On Original Sin

Pride is the first sin of the angels and led to disobedience. Disobedience is the first sin of Man and led to pride. Man is not inherently evil but inherently weak and this is the foundation of Original Justice.



Original sin is the inherent weakness against the Truth that was in spirit acquired by the family of Man through the disobedience of our First Parents.

It is not primarily an inclination to evil but a fatal lack of supernatural strength in the human soul that prevents it from applying itself freely and completely, according to its labors, in total submission to the Spirit of God.

It is a weakness; a frailty that in all humanity is transmitted across the generations of Mankind directly through Man's spiritual lineage which is, as an unbroken lineage of light that is ever begun from the Light of Creation, perpetuated like a terrible shadow that stalks with fear and death, the life of our common humanity.

(It's transmission across our generations can be illustrated with a flashlight whose beam when obstructed with any opaque object will project as shadow, the image of that particular object.)

It is not the effect of something that is present in the soul, as in personal sin, but of something that is absent in the soul which is the Presence of the Spirit of God brought about by the loss of our Original Peace with the LORD, our Creator.

To restore us to this Original Peace requires a Savior that can become the new Source of Light for all of the one family of Mankind; a Savior that can not be man alone lest we delude ourselves; this Savior has to be of God being God Himself and so God the Son came Incarnate to us, clothed in our humanity, as willed by the Father through Jesus Christ, the Lord, our Emmanuel.

Our baptism makes us into new creations because we acquire through the salvific nature of our faith in God through Jesus Christ - quite literally, a new Way, a new Truth, and a new Life: Christ is our new Adam.

For through Jesus Christ, Justice is perfected in Love and in this Love, the strength to overcome sin - original and personal, social or individual - becomes a grace that is available to all our humanity through baptism and the instrumentality of the Church with and unto all people of good will.
---<--@

Progress Report on the Fifth Battlespace

It was postulated, about the emerging nature of the information landscape, early in the 90's, at the beginning of the Revolution in Military Affairs, that information itself shall soon constitute a complete battlespace to be in particular recognized alongside the other existing four which is earth, sea, air, and space.

The importance of this characterization of the nature of information in our age in the context of the mission of the U.S. military was underscored by the designation of this nascent battlespace, of whose nature, climate, and environmental constants as well as variables were yet undefined, as primarily the specific domain of the youngest and brightest of the five distinct branches of the U.S. Armed Services, the Air Force.

This importance was driven primarily by the recognition from within the military of the emerging reality of an information threshold; that the realm of information evolving as a distinct presence in our world shall soon become decisively poised to shape the nature of human affairs in general but in particular, and as far as this report goes, the military affairs of the nations.

This was and still is evidenced by the growth of not a few information-centric thinking among the world's military establishments as well as the development and potential of those technological derivatives in support of those doctrines designed to establish warfighitng as an ability in the fifth battlespace.

This was over two decades ago now. And today we have yet to pierce the cloud that surrounds the fifth battlespace. I have come to a conviction that information which is inert yields not the secrets of its coming and going without a final recognition of a space that exists as an unseen reality beyond its nature where there inhabits a force that works behind its constant state of flux.

This force is spirit and, in my mind, it is spirit, not information, that constitutes the fifth battlespace.

Information as a whole is integral to the fourth battlespace which is space being that interior aspect of light and darkness that is both contained by space and constrained by time that in ebbing and flowing, dwells in a state of constant revelation to the mind of man.

And this new information age we are now thrust in, right here at the very crossroads, is - more precisely - an Age of Spirit and Thought.

I used to hold many fears as to the dangers of the fifth battlespace. Now they are not as many and those that do remain, though still quite significant, I feel are those we can, with good effort and concentration, hope to adequately mitigate if not master.

How we, as nations, understand information and how we apply its fruits to bless the human ends for which all information has been, from the very beginning of time, destined by heaven and earth depends on our strength of spirit and this strength of spirit depends on right remembrance - where:



1+1 = better. 
---<--@

Beyond the Ticks and the Tocks

Where is time found?

Is time behind us, can we look back
and see a stretch of past time disappearing
far, far back into the millions of years ago?

Where is time found?

Is time in front of us, can we gaze into the future
and see all the tomorrows that lay ahead of our hearts
far, far unto the unmade way of our lives in every moment born
from all those limitless horizons along the forever path?

Where is time found...
when it is neither behind us nor in front of us
but everywhere surrounding us?
Bursting forth from the abundant activity of our souls,
arising from the face of the deep, growing by God's nurture,
from each and every spirit that gives it breath
time is - in every moment we realize and recognize
the truth - from the timeless in all our very human hearts,
and all truth illuminated from the brightness shining in our spirits,
giving form and shape to the realities that arise everywhere about us
surrounding all that surround the totality of the human experience
like a great and mysterious chrysalis...

Where is time found...
but in all those moments without count?
Where does the timeless remembrance of time remain
after all the darkness in our eyes has fled forever into oblivion
but in the infinite and in the beautiful, in the loving and in the kind,
in the brave and in the strong, in the good and in the free,
and in everything that is faithful and true
and worth embracing forever.

Can time for us ever be a measure of distance?
Is the passing of our generations but a barrier and a wall
that creates separation and void between our ages and our years...

Alas! Is time an evil set against us?

Nay, my darling Starshine -
Not when time is an account of the heart.
For time seems distant only to those with distant hearts.

For all of time is Now, 'tis a nearness!
So shine thee the light of thy love, impress it in each moment and see
that you may from thy own illumination know and understand
from all thy comings and the goings, and despite of it -
what ever goes and what forever remains.
---<--@

II. The Republic

To Old Glory, an ode - 

Thou, 

at thy Birthing art forever conceived -

the home of the free, for the free, by the free

ensuring a government for the people, and by the people

carrying aloft the will and the mandate of all thy generations!

The vision of thy conception thus enshrined 

and the ideals of thy belonging thus conserved

through the economy of thy generations preserved

that Thou, that Dream - orphaned to thy own world, 

in spirit borne unto shores, distant and new, by pilgrim wings, 

to become a peculiar appearance upon the earth, a peculiar people -

art One - reborn into a unity of many, embracing a nation that is free 

and forever now endowed with thy own Spirit, faithful and true

vigilant in thy defense, and kept by God forever true to thy memory -

a nascent labor of Country, gained in Him, and through His grace

constantly achieved by thy own faith in His Providential trust.

Thou, 

at the Crossroads of Independence -

refused to be a nation in thy Spirit suppressed

by any power of hell or human dominion spread upon earth

nor enslaved by whim of tyrants with freedoms, evil and strange,  

than THIS, the dominion thou hast at thy Birthing established
in Covenant with God, and before all thy kindred nations in Eternity,

for Thou art fully invested in thy becoming, as a work of His hands,  

stronger for each thy hope in each thy present generations arising 

brighter for each thy days lived in memory of every generations past,

thou art like a song that in the stillness of thy heart gets better and better 

with every music that begins to play for all thy generations left unsung.
   

Thou wert a labor of the LORD, forever unworthy of another!
For the freedom of God shall be the inheritance of thy nationhood

and its principles thou hast with all thy heart resolved to keep forever.

Indeed, this is thy Liberty and well suited to thy love and allegiance  

and Thou art today for shame if thy own freedoms are not wholly thine

and that Thou art for naught today if thy own honor thou shalt desert

for truly Thou art in courage better served - always - than in fear

and so Thou called forth thy own Great Defender to thy common defense
(for Thou art His, the LORD's, and may this be of thy conviction forevermore)

and an army rallied to the first thy great and noble Fathers, George the free,

for as a nation thou resolved to be led - even unto war and its attendant evils.

Thus in thy will of love and fraternal sacrifice,
even unto the shedding of thy blood and thy tears
Thou - through the travails and terrors of battle enduring and persevering -

did come to recognize in the ensuing clarity, the quiet dignity of Thy peoplehood;
of what formlessness has made Thee as a form upon the earth - 

of what Spirit truly made thy citizenship utterly and completely thine.

And 

dedicated to the Principles Thou undertook at thy Birth
thou forsook the old in order to become the new 

and took on the name, America, the United.

And in thy bravery and in thy self-reliance 

and with all thy imperfections glaring, 

and with all thy hopes still shining

thou went to be thy Republic - 

From the fires of Yorktown

arose thy eagle wings!
---<--@



Guard thee thy remembrances well and in this faith persevere...
Lest we forget, lest we forget: This we'll defend: This Memorial Day 2013.

A Letter of Protest

To one Chinese nation: I salute you, China, ancient and wise nation of old and Taiwan (ROC) in particular - peace be with you and all your generations:



I condemn in the strongest way possible the continuing violence against my compatriots in your territory. I do not think I can watch idly by while my countrymen and women are presently subjected to the pain and duress of this unjust threat that looms over their citizenship with me.

They have absolutely nothing to do with the issue at hand and do not deserve to suffer for its evil - an evil we can only together attempt to address that it may withdraw its foul presence from the peace of our region, sooner than later.

These are our citizens, human beings who have sought in good faith to apply for and to work an honest job within your economy under your nation's patronage and your government's protection.

Rest assured we will honor our obligations to shelter and protect your citizens or any other citizens from any nation who came in peace to the shelter of our Republic, and uphold their human rights within our territory not because it is expedient or "politically correct" to do so right now but because it is only the natural way of things for this nation and so it shall be this way for my Country till the end of time - peace embraced with peace: It is only right and just.

Are we not a democracy? Both of us know the strengths and weaknesses of our chosen system. Right now, the effects of your lack of action to shelter the innocent in your care and protection is weakening what reason now prevails, both in the popular and in the political domain, that preserve those courses of action that will allow us to peaceably and responsibly resolve this unwanted and unneeded sea row, an issue now necessary and vital to our mutual national concerns and freely determining from what is true and what is not, how to effectively proceed.

I do not know the source of your belligerence and am admittedly still confounded by it. I hold no memory in my remembrance of our history of a division like this ever plaguing our peoples.

Yet as I seek to be prudent with what is weak in our systems, I trust also in the strengths of democracy as I must and so should advise you now most urgently that your failure to address the safety concerns of my compatriots in your care is stymieing the process instead of helping it.

None of us can resolve this issue on our own, only together - empowered in our will by the good will of both our peoples - can we run the gauntlet that will bring our Countries back into the fold of the peace our peoples have always steadily and quietly enjoyed.

Let us return again to the root of your passionate protests and know that we are just as passionate a people as you are in loving and protecting our own. I know that in this regard we both agree, we must truly love our peoples. And do so because both our nationhood hold to the truth that all human life, with all its foibles and vulnerabilities is of precious value and unlimited potential, each endowed equally and individually with natural rights and that this is the reason we are both a work of freedom; a democracy - to unleash in our citizenry the creativity, greatness, and nobility of the human potential and to protect and preserve their life and dignity.

I believe if we reflect upon this thinking more deeply, we will understand each other. We will understand as I do now hope we understand - that each human life to us is sacred - that you may feel how we too value our own and so understand the reason I must appeal in this protest to your reciprocal sense of civic solidarity:

Please extend to my people under the shelter of your care, the safety and the respect they deserve.

I am truly sorry for your loss, I truly am. Please, I humbly implore you - let us work now to reverse the tide.
I am just as eager for justice to give adequate redress to your sense of loss - to unveil the truth, properly compensate Hung Shih-cheng's next of kin, and pay the debt of remembrance both our nations now owe your deceased compatriot by recognizing in the living memory of his hope and the pain of his family and friends the present need to strengthen the mechanisms and institutions that work to help prevent similar tragedies from reoccurring, safeguard the integrity and completeness of the laws that serve to govern, protect, and conserve our seas and its riches, and affirm the peace both our sovereign peoples have always enjoyed together.

I believe agreements may only be made from seeds born from common understandings. Furthermore, I believe we are able to reach these understandings because we are simply born from the same spirit and that this seeking to freely allow truth itself to prevail - because truth ultimately will - is simply part of our strength as a democracy. For I do believe in us and desire for both our nations along with all our kindred nations, a future worthy of our common humanity.

Thank you so much for your patience. I am hopeful you will receive with reason and compassion, my most sincere and humble letter. God bless us all.

Mabuhay!
---<--@


UPDATE 20130527: Thank you, Mayor Hau Lung-pin - for being one of the first who stood up for peace and sanity between our peoples - peace be with you - Mabuhay, Taipei!

Salutation #177

Spirit is light.

Thus, how a shadow is transmitted at the source
is also how the original wounding of the first man and woman
became the original wound that - in our soul - we all carry
down the line of the generations of our humanity
to the very last of our generations.



(The Original Wounding)

"The Devil sinned in the Presence of God
but Man sinned in the presence of the Devil."

Original sin was just that... a sin - the sin...
(whose it ultimately was still depends on each of us)
It was transmitted from our original parents
down the spiritual lineage of our common humanity
as an infirmity in our hearts, an original wound:
   the cause of our exile - the separating hurt of time -
   the pain of all our pain - the fear in all our fear -
   the source of all human suffering and death
because truly, brothers and sisters,
we are more universally inclined to weakness in our natures
than to evil - for this is how we are human...  
because we are vulnerable.

Therefore,
we have to be gentle and kind
with ourselves and others like ourselves Now
knowing that to be human is ONLY to err and NOT yet to sin
and be human with our own humanity -

Indeed,
let us strive to understand - once and again -
that the origins of sin is not human...
because an understanding of this is - of that same truth -
which underpins our understanding of Justice.

FOR -

The Justice of fear and punishment,
the Justice of hatred and vengeance -
this believes that Man is by nature evil.

It believes all men guilty right from the very beginning
and accords all that is evil unto all human institutions,
and evil's damnation unto all human nations,
sowing despair at its wake.

But the Justice of love and restoration,
the Justice of repair and repentance -
this believes otherwise:

It believes all men innocent
unless proven guilty by their necessary degrees,
each according to the living customs of the laws of our nations,
and accords the merit and virtue of these self-same remembrances
to empower human institutions, and strengthen human nations,
sowing hope at its wake.
---<--@

Salutation #176

THINK about time...
how we both have it and we don't.



(Time is a Nearness)

Starshine, listen -

Time as it was intended
and time as we humans have intended it
are two very different things -

Time in its entirety is an ascent,
it is a shedding away, it is an unveiling
and has everything to do with right remembrance
and the power of Truth -

BUT
time as a human construct is a rote and linear thing,
meant to insert upon the unimaginably vast folds of time,
a limit and a count to make it more comprehensible
to our littleness...

- selah -

When we humans allow ourselves
to become unwitting slaves to our own constructs
we place our human limits within these artificial limits
we have likewise originally placed for ourselves
in order to gain a knowledge of the wonder of greater things
humility then turns to pride - and time for each of us -
becomes a measure of physical distance
instead of a measure of nearness
and of spirit brightness.

BUT
time is much more than just its segments
and our humanity, in all our littleness certainly,
though intended to ultimately be masters of time,
never were its Author nor its Source nor its Truth.

And in this thought, surely there is hope.
---<--@



The time referred to above is the time that does not exist - so...

Salutation #175

Money is but a means to obtain wealth.

Brothers and sisters of the Promise -
if money and the mere count of all worldly things
were the ultimate end of our coming together into one nationhood,
we should realize - here and now - that we should be
the most unfortunate gathering of souls
in all of God's living creation.

For the devil has his crushing evil lies,
and the angels their quicksilver blue wings,
and the LORD, His glorious, golden Eternity -
But alas, my poor nation! we shall have nothing
if we do not learn, God helping, to multiply our means
not by selfishly obtaining for ourselves the mere number of their count
but by making - in behalf of the All of ourselves - even the merest of means count
so that every generation will have something that remains
to build upon and to hold dear.



(On Eagle's Wings)

Truly,
every nation has its wings
endowed to lift unto the sky of Heaven
the burdens of the earth-bound feet of Man.

But to do so,
We must realize that we, who are but one in our community,
should always look to the least, to the weakest, to the lowliest -
ever to the ones closest to the heavy and difficult ground of our earth
and know that we can not lift up our nationhood with its own wings to fly
IF we can not together uplift the lives of the poorest of the poor
in and amongst ourselves.

The power of our release from the gravity of our earth
we acquire from the presence of the poor - and we shall always have them -
(because the poor is, by measure of time as a whole, none other than the All of us)
for it is they - who are, at each moment, among the least among us - who give to us
- as a nation among nations - ever by the grace of the LORD, our King,
the constant opportunity to fly and to ascend to our completeness.

Remembering now the 4th Cause -
(which is the key to wealth generation in this new age
and the threshold that leads unto the other three Causes)
Indeed, within this Republic undertaking of Country
under heaven upon the earth - each of us -
who become rich becomes rich indeed
when we learn how to make each other rich
within a labor of Country borne ever aloft
by an economy of matter and grace.
---<--@

I. The Birthing

To Old Glory - an ode



Of all the colonies,
Thou alone were in spirit unbowed,
thy nationhood ever conceived in liberty,
by pilgrims seeking the simplicity of a freedom
that is not wearisome and a faith that is pure -

Ah,
thou wert a peculiar appearance upon the earth -
a root of the old world carried to the new!

Thou wert strangeness and beauty all at once.

Thou, a people called and a spirit arisen - 

amidst a thousand ancient nations, the very last;  

a new community sown upon the soil of the new

bound not of blood nor tribe nor earthly bonds

being a people called through waters of the spirit   

into a nation born of vision and nurtured in liberty,

the first in thy founding and the last to be found.

Thou, at thy Formation determined -

thy destiny lay in the care of the Providence of God 

and that thy peace is strength to overcome all adversity.

And 

in wisdom still lacking but with determination so rich

preserved by thy faith and in thy freedoms nurtured 

thou enjoined each thy generations in great earnest,
despite all the many things yet left uncertain to thee,

to the call and the labor of thy emergent nationhood.

Through times of peace, and through times of war, 

life and abundance came before thee to nourish thee

and the care of friends met thee at every crossroads

for thou wert blessed by the LORD with sure safety
setting thee aside to work a work of glory in His Name

even as tears and calamity followed thee in thy wake.

And 

thou numbered the days of thy youth in great measures 

as thou grew in wisdom and age and strength of years.

Spirit and Freedom were thy most ancient of names.

---<--@