Churches based on Reformation ideas have multiplied into different forms, especially in historically Protestant countries. Even in much of Latin America, which is historically Catholic, Evangelical churches, which follow many of the Protestant ideas have greatly expanded. In the 20th century, some countries still had state churches, but also allowed full freedom of religion. In these countries, conflict between Protestant and Catholic Christians have become less important. They have to work together to confront a more secular society. In 2016 Pope Francis praised Luther in a prayer service commerating the 500th anniversary of the Refomatiom. In turn, some Protestant churches have embraced some Catholic worship traditions, and others have praised them for their stand on social issues.
Sermon
A sermon is a speech that a priest or other speaker gives during church service. The speech has a theological, religious or moral content. The purpose of a sermon is to give hope to the people who hear it, or to encourage them to do right things in their lives. The speaker may also talk about the current problems of the community, and offer ways to solve them.Very often, sermons given by priests or other clergy are based on passages from the Bible.
Sand
Sand is a mixture of very small pieces of different rocks or minerals. It is the same minerals from which those pieces are broken, such as granite and feldspar. Sand is gritty to touch. It is a naturally occurring granular material composed of finely divided rock and mineral particles. Sand is also formed various rocks by weathering and erosion. Erosion breaks large boulders into smaller rocks. They get smaller and smaller until they reach the beach or a low-lying area as sand.
Sand grains are between the size of gravel grains (which is from 2 mm to 64 mm) and the size of silt (which is around 0.0625 mm to 0.004 mm). Most sand is found on beaches, and in deserts. The most common sands are made of silica (silicon dioxide, or SiO). Calcium carbonate is the second more common.
Sand dunes are made when wind or a river pulls sand into a mountain-like shape. They can be found in deserts, but sometimes high up on beaches too.
Sand is crucial in the process of mixing concrete. It can also be used to make sand castles. Sand is sometimes in households for aesthetic purposes.
Alsatian language
Alsatian (, ) is a Germanic language. It is spoken in Alsace (eastern part of France).
Ian McEwan
Ian Russell McEwan CBE, FRSA, FRSL (born 21 June 1948), is an English novelist (who is also called "Ian Macabre" because of the type of his early work).
McEwan was born in Aldershot, Hampshire, England and spent much of his childhood in the Far East, Germany and North Africa where his father, an officer in the army, was posted. He was educated at the University of Sussex and the University of East Anglia, where he was the first graduate of Malcolm Bradbury's pioneering creative writing course.
He has been married twice. His second wife, Annalena McAfee, is the editor of the Guardian's Review section.
In March and April of 2004, just months after the British government had invited him to a dinner with First Lady of the United States Laura Bush, McEwan was denied entry into the United States by the United States Department of Homeland Security for not having the proper visa for earning a living (McEwan was preparing to give a series of paid lectures). Only after several days and publicity in the British press was McEwan admitted because, as he said a customs official had told him, "We still do not want to let you in, but this is attracting a lot of unfavourable publicity."
He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was awarded the Shakespeare Prize by the Alfred Toepfer Foundation, Hamburg, in 1999. He was awarded a CBE in 2000.
His first published work was the collection of short stories "First Love, Last Rites" (1975), which won the Somerset Maugham Award in 1976.
"The Cement Garden" (1978) and "Black Dogs" (1992) were his early novels.
His 1997 novel, "Enduring Love", about a person with de Clerambault's syndrome, is regarded by many as a masterpiece, though "Atonement" has received equally high acclaim.
In 1998, he was controversially awarded the Booker Prize for his novella, "Amsterdam".
His 2005 novel, "Saturday", follows an especially eventful day in the life of a neurosurgeon. Mr Henry Perowne, the main character, lives in a house on a square in central London where McEwan himself lives after relocating from Oxford.
The 2007 novel, "On Chesil Beach", was a short novel about one couple in England and how they experience love and sexuality in the early 1960s. The novel was on the short list of possible Booker Prize winners.
His most recent novel, "Solar", is a comedy. A fictional Nobel Prize winning physicist with a disorganized personal life is the main character.
Mahjong
Mahjong is a game for four players that was created in China. It is a game of skill, intelligence, calculation and luck.
A Mahjong game is played at a square table (four sides all the same length). The dealer is called the "east" player and everyone else is called a different direction because of where they are sitting - so the person to East's left is South, the person across from East is West, and the person to East's right is North. If East wins, he is the dealer again for the next round; if he does not, the dealer is the person to his right (North). That person then becomes East. A game of Mahjong ends when every player has been the dealer four times, or when they have played the number of rounds they said they would play before they started.
A single-player version of this game exists, called Mahjong Solitaire. It is based on the four-player game, but can be played by one person, so it is one of the games that are played often on computers (such as Solitaire, Spider Solitaire, or Minesweeper). Mahjong Solitaire is much simpler than four-player Mahjong: it is played without dice or chips, by removing tiles (set up in the shape of a pyramid) from the board in sets of two. Each set of two has to match - they are either exactly the same, or go together (two "flowers" tiles, for example). A Mahjong Solitaire player wins when he picks up all the tiles, or he loses when he runs out of sets of two that he can pick up.
Ionia
Ionia was a region in the west of Asia Minor in Ancient Greek times. It was in what is now Turkey. It was the birthplace of the Hellenic civilization. The Dorian invasion of the Peloponnesus, caused the migration of Ionic Greeks across the Aegean sea to Anatolia about 1000-900 BCE. The original Greek settlements in the region were numerous and small, but by the 8th century BCE they had consolidated themselves into 12 major cities—Phocaea, Erythrae, Clazomenae, Teos, Lebedus, Colophon, Ephesus, Priene, Myus, and Miletus on the mainland, with the islands Chios and Samos.By the end of the 7th century the Ionian cities had achieved great prosperity through their trading enterprises, their colonization efforts, and their manufacture of ceramics, textiles, and metalware. After World War One it was granted to Greece from Turkey in the Treaty of Sèvres, along with most of the islands in the Aegean sea, Thrace, and Turkey's most important city, Istanbul. The Turkish army drove the Greeks out soon after, killing many Greek people. They did not challenge the Greeks on the Aegean Islands, though.
Harmonic