To use a line from the recent HBO mini-series, "Game of Thrones":
"Winter is coming, we can not afford to fight a war among ourselves."
(The Evil in all evil things)
If guns were the root of all evil,
we'd be fighting these wars
with sticks and stones instead.
If money were the root of all evil,
we'd still be poor for lack of love.
If people were the root of all evil,
why are there still people in this world
so much in need of our humanity?
For God does not suffer evil without a cause!
And if God were the root of all evil,
why do we suffer all these questions?
Alas! There is an Evil in all evil things -
all that in spirit sows diverse corruption in the soul of Man
causing the human spirit to turn against its own self;
inspiring the human heart with adulterous lies
and the promise of empty, defeated things
poisoning both the willing as well as the unwary of soul
with false inspirations wrought by the fallen vision
of the eternal destiny of the nations of the children of Mankind.
This spirit is the spirit of War -
the ancient adversary of all national community;
an emptiness that seeks to consume as if with fullness -
crafting division, sowing discord, scattering peoples,
and devouring generations entire.
- selah -
We shall not be useful against War.
For to contend against it - and therefore, against each other -
is what War desires for us to do.
We are to build from upon these times,
the better, brighter, kinder shape of things to come;
maintain it where it needs, advance it where it should,
defend it where we must, always being mindful -
to never exceed ourselves in our observance of peace.
For the more we build upon our peace as one nation,
the more we drive against the darkness of War - and -
as we press on and away from this midnight of our times,
the more sense of hope we shall meet along the way,
ever the nearer we are to the breaking of the day
- where the new age awaits -
ever shall we also know Peace
in our heart of hearts.
And even if we do not live to see those days,
for we are here to nurture trees whose shelter we shall never use
and to build the foundation of things we shall never finish
- if we believe in the LORD and in each other -
if we endure despite ourselves and prevail in unity and in the Good,
in spite of all these things, we shall,
at the one final gathering of all our nations,
I know, come to a knowledge of these things...
- selah -
O my beloved people -
remembrance is the bond
that binds together our lineages,
our families, tribes and our peoples,
into that one gathering sense
of a self-cognizant identity
that we recognize as our nationhood.
It is in our spirit;
a unity bound by our labors
to obtain from God and heaven,
the vision of our peace - here on earth -
in time - and - unto the fulfillment
of time as we know it.
It is a unity fostered and protected by our one Republic - forever -
and a Republic guarded jealously by the Angel of the Philippines.
If there were a billion of us who belong to this one nation of ours,
endowed by our liberty with the same strength of diversity,
we would each be possessed by the same awareness
of what makes our belongings to each other
a valid and common reality.
We are children of the Promise
and born to this Land of Promise
unto a labor of common dreams
as citizens like unto each other.
We are Filipino
who by any other name
is what binds us together
as this one Filipino nation.
And this sense of belonging applies
so long as we exist as a people
together in time (our generations)
and across dimensional space (our families, our tribes)
so that if there were only two of us left,
it would still be the same truth.
Therefore, as a nation, when we forget,
it is worse than when we knew nothing.
For when we knew nothing,
there was nothing to forget.
But when we forget,
we are always divided against something.
Worse, it is always something
we should never have forgotten.
The War in Heaven is in the heart.
---<--@
"Ang bansa nati'y hindi nabubuhay dahil madilim ang gabi."
Never Again!
Revelation 12: 7-9
O Holy Michael,
by the power of God,
the dragon prevailed not!
O Heavenly Hosts,
by thy swift and powerful ascent
to the unity of the LORD,
Satan and all his fallen angels
lost their place in heaven.
War is vanquished forever!