Man and Woman as a New Creation

In this day, precious Starshine, the women of this Country possess a high degree of freedom. And it gave our national thinking a kind of soul.

Prostitution they say, is the most ancient profession.

Truth is, prostitution is only as ancient as it endures in the life of our communities today.



It has been such a persistent truth over the ages that prostitution is a womanly profession that perhaps, a greater part of our humanity may have somehow come to believe it were an honorable and ancient trade - disgracing and abusing Woman and her children.

Let me say that it is not.

Woman too was a victim in the beginning.

She and Man suffered equally the consequences of our temporal banishment from the everlasting freedom of our our original innocence.

Prostitution, dear Starshine, is a failure to protect. It becomes a profession only as a result of this evil.

And by a failure to recognize and to craft effective laws that ensure the dignity of the person of Woman is to be preserved equally right alongside Man, we inadvertently sway in support of this lie, that somehow the sex trade in Women and children is in fact, "a trade".

Where this is the fault of Man, it brutalizes the image of Man because of who Woman is to Man, not despite of her.

Where this is the fault of our nations, we perpetuate the victimization of the inherent dignity of Woman (at our expense) and as a labor of Country the necessary success of our common ascent is held back by our lack of remembrance.

Man and Woman as a union is one.
Truly, both were meant "to be".

If Man is mind.
Then Woman is heart.

So that together
Man and Woman
may become
one soul.

They are qualities equal
but not the same.

If Man is pilot.
Then Woman is navigator.

Theirs is a journey that must proceed
from the freedom of their giving,
lest the family lose its power
to shelter and to raise you,
dear little ones.

Unity of family
proceed from Man and Woman
establishing both their faith and authority
over each other, lovingly and wisely,
that a proper dominion may be established
over the generations of Mankind.

This authority in Man and in Woman
to place upon the earth their common tent
in sight of the LORD is not an authority
to establish a permanent dominion
over one - or - the other.

For their union
of bearing and strength

is one complementary equality 

intended for the renewal of creation
being itself a unity - constantly new and ever new
upon the earth - to live, love, and to set each other free

and in doing so, in between their pains giving birth
to the transformation of the life of the earth.

---<--@

Beauty is timeless.

Beauty is ageless.

Beauty is always in season...
And is forever known to be so.

What is most beautiful is fleeting, all that is worth remembering is what is most beautiful...

Do you remember?

The Archetypal Hero

True self-expression makes heroes of us all.

=^.^=

I think there is a hero
hidden in every person.

We all have our right moments...

When this hero inside of ourselves arise
to uphold something good in this world.

The wonderful thing about this
I have found is:



Each time the hero in ourselves arise to save something good,
it arises to save that something good in ourselves first...

That something good in ourselves reflected in the other person
that the hero in ourselves implicitly recognize...

Whether we know it or not, when it arises, within that moment

we act.

In a way, it might be meant
that we save each other,
you see.

Because in a way, we are all heroes.

It just might be the way it is.

- selah -

The question then is this:

This hero spark,
our precious Starshine,
from Whom did we get it?
---<--@

A different kind of different, are you up to it?

Justice for Jennifer

Politics and justice do not usually mix well. The courts of our justice system insulates itself from public sentiment for a reason.

Justice is not a spectrum. It is a compass direction that must always point to true north. Public sentiment always represents a much larger expression than this.

Politics on the other hand is usually served by tides of public sentiment and public sentiment only insofar as the public passion is at its flood.

Both serve as distinctive expressions of the enduring life of our national values. Apart, they are clear. But taken together, they represent a false choice.

The cause of justice for Jennifer should prepare itself for a difficult road ahead.

Because when politics and justice mix, it is often at the expense of the other. Which one depends on who is left believing and holding on at the turn of the tide.

I am for equal justice before the law.

No one deserves to be murdered in the way she was murdered.

This is a human being, let us remember - with human struggles, human hopes, human connections, and a citizenship which causes her to belong equally and equitably with all other citizens in our Republic. One could say the same of Pfc. Joseph Scott Pemberton.

All of these are equal considerations.

The unfortunate thing is that, due to the inescapable weight of larger issues beyond the context of this case, these individually human considerations might have inadvertently taken on a political spin.

Due process, custody and safety, correctional jurisdiction are inherently non-political issues. They belong to a sovereignty (of being) that is universally exclusive and imiscible to States.

To be honest, I am not privy to the details of the issue. I do not think this is a hate crime though. It might be more a crime of passion. There are certainly things that can and must be done to prevent and deter crimes like this from happening again in the future.

I do not think this must affect our friendship and treaty obligations with the United States. I am thinking much more of those US citizens who live in friendship with our people than with the politics of the matter here.

However, if we do not streamline and clarify the process of expediting justice in cases such as these, it might affect the overall effectiveness of our being able to carry it out as kindred Countries. Defense being always a matter carried out in the absolute.

We are both a democracy and should understand the weight of public sentiment and the vitality of national memory. Our governments alone can not sustain the potency of a national friendship and treaties alone can not effect a truly common defense of this vital friendship.

Good will must be displayed in the treatment of this case on both sides.

My sincerest sympathy goes out to the family and the friends of Jennifer Laude. It would be remiss of me not to extend my condolences to the bereaved - to those loved ones she left behind in our care.

May her soul find the peace that this world was not able or willing to offer her. May she find her way back to the God Who loves us all and gives us hope for our humanity.

Jennifer Laude is a victim. This is the bottom line. Let us not make more victims in her name.

Justice must be done.
---<--@

20141026: Apparently, there exists two other concurrent cases involving the murder of a transgender individual. When I began ruminating about the fate of Jennifer Laude, the first question that came to my mind was, "what was primary will driving the public outcry, the core sentiment as it were at the center of the outcry?"

Is it because Laude is a member of the LGBT minority sheltering under our Republic peace or is it because the alleged perpetrator just so happens to be a serving member of the US Armed Forces?

I was afraid it shall be the latter because it proves that much of the outcry is political - clamoring for an issue more than the human issue we should be dealing about in the immediate.

I understand Susselbeck is outraged. I do not wish to expound on his morality here. I sympathize with his loss of an intimate personal connection. He led one of  the protests in Aguinaldo, got into an unfortunate scuffle with one of our soldiers, apologized, and is now on his way back to Germany.

Should we make him into a persona non grata? I think we should have clearer guidelines on that too. This however, is a matter for our lawmakers and policy innovators.

One great round

Time is a flow. 

Flowing forward for everybody.

For each of us however,
time seems one great round.

For all of time
for all of us
in the absolute sense
is a reconciliation
with ultimate beginnings.



Life is a struggle. 

Free will is at the root of this struggle.

Some people would say free will is the root of all evil.

I shall beg to disagree with them.

- selah -

We all live to be free. 

Free of what though? Free of our free will?

Shall we shed off time and mortality to find only nothing? 

Is this humanity's truest, innermost expectation of the end of time?

Even those who do not believe in the Divine must know there exists evil in this world.

The freedom we must all live for is not the cause of this evil.

- selah -

The root of all evil is evil itself. 

That we human beings
must suffer to live our lives through this world
is because there is evil in this world that persists
and shall persist while this world persists.

The Evil in all evil things is the root of all evil.
This Evil is the indirect cause of physical evils.
This Evil is the direct cause of moral evils.

It lies beneath the fabric of all things seen.

- selah -

This is why in this life, 
we must struggle.

Not in spite of all that is evil
but in the very midst of it.

Not despite our free will
but precisely because of it.

That we may know once again
how it is to desire to live
in perfect freedom.

That we may together again
regain in original perfection
at the beginning of all things new
the abundant power of our free will.

One great round.
---<--@

Brave

Choose the journey.
Change the world.

---<--@

Marriage is not a Love Affair

Found these passages meaningful...



CAMPBELL: ... But marriage is marriage, you know. Marriage is not a love affair. A love affair is a totally different thing. A marriage is a commitment to that which you are. That person is literally your other half. And you and the other are one. A love affair isn't that. That is a relationship for pleasure, and when it gets to be unpleasurable, it's off. But a marriage is a life commitment, and a life commitment means the prime concern of your life. If marriage is not the prime concern, you're not married.

MOYERS: Does romance in marriage last?

CAMPBELL: In some marriages, it does. In others, it doesn't. But the problem, you see, the big word in this troubadour tradition, is "loyalty."

MOYERS: What do you mean by loyalty?

CAMPBELL: Not cheating, not defecting -- through whatever trials or suffering, you remain true.

MOYERS: The Puritans called marriage "the little church within the Church."In marriage, every day you love, and every day you forgive. It is an ongoing sacrament -- love and forgiveness.

CAMPBELL: Well, the real word, I think, is "ordeal," in its proper sense. That is the submission of the individual to something superior to itself. The real life of a marriage or of a true love affair is in the relationship, which is where you are, too. You understand what I mean?

MOYERS: No, I'm not clear on that.

CAMPBELL: Like the yin/yang symbol, you see. Here I am, and here she is, and here we are. Now when I have to make a sacrifice, I'm not sacrificing to her, I'm sacrificing to the relationship. Resentment against the other one is wrongly placed. Life is in the relationship, that's where your life now is. That's what a marriage is -- whereas, in a love affair, you have two lives in a more or less successful relationship to each other for a certain length of time, as long as it seems agreeable.

from The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell
---<--@

Love Quickens

VII. Love Quickens

The measure of love is to love without measure.

I do not know where I happened upon this saying, my loveliest love, but isn't it so true?

When I was younger, I looked at love differently. I took it from itself.

I made love mine and mine alone.

I wanted my girlfriend for myself and myself alone. And she wanted the same of me.

But love has a way of turning the tables on strangers like us.

In its own mysterious time, unknown to the uninitiated, to make itself known, love suddenly reveals itself.

With a sword, love pierces the heart. It draws blood to quicken the lovers to itself.

Then with strong arms, it subdues the self until it makes us all its own.

And suddenly, the stranger is a stranger no more.

We are one.

Unfortunately, my darlingest dear, that relationship did not survive the quickening of love.

For our hearts were not able to bear the doubt.

Nor our egos able to withstand the hurt.

Neither of us were strong enough to bear for each other, our love; the failing of our youth.

I was hurt. She was hurt.

Love was also hurt.

But it was the hurting that heals and it was the bearing that teaches.

And so for many years I grieved. Not really knowing that love also wept with me.

I do not know how many years it took for love to bear me away from my grieving, my loveliest love. But when I was able to smile again, it was with you.

It is all that I can remember now...

- selah -

True love begins with a doubt.

When love asks of itself, "do you love me?"

If one loves the beloved without measure, there is a sense of wholeness that embraces the lovers both ways and the heart that knows it doubts itself not saying,

I do.

There is a bittersweet pain to loving.

Lovers long for each other like love longing for itself alone.

It is the experience of being in love.

'Tis pain and joy.

For the quickening of love hurts.

Truly, it must.

Love reassures us wonderfully however, and gives us every chance to prove ourselves.

For at the same time loves takes us unto itself, love sets us free.

- selah -

Now that I have been hurt, I can love again.

(personal anecdote 20090824)
---<--@

“Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping. For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts. And stand together, yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart, and the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.”

from The Prophet by Khalil Gibran

The Craft of Citizens

Civics is the craft of citizens. Politics is the craft of the State.

Our first consideration: 

We are a nation. This makes us a human people.

We are human beings with common human needs. The cause of our nationhood are human causes. We are through our nationhood sought by heaven on earth that we may be sheltered in peace and sheltered that we may be sent forth in goodwill unto our Mankind.

Because we are, our identity and belonging is established upon a timeless foundation. There are truths about our being as a free and sovereign human community that are changeless and unyielding - as changeless and as unyielding as the peace that in our nation gathers us together and sends us forth as one.

Peace, written in our hearts, is the soul of our nationhood and has been before we were a people.

We are a nation forever. For the peace that forever belong to our nation is an eternal salutation.

The cause of our nationhood are our human causes.

The craft of all nations is peace.

When we know peace, we know memory. 

When we know memory, we know when and where in ourselves does hope spring and goodwill proceeds - in the peace of our nationhood and from the nationhood in ourselves (respectively).

God is our Highest Reliance. The First Defended of our Republic.

Before we know our civics, we must understand our nationhood.

That what makes us human, one to another, makes us also belong to all heaven and earth.

Our second consideration: 

What makes us citizens makes us belong to the temporal State and prepares us for greater belongings.

There is no science that serves to initiate the student of civics to a prior body of knowledge about the art of his or her citizenship. Civic aptitude does not come by way of great academic knowledge.

Recall to thy heart the fall of the first morning star of the first firmament and imagine a single star in the night sky, shining by itself from eternity.

Without the company of other stars, shall this bright morning star have cause to think itself dim or bright?

A great intellect may think itself bright only because he or she is always in the company of a myriad other lesser ones. Whether one is loathe to admit this fact or not, it is a civic truth. 

Sufficiency through reliance.

We are only as far as each of us allow, eaches only as far as we are.

Peace in the nation allows for each of us to allow that - we are.

Civics allow us to be and to function as eaches - as far as we are...

Citizens who together as a Body Politic form through the democratic foundation of the Philippine State, the one Philippine Republic whole.

Our third and final consideration:

A student of civics is a heart willing to listen... Citizenship is a lifelong art.

You do not learn it by reading alone. You acquire it by hearing it, and following, and leading.

You do not teach it by much speaking. You transmit it by living it, and loving, and remembering.

Apply yourself to knowing your civics and your civics will apply itself to teaching itself to you.

Practice. Practice. Practice.

And let us together in the nation grow bright, certainly brighter than the long night.

Start by simply not littering, if you like. And know why you do it.

Begin by respecting the ground of our earth.
---<--@

Personal Reflection

Civics inform our Politics and Politics shape the State wherein we all are citizens first.

One may be civic oriented without ever being political. One may not be political however, without any civic orientation. Politics that is professed without any grounding in civics is almost always mercenary in form, without any concept of loyalty to Country or duty to the common good.

Is it political to love a person, a thing, a place, a time, or a truth?

It may be that the State ought to be concerned about what we love. That the State may know to withdraw from interior freedoms where these are concerned.

There is no such thing as a wrong love.

Politics shall never find enough of itself in itself to prove or disprove what love there is or what love there is not - in any person. It shall soon exhaust its own expression against a question it is never intended to address.

Where interior freedoms are concerned, the State should have a recourse to exhort the civic spirit of the nation and empower the love of the people to bear the right fruit that more and more of our people may know to trust in better things and therefore, be served eventually by better loves.
---<--@

Apart from the Love of God, the Devil has no existence.

Or be a ninja, if you like.

Cheers. Steady on.

Some Thoughts on RH

Abortion is evil.
Life begins at conception.

True.

In my view however, these are not the real issues regarding our RH conversation.

It is freedom of choice. Choice, of course, not in the sense that one is free to define one's freedoms.

After all, we owe our personal freedoms to the certainty of our common commitments to Democracy as well as human morality and as a Country held responsible for them by the Life and Liberty of our Nation.

Therefore, I think the better question to be asked as regards choice in the context of RH for us Catholics is - how may these freedoms be unleashed - in the spirit of Humana Vitae - to serve the individual as well as the common good of Woman, Mother, Child, Family and Greater Society?

And this question where it pertains to Family and Greater Society directed not only to Woman but to both Man and Woman together as one soul and not just in the Catholic Church.

It has always been the negative choice "not to have a child" in scrutiny.

As such contraception is so aptly named - in the negative sense.

Now, let us examine the affirmative choice "to have a child". Because when it comes to its moral weight as regards the vital exercise of free will, this is the greater of the two choices.

There are actually two choices involved here. The negative choice "not to have a child" and the positive choice "to have a child".

The negative choice is a passive choice.

It actually goes against the natural intention of every sexual act.

It might look like an active choice but where ever and whenever this choice "not to have a child" has failed, so does the potent belief in a sovereign free will diminish itself in the human exercise.

In the souls of the people concerned, when this choice have failed them so many times "not to have a child", in most cases, human responsibility for the fruits of conjugal love slides back to being a random thing. Children are begot in our society without a clear parental vision of a definitive future for them

The failure of passive choice "not to have a child" having failed those people, most of whom are already struggling against other more immediate evils such as hunger and human security, in my view is the root
of this epidemic of helplessness is the center of the issue as regards contraception.

And is further complicated by larger structures of poverty and other adverse social conditions that besiege and surround the family unit, leading most to passivity and complacency as regards to the transmission of life as a free and human choice.

On the other hand, the positive choice "to have a child" is an active choice.

It is an act that empowers the free will. For all thing the mind conceives begin from the heart and all things the understanding illuminates are all things we may actively pursue by the innate power of our individual free will - as free and human choices.

Choices that arise from reasoned and prepared thought and reasoned and prepared thought that arise from a heart that knows it is a heart of love are never passive choices.

The choice "to have a child" therefore, goes along the natural grain of every sexual act because it involves both husband and wife envisioning family and duty to family and conversing about furthering and prospering their future, deepening the quality of their conjugal love.

If couples are taught and empowered to prepare for the active choice "to have a child" and are fully informed in their hearts and minds as to what this choice must entail - they would be inclined to think more about their choices. Planning is planning, after all.

Legislation may help curb the helplessness wrought by lack of an empowered choice. But only education can truly turn things around as regards to teaching the right choices and undoing the lingering effects of the wrong ones.

Social betterment in our nation must move not just along the limits of the law but by the free dictate of well-formed and soundly informed individual consciences. We are a Democracy after all.

This is where the locus of Catholic education should be.

Poverty is an integral part of the RH debate and we can not as a Church fully address the question without addressing poverty.

In my opinion, the questions arising from poverty takes priority. If we can curb the complications that make the equation as regards RH more simpler, perhaps the tide may one day turn.

If we slowly but surely address poverty, we might more sooner than later find ourselves perched upon a better vantaged position to effectively and democratically address the RH issue along the spiritual lines of the Church.

Because you can not teach a hungry family how to plan or how to even think ahead of their next choices to eat and to drink.

The positive choice may always escape them and the negative choice confound and weaken them - this is the conundrum. It is a Gordian knot that we may only undo by getting the poor to the middle class first.

Thus, it is important that we all must solve for hunger first.

And in this most obvious of social justice causes, I believe we can work with the politics of RH whatever side it may be, because its main concern I believe and trust is to provide a better quality of life for our less fortunate brothers and sisters in the Nation.

All the while, we shall move to better our moral and spiritual positions to correctly address the RH issue by Catholic education. In this RH conversation, we could lose to a single battle but if we do it right, we may find, we are fighting along the same lines as those who are presently pressing against us.

Let us not forget that hunger and poverty makes us poorer and poorer in spirit NOT in the sense that our beloved Savior Jesus Christ did teach us upon the mount.

Where we are poor in spirit because we are diminished in the light that makes us one, we become truly poor - being without the light that makes us a simple and single-hearted nation.

This kind of poverty make us all forget that this Nation is one.

Also, we are a Democracy, let us not act as if we are not. Too, this is a Republic, let us live up to its trust believing indeed every good thing under Heaven has a time and place here in our Land of Promise.
---<--@

Everybody Lies

I've thought about what Dr. House is really saying here... I think it's a practical truth. 



We live in a real world. In this world, what is real is always fleeting.

Lies are like shadows. They deny or expose our thinking to truths either fully concealed or only partially concealed to our naked understanding.

For good or ill, what determines how our minds are exposed to the truth is not light but darkness. And our hearts (our love) react accordingly.

(Remember, the First Night is the Sky of Illumination.)

Those with bright intentions and those with dark intentions both use shadow to awaken the seeker in the self... Think about it.

And so Dr. Gregory House says,

"Everybody lies."

I do not think he's saying one should make it a practice to deceive, mind you. But to brace ourselves because in this world, "everybody lies".

THEREFORE, to thy own self be true.

"No one changes."

So seeker be true.

Seek your permanent self.

And just be.

Be the change to master change.

Or you may never live.

Be in love. Be alive.

Be yourself.

Be brave.

Live.

Do no harm.

---<--@

I simply love the House MD series! Kudos to the brilliance of the entire cast and crew.

Truth hurts. After all, we begin life in this world not fully accustomed to it: Afterwards realizing... then growing bright. (By the grace of God, in my view.)

The Global Peace Index 2014

My fellow Filipinos, brothers and sisters of the Promise, our Philippines recently placed below the first fifty nations in the recent Global Peace Index. We ought to aim to be with the first fifty.

From 2014 forward, we shall endeavor in this blog to follow and analyze our yearly ranking on this Index.

This year we are at 134 out of 162.

Peace moves along a much broader front than the peace processes this Republic of ours has collectively and formally determined to bring to fore in the life of our nation.

Peace insofar as the Global Index is concerned holds to a larger view.

That's perfectly fine. 

We must not take it in from its own vantage though. Lest we feel lost and overwhelmed by the height. Our peace processes on the ground provides us with somewhere to begin.

This is why we are aiming modestly.

Our peace processes are a litmus test of our greater capacity to unify the soul and spirit of our people. Its equitable and decisive conclusions and their effects are presupposed to further incline a greater part of ourselves to a much larger work very much close at hand - that of building up our one Republic from emerging to developing to developed.

From here on, I am convinced we shall begin to see much more significant improvements on our Peace Index ranking that will allow us to dream (not fantasize) to belong with the first 20 nations on the Index.

It is not impossible for us to improve. As a matter of fact, we should have every reason to believe we can.

We are a nation after all, our State is well expressed in spirit if not yet in form, and our Republic is born from well-proven seeds, still quite young and perhaps not yet so well grounded in the soul and soil of our people. Indeed we have much to do and over time and I know we can do this...

Prosper in our peace.

First of all, to preclude all the unfolding political drama from becoming a running saga in ourselves, we shall re-visit the art of Civics. That we may together endeavor to know what is right in politics.

I will be posting my thoughts about this soon that I may share them with you.

Salaam. Shalom. Peace. Mabuhay po tayong lahat.
---<--@

To check out the 2014 Global Peace Index page, go to: Vision of Humanity

Salutation #201

I know you, Genocide. I know your face.
You are neither from heaven nor from this earth.

You are an abomination.

You shall never find peace with my soul and, God-helping, never ever will.

Nor shall you find in my nation through me, a welcome and nurturing host.

I never loved you.
Never.

Bergen Belsen

(Murder by Nation)

Genocide.

Let us think about Genocide.

Let us think about Genocide not as one who is ill
but as one who does not wish to become ill.

What is different about Genocide?

Murder is the willful taking of the life of another human being by another human being.
Alone or with others, murder is the crime of murderers.

Mass murder is the willful taking of the lives of other human beings by another human being.
Alone or with others, mass murder is a crime of mass murderers.

Before the Justice of God and the Nations, each murder is a sin of commission.

Each murder is a crime. Each crime is a scandal.

Each transgression an individual act of moral and physical evil perpetrated by individuals against the life of its victims and against the life of their human communities.

With every life taken, what once is can no longer be.

It is a grief the community must bear with compassion most especially with those closest in affinity with the one willfully taken away from our midst before his or her time.

With every life stolen, nations suffer a burden of the loss.

It is a burden the community must understand and remember not with vengeance or hate but have recourse to themselves and their betterment before the Justice of God and the Nations.

- selah -

Genocide makes an entire people become one in the act of murder.
It is hideous. It is murder on a wholesale basis. Murder by nation.

Before the Justice of God and the Nations, Genocide is an act of omission.

It is never random. Its occurrences never happen by accident.
It is always by design. It comes always by premeditation.

Long in thought.

Recall to mind the 4th Rupture: Man-Man.

Cain withheld from Abel his peace
and the grace of good will fled his soul. 

Thus did he see in his brother
the image of the enemy of creation. 

Thus did he slay his own kin. 

Thus did war
from the heart of Man
gain entrance into the human realm. 

Thus did Cain suffer to become a fugitive to his own heart. 

Thus did the earth became restless with the blood of Abel.

Thus did the proceeding generations suffer
the closing of heaven above the earth.

This closing is an exterior spiritual darkness. 

It is a darkness nations must account for together through the interior light of the right remembrance.

Evil become a banality where this darkness is allowed to enter into the precincts of the citizen in the self.

Where the Burden of Justice is too great and its weight of darkness lay heavy upon the soul of a people, where our Debt of Remembrance is largely forgot, Genocide creeps in through false captains to corrupt the spirit of a people.

Through omission and through shortness of days, Genocide soon becomes an attitude in the people.

And readies itself to become unleashed to make further war upon the children of Mankind.
---<--@

Remember again and again, never ever forget.

Bigger. Not Loftier

Quote from the movie, "Transcendence",

"The Internet is supposed to make the world a smaller place."

I think so too. Only because the Internet is likewise supposed to make the mind a much bigger place.

Bigger. Not loftier.

Make no mistake. Technology can not be the cause of the ascent of the human spirit. Technology is not our savior. Technology is our servant.

In the near future, Mankind may have to decide what sets us apart from machine-kind. We might be at the threshold of developing AI's far more capable and adaptable than all our brains combined...

The brain is not the mind though. It is the seat of the mind. Our brain is distinct from the mind as a chair is to the person it was crafted for, as a seat to rule the temporal self upon.   

The material and the temporal in our experience are inseparable. Time and matter seem fused together in their finitude. What is finite to the eye of the body seem permanent.

But the human heart (by its own nature) knows of things that go beyond the limits of what is finite in time and space. Boundless energy in a form benign and compatible with the living soul.

Because our experience of this finitude is also a finitude. 

What seem permanent in this world therefore, to the eye of the spirit is impermanent.

Machine intelligence may not have this ability to dwell on the spirituality at the root of all things human.


Just take a quick look at the story of Darth Vader. 
---<--@

Aussie Humor and Aussie Slang

Laughter.

A good and wholesome sense of humor is a requisite skill in the Australian Army. True story. I once tried to become. Long story. You can not be a good Aussie digger if you do not know how to laugh like one. This I have learned: Laughter is a survival skill. Seriously, it is.

Aussie slang.

Aussie humor and Aussie slang are more modern reflections of the national style. It belies a deeper sense of intrinsic optimism that is in-built in the very ancient soul of Australia. They have it down to an art down there.

The great heart of Australia is a red desert, you see. Red as the rust on the surface of Mars. Along its fringes though, hope dwells and life prospers in the form of thriving cities, towns and tree-filled mountain ranges. Hope finds its way from hoping. Aussie optimism.

You really have to experience Aussie humor and Aussie slang fully immersed in Aussie culture for a few years, it's a great experience.

Of course, any experience of a national culture would be remiss if it were not for meaningful friendships. The basic experience of any culture in my book always begins with the memory of human connections.

Some people seem to want to make space in their heads for bad experiences. Personally, I don't. Doing this crowds out the heart I have found. The mind by itself may only carry so much worldly concerns. Too much thinking about too many of any these altogether too much worldly concerns exhausts the soul.

But not our love. For I have also found that a heart that knows Who, who, what and why it must love may carry all its treasures infinitely and indefinitely. Such is the substance of permanent remembrances.

I guess that's the essence of Mateship. I've thought about the concept of Mateship and associate it with the Love of Friendship. Mateship for me is the fifth and most inconspicuous star in the Southern Cross. It's right on the Australian Flag.

I've many good memories about Australia.

Two good Aussie mates I've had the pleasure of knowing among others Down Under is a bloke named William Eric Adams-White and another named David Bullen. Bill and Dave were their usual handles. Both are battlers. Dave is a reserve combat engineer.

You see, I came to Australia speaking my college English gleaned from my native Philippine setting. I carried with me on my tongue a conspicuously American slant. You can imagine how devastating that is when it comes to just plain, small talk in Australia. All big words and a foreign accent and all.

Devastating for me, that is.

I don't know but the Aussie accent and all that slang were all so alien to me at first. It all became all too much. Aussies began to sound like Martians to me. I got culture shocked and withdrew into a shell.

Then I met these two blokes at work. And oh, how they made me laugh. Another good mate of mine during that time was a proud Kiwi named David Polson. David was more or less my introduction to New Zealand culture. Though I've never been to New Zealand, I came to know some of its spirit.

Indeed, laughter did much to break me out of my shell.

And I slid right in there. Like a swimmer learning to swim, I learned in time to paddle into the culture and the lingo until I felt myself good enough to dive right in.

Bill must be in heaven now. He was already quite old when I was there. He gave me a cheapy calculator to help me with my work. He gave it to me with a big smile. I still have that cheapy calculator. It's priceless.

During my time in Oz, apart from my family, I must have met so many good people.

I can remember only one inexplicably bad incident of this one bloke, angry as hell at me, who blocked me off the road one random day and cursed me out for no reason.

As traffic piled behind me, who else did I see from my rear view mirror were rushing to confront the guy but other Aussies. There were suddenly plenty of us against this one, pathetic wanker.

A hundred ugly racists is not equal to one good Aussie mate, fair dinkum.

Within any given nation at any given time I believe, there are always reasonable and unreasonable people. Good times and bad times will come and go and persist in our souls. It's all about perspective, you know. I choose to remember good times. And good times are always made up shared experiences between good friends and good family.

This was before my time in the States. But that's another story.
--<--@

Lead with your mind but think with your heart. 

  

I became the wind

Life is
in all things living and being
and goes whithersoever it goes.

When the wind gave breath to the trees, the wind became a tree.
When the wind gave breath to the fishes, the wind became a fish.
When the wind gave breath to the birds, the wind became a bird.
When the wind gave breath to the wolf, the wind became a wolf.
When the wind gave breath to Man, the wind became a Man.
When the wind gave breath to Woman, the wind became a Woman.
When the wind gave breath to Children, the wind became a Child.
When the wind gave breath to Homosexuals, the wind became a Homosexual.
When the wind gave breath to that Nation, the wind became that Nation.
When the wind gave breath to Christians, the wind became a Christian.
When the wind gave breath to Muslims, the wind became a Muslim.
When the wind gave breath to Jews, the wind became a Jew.
When the wind gave breath to Buddhists, the wind became a Buddhist.
When the wind gave breath to Hindus, the wind became a Hindu.
When the wind gave breath to Sikhs, the wind became a Sikh.
When the wind gave breath to Atheists, the wind became an Atheist.
When the wind gave breath to Capitalists, the wind became a Capitalist.
When the wind gave breath to Communists, the wind became a Communist.
When the wind gave breath to the poor, the wind became poor.
When the wind gave breath to the rich, the wind became rich.
Whithersoever the formless gave breath to form, we became.

When the wind gave breath to me, I became the wind.

---<--@

Affirm freedom, affirm life.
Affirm life, affirm freedom.

Nasaan ang Republika?

Nasaan ang Republika?

Isa ba itong multo sa katotohanan,
isang katagang wala namang kabuluhan...
na sa isipan nati'y pawang palutang-lutang.

Ayan ang Republika.
Mga mangingisda't magsakaka
sa karagatan at kabukira'y nangangarap
nagpapawis... nagbibigay pugay sa pangarap.

Ayan ang Republika.
Mga drayber ng traysikep at dyip,
mga yosi boy at dyaryo boy nangangarap
nagpapawis... nagbibigay pugay sa pangarap.

Ayan ang Republika.

Mga merkado't at mga manininda,

sa palengke, sa kalsada, sa SM at sa mol

nagpapawis... nagbibigay pugay sa pangarap.

Ayan ang Republika.

Mga trabahador at mga manggagawa,

konstraksyon man o opisina, pribado o publiko 

nagpapawis... nagbibigay pugay sa pangarap.

Ayan ang Republika.

Mga OFW at mga migranteng walang kalimot

mga mandaragat, keyr giber, meyd o propesyonal

nagpapawis... nagbibigay pugay sa pangarap.

Ayan ang Republika.
Mga magigiting na sundalo, bumbero't pulis
na malalayang nagsisilbi, sa kurap ayaw magpa-api
nagpapawis... nagbibigay pugay sa pangarap.

Ayan ang Republika.
Mga titser at mga magulang nang ating kabataan
na sa sakripisyo'y hindi maiiwanan magpakailanman
nagpapawis... nagbibigay pugay sa pangarap.

Ayan ang Republika.
Lahat nang sa gobyerno'y patuloy sa pagsilbi -
mula sa rurok hanggang sa mga purok nagpapatotoo
nagpapawis... nagbibigay pugay sa pangarap.

Ayan ang Republika.

nangangarap, nagpupugay, kumakanta

umiiyak, umaasa, naniniwala't nagpapawis

nagbabayad ng kanilang buhay at buwis.

Isa ba itong multo sa katotohanan,

isang katagang wala namang kabuluhan...
na sa isipan nati'y pawang palutang-lutang?

Nasaan ang Republika?
---<--@

Wine of Remembrance

History is not memory.
To see the vessel is not to drink of it.
Many are the vessels. Many are our tastes.
But where ever the drinking of this particular wine is to be done.
It is one motion. And remembrance inebriates not.

Memory is not burdensome. Never as complicated as it may seem.
It does not cause the soul to become overly anxious about it.
Memory is light to the heart and easy to the mind.
Easily raised and easily placed down.
For we do not remember it as much as it remembers us.


Memory is simple because it seeks to meet us
when ever one should draw near to it.

As if coming from a far place,
memory welcomes us as if we never left.

We do not memorize memory. We take it to heart.
The true test of memory is not set down on paper.
It is written by the lives we lead in its behalf.
---<--@

No to Homophobia

"Some of the bravest people I know of are homosexuals." I stand by that personal anecdote.

I embrace our gay community. 

I am proud of their quiet contributions to this Republic. They pay their taxes, observe and obey our laws, and add to the richness of our diversity. I recognize the contribution of their community to the well-being of our sovereign freedoms.

They should have a voice - and they do. The same with all minorities in our Nation.

My politics regarding this matter is simple:

I shall not endorse the homosexual act as a legitimate act of conjugal love. I am not for gay marriage in the Catholic Church. I will defend the fundamental integrity of the Filipino family as a social institution in this Republic and preserve marriage as a sacred union before God between man and woman.

But that is all. 

From this point, it is all civics.

I am totally and utterly against homophobia and the misrepresentations that have led to or sustains the spirit and form of the persecutions pitted as an evil against the common humanity of the gay person in our society or in any human society.

I will recognize and uphold their humanity, their rights, and their intrinsic value.

Their adequacy as citizens is equal to all others in this Country.

I am for preserving and protecting their property rights (and its legal transmission), as citizens equally engaged in this Republic undertaking of Country, through specific life contracts in the civil sphere.

I am largely inclined to recognize their ability either to responsibly adopt or provide adequate foster care to orphaned, dispossessed, and underprivileged children and babies in this Country.

I am a believer in free will. As such, I recognize it as proper to the dignity of the human person to seek, to know and to choose for him or herself freely what is human and good - in the true self.

I do not think of homosexuality as a social disease. It is simply a crisis of person. As such, homosexuality per se has no negative social dimension whatsoever from my perspective.

Insofar as it is a crisis of individuals, homosexuality per se has no ability whatsoever to corrupt or negate the free will of others in the human domain.

Homophobia on the other hand is an adverse (misanthrophic) social reaction to a purely individuated crises of persons. I will see it for what it is - a social evil.

When people argue that homosexuality is a sin of being, we forget that being simply is. The real sin here is the sin of denial and so we can see - it is precisely these types of denials that breeds those cultures of division and misanthropy that places us ever in the dark with each other.

Not our differences.

I am for prosecuting hate crimes in this Country. I am prosecuting war crimes in this Country.

I never allow this Republic to retrograde in its ages in time back into barbarisms of the past age. We will live in a civilized society held together by a peace worthy of the quality of our present times born of the maturity of our living remembrances - no more, no less.

I will recognize and uphold the value of human life in all our citizens.
---<--@

Differences make us the same

The Burden of Democracy

"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Liberty is the light that guides our freedoms together.
This unifying light is the burden of our Democracy.
It is a burden that builds. And makes strong the nation.
It makes right our freedoms and steadfast our spirit.


Of the Burdens that we, the people, must within our Democracy through individual freedoms as citizens bear, there are Five that are common (Arms, Justice, Liberty, Wealth, and Posterity) and Four that are personal (Superior Command, Enlightened Citizenship, Uncommon Exceptions, and Equal Taxation).

According to their relationships arranged as thus -

       The burden of Arms
              The burden of Superior Command
       The burden of Justice
              The burden of Enlightened Citizenship
The burden of Liberty
              The burden of Uncommon Exceptions
       The burden of Wealth
             The burden of Equal Taxation
       The burden of Posterity

We shall expound on these burdens as we go...
---<--@