Read the following articles:
Are You Running Meetings, Or Are Meetings Running You? (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.bates-communications.com/articles-and-newsletters/articles-and-newsletters/bid/59464/Are-You-Running-Meetings-Or-Are-Meetings-Running-You
Matthews, A. (2009, October 14). 6 Secrets Of Effective Meetings. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSft2OeMmzQ
Meeting Basics, Leading a Meeting – Before, During and After. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.effectivemeetings.com/meetingbasics/before.asp
Taking Charge of Poorly Led Meetings When You are Not the Leader | Facilitative Leadership & Facilitator Training. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://terrencemetz.com/2012/12/13/taking-charge-of-poorly-led-meetings-when-you-are-not-the-leader/
Attend a meeting. The meeting can be any one of the following: A work-based meeting, Municipality, township, or school district meeting, A meeting for an organization you might be involved with, or Any other meeting you can identify within the course required time frame.
Based on your reading, understanding of the articles, and your experience in the meeting you attended, answer the following questions:
Where is the meeting being conducted, and what is its purpose? Is the meeting focused on communications or problem solving, or is it a meeting with no specific agenda?
Is the meeting a regularly scheduled event, such as a monthly scheduled meeting or a meeting to address a specific matter?
Does the meeting have a set communication designed with relevant information to advance the meeting? Please explain.
Was the meeting opened with an announcement or explanation of its purpose and importance?
What was the communication style of the meeting’s leader or facilitator?
What were the leader’s bases of power? Select from a number of conceptual paradigms and elaborate on your selection.
Did the members or attendees have an opportunity to express opinions? Were they asked for suggestions, ideas, and information?
Did you recognize any conflict, disrespect, or tension among the members or attendees? If so, was the source of the conflict evident?
Did you observe the participants’ body language (such as posturing, positioning, or gesturing) when different topics were introduced? Describe it.
What was the intended outcome of the meeting? Was it achieved? Why or why not? What were the pivotal moments of the meeting which contributed to its success or failure?
Next, complete the following tasks to provide an overall critique of the meeting you attended:
Identify the positive, effective qualities of the meeting in one list, and identify the qualities which were ineffective in a separate list.
Arrange each list from top to bottom, from most important to least important.
Take the top three ranked factors from each list and explain the affect they had on the meeting.
Finally, imagine that you need to organize a meeting to introduce a new project in a health service organization. The project is sufficiently complex in size and nature to require an expanded cross-section of expertise from within and outside the organization. You are responsible for inviting the necessary individuals and representatives of involved departments and professional functions to the meeting.
Based on the principles contained in the articles, textbook, and elected independent research provided in the course, complete the following tasks:
Develop an agenda for the meeting.
Provide information, expertise, and background on the invited attendees. Explain the rationale and intended functional expertise each attendee brings to the group.
Recognize and develop measurable objectives to assess the success of the planned meeting.
Dante Alighieri played a critical role in the literature world through his poem Divine Comedy that was written in the 14th century. The poem contains Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. The Inferno is a description of the nine circles of torment that are found on the earth. It depicts the realms of the people that have gone against the spiritual values and who, instead, have chosen bestial appetite, violence, or fraud and malice. The nine circles of hell are limbo, lust, gluttony, greed and wrath. Others are heresy, violence, fraud, and treachery. The purpose of this paper is to examine the Dante’s Inferno in the perspective of its portrayal of God’s image and the justification of hell.
In this epic poem, God is portrayed as a super being guilty of multiple weaknesses including being egotistic, unjust, and hypocritical. Dante, in this poem, depicts God as being more human than divine by challenging God’s omnipotence. Additionally, the manner in which Dante describes Hell is in full contradiction to the morals of God as written in the Bible. When god arranges Hell to flatter Himself, He commits egotism, a sin that is common among human beings (Cheney, 2016). The weakness is depicted in Limbo and on the Gate of Hell where, for instance, God sends those who do not worship Him to Hell. This implies that failure to worship Him is a sin.
God is also depicted as lacking justice in His actions thus removing the godly image. The injustice is portrayed by the manner in which the sodomites and opportunists are treated. The opportunists are subjected to banner chasing in their lives after death followed by being stung by insects and maggots. They are known to having done neither good nor bad during their lifetimes and, therefore, justice could have demanded that they be granted a neutral punishment having lived a neutral life. The sodomites are also punished unfairly by God when Brunetto Lattini is condemned to hell despite being a good leader (Babor, T. F., McGovern, T., & Robaina, K. (2017). While he commited sodomy, God chooses to ignore all the other good deeds that Brunetto did.
Finally, God is also portrayed as being hypocritical in His actions, a sin that further diminishes His godliness and makes Him more human. A case in point is when God condemns the sin of egotism and goes ahead to commit it repeatedly. Proverbs 29:23 states that “arrogance will bring your downfall, but if you are humble, you will be respected.” When Slattery condemns Dante’s human state as being weak, doubtful, and limited, he is proving God’s hypocrisy because He is also human (Verdicchio, 2015). The actions of God in Hell as portrayed by Dante are inconsistent with the Biblical literature. Both Dante and God are prone to making mistakes, something common among human beings thus making God more human.
To wrap it up, Dante portrays God is more human since He commits the same sins that humans commit: egotism, hypocrisy, and injustice. Hell is justified as being a destination for victims of the mistakes committed by God. The Hell is presented as being a totally different place as compared to what is written about it in the Bible. As a result, reading through the text gives an image of God who is prone to the very mistakes common to humans thus ripping Him off His lofty status of divine and, instead, making Him a mere human. Whether or not Dante did it intentionally is subject to debate but one thing is clear in the poem: the misconstrued notion of God is revealed to future generations.
References
Babor, T. F., McGovern, T., & Robaina, K. (2017). Dante’s inferno: Seven deadly sins in scientific publishing and how to avoid them. Addiction Science: A Guide for the Perplexed, 267.
Cheney, L. D. G. (2016). Illustrations for Dante’s Inferno: A Comparative Study of Sandro Botticelli, Giovanni Stradano, and Federico Zuccaro. Cultural and Religious Studies, 4(8), 487.
Verdicchio, M. (2015). Irony and Desire in Dante’s” Inferno” 27. Italica, 285-297.
