Clicks-and-Mortar, Codes and Scripts, and C2Cs

Site News on Gospel and Culture

Our partner site, Gospel and Culture, will be having adjustments
starting this coming Wednesday, June 27, 2007.  If you wish to
access the site or to download the free Catholic eBook, you may
might incur some inconveniences.  Kindly bear with us as we make
the transition to a better web site organization by the end of
July 31, 2007.  To those who still have not downloaded the
free Catholic eBook, better download it before June 27 to
avoid unnecessary inconveniences.

Gospel and Culture is a web site that spinsoff from this first
web site, Catholic Internet Mission.  Originally intended to
promote the cause of John Paul II, it will continue to do so
with better content organization.  Although not meant to be
a web site that is specifically promoting the cause for
beatification or canonization of John Paul II, it is a web
site that honors him for his influence of promoting peace
across all cultures in the world.  If you have any article
or blog post that you wish to share in relation to how John
Paul II influenced your life for the better, or how he has
healed you, inspired you, encouraged you, or motivated you
to a sense of mission and holiness, you may send us your
article or blog post and we will surely publish it on the
site with your full name, email address and country of
origin.

The site will continue in its content development after
July 31, 2007.  As our first web site focuses on Catholic
culture, this web site will discover where the Catholic
ideal can be also found in such fields as: history, psychology,
business, inspirational books, motivational books, music
CDs, videos and films, and contemporary bestsellers. 
Featured in the articles will be book, CD, and video
reviews on the abovementioned fields and disciplines.

A special feature of Gospel and Culture is the free eBook
and free resource pages which you can download for free.
These resources give free information on how you can
make a Catholic presence on the Net through both
secular and Catholic internet connections.  You can
take advantage of our network to obtain greater traffic
for your blog or web site.  Our network has been started
since May 12, 2002 as a Yahoo! Group.  Though basically
Catholic, our network is interfaith and cross-cultural
and spans many links around the world.

Unblocking Writer’s Block

Writers experience writer’s block many times in their working lives.
This is just natural as the source of ideas in a writer’s pool of
knowledge or world of meaning gets exhausted through constant use
or through lack of new perspectives or new experiences.  However,
this condition can be managed when the writer just opens his mind
and broadens his vision of life.

“Opening one’s mind”

Although we know that opening one’s mind means accepting new ideas
or being more accepting of different ways of viewing things, it can
also mean using our intuitive faculty more.  Psychologists tell us
that most people use their left-brain - the brain that processes
our logical, mathematical, and sensory faculties.  This is to be
expected in our global society that is highly technical, data-based,
business-minded, and relying much on tactile facts.  However, we
have a right-brain that processes our dreams, feelings, ideas, and
“hunches”.  This is that part of the brain that helps those who
feel overwhelmed with a difficult situation and are working towards
a solution and then gets an experience of “eureka!”  The light bulb
suddenly lights up!  The person’s vision broadens by that single
“idea”!

Aids to help us use our intuitive faculty

Reading is a basic channel to tap our intuitive capabilities. As
we read more, our store of knowledge and experience gets replenished
by the books we read.  If we pick the right books, we can not only
gain information but also pointers for deeper reflection or guides
to obtain insight.

Taking a break is probably the best remedy for writer’s block.
A vacation with the family or doing something out of the routine is
very helpful.  This helps the constant pattern of our thoughts to
“get out of its box” and find new patterns of thinking or doing.

Listening to music is a soothing experience when you choose
mood music or music that is mellow - inviting relaxation and ease.
This helps soothe a writer’s tired mind and find new inspiration
from the musical composer’s arrangement or melody.

Sensing the wonder of nature is probably the most inspiring
experiences that any writer can tap into.  Nature invites us to
see beyond what is at hand - to dwell into the mysteries of life
and creation, and discover the Creator who reveals Himself through
them.

Attending a retreat is one way of combining all of the above.
In a retreat, you get to read, take a break, listen to music, and,
if the retreat is located in the countryside, you get a view of
nature which you may not often see in your backyard or neighborhood.
Retreats are given by many churches and parishes and by religious
congregations of priests and sisters.  They are given with different
themes.

Summary:

Writer’s block may not seem as formidable as it is when you can find
ways to overcome it.  When some writers write about “thinking out of
the box”, that usually means not thinking with your left-brain which
processes facts, information, systems, structures, and the like.
“Thinking out of the box” is like using more your intuitive faculty
in your right-brain: the brain which processes ideas, feelings, and
possibilities.

Writer’s block is a common condition among writers, and Catholic site
owners and bloggers are not exempt from this condition. When bloggers
suffer from writer’s block, it is often difficult to find means and ways
to get inspiration, especially if we are unaware of other sources of
inspiration.

Given below is a list of means and ways by which a Catholic site owner
or blogger can find inspiration to revitalize his writing.  This list
is by no means the only means; they are just suggestions.  And you can
always be creative in using these suggestions to fit your particular
writing situation.

Go back to your “dream”

We often have a “dream” or “vision” in life that is rooted in our love
for God, our family, our country, and the Church.  Part of the expression
of this “dream” or “vision” is building a Catholic site or maintaining
a blog.  When we feel cramped in our ability to write, let us go back
to this “dream” - and as it were, refill our sensory imagination with
images that will re-energize ourselves.  Just reliving the reasons why
we started a Catholic blog is enough to place us back on track. 

Continue to read the Bible and spiritual books

Writer’s block often comes to writers when they are in a routine, and
writing becomes mechanical. For those who experience writer’s block as
something akin to this, then reading the Bible again or reading new
spiritual books can help break this routine.  The Bible always brings
up an insight of wisdom that we never had before - even if we have read
that passage in the past.  As for new spiritual books, when we read of
authors we had not read of in the past, their style of writing may
inspire us to revitalize our own style of writing.

Take time for prayer and reflection

Prayer reestablishes our relationship with God and grounds us in what
is really essential.  As we take more time in prayer and reflection,
our minds and hearts are enriched with an insight into life that can
help us see beyond what is before our eyes.  This vision enlarges our
mind and helps it to access a knowledge and a wisdom that can only
come from the help of God’s Spirit.  Grounded in this wisdom, we can
then write what comes truly from the heart.

Continue to write your regular posts

Even if we experience writer’s block, we should continue on with our
regular posts.  This will prevent us from totally being taken out of
the momentum we normally keep during the week.  And it is not usually
the whole time that we write that we experience that “block”.  Sometimes
as we get on with our first paragraph, the momentum helps us to create
the second paragraph and so on until we finish the whole article or
post.  Before we know it, we have finished the article or post even
if we have writer’s block.

Never slacken in your ministry or apostolate

If you also have a ministry or apostolate, continue on with this action.
Sometimes, without really expecting it, you may experience something that
is inspiring: a group that you minister to shares how much your teaching
them means a lot to them, or an old person you take care of pastorally
suddenly progresses in her health and appears to be getting stronger.
These experiences can really revitalize your writing. Even if you do
not share these experiences directly in your blog post, the nobility
of that experience carries over to your writing.

Read Catholic news

Sometimes, reading Catholic news can fire up our imagination and help
us get ideas in writing our Catholic articles or blogs.  There are
many web sites that offer free Catholic news.  One of them is Zenit.
With these news, we can filter what is really encouraging and uplifting
and take those news as platforms for creating substantial Catholic
articles.  For the more politically-minded, these news can help one
be confirmed in his or her Catholic cause or advocacy.

Watching inspiring Catholic films

Nothing can spark anyone’s imagination as that of a well-produced
Catholic film.  Perhaps one film that we can watch again that is
apropos to our present liturgical season is the film produced by
Mel Gibson: “The Passion of the Christ”.  Watching this film can
again ennoble our minds and hearts to seek God more intensely in
our lives.  And when our minds and hearts are indeed ennobled, we
can write more easily what is expected of those who maintain
Catholic articles and Catholic blogs.

In the market space of the Net, many are using different browsers depending on their
personal or professional preference.  At present, we have found that our old home page
does not render well in all the available browsers on the Net.  Therefore, we have
decided to fix this and improve by changing the design of our home page.

Our web hosting service package with Yahoo! can help in this regard because it can
make a WordPress blog as the home page of the web site.  With a WordPress blog design,
we can make our home page render better in many browsers.  As with our other blogs in
the web site, we shall choose a design that many of our visitors, subscribers and
readers are already familiar with.

This change into a WordPress blog home page can also help also in other issues: like the
need to simplify the organization of content in the home page, and also to facilitate the
loading of the page in the browsers.  We hope to effect the transition to the WordPress
blog home page by next month.

For those who still wish to use the old home page, we will provide a link in the text
navigation that will help anyone who wants to switch to the old home page.

An Introduction

The times are indeed changing.  Usually, change is ushered in by new ways
and systems introduced into society and culture.  And one big system that
has been introduced into our global system is the use of technology.  With
technology as one of the means of living in this age, our age is becoming
rapidly an information age - one that relies heavily on information in
its operations.  With the trend especially of business to speed up things
and make their operations more efficient, technology has even helped
business operations process transactions even more rapidly.  Although
many businesses and corporations place still much of their capital on fixed
assets, as is the traditional way of proceeding in building a business,
with the present influence of technology, capital building and development
is more and more transformed into intellectual capital - what many
businesses see as the core asset for building an enterprise in the third
millenium.

What is intellectual capital?  In her book, “Intellectual Capital: Core
Asset for the Third Millenium Enterprise”, Annie Brooking describes it as:
the intangible assets of an enterprise - customer loyalty, good collaboration
with business partners, intellectual property and knowhow, electronic
infrastructures, and the innovative potential and skills of employees.
If we perhaps simplify her description of intellectual capital, we may
just describe it as all those things pertaining to the way people
and technology interact so as to process the development of a business
and enterprise.  With this in our imagination, then big buildings and
big machinery do not as before occupy the main capitalization of a big
corporation.  It is the expertise of people in an enterprise and how
they put that expertise in the use of technology that seems to matter
in these present times.  With that as the present trend, new lifestyles
and new ways of living are coming to the fore among people, especially
the young.

With more and more use of technology, corporations or those who wish to
engage in their own business, are finding it easier to operate one.  One
great benefit is the ease and facility of communication.  Electronic mail
or email, has made it not only easier and faster, but also more inexpensive
to create business communications.  Also, when an entrepreneur makes his
business available online through a web site, then he can even go beyond
the capabilities of an entrepreneur in the past and make his business
reach global destinations.  Thus, starting a business enterprise in the
present age has made it easier through technology, as compared to the
past when everything relied much on processing paper work directly, and
transacting interpersonally with many people.  Technology has cut the
work of business transactions and lessened the time in processing it
through computerized systems.

This web log will seek to enter into this new system, grounding itself
well in the old way of proceeding, and integrating the new systems of
doing business, so as to continue providing people with services that
they need in order to live in this information age of the new millenium.
The web log will uniquely provide information from a Catholic context
and gear itself to be in line with both what the web 1.0 technology
environment requires and what ethical standards the Church gives in
relation to the use of this social medium of the internet.
 

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