The Work of one Christian Relief Agency Essay Example for Free

The Work of one Christian Relief Agency Essay Christian Aid is an organisation that supplies aid to those in need. It is generally considered to have been the first missionary agency to support indigenous mission boards in countries all over the world. It all began in 1945 when Bob Finley was asked to speak at a rally of Youth for Christ in a Chicago stadium. His testimony was so fresh, unique and powerful that the 25,000 people in the stadium interrupted him several times with spontaneous applause. His words were broadcasted all over the continent and he was sent to speak at rallies throughout the U. S. and Canada. Along with his close friend, Billy Graham, they were enlisted as field evangelists with the Youth for Christ and spoke at youth rallies, churches, public schools, seminaries, colleges and Bible institutes. Between 1948 and 1950 Bob Finley traveled the East China, Korea and Asia preaching the word and lead Korea in the spiritual awakening that took place there in early 1950. Bob Finley returned to America determined to arouse the churches about the need for reform in foreign missions. He said the best way to plant a Christian witness in closed countries was to reach people who were away from home. Then when they would go back to serve Christ in their homelands; get behind them with financial assistance. Following the presentation of his honorary doctors degree, in 1953 he started International Students, Inc. to reach foreign students all over the U.S. and Canada. In 1972 the headquarters of ISI was moved to Colorado Springs, while the AID (Assisting Indigenous Developments) division was spun off as Christian Aid and remained in Washington D.C. with Bob Finley as the President. A competent staff was assembled to travel all over the world searching out indigenous ministries in every country, especially those that were closed to missionaries from America. Christian Aid grew and grew, with a number of new buildings built in co-ordination with the agency. They had a new headquarters with a conference center and more offices. It continued making contact with indigenous missionary groups in closed countries all over the world. Bob Finleys goal was to have a part in planting a witness for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ among every unreached people group on earth. Christian Aid is governed and staffed by evangelistic, Bible believing, born again Christians who uphold the fundamental doctrines of historic evangelical Christianity. The work of Christian Aid is felt in over 60 countries where they try to fulfill its aims of helping people in the long-term. This is achieved in various ways. The first is to raise money that is needed in order to help these people. They gain an income of around 48 Million Pounds a year, which they can use. This is done throughout the whole year where churches may hold collections or some sort of fund raising events where donations go to charity. A considerable amount of this money is collected during one particular week, annually. This is called Christian Aid Week. In 1995, 8.6 Million Pounds was raised in this one-week. Christian Aid has two main policies of donations. They give Emergency Aid and Long Term Aid. Emergency Aid 10% to 15% of their money is when people are in need of some sort of aid, straight away. For example, if there has been a natural disaster, or an influx of refugees to a country then they are in need of emergency aid in order for them to survive. We can see the work of Christian Aid in the Caribbean Sea islands where a 140mile-per-hour Hurricane battered the islands, leaving 20 dead and numerous others in desperate need of attention and shelter. Christian Aid went to the islands to help the suffering people get their lives back on track. Long Term Aid is when Christian Aid helps to set up funds in communities to help them in the future. This is done through churches and community centers. We can see this in place in Bangladesh where Christian Aid workers have been living there to help administer drugs to the people in need of it. They get their money to do this by Christian Aid and have helped many hundreds of people. Bob Finley has now completed 53 years of ministry as an evangelist, pastor, missionary, Bible teacher and Christian statesman. During these years he has traveled over four million miles and preached face to face to more than 20 million people. Additional millions have heard his message through radio, TV, films and videos. His published articles have touched thousands of lives and played a major role in changing the methodology and direction of Christian missions throughout the world. His influence and financial support has been used of God to further the cause of Christ among more than 2000 tongues, tribes and nations. Christian Aid continues to reach out to those who are in the remotest countries and have not heard of our Lord Jesus Christ. They continue to help other struggling ministries to preach the word of our Lord.

Harmful Effects of the Ornish Diet Essay -- Health Nutrition Diet Exer

Harmful Effects of the Ornish Diet The Ornish diet, a meal plan that emphasizes the consumption of carbohydrates over fats, is an unsafe plan despite its claims to being a safe and effective way to prevent heart disease1 – a claim only a balanced diet can make. Because the Ornish diet cuts out a large number of foods from a person’s meal, many beneficial nutrients are missing that would normally be in a balanced diet. In addition, recent studies have found that diets containing a larger than recommended amount of carbohydrates may actually increase a person’s chances of developing intestinal and breast cancers2. These findings show that despite any benefits the Ornish diet may provide to the heart, the complications of maintaining a high carbohydrate diet make it not nearly as safe as a balanced diet. Because the Ornish diet restricts participants to a strictly vegetarian meal plan, people who follow the diet often become deficient in beneficial nutrients such as vitamin B12, iron, and omega-3 fatty acids1. Vitamin B12 and iron are nutrients often found in animal products such as meat, while omega-3 fatty acids are most common fish – the foods present in a balanced diet, but absent in the Ornish diet. Deficiencies of these chemicals can often lead to conditions such as anemia, or prevent beneficial effects that are imparted by omega-3 fatty acids such as mood stabilization and improved cardiovascular health. Because the body needs iron to produce hemoglobin – a vital part in a red blood cell’s ability to transport oxygen to other cells, a lack of the substance would cause a large decrease in the effectiveness and number of red blood cells. In addition, due to vitamin B12’s regulation of blood cell production, a decreas... ...s incorrect. People on this diet often do not obtain enough of the essential vitamins and minerals that they need in order to maintain healthy bodies. Because of this, they run the risk of developing serious illnesses such as anemia. People on the Ornish diet also will not enjoy the possible benefits other nutrients such as the omega-3 fatty acids. Dieters who take in such large amounts of carbohydrates also increase their risk of developing cancers due to the elevated insulin responses their bodies put up to digest the food that they eat. In the end, a balanced diet is much safer than, and just as effective – if followed correctly – In maintaining a healthy body as the Ornish diet is. Sources 1. http://www.moscowfoodcoop.com/archive/ornish.html 2. http://www.scienceblog.com/community/article3530.html 3. http://www.bipolarchild.com/newsletters/0501.html

Human Rights Essay

Human rights are defined as all right to which all humans are entitled. Examples of human rights include freedom of expression, freedom against torture, indefinite detainment and unreasonable search and seizure. Jimmy Carter expresses a concern for human rights when he says in his inaugural address: â€Å"We will be ever vigilant and never vulnerable, and we will fight our wars against poverty, ignorance, and injustice – for those are the enemies against which our forces can be honorably marshaled†¦ Our moral sense dictates a clear-cut preference for these societies which share with us an abiding respect for individual human rights. As one of the few ‘doves’ of the American presidency, Carter emphasizes a need to combat poverty, ignorance, and injustice. These are the biggest violators of human rights, and for Carter to mention these concepts in the midst of the Cold War and the Vietnam War demonstrates the importance of these concepts to him. Even at this time, he called for â€Å"the elimination of all nuclear weapons from this earth†, a goal as highly idealistic today as it was almost forty years ago. Balance of Power Balance of power refers to the idea of maintaining stability between two nations or among several nations. John F. Kennedy in 1961 was worried about the balance of power when he said, â€Å"Let both sides, for the first time, formulate serious and precise proposals for the inspection and control of arms – and bring the absolute power to destroy other nations under the absolute control of all nations. Let both sides seek to invoke the wonders of science instead of its terrors. Together let us explore the stars, conquer the deserts, eradicate disease, tap the ocean depths, and encourage the arts and commerce. Kennedy understood that the United States and the Soviet Union were at odds in developing superior technologies. He exhibits a desire to use scientific developments resulting from the arms race between the two nations for cooperative activities instead of ill-intentioned activities. Kennedy led the United States in bipolar world, so diplomacy to get the two biggest powers to work together instead of to fight each other was key. Unilateralism Unilateralism is a philosophy that supports one-sided action as opposed to cooperative action. Both George W.  Bush and Barack Obama addressed this concept, but in different ways. Bush implicitly supported the idea, when he said in his first inaugural address, â€Å"Our democratic faith is more than the creed of our country, it is the inborn hope of our humanity, an ideal we carry, but do not own. † Obama, however, rejected unilateralism when he said, â€Å"Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with the sturdy alliances and enduring convictions. They understood that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please. Though Bush was sworn in before the events of 9/11, he already demonstrated in this address that part of his policies were to have the United States spread democracy and freedom around the world. Bush thought that this role of ‘freedom martyr of the world’ is America’s role and America’s role alone. Obama debunked this idea, illustrating that in history, countries worked together to fend off harsh governments and to spread democracy and freedom. Obama, whether he truly believes this or not, had to separate himself politically from Bush policies because Bush policies were highly unpopular.

Fellini Film Narrative - Free Essay Example

Sample details Pages: 8 Words: 2442 Downloads: 3 Date added: 2017/06/26 Category Cinematographic Art Essay Type Narrative essay Did you like this example? 8 1/2 Federico Fellinis 8 1/2 is one of the early landmarks of postmodernism. (Bondanella, 93-116) If the myth is to be believed, Fellini had signed with producer Angelo Rizzoli to direct something like a sequel to his enormously successful La Dolce Vita. Actors were hired. Don’t waste time! Our writers will create an original "Fellini Film Narrative" essay for you Create order The crew was ready. And a large set had been built: a rocket launching pad. But where was the story? In early drafts of the scenario, Guido Anselmi (Marcello Mastroianni) had been a writer. Only when Fellini turned the character into a film director did the elements fall into place. This would be a film about directors block: about not being able to make a film. About what the scholars call the creative process. Weaving together fantasy, flashback, fear, and celebration all orchestrated, as usual, by Nino Rota he achieved an overwhelming international success. (Bondanella, 93-116) 8 1/2 remains the key Fellini movie because it is freer from the tyranny of narrative than anything that came before or since. In the Fifties Fellini had been a storyteller in the neorealist tradition. But that wasnt his real calling. The meandering plot of La Dolce Vita had given him a more accommodating framework for his collection of gorgeous images, extreme characters, and musical set pieces . In 8 1/2 he is free entirely to organize these quintessentially cinematic tropes in a way that fits the curious logic of cinema (not the demands of narrative.) The film is more like a night at the opera than an afternoon at the movies. (Bondanella, 93-116) Today, national cinema is on the top. It is producing more and more films based on socio-political circumstances. Its not the quotes from Rossini and Wagner; its Nino Rota and Fellini. To me, Rota has always been Fellinis co-auteur. Theres a powerful interplay between Rotas evocative music and Fellinis musical images. Both of them use their images and themes over and over, reworking variations in interesting ways. 8 1/2 gives Rota more room to elaborate on Fellinis visuals than he had had in earlier films. Industrial and economic factors are highlighting major issues in modern films like 8 1/2. Apart from other international standards, the musical nature of 8 1/2 makes it a perfect candidate for DVD. This is one film, like music, that you want to play again and again. About the only feature missing from this Criterion edition is a random player that would allow you to run through the twenty-six chapters in arbitrary order! Im not joking: restructuring 8 1/2 would reveal a lot about Fellinis art. You can see from the DVDs chapters that the maestros unit of thought was the sequence, not the narrative. You could make four smaller films from the material the women, the dreams, the production, the spa. You could reverse the first and last sequences (Guido trapped in the traffic jam, the circus at the spaceship) and it would work, but as a much darker film. Aside from that random player, not much else is missing from this typically rich and careful Criterion production. Its a minicourse in Fellini that should keep your evenings occupied for most of the week (even if you watch the film only once). The commentary track skillfully interweaves three different tracks. Theres no indication who w rote the competent essay read by actress Tanya Zaicon, but Antonio Monda teaches film at NYU and Gideon Bachmann was a longtime friend and colleague of Fellini. A telling line from Gideon Bachmann: Everyone loved being used by Federico. Including myself. Their additions make the commentary track less of a lecture, more a discussion. (The Terry Gilliam introduction is just decoration: the premise was that both he and Fellini started as cartoonists.) The transfer is up to Criterions usual high standard, made from a 35mm fine-grain master made from the original negative. (Although I still prefer Criterions laserdisc edition but thats another story.) The extras on disc two are remarkable. Fellini A Directors Notebook is the documentary he made for television in 1969 dealing mainly with his inability to make The Voyage of G. Mastorna several years earlier: a case of life imitating art (except that producer Dino Di Laurentiis sued Fellini for the expense of the sets that had b een built). It is cloying and silly but his only chance to amortize the cost of the Mastorna sets. The documentary on Nino Rota is essential viewing if you believe, as I do, that Fellini would not have been possible without Rota. (This is a film from German television made by Vassili SilovÃÆ'Â ­c.) The interviews with Lina WertmÃÆ'Â ¼ller (an uncredited Assistant Director on 8 1/2) and cinematographer Vittorio Storaro (who never worked with Fellini) are both worthwhile. But the real jewel of the extras is a twenty-six-minute monologue by Sandra Milo. (This is one of the interviews apparently shot especially for the DVD.) Milo played Carla, Guidos mistress, in 8 1/2, and then had a seventeen-year affair with Guidos alter ego, Fellini. The interview is an eerie mirror of the forty-year-old movie. Milo paints breathless word pictures of life with Fellini. She didnt want to make the film, at first. One day Fellini arrived at her apartment with cinematographer Gianni di Ve nanzo, designer Piero Gherardi, camera, and costumes. Were here to make your screen test, he announced. Her housekeeper dragged her out of bed to meet him. A few years later he offered her the role of Gradisca in Amarcord. She describes how the two of them worked out the character on a cold, dark soundstage at CinecittÃÆ'Â   in the dead of winter. But her husband wouldnt let her make the film. The role was eventually played by Magali NoÃÆ'Â «l, imitating Milo (imitating Carla). At the end of these stories she puts a period: This is my story with Federico Fellini. But the camera rolls on. After a few seconds she adds: When I go to Fregene I think I see him among the trees. (Fellini died in 1993.) A few beats. Her smile crumbles; a tear forms; she sways. Sometimes he calls me, and laughing, he asks me to chirp. (She laughs.) As if I were a bird, and could go on the trees, too! Another long pause. Another false ending. But I cannot tell you more. There is a part, a littl e secret and mysterious, I believe is for me alone. She blows us a kiss goodbye. It is a strangely moving moment. Felliniesque. Id like to have seen Sandra Milo play Tosca. You can almost hear her singing the great aria Vissi darte, vissi damore. (I lived for art, I lived for love.) With its self-referential quantum psychology, 8 1/2 remains a key postmodern work. But its more. With hindsight it also shows us the way beyond postmodernism to a time when sentiment such anathema to modernists and postmodernists alike for a hundred years will return. Like his nineteenth-century paisani Verdi, Puccini, and the other maestri, Fellini/Rota understood the transcendence of celebration: feeling together. In the last scene of 8 1/2 all the characters in Guidos life descend from the rocket gantry to the circus ring as he orchestrates them. The last words of the film: Tutti insieme! All together! If we look into the roots of national cinema then we may find different cultural tr aditions on its way. Numerous links between locations in films and their condition today are made. Thus, we see the spot where ZampanÃÆ'Â ² abandoned Gelsomina in La Strada (near Ovindoli, a small town eighty kilometers from Rome); the courtyard of the Palazzo del Drago in Filicciano (seventy kilometers from Rome) where Guido and Claudia meet in 8 1/2 Cecchignola Military Reserve (some twenty minutes from CinecittÃÆ'Â   outside of Rome), where Fellini shot the scene in which Guido imagines his fathers tomb in 8 1/2 and so forth. (Bondanella, 93-116) These shots, so precious to the specialist, are unfortunately wasted on the neophyte, since they are never clearly identified in the documentary. Indeed, the individuals interviewed by Pettigrew are not identified for the audience until the end of the film, an unfortunate arrangement of his material that presupposes a great deal of knowledge about Fellini that few of Pettigrews spectators will possess. Nevertheless, the nu merous clips of Fellini discussing his work and his esthetics (thankfully uninterrupted by endless journalistic questions and accompanied only by pertinent clips from his works or other comments by his collaborators) provide what one reviewer rightly calls a master class on filmmaking, Fellini style. Among the topics Fellini addresses are the relationship of reality to fiction (the former is mistrusted, the latter is praised); the question of improvisation (Fellini rejects it, declaring that making a film is similar in its attention to detail to the launching of a rocket ship into space; Fellini does believe in what he calls disponibilitÃÆ'Â   or openness to possibilities on the set that have not been envisioned prior to shooting); inspiration (Fellini has no use for waiting for inspiration, believing that creative artists who do so merely waste precious time in relying upon such a Romantic concept); alienation (Fellini asks how a man can be a film director, a vocation th at is akin to being a magician, if he or she lacks faith in the future); imagination (for Fellini, film directing involves a combination of the qualities of a simple artisan and that of a medium); imagery (for Fellini, cinema is first and foremost painterly, relying upon light more than dialog); and esthetics (regardless of whether something is beautiful or ugly, culturally sophisticated or simple, Fellinis only criterion of value is whether a work of art is vitale or alive). I can think of no better examples than Federico Fellinis 8 1/2 (1963). Fellini is known even in amateur circles as a filmmaker with a distinctly dark and depressive vision. His work is deeply troubled, preternaturally focused on himself and morbidly preoccupied with death. This film that I have in mind as a definitive representation of how explicitly existentialist ideas can be expressed in film is Federico Fellinis 8 1/2, which has been analyzed by Jerry Solomon. Given the capable analysis he suppli es in his own study, I will only say a few words here about the character of Fellinis efforts in film and will direct our attention to Bondanella book for the bulk of what needs to be said about 8 1/2 in particular. Fellinis Italy is a vibrant and rich artificial landscape, in contrast to the natural picturesque and spare visions of Bergmans Sweden. Despite the flurry of activity that is always going on in Fellinis work, there is no activity, even including, as Bondanella (1992) points out, the activity of directing film, that is intrinsically worthy of pursuit. Instead, Fellinis characters are busily distracting themselves with useless vanities. Again, as Mr. Solomon has noted, there is in Fellinis work a fixation on the acute need for choice, for some kind of act, without any solid guidelines for choice. Besides 8 1/2, I would personally recommend La Dolce Vita (1961) as one of Fellinis films that best represents his concern with the futile and arbitrary choices of man. His films are gloriously photographed, filled with vibrant images of glamorous and exciting people, whose external beauty and grace conceal their internal emptiness and frustration. (Bondanella, 68-149) He is a master of imagery. La Dolce Vita alone is a lush but pruned arrangement of strikingly vivid visual compositions, from the opening shot of a helicopter airlifting a massive statue of Jesus over Saint Peters Cathedral to the closing scene in which an abnormally large fish is dragged onto a beach as some kind of eerie signal of the main characters final confinement in his own despair. The world of 1960s Italy, as Fellini depicts it, is hopelessly superficial, exhausting itself in a frenzied hurricane of champagne bubbles, costume parties, gossip and paparazzis flash bulbs. Fellinis mood is bizarre and frantically upbeat where Bergman is obsessive and morbid. Fellinis experimentation with the extremely surreal will surpass that of Bergman. Yet, these two, despite their divergent styles, stand together as the greats who understood perhaps more fully than any other film makers the implications of existentialist philosophy for their medium. Their films are existentialist not necessarily because they treat existential themes, but because they benefit from the impact of existentialism on popular culture. As has been indicated many times, existentialism, more than any other philosophical movement, would come to pass out of the hands of the privileged elite and would be claimed by the common man. In so far as this movement took place, film benefits, in that as a medium open to the common man, it is able to continue to bear highly conceptual subject matter to a wider thinking community. Thus while film in the wake of existentialism may not be existentialist, it is often at the least deeply philosophical in a medium accessible to thinking individuals who may not be formal students of philosophy. Whereas the existential films prior to Bergman and were inspired not so much by existentialist thought but by post-war shifts in culture, the existential films that follow Bergman and Fellini are not necessarily inspired directly by existentialist thought, but are certainly inspired by Bergman and Fellini and by what existentialism in part stands for, namely, the communication of philosophical ideas to all men. For many audiences, critics, and film historians, 8 1/2 remains the benchmark film by Fellini, the work that justifies his status as a master and continues to reward the spectator after numerous screenings. Besides a host of awards (including an Oscar for Best Foreign Film) received when it first appeared in 1963, a group of thirty European intellectuals and filmmakers in 1987 voted 8 1/2 the most important European film ever made and, on the basis of this work, also named Fellini as the European cinemas most important director. The film occupies an important role in the directors complete works, not only because of its obvious autobiographical links to Fellinis life but also because it focuses upon the very nature of artistic creation in the cinema. La dolce vita is the last film Fellini made with obvious mimetic intention: It provides a panoramic view of a society gone wild with press conferences, image makers, paparazzi, and celebrities, and in spite of its ability to create stirring images of an unforgettable character (such as the Trevi Fountain scene, which was indelibly etched into the imagination of an entire generation of moviegoers), its subject matter remains steadfastly connected to the society within which Fellini lived. After La dolce vita, however, Fellini turns toward the expression of a personal fantasy world that often, as in the case of 8 1/2, also deals with the representation of cinema itself in a self-reflexive fashion. References Bondanella, Peter. (1992). The Cinema of Federico Fellini (Princeton: Princeton University Press), pp.68-149. Bondanella, Peter. (2002). The Films of Federico Fellini (New York: Cambridge University Press), pp.93-116.