SUPRA!

Last night was another inspiring household!


THANKSGIVING!


'Pag uwi ko, umupo ako sa sofa. Then I suddenly found myself reflecting on the events of the past; lalo na 'yung nangyari last semester (4th year, 1st sem). Just the recently concluded semester. Events flashed before my very eyes.


Duties.
Lectures.
Cluster activities.
Campus activities.


After reminiscing these things, wala akong ibang nasabi kung di, "Thank you Lord! Thank you sobra!"
At wala akong ibang nagawa kung di ang magdasal!


Ang magdasal na ang laman ay pasasalamat.
Pasasalamat sa mga naging hamon ng nakaraang semester; na sa huli ay naging hamon na food!
Pasasalmat na nakalagpas sa mga istriktong propesor and all.
Pasasalamat sa lakas na alam kong hindi nagmula sa akin, kung di mula kay God.
Pasasalamat sa biyaya ng pag-aaral.
Pasasalamat sa biyaya ng pamilya na laging nakasuporta.
Pasasalamat sa biyaya ng YFL community, na nag-iinspire sa akin.
At higit sa lahat, pasasalamat sa biyaya at regalo ng buhay sa pagkakataong maranasan ang lahat ng ito!


LORD! SUPRANG THANK YOU!


SUPRA = Super + Sobra


At sa ikaw na bumabasa nito, salamat sa oras sa pagbasa ng mga bagay-bagay na pinasasalamatan ko.
Ikaw, anong mga pinasasalamatan mo?
Kung ano o sino man yan, pasalamatan mo na!


Deo gratias!

Is it wrong to wear a bikini?

Male college students at Princeton University recently took part in studies of how the male brain reacts to seeing people wearing different amounts of clothing. The test subjects were placed in a brain scanner and for a fraction of a second were shown photographs of women in bikinis, as well as men and women dressed modestly.

When the young men viewed the scantily clad women, the part of their brain associated with tool use lit up. Even though some of the images were shown for as little as two-tenths of a second, the most easily remembered photographs were of bikini-clad women whose heads were cropped off the photos!

The purpose of the research, according to Susan Fiske, a professor of psychology at Princeton University, was to examine ways in which people view others as a means to an end. The findings of the research were presented during the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, held in Chicago.

Researchers also discovered that when some of the men viewed scantily clad females, the men’s medial pre-frontal cortex was deactivated. This is the region of the brain associated with analyzing a person’s thoughts, intentions, and feelings. Fiske remarked, “It is as if they are reacting to these women as if they are not fully human.” She added, “It is a preliminary study but it is consistent with the idea that they are responding to these photographs as if they were responding to objects rather than people.”

She considered this discovery to be shocking, because “The lack of activation in this social cognition area is really odd, because it hardly ever happens.” Researchers have witnessed such a dehumanizing absence of brain activity only once before, during a study where people were shown images of drug addicts and homeless people.

Another study performed on undergraduate students at Princeton found that when men are shown images of women in bikinis, they associate the women with first-person verbs, such as I “push,” “handle,” and “grab.” When shown images of modestly dressed women, the men associated the images with the third-person forms of the verbs, such as she “pushes,” “handles,” and “grabs.” In other words, the fully-clothed women were seen as being in control of their own actions, whereas the immodest ones were to be acted upon.

Although scientists were surprised by these findings, they won’t come as a shock to those who know the origins of the bikini. Its inventor was a Frenchman named Louis Reard, who worked for his mom’s lingerie business. When he created the first two-piece bathing suit in 1946, he had to hire a stripper to debut the outfit, because no model was willing to wear it on the runway! After all, what kind of woman would wear her underwear in public, just because it became waterproof? Over half a century years ago, these French models took for granted what today’s scientists from Princeton find surprising.

Dr. Alice Von Hildebrand once remarked, “If little girls were made aware of the great mystery confided to them, their purity would be guaranteed. The very reverence which they would have toward their own bodies would inevitably be perceived by the other sex. Men are talented at reading women’s body language, and they are not likely to risk being humiliated when a refusal is certain. Perceiving women’s modesty, they would take their cue and, in return, approach the female sex with reverence.”

Just as bikinis cause some men’s brains to overlook a woman’s intentions and thoughts, modesty does just the opposite. It invites men to consider how much more a woman has to offer. If bikinis objectify women, modesty personalizes them. Therefore, women who wish to be taken seriously by men may want to reconsider the power of modesty. Its purpose is not to veil the woman’s body because it is bad. Quite the contrary! A modest woman is not hiding herself from men. She is revealing her dignity to them.

Nothing on earth approaches the beauty of the woman. For this reason, the question must be asked to women, “How will you use your beauty?” Pope John Paul II remarked that the dignity and balance of human life depends at every moment of history and in every place upon who man will be for women, and who women will be for men. So, who will you be for men?

If women have become objects in the minds of many men, what can be done to restore the hearts and minds of both? If the world is ever to see a resurgence of values, modesty, and chivalry, it will require both men and women to take an inventory of their own hearts, to examine who they have become for each other.

from: www.Chastity.com

Why should I have to change the way I dress? If a guy has a bad imagination, that's his problem.

If you are fed up with the way guys often treat women and wonder what can be done to restore a sense of respect, modesty is the solution. The problem is this: Many men today do not know how to relate to women. Part of the remedy for this ailment lies in the hands of women. Wendy Shalit said, “Ultimately, it seems that only men can teach other men how to behave around women, but those men have to be inspired by women in the first place; inspired enough to think the women are worth being courteous to.”[1]

How will this happen? Well, many young women are aware that they have the power to seduce a man, but few girls are aware that their femininity also has the power to educate a guy. The way a girl dresses (not to mention the way she talks, dances, and so forth) has an extraordinary ability to help shape a man into a gentleman or into a beast.

I have read tens of thousands of pages of theology, counseling, and information about relationships and human sexuality, but I never learned how to treat a woman until I dated one who dressed modestly. It was captivating, and I realized for the first time that immodest dress gets in the way of seeing a woman for who she is. Immodest outfits might attract a man to a girl’s body, but they distract him from seeing her as a person. As one man said, “If you want a man to respect you, and perhaps eventually fall in love with you, then you must show him that you respect yourself and that you recognize your dignity before God.” [2]

A woman who dresses modestly inspires a guy in a way that I am not ashamed to admit I cannot explain. I suppose it is safe to say that it conveys your worth to us. When a woman dresses modestly, I can take her seriously as a woman because she doesn't look like she's begging for attention. She knows that she’s worth discovering. Such humility is radiant. Unfortunately, many women are so preoccupied with turning men’s heads that they overlook their power to turn our hearts.

Sometimes femininity is confused with weakness, but nothing could be further from the truth. A woman who is truly feminine is well aware that she could dress like a collection of body parts and receive countless stares from guys. But she has the strength to leave room for mystery. Instead of dressing in a way that invites guys to lust, the way she dresses says, “I’m worth waiting for.” She trusts God’s timing, and she knows that she does not need to make boys gawk in order to catch the attention of the man God has planned for her.

In his letter on the dignity of women, Pope John Paul II quoted a document from Vatican II, saying: “The hour is coming, in fact has come, when the vocation of women is being acknowledged in its fullness, the hour in which women acquire in the world an influence, an effect and a power never hitherto achieved. That is why, at this moment when the human race is undergoing so deep a transformation, women imbued with a spirit of the Gospel can do so much to aid humanity in not falling.”[3]

So what is modesty? It is not about looking as ugly as possible. It is about taking the natural beauty of womanhood and adorning it in a way that reflects one’s true identity. When a girl knows that she is a daughter of the King of heaven, she does not allow her outfits, conversations, and mannerisms to distract from this. She is aware that her body is sacred because it is a temple of the Holy Spirit. This brings about a certain humility of the body, since humility is the proper attitude toward greatness. In this case it is the greatness of being made in the image and likeness of God.

This is not an “I am woman, hear me roar!” bit, but a serene sense of not needing to grope for attention. Sure, guys will gawk at a woman who dresses provocatively, but in your heart do you long to be gawked at or to be loved? You want real love. When a girl dresses immodestly, she often does not realize that she robs herself of the intimacy for which she yearns.

When a girl wears outfits that could not be any tighter without cutting off her circulation, guys will think she is trying to tell them, “Hey, boys, the greatest thing about me is my body!” They will stare and will probably agree. But if her body is the greatest thing about her, it must be all downhill from there. If that is the best she has to offer, why should they get to know her heart, her dreams, her personality, and her family? They want to get to know her body.

Dressing immodestly also harms a girl’s chances of being loved. The type of guys who will be drawn to her will not be the type of guys who will treat her as a daughter of God. No matter how a woman dresses, she sends out an unspoken invitation for men to treat her the way she looks. For example, consider a magazine I recently saw at an airport newsstand. On the cover was a woman wearing a short skirt that could be mistaken for a wide belt. Her airtight top was scarcely the size of an unfolded napkin, and in big bold letters across the cover was “Suzie [or whatever her name was—I don’t remember] wants men to respect her!” I wished her the best of luck and walked on to my gate, after covering up the magazine with a few issues of Oprah. (I consider this a corporal work of mercy—clothing the naked.)

Although a girl deserves respect no matter what she wears, a guy can tell how much a woman respects herself by how she is dressed. If she does not respect herself, the odds are that guys will follow her lead. In the heart of a woman, there is no desire to be a sex object. Is there a desire to receive attention, affection, and love? Certainly. But is there a desire to be reduced to an object? No girl wants to go there, but many do for the sake of receiving emotional gratification.

When a girl puts on a belly-button-showing, spaghetti strap shirt, she is not thinking about how she hopes to lead men to sin. She’s probably thinking, “That’s a cute top, and it will look perfect with my shoes.” But beneath this simple desire to be attractive is a deeper desire to be accepted. If a girl understands how visual guys are when it comes to sexuality, she may look at the outfit as a means to receive attention. She may see the scantily clad mannequin and think, “That outfit turns heads. If I wear it, guys will look at me. Maybe I’ll even meet a nice one.” But her logic will not pay off.

Assume that a girl dresses provocatively and she comes across a genuinely good man. The man is no better off because of her outfit. Men are more visually stimulated than women, and immodesty can easily trigger lustful thoughts. When men harbor these impure ideas, lust separates us from Christ, the source of unconditional love. Does a woman really want to separate men from the source of the unconditional love she seeks? If not, then why not opt for the more modest outfit? There is nothing wrong with wearing things that make you look cute, but seductive and sexy outfits should not be part of a Christian woman’s wardrobe.

If your heart is saying, “Is this too short?” or “Does this look too tight?” listen to that voice. It has already answered your question. Listen to this voice for your sake and for ours. For your sake, realize that as a moat surrounds a castle, modesty protects the treasure of chastity. For our sake, remember when Cain killed Abel back in Genesis? When God asked Cain where his brother was, Cain replied, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” In the same way, it is all too easy for guys and girls alike to shrug off the responsibility we have to help one another maintain purity. Adopt the attitude of Saint Paul, and live in a way that does not cause your brothers to stumble (Rom. 14:21).

Some girls spend more energy trying to make guys notice them (even if they have no interest in the guys) than they spend trying to focus young men’s attention on God. As a woman of God, use your beauty to inspire men to virtue. Again, there is no problem with looking cute. Problems arise, however, when clothing (or the lack thereof) is worn in a way that is immodest, or when a person falls into vanity and excessive concern about looking perfect. Your body is precious in the sight of God, and you do not need to look like an airbrushed Cosmo model to deserve love.

from: www.Chastity.com