The Great Radicalizer

Who is the great radicalizer but the spirit of War?

Consistent,
persistent states of violent war
that reduce to meaningless suffering
unto despair -
the labor of our nations,
destroying the living fabric of our national communities,
and displacing the spirit and the memory
of entire peoples
from their own sense of common humanity.

War
that eventually calls down
an atmosphere (strange and unfamiliar)
that attracts radicals (i.e. political extremists)
from all walks of life -
and from all ways of religion.

But we, my people -

The Peace we shall share - together this time - shall be a great producer.

The Peace we are striving towards shall be a great producer of leaders, builders, farmers, fishers, merchants, artists, healers, craftsmen, and soldiers.

It shall be a Peace that sustains our common humanity and a Peace that obtains from God and All Heaven, every form of gift and blessing the LORD has promised our Father Abraham of old - for this Nation and all our kindred Nations in our one Family of Nations.

Learners we shall each be unto one another, knowing wonders - under this new Season and Sky.

It shall be our shelter in these times, and the overcoming strength of our generations.
---<--@


Keep Calm and Support the Bangsamoro

A Season for Faith and a Time for Reason

All things happen for a reason. And verily, Man is made to understand them. But all things under sun come each in their due season. So that Man is made to trust in his faith as well as to his reason.

Faith is a season to trust. Reason is a time to understand. And they come in cycles, great and small. T'is the First Sufficiency, and true for all. T'was with the Peace that never did fail nor fall.

The Lord Jesus many at time left trails in His Incarnation. Proclaimed in the Good News - He often left things He did to faith, and then gave faith in each person their own due season, so that each Man through his reason may in time hear - and understand His Word - and see the Truth they came to see.

That nothing in this world was built on random purpose, and that this is true! And so to those who feel their freedoms constricted because "everything" happens for a reason, the Lord Jesus says, "come and see", thy faith will you set free.

Faith and reason is like two freedoms reaching out to each other. Where they meet they kiss, and when they embrace the embrace of peace - as heaven and earth must always do, in the soul, and in time too - Truth is, for God is with us and Man hears, and faith remembers, and reason too, understands - all is well, all is well...

Therefore, Starshine, you must lead with your mind, but always think with your heart.


To understand the Trinity is to know more and more that God is one - and to proclaim Amen to the Truth: Amen to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit - the LORD indeed is one God alone!

And in Peace to proceed in God - with the Goodwill of God - for all Mankind.
---<--@


Mabuhay! May you always be in love, Beloved of the Love.

A Problem of Dust

I was from the Bikol, or my maternal lineage grew from out of it, I have found. And my paternal line is from Cavite. My ancestry is Tagalog and Chinese and Spanish.

But me, I grew up displaced. In cities and in places, in the here and there, that led me back to the wondering who I am and where I've been. And I have to believe urbanization has this effect on my fellow human travelers on the way of our return, who are traveling as Nations back to our home Country.

One does not grow roots in a city. One grows a business or finds some form of gainful work over there. But there shall always be from the city in the heart of a people, a longing for good, green soil and clear blue skies.

Does it mean one is not loyal to one's community? Loyalty to one's community is an essential character of one's civic identity, and allows us to embrace the whole universe, if we are as loving as we are wise.

No, I think it only means there is more to our national communities than just the living to make a living. And that the city community is only part of something bigger and better than itself, and must be. Else all the hum and the noise is just one great, big nothing. Not enough living to make a life.

One has to find time in all that living, for life itself - yes, life in the raw! Life in the "be" form. Living without the present form "ing". Basically, just being. 

Here in the Pinas, I feel we are blessed.

From within our Cities, we have little islands of just plain life in the raw. We Filipinos like to do everything as a unit, we like to pack it up in a jeepney just to beat the chill, especially during cold nights and dark, windy, stormy days (don't we?).

We like to live life up close, just to be warm and this warmth - and - the need to be warmed - for the longest time, shaped and informed our living culture in the Nation.

I have learned it by observation. And I have discovered it in myself as such.

Which is why, it is my own conviction that those of us who would like to abolish our barrangays have gone mad from too much exposure to the city life. But it is not their fault too.

There is no line that distinguishes where one ends and one begins. Neither its physical measures nor any of its interior dimensions seem to be distinct between the both from the fog of so many human dreams weaving and inter-weaving together with the noise of a hundred thousand things - city and barrangay seem merged but not because we understand how they are united, but simply because - I think we don't.

To lay upon the life of our barrangays is to find good, green earth. 

And to return to the basics of being just plain human and alive, and Filipino to boot. We need what we need as individual persons - and - as an extension of our human communities, there is always a social dimension to every individual human need, especially in us Filipinos.

As a matter of fact, I am personally inclined to conclude that we might be more persuaded to represent our voices in the Republic not as individuals but as any of these units - from family, to barrangay, to city or from any number of formal or informal groupings within our Nation and its Republic for as long as there is strength and comfort in their unity - for the horizontal structures of our Republic are peerages by their Institution, and preserve for us many things that pertain to our Liberty e.g. personal initiative, civic cohesion, political solidarity, and human sympathy, etc.

This is passionately democratic of us - our Liberty is beautiful, isn't she? She is also not dumb. For we as a people able to innately distinguish between a warmth that comfort and a fire that consume.

- selah (pause and think) -

Greater than the City, where the blue skies must be - where we must as fishes rise to get some air, we have our Provinces.

It is where we go to get a vantage on life, to look at things from a greater perspective. It is to me like Jesus overlooking Jerusalem in that painting that I love. But ours is more in that we have complete possession of our Provinces where in the Lord's time, it was different.

Therefore, our Provinces (who are our arcs of sky) also contain the water of our living culture, and it's air to us has a substance which is not empty (and musn't be).

We might go up to regional but that is like going out of the atmosphere.

Our regional in the National is for demographics and incident command and risk control purposes that the central government of our Republic utilizes to muster the Nation and to marshal the efforts of those first three LGU's as a unit, towards Time and the Truth.

To establish another sky upon another sky, and create another level of community in the regional - within our Nation, is just plain bureaucratic insanity, a humdrum thing that could go on and on ad nauseam.

To do the same thing under a barrangay is like going down into the ocean. And we have yet to grow gills. Everything is as it should, I think. Nope, (as Ron Weasley would say on the train) I think we're good.

Like when I was in Manila looking for Manila, the old Manila by the sea. I found I was looking only at her dirt and her grime. She was never lost to me. We only need to clean things up and reveal our quality.

There is nothing wrong or lacking in us.

It's all just a problem of dust.
---<--@

"Our home is a bit of a fixer upper,
there's nothing wrong with us,
all we need is a mop and a feather duster,
and get rid of the dust (ala Frozen)."

"So she's a bit of a fixer upper but this we're certain of, you can fix this fixer upper with a little bit of love."

=^.^=

The Haze

Hazing is all about the "haze".

There has been a lot of public controversy about hazing. Most of it is well founded.

This matter mostly concerns our youth.

Because most of those who speak out against hazing are grieving parents who have lost a son or a daughter to it - respected fathers and beloved mothers in the Nation.

For many are the names heard who perished from the ineptitude and utter recklessness of those who haze who understanding nothing about the "haze". And it is always one life too many, and it is always one of our hopeful and aspiring, spirited, young starshines.

Those who themselves did not conquer the haze now use their blindness to mindlessly destroy young lives and young dreams. They do not haze, they simply abuse. Some of them so wantonly and so recklessly that perhaps they have come to feel they have a special license to secretly propagate their violence in the minds and hearts of our children in the Nation.

They have no such right.

Those traditions who transmit violence for violence's own sake are evil and empty and also blind. It mires the spirit of our youth permanently in a state of inward confusion and afflicts them in their formative ages until they themselves resolve to regard violence as a point of clarity and resolution. Until they themselves become inwardly drawn to violence as a mode and an answer to interior conflicts.

It is a betrayal.



Those who did not physically perish - have themselves perished - from the thought - that lived within the formative longing in them - for those self-same spirit ideals of civic trust and human solidarity integral to the formation of a crucial sense of a uniquely personal sense of identity - distinctive - yet identifiable with and within a greater, common belonging - a civic identity, a citizenship.

- selah -

The issue at hand as regards the controversy on hazing, I am convinced, is not really about hazing but about those who have corrupted its spirit and living tradition. It is really about criminal abuse, spiritual corruption, and the betrayal of the common trust of our generations.

Hazing is an act of passing on. One does not endure it or merely survive it, one must conquer it and from it prevail in passing from a past life into another one.

It afflicts in an inductee, a deliberate sense of confusion and this state is - the haze.

How this is done may be physical or mental or both. And though it shall and - it must - always involve a level of pain, it must never be done to excess. Because it is intended to be a spiritual rigor. Those who pass it on must be careful in passing it on - because the act itself always contains something...

One emerges from the haze, into the fullness of the clarity of its intended evolution. It is always part of a program of initiation and indoctrination. And it is always an act of spiritual connection, sacred as well as intimate. It proves trust and blesses it. A paradox to those who do not experience it from within.

The haze is what it produces. Because a lie is a lie is a lie - but - it is not self-deception unless one believes that a lie is not a lie - inasmuch as to knowingly tell a lie and to knowingly impugn the Truth is not the same action.

It has something to do with character building - and - it has everything to do with leadership formation in a peerage Institution.

Because self-deception is the enemy of every Code that institutionalize leadership professionally in the formal and in the national, civil as well as military. And it shows no prejudice to rank just as much as the Code shows no yield to the equality of its application.

Because ultimately, it is only a question of one or the other.

The Code answers to a question, and it is a question of honor, and it is a question too - that no man nor woman may know the answer to - unless he or she becomes - and is made answerable to - the question itself.

And is not a question of violence - or how violent.

The haze is what it produces: It makes for a vigilant spirit and an upright heart. It produces focus and clarity of intention. And it is always an integral part of a greater spirit of a living tradition of leadership formation and academic excellence. It prepares leaders to serve among leaders.

But if it only passes on an empty spirit and a dead tradition - in this controversy on hazing, we may also see - the blind can never lead the blind.
---<--@

Life itself will haze us, you know. Individuals and Nations too. And in the world outside, if one loses sight of one's own true self - or what is true - it will be permanent, and it will be for real.

Fear only what is certain.

Then KCCO.

GunSMART: An Able Steward

Every Gun Safe and Gun Mature Citizen
understands the implicit spirit in - and - the explicit intention for
- the Second Amendment - as intended by General George Washington
being a natural Provision in the Freedom of the new American Nation
to be invoked in Liberty - as necessary for the Security of a Free State -
and through her constant Illumination - forever purposed - and proceeded -
across all generations to the last - by the duty of the Common Defense.

And in that same Faith - decisively undertook -
in God - and - in the Providence of God in Country,
thou - should now undertake to cross the same Delaware
with Washington - in thy own spirit - to train to become
after that last cold and bitter Wintering at Valley Forge
- a constant and Able Steward of the Gun.

 Every
GunSMART
Citizen - is a -

S - Safe
M - Mature
A - Able
R - Responsible
T - Trustworthy

Steward of the Gun.
---<--@

3. An Able Steward
is Safe, Mature, and quite Proficient
- in the keeping and the use of the Gun -
Fully understanding of the Power of the Gun.

That the Power of the Gun - is to kill -
and that this is a Power - utterly without recall,
without remorse to Life, without prejudice to Liberty.

The Vision of the Gun Able Citizen

is of one secure in a knowledge of the truth 

that the Power of the Gun is - never its Virtue.

So that an Able Steward,
in order to rightly Respect - the Power of the Gun
obtains for him or herself, an understanding of its Virtue.

That the Power of the Gun - is distinct from its Virtue;
that this Virtue is - Valor - and - Valor which is
the greatest expression of all Martial Virtue
and the order - and - purpose by which
all Martial Virtue must forever
distinguish themselves
from all Virtue.

For one is a fool who knows not
how to rightly respect - the Power of the Gun -
who in never seeking the truth of its Virtue and of its Liberty
can not be defended by its Power.

And another such a one
so taken by the Power of the Gun
who submits one's soul to the Allure of Arms
in the seeking to serve and to worship its Power
becomes a lowlier fool, who exceeding not the Ignorance
of the first fool - but transcends it - so infinitely so - that
he proceeds with great evil - and does great harm.

For those who serve the Sword
never serve the Sword by their Ignorance.

For
- as in the first fool -
the Ignorant
when Danger is near
may hearken to the Wisdom that arouses
their spirit to waken from the slumber of the dust.

But
- as in the second -
those who have become
by their own free submission
- evil-inspired -
are those who fear
no other ruin
more than the ruin that Wisdom herself
may call down upon their heads,
who have made a choice 
to remain unmoved.

Truly, the Sword of the Nations know of each of them
who - of its own truth - became intimate with them
only by their own Ignorance and Malice -
to their great and terrible regret.

For the Sword
that must fight against
each our own Ignorance of the Sword
- in Truth -
is the Sword that must likewise stand
against each our own Betrayal of the Sword
- in Justice -
before the LORD and before All
the Nations before God - is -
that selfsame Sword of the Nations.

And so
- they who become evil-inspired
by the Allure of their own arms
shall - against the Admonition of All
in Heaven and on the Earth -
forever know of a willful deliberation
(and the Despoliation of the Sword in them
come never by any accident of nature).

Thus,
during a time of greatest need
their own Nations shall forsake them
(and burden of their own Arms

shall work to crush them).

So that
even as their own swords are failing them,

their evil works shall die with them.

For verily, this is true -
by Providence and Gospel admonition:
all who serve the sword
shall die by the sword.

An Able Steward
does not - and - never will serve
the base nature of any Nation's Arms.

And because of it - not in spite of it -

proceeds in Confidence of his Freedom,
and through it obtains to a Maturity of its Virtue -
in Liberty, bearing its Burden firmly in the Right.

That the Virtue of Arms
wields the Power of the Gun -

for the Power of the Gun is to kill

but the Virtue of Arms is Valor
and preserves the soul 
against War.

Valor is Virtue - brightest against War,
as a Spear - set against the ensuing Darkness,
constantly aflame - with a Sacred Remembrance -
All that - in Light - must arise to lead Virtue into Battle,
commanding as Charity commands, is Valor ascending
to realize itself - in all Martial Virtue - for God and Country
in each Person of the Soldier - unto Victory - and unto Peace.

One then proceeds - to learn
of the Proficiency and the Skill
specific to each particular weaponry
seeking to Master its every utility
without ever succumbing
to the Allure of Arms.

And that the Nation is to be defended 

not by the sheer might of its Arms
but by the Virtue of its Arms -
as a Gun Able Citizen.

---<--@

*At the conclusion of this series,
I shall post a simplified version of GunSMART
and the GunSMART oath.



To my beloved nieces 
- Aleksis, Clara and Leila -
and their common generations
utterly deserving of safer schools,
saner communities, and abler mentors -
upon a brighter world, under nobler skies.

Remembering Tado

People say comedians are inwardly sad, that the reason for the brilliance of their comedy is a deep and personal familiarization with tragedy. I tend to believe this. Humor often conceals difficult truths.

I always wonder now how much we've lost with the passing of Tado. I feel he was working for the genuine betterment of our people to the North of Luzon when his life was cut short. 

I feel that he left us something to complete... 

I too feel strongly for the preservation of our indigenous tribal cultures from Batanes down to Sulu - theirs is a knowledge that is fast becoming rare in a globalizing, urbanizing planet - profitable for its ageless, proven wisdom - and am conceiving a "Council of the First Filipinos" to represent the Lumad ways of life as a force of good in the Republic. They too are citizens not unlike a city slicker like me.

Arvin "Tado" Jimenez (19740324-20140207) via con Dios.

The Phenomenon of Corruption

CORRUPTION 
in the manner with which we use it 
in the National Dialogue 
as citizens 
is usually implied to be 
a political malaise. 

Thus,
that same word, 
when in the forums of the Republic 
the issue of the popular will 
as regards corruption 
is - in every manner - heard,  
bears with it 
this weight of civic belief - 

that corruption 
is "political".

And so - 

Our genuine representations in the State 
whose particular politics - must - be relied upon 
to hammer and craft a policy on this matter (of corruption)
find themselves cast on the same boat 
with the disingenuous. 

Without the public trust, 
the politics of the Republic can not work 
in the manner it is supposed to work. 

   (Because 
   the public interest 
   - is - 
   this public's interest.)

And dirty politics 
will indeed 
creep into the Republic 
to cheapen the regal mantle 
of public service - 

the public 
and the Republic 
be damned.



So what is corruption? Certainly our Nation must consider this issue as an event - for the life of our Nation is more permanent than the Phenomenon of Corruption. And this is the truth. 

We were not always overly anxious about corruption till it became a life threatening sickness in the Republic. 

Poverty and corruption seem to be in a death spiral because the labor of our Nation translate not or is either dissipated or ignored by the unsavory politics that - we, the people - are supposed to own (i.e. exercise a proper civic ownership) in this Nation. 

Were we not a participatory democracy, everybody should be free to exculpate political responsibility from the people (and divest popular government of all its virtue). 

AND were we not a Republic, that same "freedom" (to willfully deny the character of our citizenship its first principles) may be a right invested forever in the "citizenry".

That the politics of the free 
belong not to the free 
and the right of its freedom 
is a political exercise 
of no one.

But that is not who we are. 

The truth for this Nation and its Republic is - if corruption were indeed political (and there is nothing to be done about it), then we are all corrupt. This makes us all responsible for the Phenomenon of Corruption.

Corruption is political. Therefore, what troubles it brings to our politics is our common concern. 



Political freedom - is ensured -
by the right to exercise its - expression -
- responsibly, purposefully, and honorably - 
in a participatory democracy, 
as citizens equally, 
and with our representations in government, 
knowing well - we are together - 
across our generations - to the last -
engaged 
in a Republic undertaking. 

Political devolution that is the exercise of our national communities as LGUs makes no sense if this power of popular empowerment was intended only for those who use it in a manner that is corrupt  - politicians of this stripe neither serve, nor sow, nor build, nor burden themselves with the weak and powerless, but only seek to reap. How do we make sense of our political freedom with theirs?



There are no good or bad politicians, politics was never a vocation - in and of itself - in this Republic, only public service.

And so, who we consider as our politicians are actually our public servants, whether good or bad, especially those who - we affirm - as an Electorate - in their Executive and Legislative seats of service - who are in various ways, skilled in politics. 

Whatever platforms and initiatives these elected officials in the Republic State shall represent - receive our mandate in the elections that affirm them - because they represented the matter well - in the public forums of the Republic.

BUT of the good ones, let is also be said - that they have won their mandates - because their agendas are derived from a heart that listens to what is real in the hearts of the people - and so serve to carry them out, their politics is the art of the real - real service, real needs, real people.

So in politics, there are those who are skilled in its exercise - living with and alongside the people - and also those who believe that politics may be exercised without a heart of public service. No one is a politician like these politicians. And no politics is dirty that represent what is sovereign in the Filipino people. 

We have truly dedicated public servants serving in our midst everyday, some of them exercise in our behalf, the politics of State - to make real what in the election we have affirmed in them - as a matter of policy. 

Corruption is not a political malaise - in them.

Corruption is what grows forth in fields of County where the laborers in the Nation become scarce. 

It is not a weakness in our civic spirit, but a failure to appreciate what is true forever in our common citizenship; a failure to recognize the tares from the wheat.



Legislating corruption will seem an impossible task without apprehending how Law may serve to confine its specific manifestations in the life of our national communities. 

Where our Justice system and juridical thoughts be led to suspect that corruption is ONLY political, it shall defer the matter exclusively to the Executive and Legislative as a matter of institutional self-maintenance. 

But the truth is, corruption affects all Filipinos in a very real way, producing poverty where before there was none and despair where poverty have for so long persisted - poverty that registers as a national security concern. 

Why is Justice herself (as she is established in this Nation) not impelled to act? 

Perhaps, we need an anti-corruption law. I personally think we do.

However, with our lawmakers and leaders saddled with the enormity of the political scandal wrought by Janet Napoles, it seems there is little time for it.



Public funds forever retain a public nature. 

Citizen Napoles should have realized the aforementioned fact and her personal freedoms should have responded accordingly. 

Any Court in the Republic may convict her for the misuse of the material representation of the spirit of our coming together as a Republic - that those taxes and all such proceeds that symbolize the parity of our common fortunes as one Country and one Nation - were never hers - nor were they the possession of those who authorized their individual disbursements - for the law recognizes theft as a crime. 

But no Court save the Justice of God in both individual and collective Judgment may convict her for the omission with which she first implicated herself and caused her to willfully commit this quite epic public disappointment we now witness unfolding in the life of our Nation - a transgression against her freedoms which are those same freedoms defined by her citizenship - which is that same citizenship that we are all responsible for - upon the Liberty of Country as we know it - because as a citizen, it should have been made well known to her soul that to bear the burden of our Liberty is to share in its light. 

These days, pending the conclusion of the Legislative inquiry, she stands a very good chance to lose her freedom. Indeed, the freedoms that bless are not the freedoms that curse.
---<--@



Personal Reflection

I feel, as I know most of us do, the enormity of the loss inflicted by billions of pesos not just in the material but also in the spiritual - for the taxes we all pay - are always - more than just their material worth. 

The permissiveness of it all confounds minds and crushes hearts. It sets us back years. And it affects lives in the millions, afflicting the Nation as a whole.

I do not hate Janet Napoles. I hate what she did but would never wish for anyone, the predicament she now finds herself irreversibly embroiled in - so full of betrayals, distrust, and seething malice. 

No amount of money in this universe is worth the value of good and simple, happy living. Wealth comes naturally to a free and happy people - AND this is who we are. 

AND this is why we are a Republic, to make it so.

My observation as regards the Legislative inquiry is first and foremost, as an aid to the work of sustaining the living law - public funds deserve better protection and this shall require the aid of Law.

To move the Nation forward with the times, we should also seek to better understand and realize - within each ourselves - the citizenship which is our heritage and the freedoms we are responsible for - because of it, that keep us free. 

Because in a way, we are each responsible for Citizen Napoles - not for what she did, but for who she failed to become.