he uses in the story is -Novel.The Genre of the book is Adventure and novel of isolationThe language utilize is English. The author used good language in thebook it was also easy to read. The dialogue used in the novel isrealistic among the characters.Robinson Crusoe is both the vote counter and main character of the book.Crusoe narrates in both the first and third person presenting onlywhat he himself observes. He occasionally describes his feelings butonly when they are overwhelming. Usually, he favours a more narrativestyle to focus on actions and events. Robinson Crusoe is also theprotagonist in the novel. The major conflicts are - Shipwrecked alone,Crusoe Struggles against hardship, privation, loneliness and cannibalsin his attempt to outlast on a desert island.The rising action in the book is that Crusoe disobeys his father an dgoes out to sea. Crusoe has a profitable first merchant voyage, hasfantasies o victor In Brazil and prepares for slave gatheringexpedition while the falling action is that Crusoe constructs ashelter, secures a food supply and accepts his stay on the island as

How are nonverbal signals sent by casual dress in the workplace? Essay

How are nonverbal signals sent by chance(a) dress in the workplace?Business CommunicationApr 11, 2005How are nonverbal signals sent by casual dress in the workplace?The phenomenon of casual dress in the business place has come full circle. Many companies are now locomote away from casual dress. Many business leaders have come to realize that the nonverbal signals sent by casual dress, conflict with the image the telephoner is attempting to portray. A trend that was seeing more and more companies opting for casual dress, now has companies considering a complete withdraw from this popular business fashion. Companies will need to on the whole overhaul their dress codes if casual dress is to survive.The HistoryThe concept of business casual dress began in the early 1990s in Silicon Valley, California. In the beginning, it was a method of getting out of those hot suits in the summer, allowing people to be more comfortable in their work environment. It was expanded to console or placa te workers during hard times. Casual Fridays were introduced, experts say, to improve morale among cynical white-collar folks who saw their coworkers falling like flies during the layoffs of the 1980s and early 1990s. Generally, the casual look was never meant to replace traditional Monday-through-Thursday business attire (McPherson, p. 134). Business casual was hyped as an employee benefit.The casual experiment quickly gained popularity. The attitudes toward casual dress began as positive and at its peak in the mid 1990s the business industry reported that 63.7% of all businesses were allowing some form of casual dress (Cotton, Inc., 1997). collateral ThinkingWhether true or perceived, some businesses and workers have stated a positive outcome to casual dress. Some of the more commonly touted benefits include alter employee morale, a lack of cost to the employer, increased worker productivity, more open communication between staff and managers, cost savings to employees because c asual business get out is less expensive, and improved work quality (Gutierrez & Freese, 1999). Casual dress was received so headspring by the employees that most companies thought they had tapped into the morale specious mine. Take Morgan & Finnegan LLP, a Park Avenue law firm in New York. It started a Casual Friday routine during the summer of 1998. It was so well received the firm decided to allow bu... ...ished and then policed.ReferencesAllen, F. L. (2003, December). Dress for the Occasion Your Attire - Your Image. Retrieved April, 5 2005, from http//www.blacksocietypages.com/advice.htmlCotton, Inc. (1997, January, 23). Corporate Casual Daze?. Retrieved April 5, 2005, from http//www.cottoninc.com/lsmarticles/?articleID=373Cotton, Inc. (2001, November 1). Casual Dilemma. Retrieved April 5, 2005, from http//www.cottoninc.com/lsmarticles/?articleID=392Emily Post fetch (2003). Many businesses today have a "Dress Down Friday" policy. Do you think this is a good id ea?. Retrieved April 5, 2005, from http//www.emilypost.com/surveys/results/poll2.htmGutierrez, T., & Freese, R. J. (1999, April). Benefit or magnetic core? Dress-Down Days . Retrieved April 5, 2005, from http//www.nysscpa.org/cpajournal/1999/0499/Features/F320499.HTMMcPherson, W. (1997, March). "Dressing Down" in the Business Communication Curriculum. Business Communication Quarterly, 60(1), 134-146.Taub, S., & Parsi, K.JD, PhD (2003, Feb). The Trend Toward Casual Dress and Address in the checkup Profession. Retrieved April 5, 2005, from http//www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/category/6563.html

How are nonverbal signals sent by casual dress in the workplace? Essay

How ar gestural signals sent by day-after-day dress in the workplace?Business CommunicationApr 11, 2005How are nonverbal signals sent by mundane dress in the workplace?The phenomenon of day-after-day dress in the business place has come full circle. Many companies are now moving away from casual dress. Many business leaders have come to realize that the nonverbal signals sent by casual dress, encounter with the image the company is attempting to portray. A trend that was seeing more and more companies opting for casual dress, now has companies considering a complete withdraw from this popular business fashion. Companies ordain need to completely overhaul their dress codes if casual dress is to survive.The HistoryThe concept of business casual dress began in the early 1990s in Silicon Valley, California. In the beginning, it was a method of getting out of those hot suits in the pass, allowing people to be more comfortable in their work environment. It was spread out to conso le or placate workers during hard times. quotidian Fridays were introduced, experts say, to improve morale among cynical white-collar folks who saw their coworkers falling like flies during the layoffs of the eighties and early 1990s. Generally, the casual look was never meant to replace traditional Monday-through-Thursday business attire (McPherson, p. 134). Business casual was hyped as an employee benefit.The casual experiment quickly gained popularity. The attitudes toward casual dress began as positive and at its peak in the mid 1990s the business industry reported that 63.7% of all businesses were allowing some form of casual dress (Cotton, Inc., 1997). Positive ThinkingWhether true or perceived, some businesses and workers have stated a positive outcome to casual dress. Some of the more ordinarily touted benefits include improved employee morale, a lack of cost to the employer, increased worker productivity, more open communication between staff and managers, cost savings to employees because casual business wear is less expensive, and improved work quality (Gutierrez & Freese, 1999). Casual dress was received so well by the employees that most companies theory they had tapped into the morale gold mine. Take Morgan & Finnegan LLP, a Park Avenue law firm in New York. It started a Casual Friday routine during the summer of 1998. It was so well received the firm decided to allow bu... ...ished and then policed.ReferencesAllen, F. L. (2003, December). Dress for the Occasion Your Attire - Your Image. Retrieved April, 5 2005, from http//www.blacksocietypages.com/advice.htmlCotton, Inc. (1997, January, 23). Corporate Casual Daze?. Retrieved April 5, 2005, from http//www.cottoninc.com/lsmarticles/?articleID=373Cotton, Inc. (2001, November 1). Casual Dilemma. Retrieved April 5, 2005, from http//www.cottoninc.com/lsmarticles/?articleID=392Emily Post Institute (2003). Many businesses today have a "Dress Down Friday" policy. Do you think this is a good idea?. Retrieved April 5, 2005, from http//www.emilypost.com/surveys/results/poll2.htmGutierrez, T., & Freese, R. J. (1999, April). pull in or burden? Dress-Down Days . Retrieved April 5, 2005, from http//www.nysscpa.org/cpajournal/1999/0499/Features/F320499.HTMMcPherson, W. (1997, March). "Dressing Down" in the Business Communication Curriculum. Business Communication Quarterly, 60(1), 134-146.Taub, S., & Parsi, K.JD, PhD (2003, Feb). The Trend Toward Casual Dress and visit in the Medical Profession. Retrieved April 5, 2005, from http//www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/category/6563.html

Mock-heroic features of Pope’s “The Rape of the Lock” Essay

Mock-epic, also kn avouch as mock-heroic poetry is a juxtaposition of trivial subject matter and grandeur epic style. From the original point of view, mock-epic is nothing however the most popular neo-classical burlesque used as a double-edged satirical weapon. Batrachomyomachia, an anonymous parody, attributed to Homer, is most probably the earliest example of mock-epic genre. Alexander pontiff was the central figure of Augustan Age, for his best mock-heroic poetry The bollocks up of the Lock, written based on a contemporary scandal. It deals with the locomote from an insignificant event of cutting hair lock of a belle, to a Trojan war.Popes The Rape of the Lock, published in 1712(revised version in 1714 with five cantos), is like a literary heterogeneous architecture that offers a multi-dimensional flow of phenomena. This poem nurtures the every sphere of emotions. The poem is just to bring bring out a serious enmity between two Catholic land lord families-the Petres and the Fermors derived from a dire offense by the young lord Petre. He takes revenge by cutting the lock of hair of Arabella Fermor, a lady from Fermor family, as his amourous proposal was strongly shunted aside by the lady. The entire poem is decorate with super-natural characters like sylphs, gnomes and their magical activities. From the beginning, Pope created a sarcastic atmosphere with the luxurious, idle lifestyles of lord families. At last but not the least, this mock-heroic poetry, written in iambic pentameter, also leaves a great literary value with its enriched rhetoric and prosodic features.The features of a mock-epic would be almost same as the epic but it should be clearly distinguished by its dissimilarity between subject and style. The features of The Rape of the Lock as a mock-epic, are depicted belowThe Title A mock-heroic poetry must be beautified with a grand title. Rape is a serious moral violation which means the seizure of a lady against his consent. In this case, P ope brought such very word to describe the possession of Belindas hair-lock by Baron, just to produce a mock-heroicsensation.Variation of Style and Subject Mock-epic is a good example of high-burlesque. This means, the rhyme-scheme of a mock-epic would be grand but the subject would be ridiculous.In this poem, Popes subject matter is insignificant but the style is very high like an epic saga. The rape of the lock is not so rich in content to fit with the epic-rhythm.Structural resile Like an epic, this poem is also divided in several Cantos and episodes that filters The Rape of the Lock as a mock-heroic epic. Pope also began this poem with an invocation in first stanza, that fits the style appropriately.Supernatural Activities Being an epic, The Rape of the Lock is presented with supernatural activities. As an epic feature, an explicit difference between heaven and hell is shown in this poem. Belinda plays the role of a divine ore from the celestial chastity of sylphs. In other han d, Baron is the spokesman of gnomes like Miltons Satan.Popes The Rape of the Lock, a tribute to friend Caryll, is a superlative piece of mock-epic that delivers charms at first glance with its inherent intellectual tricks at its fullest, as Pope describes in his own way-Charms strike the sight, But merit wins the soul (in The Rape of the Lock).BIBLIOGRAPHYMain text Page-56, An Anthology Poems, Plays and Prose by Board Of Editors. The University Of Burdwan, Burdwan, June2013Albert Edward. History of English Literature. City New Delhi, Oxford University Press, 2014www.britannica.com. The Rape of the Lock. 24 November 2014www.writework.com. Discuss Alexander Popes The Rape Of The Lock as a Mock Heroic Poem By Kellee. April 2005http//education-portal.com/academy/lesson/mock-heroic-poetry-definition-examples-style.htmllessonwww.en.wikipedia.org. Mock-Heroicwww.goodreads.comwww.scribd.com. Pope Rape of the Lock-Mock Heroic Featureswww.crossref-it.info. Mock Heroichttp//www.sparknotes.com. THE RAPE OF THE LOCK

The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner Chapters 2

When the second body was empty, my throat felt better. There was a lot of blood in my system. I credibly wouldnt real y burn for a hardly a(prenominal) days.Diego was stil waiting, whistling quietly through his teeth. When I let the body fal to the ground with a thud, he saturnine back to me and smiled.Um, thanks, I state.He nodded. You looked like you needed it more than me. I remember how hard it is in the beginning.Does it get easier?He shrugged. In some ways.We looked at each former(a) for a second.Why dont we dump these bodies in the sound? he suggested.I bent down, grabbed the dead blonde, and slung her limp body over my shoulder. I was ab stunned to get the other one, but Diego was there before me, the pimp already on his back.I got it, he state.I fol owed him up the al ey wal, and consequently we swung across the girders downstairs the freeway. The lights from the cars below didnt touch us. I thought how stupid passel were, how oblivious, and I was glad I wasnt one of th e clueless.Hidden in the darkness, we make our way to an empty dock, closed for the shadow. Diego didnt hesitate at the end of the concrete, he just jumped right over the edge with his bulky burden and disappeared into the water. I slid in after him. He swam as sleek and quick as a shark, shooting deeper and farther issue into the black sound. He stopped suddenly when he found what he was looking for a huge, slime-covered boulder on the ocean floor, sea stars and garbage clinging to its sides. We had to be more than a hundred feet deep to a human, it would bring on seemed pitch-black here. Diego let go of his bodies. They swayed slowly in the current beside him plot he shoved his hand into the mucky sand at the base of the rock. later on a second he found a hold and ripped the boulder up from its resting spot. The weight of it drove him waist-deep into the dark seafloor.He looked up and nodded to me.I swam down to him, hooking his bodies with one hand on my way. I shoved the blonde into the black hole under the rock, thence pushed the second girl and the pimp in after her. I kicked them lightly to make sure they were in, and then got out of the way. Diego let the boulder fal . It wobbled a little, adjusting to the newly uneven foundation. He kicked his way out of the muck, swam to the top of the boulder, and then pushed it down, grinding the obstructions flat underneath.He swam back a few yards to view his work.Perfect, I mouthed. These three bodies would never resurface. Riley would never hear a story about them on the news.He grinned and held up his hand.It took me a minute to understand that he was looking for a high five. Hesitantly, I swam forward, tapped my palm to his, then kicked away, putting some distance between us. Diego got a weird expression on his face, and then he shot to the surface like a bul et.I darted up after him, confused. When I broke through to the air, he was almost choking on his laughter.What?He couldnt answer me for a minute . Final y he blurted out,Worst high five ever.I sniffed, irritated. Couldnt be sure you werent just going to rip my arm off or something.Diego snorted. I wouldnt do that.Anyone else would, I countered.True, that, he agreed, suddenly not as amused. You up for a little more hunting?Do you have to ask?We came out of the water under a bridge and lucked right into two homeless guys sleeping in ancient, filthy sleeping bags on top of a shared mattress of old newspapers. uncomplete one of them woke up. Their blood was soured by alcohol, but stil better than nothing. We buried them in the sound, too, under a different rock.Wel, Im good for a few weeks, Diego said when we were out of the water again, dripping on the end of another empty dock.I sighed. I guess thats the easier part, right? Il be burning again in a couple of days. And then Riley wil probably send me out with more of Raouls mutants again.I can come with you, if you want. Riley pretty much lets me do what I want.I thought about the offer, suspicious for a second. But Diego real y didnt seem like any of the others. I felt different with him. Like I didnt need to watch my back so much.Id like that, I admitted. It felt off to say this. Too vulnerable or something.But Diego just said cool and smiled at me.So how come Riley gives you such a long leash? I asked, wondering about the relationship there. The more time I spent with Diego, the less I could picture him being in tight with Riley. Diego was so friendly. Nothing like Riley. But maybe it was an opposites-attract thing.Riley knows he can combining me to clean up my messes. Speaking of which, do you mind running a quick errand?I was starting to be entertained by this strange boy. unmatched about him. I wanted to see what he would do.Sure, I said.He bounded across the dock toward the road that ran along the waterfront. I fol owed after. I caught the lift of a few humans, but I knew it was too dark and we were too fast for them to see us.He chose to travel across rooftops again. After a few jumps, I recognized both our scents. He was retracing our earlier path. And then we were back to that first al ey, where Kevin and the other guy had gotten stupid with the car.Unbe liev able, Diego growled.Kevin and Co. had just left, it appeared. Two other cars were stacked on top of the first, and a handful of bystanders had been added to the body count. The cops werent here yet because anyone who might have reported the mayhem was already dead.Help me variant this out? Diego asked.Okay.We dropped down, and Diego quickly threw the cars into a new arrangement, so that it sort of looked like theyd hit each other rather than been piled up by a freak tantrum-throwing baby. I grabbed the two dry, lifeless bodies abandoned on the pavement and stuffed them under the apparent site of impact.Bad accident, I commented.Diego grinned. He took a lighter out of a ziplock from his pocket and started igniting the clothes of the victims. I grabbed my own ligh ter Riley reissued these when we went hunting Kevin should have used his and got to work on the upholstery. The bodies, dried out and laced with flammable venom, blazed up quickly.Get back, Diego warned, and I saw that he had the first cars gas hatch open and the lid screwed off the tank. I jumped up the closest wal, perching a story above to watch. He took a few steps back and lit a match. With perfect aim, he tossed it into the smal hole. In the same second, he leaped up beside me.The boom of the explosion shook the whole street. Lights started going on just about the corner.Wel done, I said.Thanks for your help. Back to Rileys?I frowned. Rileys house was the last place I wanted to spend the rest of my night. I didnt want to see Raouls stupid face or listen to the constant shrieking and fighting. I didnt want to have to grit my teeth and hide out behind Freaky Fred so that people would leave me alone. And I was out of books.Weve got some time, Diego said, reading my expression .We dont have to go right away.I could use some reading material.And I could use some new music. He grinned. Lets go shopping.We moved quickly through town over rooftops again and then darting through shadowy streets when the buildings got farther apart to a friendlier neighborhood. It didnt take long to find a strip mal with one of the good-looking chain bookstores. I snapped the lock on the roof access hatch and let us in. The store was empty, the only alarms on the windows and doors. I went straight to the Hs, while Diego headed to the music section in the back. Id just finished with Hale. I took the next dozen books in line that would keep me a couple of days.I looked around for Diego and found him sitting at one of the caf tables, studying the backs of his new CDs. I paused, then joined him.This felt strange because it was familiar in a haunting, self-conscious way. I had sat like this before across a table from someone. Id chatted casual y with that person, thinking abou t things that were not life and death or thirst and blood. But that had been in a different, blurry lifetime.The last time Id sat at a table with someone, that someone had been Riley. It was hard to remember that night for a lot of reasons.So how come I never notice you around the house? Diego asked abruptly. Where do you hide?I laughed and grimaced at the same time. I usual y kick it behind wherever Freaky Fred is hanging out.His nose wrinkled. Seriously? How do you stand that?You get used to it. Its not so bad behind him as it is in front. Anyway, its the best hiding place Ive found. Nobody gets close to Fred.Diego nodded, stil looking kind of grossed out. Thats true. Its a way to stay alive.I shrugged.Did you know that Fred is one of Rileys favorites? Diego asked.Real y? How? No one could stand Freaky Fred. I was the only one who tried, and that was solely out of self-preservation. Diego leaned toward me conspiratorial y. I was already so used to his strange way that I didnt eve n flinch.I heard him on the phone with her. I shuddered.I know, he said, look sympathetic again. Of course, it wasnt weird that we could sympathize with each other when it came to her. This was a few months back. Anyway, Riley was talking about Fred, al excited. From what they were saying, I guess that some vampires can do things. More than what normal vampires can do, I mean. And thats good something shes looking for. Vampires with skil zzz.He pul ed the Z sound out, so I could hear how he was spel ing it in his head.What kinds of skil s?Al kinds of stuff, it sounds like. Mind reading and tracking and even seeing the future.Get out.Im not kidding. I guess Fred can sort of repel people on purpose. Its al in our heads, though. He makes us repulsed at the thought of being near him.

How Business Strategy and Hr Strategy Are or Should Be Linked Together

Institute of Tourism and Hotel Management Anna Morozova Essay How problem strategy and HR strategy ar or should be linked together? Moscow, 2011 Departments be the entities organizations form to organize community, reporting relationships, and work in a way that best supports the accomplishment of the organizations goals. Departments ar usually organized by functions such as human resources, marketing, administ ration, and sales. The for struggled thinking human resource department is devoted to providing effective policies, procedures, and muckle-friendlyguidelines and support deep down companies.Additionally, the human resource function serves to take a crap sure that the company mission,vision,valuesorguiding principles, the company rhythmic pattern, and the factors that keep the company guided toward success are optimized. Of executives surveyed, 20% currently use the HR department as active and innovative blood solution colleagues. 20% consider that the HR department s hould cover as administrative overhead and only perform transactional work. But, 60% of theexecutives are starting to expect the HR department to partner with others departments to break the companys core competencies and competitive advantages.Competitive pressure in a fast changing business world pressures for sales, talent, and profits. Most CEOs are held accountable for deuce-ace general but powerful results Increasing revenue, generating cash, and reducing costs. In order to focus on these three accountabilities, executives are discarding paradigms that no longer work as companies seek to stay in and grow their business. Many CEOs and CFOs are more interested in the payoff and are asking appropriate questions Whats in it for the company? Where is the improvement in the revenue stream? How does this get us new customers and retain our current customers.Where is the proof of corporate performance enhancement metrics? Once they get solid answers to these questions from compete nt HR leaders, the CEOs are quick to change their thinking. To answer the payoff questions, recognize that a continual company-wide value strand analysis is critical to the success of any organization. Over the past decade, CEOs began demanding that their humans Resources departments deliver flawless functional work and become a k nowadaysledgeable partner with all other disciplines to advance the business plan of the company. Individual professional silos are breaking down.Disciplines such as finance, sales, marketing, operations, and HR no longer make it as stand-alone entities. They are inter-dependent with one another. Weakness of any one of the links inhibits other links from maximizing their efficiency and productivity. These three emerging concepts in the practice of HR bear examination * What value does the HR department brings to the organization. Many HR aggroups lack a vision that includes their value to the organization. Do the HR departments activities directly enc ourage the company achieve its broad business objectives?Are the HR team ups arguments for or against a business strategy credible to the other department heads at the decision making table? How are the HR department strategies that upbeat the employees, the shareholders, the customers, and all other stakeholders in the organization, selected and implemented? * What value does the HR department generate for the customer the end user of the companys product or serve salutary? Sales and tincture are no longer restricted to the sales and musical note assurance teams. The HR department doesnt just hire a salesperson base upon a managers request.The end result of HRs recruiting and hiring efforts is that the customer who interacts with the new sales person receives continuing world class service from the company. HR shares the quality of the new hire with the other departmental silos to insure that the company is, or becomes, the vendor of choice for that customer. * The final of the three emerging concepts for the Human Resources Department is What core business competencies must HR leaders possess in order to be credible strategic partners with the rest of the executive team?Each company and each industry tush generate its own list of core business skills their teams must buzz off that go beyond their case-by-case specialties. This issue has become so critical that in graduate and undergraduate level business programs, new editions of Organizational Development textbooks are including chapters on pecuniary calculations and ratios, corporate social responsibility, globalization, and major workforce diversity challenges, among others.The biggest barrier to profitability is ignorance ignorance by many population about how the company makes money and how it achieves its objectives, and how all of the departmental silos are interdependent on each other. The myth that only finance people need to know about finance or that marketing people are the only peo ple who need to know about marketing is fast disappearing. In todays business environment, profitable organizations require super skilled employees who can solve complex problems using multi-disciplinary teams.hither are three examples how can HR be linked to profitability metrics * A well known global company formed a group of HR professionals who developed processes and training programs in sales, customer service, workouts, project counsel, process improvement and leading development that focused on critical performance issues for their internal and external customers. By partnering with operations, sales, and customer service they served as a catalyst to forge alliances, partnerships and agreements.Many of their efforts resulted in improved relationships that translated into Preferred Provider Status, which increased sales and lowered costs. All of their costs were liquidated by charging a fee for the service while creating mesh revenue. After two years, this HR group genera ted sales of $4 million and a profit margin in excess of 30% which was returned to the division compute at the end of each fiscal year. * Secondly, an HR team, partnering with the Audit staff, discovered that the accounts receivable turnover had moved from a preferred 30 days to 45 days during the past two years.They decided to let the chief credit officer go. The HR staff established criteria to identify candidates with the ability to reduce the ratio from 45 days back to 30 days. The HR staff recommended one candidate for hire. Within six months, the companys DSO (Days Sales Outstanding) ratio was reduce to 35 days. * In a third case, while designing and negotiating a new health care and 401(k) plan, the HR leadership partnered with the sales and marketing team to determine if the cost of the program would erode the companys market share and competitive pricing strategy.The resulting benefit program design achieved its cost/benefit objectives without jeopardizing the companys ma rket share and pricing metrics. How do HR leaders and CEOs make the Human Resources Department to a Profitability Factor? Here are suggestions based on that the more employees become knowledgeably involved in the business, the better they will be able to become a more deep asset. * Develop a leadership development program that includes hands on training in all of the functional disciplines.For example, in the production department, identify the barriers that foresee managers from achieving efficiencies and savings * Insist that Human Resources staff receive financial training so they understand the impact of cash flow, receivables, billing cycles, and so forth. If it is a unexclusive company, teach them how to read and understand companys annual report. Reading the proxy statement is always informative even if the information contained in it is reluctantly revealed, and occasionally masked with arcane accounting jargon * Have HR staff participate in sales strategies, customer vi sits, and technology reviews.Encourage them to learn quality methods, process improvements techniques, terms and conditions, and contract negotiations with suppliers and customers. Engage them as process consultants ( hit them trained if necessary) so they can assist with growth initiatives * Most essentially, hold all employees accountable for achieving the critical numbers established for your company. A superb HR department becomes irrelevant if the company is sliding into bankruptcy. The HR departments powerful value focuses on its contributions toward reversing the slide.It is important to Include HR employees as full business partners. They will rise to the occasion and surprise you by building your bottom line and becoming a profit center contributor as well as maintaining their traditional responsibilities and they will be better at both. The intense and brutally competitive business environment of our global and digital world needs the help of everyone in the company. Rus sian comminuted enterprises do not practice the establishment of HR Departments in view of unprofitability of such a business organization.As the result, the majority of picayune enterprises do not develop any HR strategy. Thus I would equal to present the unique HR strategy of Apple Inc. and how it is linked to companys business strategy. Most firms strive to have a productive workforce. unitary of the best ways to measure workforce productivity is revenue per employee. Apple produces what can only be considered extraordinary revenue per employee $2 million. A plunk for measure of workforce productivity is profit per employee nearly $478,000 for Apple (unbelievable considering it has a retail workforce).During 25 years Apple has been following the philosophy called lean management which explains the prime drivers for Apples extraordinary employee productivity. For years, the leadership of Apple has followed the philosophy that having less is more, meaning that by purposely un derstaffing and operating with reduced funding, you can make the team more productive and innovative. Innovation at most firms is expensive because you must pay for a lot of trial and error.The lean approach, however, can improve innovation because with everything being tried, there simply isnt enough eon or money for major misses and re-dos. Unrealistic deadlines at Apple mean that you have to get project problems solved early on, because there isnt time to redo things over and over. Being lean forces the team to be more cohesive. crimson providing a lean schedule forces everyone to be productive because they know there is no room for slippage. At Apple, the lean approach means that even with its commodious cash resources, every employee must adopt the mentality of leanness.If you understand the lean concept and its advantages, you shouldnt be surprised that numerous innovations have been developed in garages, the ultimate lean environment. I have chosen an article Human resourc e practices to attract and retain talents by Hiltrop, 1999, because, in my opinion, it is very actual substructure as businesses look for global growth, chronic skills gaps combined with a mismatch between demand and supply of talent means that getting (and keeping) the right people in the right places at the right time has never been more challenging.HR leaders need to mobilize talent to help businesses grow. This article explores one of the biggest issues and challenges now faced by large organizations how to attract and retain a critical group of talented people. Getting talent management right means you can worry less about your talent problems and more about your business opportunities. It is very important to use a fact based approach to help identify the specific elements of talent management which drive the most value in your business and industry.It is needed to create a Talent Management modeling and Diagnostic to develop and implement strategies that deliver the right i mprovements those that give you the best return on investment. So I can conclude that to win the war for talent, companies should figure out who they are aiming for, and then make sure the recruitment process and practices are tailored to the specific needs and expectations of the target group. I have chosen an article Science and practice of HRM in small firms by Mayson and Barret, 2006 because human capital (i. e. the knowledge, skills, and abilities of employees) is one of the primary factors a business can cuss on to differentiate their products or services and build a competitive advantage however, few studies directly guide managers of small and growing firms through the people management issues that they will face through the lifecycle of their business. The recognition that human resource issues are important to small and growing firms is not new. For instance, in 1987 (Hess) was presented data that suggested that small business owners rank human resource related issues as the second most important management activity after general management.Further, was suggested that the majority of CEOs believe that human resource practices have a substantial impact on firm performance. Additionally, in 2008 were presented the results suggesting that sound hiring practices and training programs are considered important by small business owners who have 10 or more employees. A small firms ability to attract, motivate and retain employees by offering competitive salaries and appropriate rewards is linked to firm performance and growth.Whilst the evidence does show that there is some form of HRM in small firms, it also confirms that the practice is characterized by informality. I personally think, that this is a problem, because informal HRM practices do not necessarily recognize the value of employees. Despite the recognition of the importance of HRM to small, growing and entrepreneurial firms, there is very little query in the area, there is even less research th at explores the strategic nature of HRM in small firms.It is important to note, that properly developing strategic selection, training, and compensation programs takes time and financial resources. However, these short-term costs are almost always balanced by long term gain because the quality and caliber of employees (or human capital) at heart the firm improves. The improved caliber of employees and enhanced effort almost always has a positive financial impact for the organization.

Bank Reconciliation Lesson Plan

Lesson Plan The Bank Reconciliation Statement General Objectives Students go away1. Account for differences between the change mass and rim statement balances.2. Construct a desire rapprochement statement using the adjusted trial balance.Specific Objectives Students provide Cognitive1. Demonstrate k straightawayledge of the concept of reconciling bank statements.2. Explain the reasons as to why your notes book and bank statement may non balance.Psychomotor 1. Construct a bank reconciliation statement using the adjusted cash book balance.Affective 1.Value the importance of preparing a bank reconciliation statement.Prior Knowledge Students have a clear understanding of 1. The two column cash book.Lesson 1 Bank Reconciliation Statement TIME(minutes) ELEMENTS METHOD nub TEACHER ACTIVITIES STUDENTS ACTIVITIES TEACHER LEARNING RESOURCES EVALUATION Set Induction/Introduction - Scenario -Discussion -Listening- Responding Formative inquisitive Objectives Sharing the Specif ic Objectives Presentation 1 - Reasons for the difference in the bank statement and our cash book. -Questioning- Providing information-Explaining -Listening- Responding Chart- Whiteboard- Whiteboard markers Formative Questioning Summary 1 Review of Presentation 1 - Questioning Responding Formative Questioning Presentation 2 - Definition of terms -Providing information-Explaining -Listening- Responding Chart- Whiteboard- Whiteboard markers Formative Questioning Summary 2 Review of Presentation 2 - -Questioning Responding Formative Questioning Presentation 3 Illustration of an example -Providing information-Explaining -Listening- Responding Chart-Whiteboard- Whiteboard markers Formative Questioning Summary 3 Review of Presentation 3 - -Questioning Responding Formative Questioning Evaluation - Students will complete vigilant worksheet -Observation Working Whiteboard- Whiteboard markers Summative Conclusion Correction of exercise - Providing feedbac k -Providing Answers Students work - Closure - The teacher will review and recap the lesson and then depose the class. Dismissing of students. - - - Lesson Notes Set InductionEdward Cullen from the movie Twilight has a bank account and money to manage. You will learn to check his monthly account statement and help him desexualise sure his bank balance is correct. This will help him to make sure that he has enough money for his date with Bella this weekend. This will help you in your admit life with your own banking responsibilities. A bank statement is a detailed record of the checking account from the bank. The bank statement balance is the amount of money go away in the account per banks records. The check book balance is the amount of money left in the account per depositors records. in all banks use computers to cram bank statements. Data about all checks paid and all deposits received are entered into the computer in order to keep the depositors account up-to-date. A ll of the data that is stored in the computer is printed out on the bank statement. There will usually be differences between the check book balance and the bank statement balance. In this lesson, you will begin to learn how to explain these differences by preparing a bank reconciliation statement. This statement is used to bring the check book and the bank statement balances into agreement.Presentation 1The teacher will now explain the reasons for the difference in the bank statement and the cash book. Which are as followsUn-presented chequesDishonoured chequesDirect debitsStanding ordersBank giro creditPresentation 2The teacher gives a brief explanation on the meaning of these items, and why they may cause the bank statement and bank account balances to differ.Presentation 3The teacher demonstrates a scenario where the cash book bank balance and the bank statement balance differ.CASH BOOK DATE PARTICULARS AMOUNT DATE PARTICULARS AMOUNT 2011 $ 2011 $ regrets 1 end b/f 250 fall 5 J. Gordon 65 Dec 20 P. Thomas 100 Dec 27 K. Hughes 175 Dec 28 D. Jones 190 Dec 31 Balance c/d 300 540 540 2012 Jan 1 Balance b/d 300 Bank Statement 2011 Particulars Withdrawals Deposits Balance $ $ $ Dec 1 Balance b/f 250 Dec 8 10625 65 185 Dec 21 Deposit 100 285 Dec 28 Deposit 190 475 Dec 29 10626 175 300 Dec 30 Bank Giro credit P. Smith 70 370 Dec 31 Bank charges 50 320 It is now possible to see that the two items not shown in our cash book are Bank Giro credit P.Smith $70 P. Smith had paid us $70, but instead of paying us by cheque he paid directly into the bank. We did not know of this until we received the bank statement. Bank charges $50 The bank had charged us $50 for keeping our bank account and all the work connected with it. Instead of notifying us they have simply interpreted out the money out of our bank account. The balance in our cash book was $300, whereas our bank statement shows a balance of $320. To prove that although the balances diff er they send packing be reconciled with each other, a bank reconciliation statement will be drawn up.As we have now identified the items missing from our cash book we can now complete writing it up as follows. Bank Reconciliation Statement as at 31 December 2011 Balance as per cash book $300 Add Bank Giro credit $70 $370 Less Bank charges $50 Balance as per bank statement $320 The completed cash book would now look as followsCASH BOOK DATE PARTICULARS AMOUNT DATE PARTICULARS AMOUNT 2011 $ 2011 $Dec 1 Balance b/f 250 Dec 5 J. Gordon 65 Dec 20 P. Thomas 100 Dec 27 K. Hughes 175 Dec 28 D. Jones 190 Dec 31 Bank charges 50 Dec 30 P. Smith 70 Dec 31 Balance c/d 320 610 610 2012 Jan 1 Balance b/d 320 Evaluation The teacher would present each student with a practise exercise on prepaid expense accounts scenarios. During this cartridge clip the teacher would walk around the classroom observing the students responses and offering assistance were needed.

Cellulitis

Description Main purpose of cellulitis manipulation process is reduction of severity cellulitis contagion, fast reco real, pain relieve, cure bear upon p argon down and legal profession of retort definition of treatment for cellulitis. In most cases healing process contains treatment with antibiotics drugs. Antibiotics ar used orally or intravenous depending of severity of touch on skin eye socket. Period for victimisation oral antibiotics (by mouth) is 10 to 14 days. In this period is crucial to take every single pill that doctor has prescribed, notwithstanding subsequently when you begin feel better . interposition for cellulitis with intravenously antibiotics (IV) is recommended when we flummox more serious infection,in most cases lasts 3 to 5 days. Generally,skin and any underlying tissue treatment include schemes to h disused recurrence of agitation (protective clothing covering scrapes or open cuts practicing good skin care too). Crucial is healing of affecte d area and all underlying tissue develops nearby which could increase chance of recurrence of infection. Antibiotics medications and recurrence prevention are part of special treatments for cellulitis infection. there are threesome types of herbs which helps in battle and prevention of cellulitis infection. discussion for cellulitis on natural nates is explained on cellulitis natural treatment page. Depending of severity infection,cellulitis treatment can be change integrity to A) Cellulitis Self-Care Treatment At Household An ordinarily healthy individual is usually not hospitalized for round the bend or moderate cellulitis. In case of mild cellulitis and using antibiotics, its recommended for self-care home treatment that you should take care of ? to rest yourself, particularly the area of body involved ? rink plenty of water to help prevent you bonnie dehydrated ? elevate the region of the body affected with cellulitis,that go out help to decrease main symptoms of swell ing and relieve irritation,specially for cases of lower leg cellulitis and build up cellulitis (cellulitis of extremities) ? use over the counter(OTC) pain relievers Ibuprofen (Motrin) or Acetaminophen (Tylenol) for pain reduction and help to keep fever down. All this instructions of self-care cellulitis treatment are in order to help ease symptoms and speed up recovery.Upon healing, the infected skin showing signs of cellulitis entrust begin to regenerate and the blistered areas will oddball forward like old skin. Terrasil MAX is a reparative skin thrash or so used to treat various types of skin problems. It is fast-working and can provide instant rest from itching, irritation, inflammation and soreness. With regular use, Terrasil MAX cleans, soothes, moisturizes and repairs unhealthy skin. Its formulated with plant extracts and minerals which fight germs and enhance the skins regenerative process. This innovative lotion contains no stinging chemicals, steroids or parab ens.Made from only natural ingredients, Terrasil MAX is safe to apply on sensitive skin, and people of all ages and skin types can use it. There are no known side effects associated with the use of Terrasil MAX over a five year range. Thousands of customers around the world recommend this remedy cream for numerous skin issues. B)Medical Treatment For Cellulitis Infection B. 1. ) Home Care Medical Treatment For Cellulitis If infection is not too serious you can be case-hardened at household. Your medical adviser will give you a prescription for antibiotics to take orally for a 7 to 10 days.Be authorized to mark your doctor about any responses you whitethorn excite had previously to antibiotics. If your symptoms worsen 48 hours after taking the antibiotics, or you start to develop symptoms much(prenominal) as a high temperature, or vomiting, you should contact your medical adviser immediately. B. 2. ) Hospital Treatment For Cellulitis If your cellulitis is especially severe, you may need infirmary handling (and you will postulate antibiotics to be given through a vein in your arm). You may be taken to hospital if ? your cellulitis is severe, or rapidly deteriorating ? you are very old or very young person your cellulitis involves extensive areas or areas close to important structures( such is infection around the eye socket) ? you have bad alternative symptoms, such as fever, or vomiting ? your infection worsens after taking antibiotics for 2 to 3 days ? you have cellulitis on a recurring basis ? you have other medical problems which is serious. Important note It is very important to take all prescribed antibiotics. Even in case that the inflammation seems to be done for(p) do not stop taking the medications early. Medical practitioner may want to see patient in 2-3 days to check if the up-to-date infection is improving.Surgery process is required rarely in cellulitis treatment, severe only. An abscess, or collection of pus in the tissue, may requi re to be undefended surgically to provide drainage. Inactive tissue may require to be cut away to allow healing. Cellulitis Treatment With Medications Oral, topical (skin applied), or IV ( intravenous) antibiotics drugs may be used for cellulitis treatment. Treatment with antibiotics also calling treatment of choice. It depends on the severity and body region involved by infection, medicines are given in the infirmary, at household, or combination both locations.Hardness of infection will also determine whether antibiotics drugs are distributed through IV or orally. More flesh out about medicines used to treat cellulitis please visit our cellulitis treatment antibiotics page. Prevention Of A Recurrence Unfortunately, there is high percentage of patients who receive treatment for cellulitis will have a recurrence (up to 50%). To find more about prevention of a recurrence visit our cellulitis prevention page. Cellulitis Treatment Chemotherapy Treatment Treatment of cellulitis Treatm ent for cellulitisCellulitisDescription Main purpose of cellulitis treatment process is reduction of severity cellulitis infection, fast recovery, pain relieve, cure affected skin and prevention of recurrence definition of treatment for cellulitis. In most cases healing process contains treatment with antibiotics drugs. Antibiotics are used orally or intravenous depending of severity of affected skin area. Period for using oral antibiotics (by mouth) is 10 to 14 days. In this period is crucial to take every single pill that doctor has prescribed, even later when you begin feel better .Treatment for cellulitis with intravenously antibiotics (IV) is recommended when we have more serious infection,in most cases lasts 3 to 5 days. Generally,skin and any underlying tissue treatment include schemes to prevent recurrence of inflammation (protective clothing covering scrapes or open cuts practicing good skin care too). Crucial is healing of affected area and all underlying tissue develops nearby which could increase chance of recurrence of infection. Antibiotics medications and recurrence prevention are part of special treatments for cellulitis infection.There are three types of herbs which helps in battle and prevention of cellulitis infection. Treatment for cellulitis on natural basis is explained on cellulitis natural treatment page. Depending of severity infection,cellulitis treatment can be divided to A) Cellulitis Self-Care Treatment At Household An ordinarily healthy individual is usually not hospitalized for mild or moderate cellulitis. In case of mild cellulitis and using antibiotics, its recommended for self-care home treatment that you should take care of ? to rest yourself, particularly the area of body involved ? rink plenty of water to help prevent you becoming dehydrated ? elevate the region of the body affected with cellulitis,that will help to decrease main symptoms of swelling and relieve irritation,specially for cases of lower leg cellulitis an d arm cellulitis (cellulitis of extremities) ? use over the counter(OTC) pain relievers Ibuprofen (Motrin) or Acetaminophen (Tylenol) for pain reduction and help to keep fever down. All this instructions of self-care cellulitis treatment are in order to help ease symptoms and speed up recovery.Upon healing, the infected skin showing signs of cellulitis will begin to regenerate and the blistered areas will flake off like old skin. Terrasil MAX is a reparative skin cream used to treat various types of skin problems. It is fast-working and can provide instant relief from itching, irritation, inflammation and soreness. With regular use, Terrasil MAX cleans, soothes, moisturizes and repairs unhealthy skin. Its formulated with plant extracts and minerals which fight germs and enhance the skins regenerative process. This innovative lotion contains no harsh chemicals, steroids or parabens.Made from only natural ingredients, Terrasil MAX is safe to apply on sensitive skin, and people of all ages and skin types can use it. There are no known side effects associated with the use of Terrasil MAX over a five year range. Thousands of customers around the world recommend this therapeutic cream for numerous skin issues. B)Medical Treatment For Cellulitis Infection B. 1. ) Home Care Medical Treatment For Cellulitis If infection is not too serious you can be treated at household. Your medical adviser will give you a prescription for antibiotics to take orally for a 7 to 10 days.Be sure to tell your doctor about any responses you may have had previously to antibiotics. If your symptoms worsen 48 hours after taking the antibiotics, or you start to develop symptoms such as a high temperature, or vomiting, you should contact your medical adviser immediately. B. 2. ) Hospital Treatment For Cellulitis If your cellulitis is especially severe, you may need infirmary handling (and you will require antibiotics to be given through a vein in your arm). You may be taken to hospital if ? your cellulitis is severe, or rapidly deteriorating ? you are very old or very young person your cellulitis involves extensive areas or areas close to important structures(such is infection around the eye socket) ? you have bad secondary symptoms, such as fever, or vomiting ? your infection worsens after taking antibiotics for 2 to 3 days ? you have cellulitis on a recurring basis ? you have other medical problems which is serious. Important note It is very important to take all prescribed antibiotics. Even in case that the inflammation seems to be gone do not stop taking the medications early. Medical practitioner may want to see patient in 2-3 days to check if the current infection is improving.Surgery process is required rarely in cellulitis treatment, severe only. An abscess, or collection of pus in the tissue, may require to be opened surgically to provide drainage. Inactive tissue may require to be cut away to allow healing. Cellulitis Treatment With Medications Oral, to pical (skin applied), or IV ( intravenous) antibiotics drugs may be used for cellulitis treatment. Treatment with antibiotics also calling treatment of choice. It depends on the severity and body region involved by infection, medicines are given in the infirmary, at household, or combination both locations.Hardness of infection will also determine whether antibiotics drugs are distributed through IV or orally. More details about medicines used to treat cellulitis please visit our cellulitis treatment antibiotics page. Prevention Of A Recurrence Unfortunately, there is high percentage of patients who receive treatment for cellulitis will have a recurrence (up to 50%). To find more about prevention of a recurrence visit our cellulitis prevention page. Cellulitis Treatment Chemotherapy Treatment Treatment of cellulitis Treatment for cellulitis

Basic Ecclesial Community Essay

The equal s oddity formulate be said of the divers(a) theologies of venting. Although in sensation or anformer(a) vers rescuerianity,ion they may non dovetail exactly with the theological frontiers of Puebla, liberation theologies argon a stilbesteroltineingful and important behavior to approach and witness BECs. WHAT ARE THE BASIC ECCLESIAL COMMUNITIES? For the sake of precision, let me make clear what BEC message in the mount of this name. The currently so-c in every(prenominal)ed Basic Communities, Basic Christian Communities, basic Christian Communities, oasic Ecclesial Communities in different start come to the fores of the mankind sh be some common and cardinal features.However, at the present level of ecclesiological aw arness as it is reflect in the specialized theological literature, we washba vileness hardly talk closely the current phenomenon of BECs in a general, univocal direction. They are a change servicemanity from which we can draw an analogical concept. They offer a certain integrity in their diversity. Even within a to a spectacularer extent homogeneous scenario such(prenominal) as Latin America, there are significant differences amid the BECs in Brazil, in Peru, in El Salvador, or Nicaragua, for instance, which pr up to nowt us from talking of them without further specification.To pen on the BECs in a scholarly fashion, therefore, we need a concrete point of reference. Here this get out be the BECs in the Roman Catholic church building in Brazil. From such a specific point of reference it is possible then(prenominal) to relate to other analogical cases. I do not judge to give a distinguishable definition or counterbalance a description of the Brazilian BECs. This would deprive them of one of their fundamental traits, namely, flexibility, openness to change and to relapse strains, something which is very some(prenominal) connected to real life. Let me make explicit some of their major characteristi cs.First, they are communities. They are trying to set a pattern of 601 602 THEOLOGICAL STUDIES Christian life which is deliberately in contrast with the individualistic, self-interested, and competitive approach to ordinary life so inherent in the Western, modern-contemporary culture. As a proceeds of their own unfolding evolution in the last 25 years or so, BECs in Brazil fork over been aiming at living the 2 balances of share-out and employment. By stressing communion, the BECs want to locomote trustfulness not as a privatized upright straight as a cared, real experience which is mutually nurtured and supported.such(prenominal) a deep level in corporate trust sharing is at the roots of an attempt to improve social relationships within the community. This then makes possible the dimension of involvement especially in the decision-making process, in contrast with a rather passive attitude of the faithful or a too vertical orientation in exercising cause or self-as surance by the clergy or by the laity. Secondly, the BECs are ecclesial. The catalysts of this ecclesiality in the Brazilian BECs comport been the unity in and of faith and the linkage to the institutional perform.Even when BECs are ecumenically oriented, experience has proven that the sharing of a specific, common faith was a crucial element for lift the home(a) growth of the community. This is oddly important because of the paramount moment of the Word of paragon and biblical-prayer sharing in BECs life. By linking themselves to the institutional church building, BECs want to reverse the confrontational and/or hostile approach to the hierarchy that used to be a hallmark of Basic Communities in the sixties, especially in Italy and France or in the so-called subway church in the United States.This does not mean that the BECs must be mothered by a clerical beginning(a), although m any have indeed been. It means, though, that however originated, the BECs facet for recogniti on and support by the pastors or by the bishops, even when enjoying a fair amount of internal autonomy. Thirdly, BECs are basic (de nucleotide). Being predominantly a gathering of active lay sight, they are said to be at the base of the perform, from an ecclesiastic point of popular opinion, as related to the hierarchical church structure. Moreover, in Brazil and in many Third World countries, the BECs are at the base of society as head.In fact, most of the thousands and thousands of BEC members are poor. This is not an goop option only if an chthonicstandable fact. The poor feel in a stronger way the need for community, for mutual support. They are less sophisticated in do their interpersonal relationships because they have less to lose. They are more open to participation because more pressed by common needs. Finally, they are more sensitive to the talent because they realize their personal and mixer needs. Thus they hardly take things for granted or as if deserved.Thi s opens their hearts to faith, which is part of the gifteconomy of salvation and liberation. Moreover, being at the base makes BASIC ECCLESIAL COMMUNITIES 603 it easier for BECs to link faith and real, everday life. On the grounds of the gospel demands, they realize the need for the break of a society whose organization is in itself unjust in many aspects and very much the source of their own poverty. Thus faith is not locked in the mind and even less within the private, individual horizon. opinion is a dynamic factor of personal conversion and societal transformation.In an earlier stage the BECs in Brazil were thought of as a way to improve the life of parishes. Progressively it became clear that such a shape of communion and participation, such a quality of interpersonal relations, were not possible in a large-scale group or at a highly developed level of social organization. Without losing the linkage to the parishes, BECs multiplied within each parish, tutelage their spontan eity and flexibility. Today there is no pretense of making of a parish a community in the terms of BECs.This would hardly be possible in sociological terms. The life of a parish, however, can be significantly improved by the presence of many BECs that gather amid 20 and 50 deal in general and can occasionally interact for common pur stuns within the parish. For historical and sociological reasons, Brazil has been a land chronically oblivious of priests (a pip that is starting to loom elsewhere too). In previous times people would confine their active church life to the periodic and scarce presence of the prescribed attend.With BECs the growing awareness of the diversity of vocations and of their respective responsibility in the church service led them to consider the priest as a part of the BEC and not higher up it. In his absence, however, the community goes on in its ordinary life, be it at the level of internal church affairs (prayer and biblical groups, preparation for t he ceremonys, attention to the sick, vicissitude and ongoing formation programs, and so on), be it in the field of concrete commitments to action in the social and political realm.Links to the parish or the diocese are kept, of course, and they remain the main source in the preparation of written material for several projects (biblical papers, liturgy of the news show, etc. ). But life does not rest upon the initiative of the clergy and even less on the need for its constant involvement or required approval. This leads to a growing decentralization of church life which, however, fits within the parameters of a broad and all-embracing planning by the parishes, the dioceses, and even a very active and wellorganized Bishops Conference at a national level or in each one of its 15 regions in the country.The further elaboration of this article volition set up the reader with more detailed information on what BECs mean in this precise context. It is important to bear in mind that fet ching Brazil as a case study for methodological reasons should not run out to be an exclusive or narrowing focus. Having a specific point of reference helps us to have a context 604 THEOLOGICAL STUDIES for thinking, to be precise on what we are talking about, and to make possible a concrete comparative approach to our own ecclesial situation or perspective. BEC A behavior OF BEING CHURCHThe growing literature on BECs has accustomed us to think of them mainly, if not exclusively, in terms of Latin American ecclesiology and one of the postulates of this ecclesiology is that the BECs are not simply a movement or association in the church but rather a way of being Church. I start from this position, which I myself share, but in this article I would like to look at the issue from a different angle. It may help to broaden ecclesiological apprehension vis-a-vis our BECs, as well as their scope and significance for the Church as a whole.If indeed the BECs are a way of being Church, then they, like the Church, can be read and interpreted by intelligible ecclesiologies. The reading will be more or less adequate in a given case, particularly when it has to do not so much with a more or less abstract concept of the Church but rather with its concrete embodiment in a given local area the Brazilian Church, for example. I intend in this article to link up the BECs with several major ecclesiologies of European-American extraction in the last 30 years or so. Those ecclesiologies were not thought out in terms of BECs, so the tie-in may serve two purposes.First, on the basis of premises that are not just Latin American, it will check out the proposition that BECs are truly a way of being Church. Second, it will show that such ecclesiologies can be enriched and opened to new horizons in the light of BECs. Let me consultation two further points. First, we intelligibly have a wide and varied multiplicity of ecclesiological standpoints. Each one, taken individually, brings o ut the richness of the aspect it highlights, while at the same time leaving other possible dimensions in impoverished silence.The very plurality of ecclesiologies reveals the inability of any given one to exhaust the arcanum of the Church. Understanding the Church, and BECs as a mode of embodying the Church, will always entail the meeting and linking up of various ecclesiological intuitions. It can never be a tie beam with one exclusively. Indeed, in principle it should embrace them all, though of course with differing tones and stresses. My second point has to do with the present level of ecclesiological awareness, in which difference of focus is not due solely to difference in the aspect treated.It in addition depends on the historical frame of reference that serves as the keisterdrop for the reflection process. Theology carried on in the First World or inspired by it has been less explicit about that context, but it nevertheless bears the marks of it. For Third World faith in general, BASIC ECCLESIAL COMMUNITIES 605 and Latin American theology specifically, that frame of reference is inescapable, clearly putting its mark on theological method and its final product. This article may help us to render that these ways of doing theology are not mutually exclusive.By the same token, the Church, reflecting consciously on the mystery that it is, can derive benefit from this plurality. It can once more take up the problem of its unity on the basis of presuppositions that do not rest upon uniformity in its process of theological reflection. The BECs may serve here as a focus and means for verifying this proposition. Among possible methodological options, I would like to hit out three that are embodied in works of comparative ecclesiology.The premier identifies the ecclesiological perspective, organizing the thought of each author around a dominant movement in his works this was the approach used by Batista Mondin. 1 The second defines a theoretical frame at the start and then uses it to compare distinct ecclesiologies, authors, or schools such was the approach used by Alvaro Quiroz Magana in his thesis. 2 The third inductively works out ecclesiological models on the basis of various authors, suggesting the viability and even sine qua non of using different models to articulate an ecclesiology that has been the approach of Avery Dulles in several works. Since it does not focus mainly on authors as Mondin does, or anticipate any theoretical grid as does Quiroz Magana, Dulles method lends itself best to my objective here. I want to verify whether and how BECs bear the chief marks of the Church that have been unders eyed in recent ecclesiologies outside Latin America, and how BECs can amplify and shed light on the content of those ecclesiologies in a different way. Taking my fanaticism from Dulles method, then, I will try to expand the content of his analysis in ModeL of the Church by focusing specifically on BECs.In his later work, A C hurch To impact in, Dulles really ends up proposing a sixth model (the Church as a community of disciples), but I shall not consider that model specifically here. Its syntheticintegrative character is less adequate to my analytic-comparative purpose here. In Models of the Church Dulles proposes the following ecclesiological 1 Batista Mondin, Le nuove ecclesiologie Unimagine attuale della Chiesa (Rome Paoline, 1980). 2 Alvaro Quiroz Magana, Eclesiologia en la teologia de la liberacion (Salamanca Sigueme, 1983). Avery Dulles, Models of the Church A Critical Assessment of the Church in All Its Aspects (Garden City, N. Y. Doubleday, 1974) A Church To Believe in (New York Crossroad, 1982). 606 THEOLOGICAL STUDIES models Church as institution, communion, Lords Supper, herald, and servant. I shall briefly present the fundamentals of each model, reflecting on the relationship of BECs to the model in question. Church As Institution This is the model to which we have been traditionally ac customed.It solidified over the centuries, and we were evangelized and theologically educated in it until the 1950s. Its main thrust lies in understanding the Church as a society, indeed as a perfect society. Its underlying Christology views Christ as prophet, priest, and king, with the threefold function of teaching, sanctifying, and ruling. That mission is carried out by virtue of the power which Christ received from God, and which he gossips on those who in fact possess authority and jurisdictional power in the Church the pope, bishops, and priests.Thus the ecclesiological accent is on the organization and dispensation of power, hence on the juridical dimension. This stress shows up on the three planes of doctrine, ceremony, and administration, which are explicitly linked up with their divine origin. The logical go is the excessive growth in the Church of the clerical and institutional dimension and the relative atrophy of the charismatic element as well as of the significance of the People of God, particularly the laity.Proper membership in the Church is defined as birthance of the same doctrine, communion in the same sacraments, and obedient subjection to the same pastorsall that being visibly verified. Obviously the relationship of this paradigm to EECs is remote, by virtue of the characteristics of some(prenominal) the model and BECs. The predominantly vertical conception of power, the event structural organization, and the primacy and hegemony accorded to clerical initiative and activity represent something very different from what BECs are actually seeking andfleshingout in their way of being and living the world of the Church.By the same token, however, BECs in Brazil, as I said, do contrast with basic communities that have arisen in the First World, particularly with those that arose in the 1960s. Brazilian BECs near always arise by means of the initiative of the hierarchy and are sustained by their support. Working alongside lay hoiden ish agents, priests and religious as well as provide inspiration and motivation. Bishops and priests exercise jurisdictional power over Brazilian BECs, and the latter recognize and accept this because they consciously regard themselves as an integral part of the institutional life of the Church as a whole.Thus Brazilian BECs are not resistant to the Church as institution, they do not pose an secondary to it, nor do they absolutize their own way of being Church. Instead they see themselves as a vital part of the Church, without which they would have no meaning. BASIC ECCLESIAL COMMUNITIES 607 Taking all these factors into account, we can see that, from an analytical point of view, the Church-as-institution model hardly serves as the dominant ecclesiological inspiration or perspective in the rise of BECs and their actual working.Church As Sacrament The Church exists in Christ as a sacrament or sign and an instrument of intimate union with God and of the unity of the whole humankin ds race (Lumen gentium, no. 1). With these pronounces Vatican II summarily echoes and ratifies a theme that was much in evidence in the Church Fathers (Cyprian and Augustine) and in the age of scholasticism (Thomas Aquinas). Its elaboration in terms of a more general ecclesiological perspective, however, is fairly recent. This newer perspective views the Church as a sacrament.One delighted effort of this sort was by Otto Semmelroth, and his work inspired many others. 4 Henri de Lubac also made a significant contribution to this approach by using patristic and medieval sources. 5 He linked up two dimensions the Christologicalfor us Christ is the sacrament of God and the ecclesiologicalfor us the Church is the sacrament of Christ. All the sacraments are essentially sacraments of the Church. The sacraments derive their power of grace from the Church, and through with(predicate) them the Church becomes the sacrament it is.Here we have a linkage in the midst of the model of the Churc h as institution (which stresses the visible reality of the socio-ecclesiastical dimension) and the model of the Church as communion (which stresses the socio-ecc/esiai dimension rooted primordially in the inner union of faith, hope, and love). In the Church-as-sacrament model the whole congregation of the faith comes together in all its diverse vocations and functions. That explains the fecundity of this approach, which has been explored ecclesiologically by many theologians, particularly since World War II. A sacrament is a sign of something really present, the visible form of an invisible grace. It is an efficacious sign, producing or intensifying the reality it signifies. The sacraments, then, contain the grace they signify and confer the grace they contain. In tradition the sacraments have always been associated with the social dimension of the Church, not with the isolated individual, even though they are administered and received by individuals. For the human being, then, the sacraments bring together Otto Semmelroth, give Kirche als Ursakrament (Frankfurt/Main Knecht, 1953).Henri de Lubac, Catholicisme (Paris Aubier, 1948). See the following works by way of example Leonardo Boff s doctoral dissertation, Die Kirche als Sakrament im Horizont der Welterfahrung Versuch einer Legitimation und einer struktur-funktionalistischen Grundlegung der Kirche im Anschluss an das IL Vatikanische Konzil (Paderborn Bonifatius, 1972) Yves Congar, LEglise, sacrement universel du salut, in Cette eglise que jaime (Paris Cerf, 1968) 41-63 P. Smulders, LEglise, sacrement du salut, in G. Barauna, ed. , LEglise de Vatican II2 (Paris Cerf, 1967) 331-38. 5 6 4 08 THEOLOGICAL STUDIES and link the visible and invisible orders as well as the individual and social planes. We can sum this up by saying that Christ is a sacrament and so is the Church. Christ is the sign and visible presence of the invisible God, the efficacious power of salvation for the individual and the whole People of God. As institution and communion, the Church is the sign and visible presence of Christ accepted by faith and lived both really and mystically by the ecclesial community in the unity of the same faith. Indeed, the Church is even more sacrament than sign.Through its visible actions the Church not only signifies but dynamically produces and makes visible the reality of salvation that it represents and announces. The Church, then, is a grace-happening, and not just in the sense that it effects and administers the sacraments. It is a grace-happening as well because in the life of believers, who are the Church, we see operating and unfolding faith, hope, love, freedom, justice, peace, reconciliation, and everything else that establishes human intercommunion and humanitys communion with God.Now let us see how the BECs look in the light of this model, the Church as sacrament. 1. From our examination of the Church-as-institution model, there is no doubt that the BECs see themselves as Church, as part of the visible, institutional, sociological body of the Church, and that they are a specific way of living as such. We also view Church as sacrament in the BECs. They are it within the Church itself until now as they better embody the ecclesial range and presence of lay people, or the poor, in the Church two features less evident in the Churchs concrete structures and functions in recent centuries.Lay people and poor people share a core reality. They are both of the grass-roots level, of the base lay people in the Church, poor people in the world. Consequently we get thereby a visible, ecclesial sign of Christs own kenosis, a fundamental Christological dimension (Phil 25-11), which had not found suitable expression in the Church-as-institution model as lived in the past few centuries. This Christological tie-in, which is lived intensely in BECs, serves as an instrument of grace for bishops, priests, and religious who accept, recognize, or even share the BEC way of being Church. . The BECs have emerged from within a traditional Catholicism.In Brazil that Catholicism was centered around sacramentalization inadequate effort was put into clear-cut evangelization and explanation of the faith. Both in pedagogical intent and in actual practice, BECs put less stress on the traditional approach of sacramentalization. This is obvious insofar as the older focus on administering and receiving the sacraments signified and reaffirmed the hegemony of decree authority and power. This was characteristic of the earlier pastoral BASIC ECCLESIAL COMMUNITIES 09 approach or flowed naturally from it. In the cities it took the form of regular administration of the sacraments. In rural areas and the interior it took the form of rapid discharge of various sacramental obligations (baptism, confirmation, marriage, penance, and Eucharist) in a very short period, on those rare or sporadic occasions when decree ministers of the sacraments were on hand (the Brazilian-coi ned article to say it is desobriga, literally discharge of obligation). In both cases the tenor was more individual than communitarian.Administration of the sacraments frequently took place without proper doctrinal preparation and without rightly establishing the inner dispositions required for meeting the ethical and ecclesial prerequisites for participation in the sacraments. Thus sacramentalization was not tied into a clear ecclesial awareness of the scope and significance of the sacraments. The forms of sacramental expression and preparation for them were associated mainly, indeed almost exclusively, with the ordained minister, who was and still is scarce and much overworked in Brazil.Through their functions and services, current BECs have been filling in for ordained authority insofar as they can. Church as sacrament, in the terms indicated by Lumen gentium, finds expression in many ways. The overwhelming growth of sacred authority and power (the first model) had led historic ally to exclusive attribution of all that to the clergy. Today lay people, in BECs and other ecclesial areas, are serving as ministers to the sick and Eucharistie ministers. They are preparing individuals and communities for baptism, confirmation, and the Eucharist.And they are performing other functions for the immediate human and Christian well-being of individuals and communities. All these activities are clear signs of the Church as sacrament and its efficacious presence, which is not restricted to the seven sacraments alone. The fundamental change is the fact that this whole complex is seen in an ecclesial context. Without denying the vocational and ministerial role and importance of the clergy, BECs have ceased to be wholly dependent on them.The ordained minister takes his place once again within a community growing increasingly aware of its diverse vocations and functions, which are the presence of grace in the world, for the lowly in particular. 3. Insofar as the seven sacra ments as such are concerned, BECs cannot fully realize the Church as sacrament in the choose of the sick and two other basic points. They are promoters of reconciliation at the level of interpersonal relations between their members, but they cannot effect reconciliation as sacrament.Builders of communion as the only viable root of community, their members cannot realize the full significance of the mystery of the Eucharist. These sacraments, which are an indispensable part of Christian life, are enclose up with the ordained minister. 610 THEOLOGICAL STUDIES Given the current discipline of the Church and the envisioned requisites of formation and life style, there is no way of providing BECs with such ministers. BECs are multiplying rapidly and sporadically in rural areas and urban peripheries.There are not enough priests for them either quantitatively or qualitatively. By qualitatively here, I am not so much referring to the ministerial qualifications of the priest or his fulfilme nt of the juridical requisites for exercising his pastoral ministry. I am referring to the suitable edition of the priestly type to the BEC way of being Church. For the BEC has its own proper form of communion and participation, integrating various vocations into a more decentralized overall pastoral design based on subsidiarity.This is the present situation, and in the foreseeable proximo there does not seem to be any thought on the part of the Church as institution to give BECs, or the rest of the Church for that matter, any alternative to the present form of the sacrament of holy orders or to the prerequisites for its answer and exercise. This is a very serious problem affecting churches that are heavily nurtured by the word of God and that consolidate the bonds of communion between their members by fostering ecclesial awareness.In traditional Catholicism and the desobriga paradigm, the Eucharistie question was relativized in one or another way either the ecclesial significanc e of the sacrament of the Eucharist was not perceived, or the pertinent law of the Church was fulfilled, not very often but enough to be considered satisfactory. In the living Church embodied by BECs we see, first and foremost, a keen awareness of the structural significance of the Eucharist in the Church as sacrament. They are acutely aware of the necessity of the Eucharist, but also of the actual impossibility of their having the Eucharist with its full meaning and reality.This problem cannot be solved adequately by allowing for exceptions or by occasional casuistic explanations. It will have to be faced by the Church as part and parcel of its overall pastoral responsibility. The latter must take into account the concrete, diversified reality of the ecclesial body in the world as well as the salvific function of the Church as sacrament, whose core is the Eucharist. Placed at the disposition of human beings, the Eucharist is meant to be the efficacious font of communion between b elievers, and of their communion with God in Jesus Christ.Church As Herald In this model the Church is seen primarily as the bearer of the word of God. Receiving that word, it is to pass it on to human beings. Its proclaiming is also a convoking, bringing together those who hear and accept the word in faith and who are maintained in faith and union by the strength of the word. Thus the word is constitutive of the Church. BASIC ECCLESIAL COMMUNITIES 611 The Church is the herald of the word, however, not its ultimate addressee. The Church receives the word to announce it. Thus the word emerges as the crucial axis of an ecclesiological perspective that is kerygmatic, prophetic, and missionary.The two preceding models pullulate on Catholic soil and are cultivated there. This model, on the other hand, was nurtured by Protestant reflection. In this century it has been cultivated by Karl Barth and Rudolf Bultmann in particular. around of its intuitions share a common subsoil with more an cient Catholic tradition, however, and they emerged again in Vatican II to find theological expression in a Catholic and ecumenical way. In the work of Barth, the Church is the living community of the living Christ. 7 God calls it into being by His grace and gives it life by means of His Word and His Spirit, with a view to His kingdom.Thus the Church is not a permanent fact, an institution, much less an object of faith. It comes about by Gods action. It is an event constituted by the power of the word of God in Scripture, made real today and announced to human beings. This proclaimed word gives rise to faith, a gift from God that is outside human control. There is no authority in the Church except the word of God, which is to be left wing hand free to call into question the Church itself. Through Gods word the Church is renewed and, preceding(prenominal) all, urged on to its mission constant resolve of the salvific event, Jesus Christ, and of the advent of Gods kingdom.This is t he core of Barths message. The word and its contract are not meant to reinforce confessional, institutional, social, or political positions, or to abet the expansion of the Church as a society. In the work of Bultmann8 two crucial points must be considered with regard to ecclesiology. First, there is his nonhistorical conception of the Church. The result is the absence of any solid sociological or institutional dimension for the Church, and indeed the absence of any intention in Christ himself to establish or build it.Hence the identification of the Church with a historical datum or phenomenon remains ever paradoxical. Second, for Bultmann the word of God remains central, along with its contract as call, appeal, and invitation. But his view here is not the same as Barths. Let us look at it a bit more closely. Bultmann, more exegete than systematic theologian, sees the Church 7 Karl Barth, Kirchliche Dogmatik 4/3 (Munich Kaiser, 1935 and 1967). For a systematic presentation of Bart hs ecclesiology vis-a-vis Catholic ecclesiology, see the work of Colm OGrady publish by G. Chapman in London Vol. , The Church in the Theology of Karl Barth (1968) Vol. 2, The Church in Catholic Theology Dialogue with Karl Barth (1969). 8 Rudolf Bultmann, Kirche und Lehre im Neuen Testament, in Glauben und Verstehen 1 (Tubingen Mohr, 1966) 153-87 Theologie des Neuen Testaments (Tubingen Mohr, 1948). Both works have been translated into English Faith and Understanding A Theology of the New Testament 612 THEOLOGICAL STUDIES as a Pauline creation. It is so on three levels. It is a community of worship, an eschatological community, and a community with a vocation. In the first, the word is proclaimed.In the second, God is made present in the acceptance of Jesus by human beings. In the third, the first becomes prophetic vocation, kerygma that calls for a decision. The ecclesial event emerges in this kerygmatic tension of summons and response that the word brings with it, always assuming someone with credentials who proclaims it and/or a community that hears it and takes on the commitment. The Church comes to be in this faith-happening, which frees the context from any institutional, normative, or legitimating instance. The Church is actuated whenever the kerygma unleashes the summons of God and the response of human beings.There are clear differences between Barth and Bultmann. But they also have a basic affinity with regard to the significance and active role of the word in constituting the Church as a happening. These two theologians assume the importance of the community to which the word is addressed. The word is the glue around which the community gathers. The response of faith given to the word by the community is what gives the latter its meaning and reason for being. Here we can see the clear difference between the Protestant and the Catholic perspective vis-a-vis this model.Vatican II stresses that the Word became human, became flesh. Christ lives on in bill through the Church, manifesting in it his message and saving activity but there he also shares his own being with humans. In the Catholic version the Church-as-institution model is also brought into relationship with the word. The Church as a wholeand some in it by specific functionhas the responsibility of watching over the proclamation and interpretation of the word. The Churchs magisterium is not above the word, as Barth claimed. It is under the word, deriving from that word its starting oint, its norm, and its nourishment. In and for the community, the magisterium is the instance of Christs power and authority with regard to the fidelity and continuity of his message. The community that hears and accepts it is not just called to proclaim it and bear witness to it it must also translate it into real-life action on both the individual and the social levels. The word of God is central in the ecclesiological outlook of BECs. For them it is the immediate point of reference, the source of inspiration, nourishment, and discernment.Quite often it is the primary catalyst of community. distant the sacraments, which are not always accessible, the word is always within their reach. But there are primal differences between the BEC focus on the word and that to be found in the ecclesiologies of Barth or Bultmann. BASIC ECCLESIAL COMMUNITIES 613 1. In BECs the word is received within the Church and as Church insofar as the BEC is a way of being Church, or insofar as it is located in the bosom of the Church as institution and united with it. This implies the permanent reality of the Church to which the word is addressed.It also implies acceptance of the magisterium, the function in the Church that watches over the interpretation of the word and our fidelity to it. 2. In BECs the word naturally is conveyed through Scripture, which is read, prayed, and reflected upon but all this is done in direct relationship with life. One could put it the other way and say in BECs the everyday life of the members, the Church, and the world are read, prayed over, and reflected upon in relation to the word of God. If it is true for BECs that the word of honor is the word of God, it is no less true that God also speaks to us in the language of real life. watchword and life shed light on each other for those who look to them for meaning in faith. The faith and spirituality of BECs are grounded on this foundation. 3. In BECs the symbiosis of word and life is the key to the process of evangelization. In the earlier pastoral paradigm, and particularly in the quick discharge of sacramental obligation (desobriga), there was little space for the word. The faithful received the word in a largely passive way. Their faith was receptive, but it did not feel summoned to commitment and radiation.There was no urgency toward a lasting conversion, on both the individual and social level, as a radical consequence of hearing and assimilating the word. This sort of profound tran sformation (metanoia) and the proclamation of the word to others characterize the BECs insofar as they embody Church as herald, Church of the word of God. Unlike Barths view, however, this proclamation is not dissociated from the world and its problems it is in solidarity with them. Nor is it turned in on the Church and the community of believers, who are exclusively focused on an eschatological kingdom of a future sort.In BECs the word is a summons to lives being lived in the Church and already preparing the kingdom. It summons them to call into question both the individual person and the world, in order to shape a just society that will turn the word into reality and embody the gospel project in a luculent way. 4. In BECs, then, the word is kerygmatic and prophetic, as it was for Bultmann. It is that insofar as it is the center of a community of frequent de facto non-Eucharistic worship, which lay people can celebrate without the ordained minister they lack.The word is also keryg matic and prophetic insofar as it belongs to a community focused on the definitive kingdom. Contrary to Bultmanns position, however, this kingdom is tied to the historical Jesus, the Word made human being. Through his word and presence in the Church, this kingdom is already beginning to take 614 THEOLOGICAL STUDIES on shape in the course of history. In BECs the word is kerygmatic especially insofar as it calls for living commitment and a coherent response on both the individual and societal planes. Bultmann requires someone accredited to proclaim the kerygma.In BECs this accreditation is not primarily rooted in human wisdom or qualifications, though of course such factors are not ruled out. In BECs the crucial factor is the faith lived by the vast majority of the members in uprightness, simplicity, and poverty as they see their salvation and liberation in spirit and in truth. 5. All this is realized in BECs through the ongoing improving of interpersonal relationships, which give vis ibility to ecclesial community rooted in the prior communion in faith, justice, and love. In that sense community is not just the initiative of a God who summons and brings together.It is also the persevering voiceless response of human beings journeying day by day through time and facing the problems and conflicts of life. The limits and benefits of BECs vis-a-vis the word have been well brought out by Carlos Mesters, to whom they are indebted for a notable service of the word. Officially and scholarly accredited as a minister to proclaim the kerygma, he knew how to listen well to the word that God continues to utter in the hearts of the lowly, opening their hearts and minds to an understanding of both God and the human being.Mesters warns us about the risk of subjectivistic interpretation, about the failure to do a judicious, historically situated reading of the text, about the danger of a selective, ideological approach that seeks only confirmation of ones own initial position. He stresses the importance of a solid exegesis that will help the common people to get beyond those problems and also respond to the questions they themselves raise. He insists on the viability of a reading that will take into account the physical and material reality of the biblical folk without reducing the biblical message to just that.Finally, he tries to make it possible for an urban, industrial world to get closer to the rural book that the Bible is. 9 Church As Servant The ecclesiological models considered above are markedly centripetal. They prefer to focus on the internal reality of the Church, affirming its vitality and self-sufficiency in relation to the world. The Church teaches, offers a salvific presence, issues ethical norms, and enunciates values. For the far from naive use of the Bible in BECs, see the article by Carlos Mesters in John Eagleson and Sergio Torres, eds. , The Challenge of Basic Christian Communities (Maryknoll, N.Y. Orbis, 1981). For a sample of his own ability to relate biblical exegesis to real human problems, see Carlos Mesters, God, Where Are You? Meditations on the Old Testament (Maryknoll, N. Y. Orbis, 1977). 9 BASIC ECCLESIAL COMMUNITIES 615 The advent of modernism and the growing autonomy exercised by the world drew it further and further away from dependence on the Church and acceptance of it. The Church, in turn, reacted by taking up a defensive, indeed often aggressive, position vis-a-vis the world. Church and world took up hard lines in opposing trenches. 10 Vatican 1 reverse this tendency.It led the Church to see the modern world as an interlocutor with its own identity. This focus can be described as a latterly optimistic view of the world. Nevertheless, the Church continues to cherish the hope that it will be able to continue its mission vis-a-vis the world. That mission to the world will be one of service primarily. The important thing for the Church is not to withdraw into itself and attract a small group th at keeps its distance from this world. Instead, it must take its rightful(prenominal) place in the world and then open itself up as a place for dialogue, constructive action, and liberation.Paralleling the whole conciliar thrust in the Catholic Church, various theologies of secularization have taken shape in Protestant circles by stages. Their impact on the way to read world and Catholic theology was felt most keenly in the decade of the 1960s. The basically positive thrust of the process of secularization (taken as the human autonomy with regard to the explanation of the essential reality) clearly took an increasingly immanentist turn, often enough degenerating into an undesirable secularism (which is the negation of any transcendent dimension or reality).Despite some unacceptable turns and developments, the Western Church has clearly taken an uncontestable step in reformulating its own reality vis-a-vis the world. The disposition of the whole Church is one of universal service t o humanity as such, which is now seen as one big family or indeed as the People of God. Service (diakonia) becomes the central inspiration of ecclesiology. Though very aware of its frailty and inconsistency, the Church will not retreat into itself.On the basis of its theological anthropology, it will offer the world answers that the world itself has not found, or that the world has missed and demoralize in its dizzying drive toward immanentism and reductionism. This focus of the Church as servant is, however, still sharply confined. It was the theological perspective of the North and West immediately following Vatican II. Today, even in those hemispheres, it is being sharply contested, and its limitations are being recognized. It is from different angles that the BECs translate and embody the new diakonia of the Church vis-a-vis the world.In Brazil and the rest of 10 See Marcello Azevedo, Modernidade e Cristianismo (S. Paulo Loyola, 1981) Inkulturation and the Challenges of Modern ity (Rome Gregorian Univ. , 1982) J. B. Libanio, A volta a grande disciplina (S. Paulo Loyola, 1983). 616 THEOLOGICAL STUDIES Latin America, there can be no naively positive view of the modern world. The achievements of science and technology are admitted, and so is the heightened human awareness of such basic elements as human rights, individual freedom, participation in normal life, recognition in principle of the equality of all human beings, and other features of modern contemporary culture.But it is impossible not to notice the gap between these theoretical ideals and their actual realization in history, not to mention the actual frustration and perversion of these ideals in many areas. Medellin and Puebla, as well as portentous and episcopal postconciliar documents, underline the aberrations embodied in injustice, poverty, hunger, oppression, and structural stigmas that mar our reality. In such a context the poor are the ones who suffer most, along with those who are discrim inated against and marginalized, crushed and destroyed beyond any hope of repair.These are the people who predominantly make up the BECs. Hence this is the concrete way that the Church as BEC manifests its status as servant. In itself it again takes on and lives Christ the Servant in the mission of the suffering people and in the witness it bears in faith, even to the full embodiment of the message in martyrdom. New life is thus given to a Christological component that has long been forgotten or left buried in obscurity. Here we have a Church that serves and fulfils itself in service to the world.It does this through the diakonia of a faith, conscious of the gift given to us in Jesus Christ. This gift is not, however, the privilege of a chosen few it is the responsibility of all. This responsibility is lived in the urge to denounce and call into question the sociostructural organization that has produced such an unjust society. It does this by identifying clear-cut forms of institut ionalized violence in all their shapes. It does this by insisting on radical changes through relations of communion and participation among human beings.Moreover, in BECs the Church becomes a servant by serving the common people without replacing them in either the Church or the world in a paternalistic way. It recognizes that they too have the right to take the initiative in carrying through their own process of maturation and liberation, both religious and civil, after centuries of denial, tutelage, or marginalization. In this perspective of active ecclesial participation, BECs are a Church that eminently serves the other forms of being Church as well as the other vocations and charisms in the Church. 1 11 This model, which stresses the urgent necessity of service as a consequence of faith, spells out the specific nature of Christian faith in full consistency with the tradition of ancient Israel and with the Gospel message. Both stressed the necessity of fleshing out in reality wh at one believed. Faith, then, cannot be tacit solely in terms of assent or conviction it must be translated into real-life action. There is a strong echo of the Gospel message (Mt 25 and Lk 1025-37) in the insistence on a theology of service as an underlying BASIC ECCLESIAL COMMUNITIES 17 Church As Communion/ federation The model of Church as community founded on communion is the one that emanates most directly from the explicit ecclesiology of Vatican II. It stands in marked contrast to the hegemonic model (Church as institution) that was regarded as the primary interpretation of the mystery of the Church for ten centuries as least, and that was practically the dominant interpretation in the last five centuries. Nevertheless, the communitarian conoeption of the Church goes back to Scripture itself and was vigorously upheld in the patristic era.It threads through many phases of church history with regard to the ecclesial body as a whole and with regard to specific vocations within t he Church, particularly in the evolution of the religious life. Thus in its ecclesiological perspective Vatican II taps roots grounded in tradition and the Bible and rediscovers one of the most fruitful facets of ecclesial inspiration throughout church history. 12 Here the Church is the community that is established in communion with God and between human beings.It embraces and pervades the part of an unmistakably Christian praxis. The term praxis is not synonymous with practice insofar as the latter term simply means action or behavior nor is praxis the opposite of theory. Praxis is a concrete form of historical commitment and involvement, stemming from a twofold awareness that history is made in time and that it is the result of human actions stemming from concrete choices. Praxis, then, is the conscious making of history, and Christian praxis is the concrete living out of the historical dimensions of the faith.Christian praxis is the daily, long-term embodiment and direction giv en to the service that faith demands. See F. Taborda, Fe crista e praxis historica, Revista Eclesiastica Brasileira 41 (1981) 250-78. This notion of praxis has been much discussed by various liberation theologians, including Gustavo Gutierrez, Juan Luis Segundo, Leonardo Boff, and Jon Sobrino. For a sophisticated and penetrating examination of the complexities of modern historical reality in the industrialized nations and Latin America, see chapters 1013 of Juan Luis Segundo, Faith and Ideologies (Maryknoll, N.Y. Orbis, 1984) 249-340. 12 See Pier Cesare Bori, Koinonia LIdea della comunione neUeclesiologia recente e nel Nuovo Testamento (Brescia Paideia, 1972) id. , Chiesa primitiva LImmagine della comunita delle originiAtti 242-47 432-37nella storia della chiesa antica (Brescia Paideia, 1974) Yves Congar, LEglise de saint Augustin a lepoque moderne (Paris Cerf, 1970) Jerome Hamer, LEglise est une communion (Paris Cerf, 1962) Emil Brunner, Das Missverstandnis der Kirche (Zurich Zwin gli, 1951) id. Dogmatik 3 Die christliche Lehre von der Kirche, vom Glauben, und von der Vollendung (Zurich Zwingli, 1960). For Brunner, the Church is pure fraternal communion bearing witness to love. The antithesis between communion and institution is the core and guiding thread of his ecclesiology. In Dulles first model (Church as institution), the Church stands above the faithful, as it were it is extrinsic to them in a certain sense. In Church-as-communion ecclesiologies, the Church is the community of all the faithful living a life of communion.Bellarmine opposed institution to communion. Brunner opposes communion to institution. Hamer sees communion lived out only in the institution. BECs start from communion as experiential living in the light of faith to reflect consciously on their ecclesial participation in the Church as institution, which they would never imagine to be adequate without the living experience of communion. 618 THEOLOGICAL STUDIES People of God in the multip licity of their gifts, vocations, services, and functions.It embraces the Church at every level, particularly in its appreciation of episcopal collegiality and local churches. It is no less open to other Christian denominations, non-Christian religions, and all human beings who sincerely search for love, truth, and justice. There have been frequent manifestations of this spirit, from the first encyclical of Paul VI (Ecclesiam suam) to the outlook underlying the basic structure of the new Code of Canon Law. It might be sour that all this was inspired and dictated merely by sociological imperatives. That is not the case.The People of God, the image of the Church most esteemed by Vatican II, is a great community but it is so under the action of the Holy Spirit. The members of this People, who are seen in terms of equality, dignity, and freedom, receive the very same Spirit and act under that Spirit hearing and proclaiming the word of God in the unity of the same faith and mission. In this model of the Church as communion/community, both Medellin and Puebla will find their common basis and their great mediation for an evangelization that is humanizing, transforming, and liberating.The BEC is indicated as the primary and proper scenario for the concrete embodiment of this communion. Sociologically, it implements a new pattern of personal and social relationships. Ecclesiologically, it is a common center for reading and interpreting life and for hearing the word of God, for union among those who believe, and for service to all through the various ministries that arise out of the needs of the community and dovetail with ito varied vocations and charisms.The BEC amalgamates and integrates the conscious, subsidiary coresponsibility of all, under the action of one and the same Spirit, into the total body of one and the same Church. Here again we come across a central element that sheds light on the whole complex. These BECs have been in fact ecclesial communities of po or people, marked by a structural poverty stronger than the poor themselves. In a glaring way it bears witness to the absence of communion and solidarity between human beings in our current societies, to the ordinary power of injustice that destroys the human being and nullifies Gods plan for humanity.Thus the BECs are a call to conversion of heart and to the re-establishment of justice in love, which will make possible communion in faith and mission. As a community that unites hearts, the BECs are no less a force for the transformation of a world that divides and crushes. They are insofar as they try to extend to the world and the Church the reality of communion that they themselves are already trying to live as communities. The little patch of the People of God that is living in each BEC, an initial cell as Medellin puts it, is a sign andBASIC ECCLESIAL COMMUNITIES 619 sacrament of the People of God that Vatican II sees as the Church, and that it would like to project over the wo rld as a whole. In BECs, then, the ecclesiological model of Church as communion/ community ceases to be a theoretical variable of ecclesiological analysis. It becomes the existential witness to a reality of the Church, which is growing in communion and participation to become a community.In the BECs this model is a promising prototype of the necessary, ongoing process of historical becoming that is to culminate in the eschatological kingdom, where community is to be lived in full, definitive communion. THE SOTERIOLOGICAL COMPONENT In discussing these various ecclesiological models, I mentioned several times their underlying Christological component. I do not want to end this article without also alluding briefly to the importance of the soteriological conception these models may derive from their association with BECs as a way of being Church.The mystery of the Church is intimately bound up with the mystery of Jesus Christ, and no less with the understanding of his mission. This, in turn, is reflected in the conception of the ecclesial mission. Thus ecclesiology, Christology, and soteriology shed light on one another and help to explain one another. The salvation and redemption given to us by the Father in and through Jesus Christ (the meaning of his life and mission) is to be realized on at least three levels.They can be distinguished from one another analytically, but they are interwoven in reality. For the historical destiny of humanity must be oriented in line with its eschatological destiny, in the indissoluble unity of the proclamation and realization of the kingdom, which is to be initiated here but find its ultimate culmination only in the eschaton. The first level is the redeeming and saving liberation from sin that marks the human race as a whole and the individual human person.The second level has to do with sin in terms of its interpersonal and social projections, insofar as it expresses the perversion of Gods plan as manifested in the concrete hum an organization of social, economical, and political realities that have been created by human beings and that affect humanity. The third level has to do with liberation from sin as the latter is incorporated into the gestation of culture and history over centuries, which in turn is often the wellspring of sin on the two other levels and vice versa.These three levels of salvation, redemption, and liberation are a replica of Gods activity with the people of Israel, hence of the history of our salvation as designed by God. Salvation, redemption, or liberation cannot be understood solely from the divine side, i. e. , as our ransom from sin through Gods initiative and His new openness to a covenant of love with human beings in and 620 THEOLOGICAL STUDIES through Jesus Christ. Neither can it be understood solely in a directly anthropological sense that is not sufficiently existential, i. e. salvation as the fulness of human liberty and total opening up to the absolute, as a teleological orientation to the definitive, eschatological future of humanity. Salvation, redemption, and liberation must further be understood as the Pauline exigency that human beings also respond to, and ally themselves with, God and His project to liberate humanity with respect to the consequences of sin (Romans 2 and 7). Throughout history those consequences leave their mark not only on the life of the individual but also, and even more so, on the social context of the world.In the BECs we do find the soteriological key of the various ecclesiological models mentioned, a key that tends to stress the first level of redemption just noted. But everything I have been saying about the BECs with respect to the ecclesiological dimension of these models implies a twofold ferocity in the soteriological perspective, which is paramount in the ecclesial awareness of our day. The first says that human beings are, by the saving power of Jesus Christ, an active party in carrying on the process of salvati on and liberation in history.Just as they were agents in the deformation of Gods plan through their human sin, so they express the new life given to them in Jesus Christ through their real-life embodiment of the love and justice that he has re-established. It is the realization of the Word, made Salvation a biblical exigency throughout the two Testaments. A second emphasis is also affirmed in the BECs, communities of poor people. They see themselves as the primary subjects in setting in motion and actuating this process of realizing salvation through the transformation of sins consequences.In fact, they are the real-life victims of injustice-made sin in the world in which we live. Hence it is they who can best perceive the rupture between such injustice and Gods project. To be or become poor is to perceive this from the standpoint and condition of the poor whatever our social and economic condition might be. Here is picked up the primary inspiration of Jesus own life and mission (Lk 318-21), which must necessarily be reaffirmed in the life and mission of the Church. 3 13 In a forthcoming book, Basic Ecclesial Communities in Brazil, which is to be published in English by Georgetown University Press, I examine the origin and formation of Brazilian BECs, their evangelizing potential, and the rich novelty of their pastoral paradigm. I also explore them as a theological topic, and the challenges they may pose to the overall process of evangelization. A Portuguese version of the present article is being published by the Brazilian journal Perspectiva teologica (Sept. -Dec. 1985).