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.

Where is thy brother, Abel?

To a man with no sense of Remembrance, one hundred people murdered in war and one million people murdered in war makes no difference.

But to those who know of Sacred Remembrance - to save one life is to save all of Mankind.



The first time
Man ever saw in himself
the form of the Enemy was
when Cain slew his own brother, Abel.

This primordial sin of mortal division
that passing through the door of the heart of Cain
unleashed the adversarial spirit of the Enemy of all Nations
and upon our world, resulted in the first taking of a human life
marked the advent of War and the first loss of an innocent soul
as both violent conflict and murder were realized upon our world -
at the very same moment - for truly they are synonymous to each other.

Beloved Starshine -
the Soul of every single Man
when they are each endowed by God
makes fully human - and - fully complete
the seed of corporeal life that is fruit and blessing
of the consummation of the love of Woman and Man
wrought within the freedom of their Sacred Union in Marriage
at the very moment of its conception - to become a Living Soul -
a complete human being - united in body, soul, and spirit -

and as such, contains within it's being all the good and the promise 

that the LORD hath fully intended for that person to be and to become
in time, emerging upon the earth, a wonder and a work of completion
in the freedom of the Truth - for the greater purposes of God -

for Man is a creature of the becoming - a being invested in hope!

(Why do you think, Starshine, human parents plan ahead for their child?
God being Parent to His Children, also plan for their success - as is His right.)

So when God asked Cain, "where is thy brother, Abel?"
The LORD was not asking Cain about the whereabouts of his brother.
Indeed, God already fully knows where Abel went, for - in being with Him
the LORD asked of Cain where the life - the entire life - of his brother went
that he may come to realize the gravity of his sin - for all that Abel was - cried up
to the LORD from the ground and his blood wept for all the good that shall never be.

- selah -

A sapling felled
at the beginning its life will no longer yield it's fruits -
and yet these fruits shall still be required of us by the Master of Harvest
we shall then produce them by the improvements we make unto ourselves -
that - each of us - may hope to yield more for the Master of Harvest
but most of all, by the improvements we undertake to create in our communities -
that - all of us - may hope to yield more for the Master of Harvest
and by our Remembrance receive the blessings of His everlasting Peace
and by our God's faithfulness and mercy - succeed!
And that our joy may be full forever.

We wonder why the world is so troublesome and lacking in fruit...
How many trees have we lost since the beginning of our long march into Exile?

How many times
have the LORD asked our Nations
the same question he asked Cain at the advent of War?

And how did we respond?

- selah -

Every Nation of the Children of Mankind
are charged with a constant Remembrance of these things,
that we may together render faithful account of each human life
All in behalf of each other - all for the life of visible creation
with a Book of Memory, and a Burden of Justice to carry
and a Sword to guard - for each of thee - thy every generation well
and to charge them all - to remember always - from the very beginning
at the East Gate of faded Eden - the way of our return to an Eden rebuilt -
their constant Debt of Remembrance - to God and to each other -
that each is a keeper to another, citizens and human beings -
so that by each their labors, these thy generations may soon undertake
in behalf of each other - and - in peace with all other Nations
to make each their Soul of Country in spirit - ever brighter
by each their degrees of Love and Remembrance
and its every Ascent unto completion of All Country
in Ages together - ever more certain.
---<--@

Salutation #173

Wings that work
are wings that lift - aloft -
they fly not merely
because they can, or they must;
they fly because
they carry something that belong
to the skies!



(Burden of Justice)

A nation's burden of justice - is -
all its unaccounted for losses
   (these losses being all that was given us
   that was taken by force from among our midst)
measured in terms of individual human life
each in their own distinct and unrepeatable persons,
each with their own particular names known to the LORD,
the God Who commanded all nations to keep them all,
ever in their entirety, each in spirit preserved
in the sacred remembrance of every nation of the children of Mankind
as a debt of remembrance owed to the God of all life - and -
as a work of peace to be kept - in common trust -
on behalf of all the life of living creation itself.

To each nation God has provided a right of ascent,
a way through which a nation may attain to a knowledge of itself
   (being a way of our returning from the exile darkness -
   in spirit - through - the easternmost gate of faded Eden)
and to every nation there is only one right of ascent.

It is therefore crucial
especially in these present times
that every nation know - as well as -
understand the (1) truth that abides within itself;
   (in general, that every nation is distinct yet the same;
   that every nation though it may long for many things long for only one thing;
   that though the spirit of war marches to threaten,
      in every time, place, and in every age, the peace of all nations,
      that every nation exists for the good and only for the good;
   that every nation exists for the other and that, in the economy of grace,
      there is no other but the self alone;)
and (2) that the power of this ascent is directly affected
in proportion to every nation's burden of justice
and that the weight of this necessary burden
is carried by all of our citizens,
   (each of us according to the measure
   by which we receive them from the Providence of God)
to be shared - as a common labor of peace - across all our generations,
according to our national debt of remembrance -
   (so that it may be heavy - the people choose to forget their hope -
   or it may be light - the people choose to take responsibility for their hope.)

Failure to responsibly carry
this burden of justice - in a nation -
is failure itself.

For a nation overtook by the darkness
is no longer itself.

And every spirit of Country
that has become utterly corrupted
by the adversarial nature
of the enemy of all nations
shall perish forever
from the earth!
---<--@

Salutation #111

(The concise meaning of -)

"SACRED LIFE is all of life, plant and animal, above all human life."



(The 1st Cause: The Cause of Sacred Life - God)

The Cause of Sacred Life is the Cause of God.

This is the 1st of the Four Faithful Causes;
the Cause for which all the other Causes exist:

Sacred Life is the All of life, seen and unseen,
- as well as -
all of life's distinctly individual relationships
- with and to -
the LORD, our God, the one Creator of all of life, first of all
and then to each other -
Angels first, then Man, then animals,
then trees, then plants.

It includes both being (dignity) and becoming (potential)
especially in the visible realms of Man.

To this Cause belong
the exercise of Christian charity - as a sacred duty -
which is compassion, kindness, and mercy tempering
truth, common humanity, and justice in that order.

It bids all human hearts - Love first, all else follows!

Because Our God,
O my beloved of my heart,
is a God of relationships.
---<--@


The Circular Relationship of the Four Causes

Only For a Moment

We live only for a moment - and -

that moment passes away all too quickly

so that if we do not pause to remember it,

it shall be as if we never lived at all.

(my Anne with a neighbor's dog, Dopy)

I know that in this life,

I can never fully express nor explain

how much I love my Anne.

I love my Anne and my Anne loves me. PERIOD.

---<--@

One life lost to War is one life too many.

20111009 AM

“God loves human beings. God loves the world. Not an ideal human, but human beings as they are; not an ideal world, but the real world.

What we find repulsive in their opposition to God, what we shrink back from with pain and hostility, namely, real human beings, the real world, this is for God the ground of unfathomable love.”

― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, A Year with Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Daily Meditations from His Letters, Writings, and Sermons

---<--@

Good morning!

I'm just going to shoot off some quick thoughts here -

I think we should never have removed Spanish from our national curriculum.

I think we should start thinking about the regional good more often - go ASEAN!

I think our President Noy is doing a splendid job. I think it is not fair to be so short-sighted, the work of reversing the tide will take a couple of generations. We are going to need a succession of strong and committed Presidents after him to bring our Country out of the doldrums.

And release Pastor Yousef Nadarkhani!

---<--@

More on the RH Bill -

I saw a struggling young mother with her baby once. She was trying to figure out if she could afford to get her baby a little pack of Bear Brand. The baby had a cleft lip and appeared to be malnourished. They appeared so poor and so desperate but largely unaware...

To me, her plight and that of her months-old baby girl seemed so overwhelming. I contemplated how she could have managed to conceive her baby through a free and human choice to have a baby. A few other questions came naturally after... what of the father, the family, the future?

I wondered if she could really be held completely responsible for bringing a soul into our world largely ignorant and so obviously unprepared to properly receive such a precious endowment from God. If not her, if not the father, certainly not the child. If not them, who?

I also wondered how many more young women like her will go through such an unnecessarily harrowing ordeal before their consciences become fully formed so as to effectively protect the freedom of their choices from the harshness of blind and random chance.

This is not the first time I've seen the hope of the poor burdened by so much weight.

Now, I look back at the debate on the RH bill and I ask myself, "is justice served to allow a condition like this to endure?"

The RH bill is NOT about abortion.

It is about human choice and about human choices freely and responsibly exercised in the context of Filipino society as a national whole.

The focus of the debates should shift more toward conscience formation and proper public (civic) education in the long-term and public safety, health and protection in the near to mid-term (our time frame still stands at 2012-2045).

If every Filipino were born with a properly formed conscience; if all our freedoms as individuals were - without exception - served enough even by human reason alone, then we would as citizens be completely right to immediately dismiss both the points as well as the failures (if any) of reproductive health practices in our Country.

Because if it were the case, human sexuality would not appear to be so beyond our natural power as human beings so as to consume so much of our time and effort in community with each other. We would have no need to debate the RH bill.

If every Filipino existed on the same plane of moral thinking, we would have been justified as a Republic to unanimously vote down the RH bill.

But since we all must as individuals exist on independent planes of spiritual maturity and since our common humanity must never again unburden itself of its duties and responsibilities to Sacred Life, the debate must continue.

We must agonize, we must fight our way toward a solution.

There should be a middle ground somewhere and somehow we have to get there...

---<--@

Finally,

I am proud of apl.d.ap and I know he's proud of me. Why?

Because we're both Filipino. We know it. We wear it. We flaunt it.

Mabuhay ka kapatid ko!

---<--@

So there. Everybody have a great weekend!

Mabuhay ang Pilipinas! God bless us all.

One Nation

Down with Filipino Crab Mentality!

20110522

The 1st Cause: The Cause of Sacred Life - God

"Sacred Life is all of life, plant and animal, above all human life."

This is the Cause for which all the other Causes exist:

Sacred Life is All of life, seen and unseen, as well as all of life's distinctly individual relationships with and to the LORD, our God, the one Creator of all of life, first of all and then to each other - Angels first, then Man, then animals, then trees, then plants.

It includes both being (dignity) and becoming (potential) especially in the visible realms of Man.

To this Cause belong the exercise of Christian charity - as a sacred duty - which is compassion, kindness, and mercy tempering truth, common humanity, and justice in that order.

It bids all human hearts - Love first, all else follows.

Because Our God, O my beloved of my heart, is a God of relationships.

---<--@

The Noahide Covenant: The Covenant of the Nations

"You shall love the LORD, thy God, O my nation, with everything and in everything."

Reading: Genesis 9: 1-17 -

God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them: "Be fertile and multiply and fill the earth.

Dread fear of you shall come upon all the animals of the earth and all the birds of the air, upon all the creatures that move about on the ground and all the fishes of the sea; into your power they are delivered.

Every creature that is alive shall be yours to eat; I give them all to you as I did the green plants.

Only flesh with its lifeblood still in it you shall not eat.

For your own lifeblood, too, I will demand an accounting: from every animal I will demand it, and from man in regard to his fellow man I will demand an accounting for human life.

If anyone sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; For in the image of God has man been made.

Be fertile, then, and multiply; abound on earth and subdue it."

God said to Noah and to his sons with him:

"See, I am now establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you

and with every living creature that was with you: all the birds, and the various tame and wild animals that were with you and came out of the ark.

I will establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all bodily creatures be destroyed by the waters of a flood; there shall not be another flood to devastate the earth."

God added: "This is the sign that I am giving for all ages to come, of the covenant between me and you and every living creature with you:

I set my bow in the clouds to serve as a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.

When I bring clouds over the earth, and the bow appears in the clouds,

I will recall the covenant I have made between me and you and all living beings, so that the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all mortal beings.

As the bow appears in the clouds, I will see it and recall the everlasting covenant that I have established between God and all living beings--all mortal creatures that are on earth."

God told Noah: "This is the sign of the covenant I have established between me and all mortal creatures that are on earth."

---<--@

O Unspeakable Beauty

O UNSPEAKABLE BEAUTY that surrounds, penetrates and transcends into eternity, O Beauty that shines forever brightly, ever here and ever there, ever always present in places sacred to Thy holy remembrance, in places found within the soul of every creature in need of Thee.

Arise in me and cure me of my deformity, my perversity, my ugliness, my constant rebellion.

Though I weep with guilt and shame at every thought of Thee, though I should recede back into the darkness where I truly belong, Thou has seen into my soul and my soul has caught a glimpse of Thee!

O what can a mere creature do at the hint of Thee, O unspeakable Beauty?

By Thy own Truth, Thou hast enraptured my heart and now I am madly in love with Thee.

I reject all that is not Thee!

Ever in spite of me, I constantly long for Thee, I thirst and I hunger for Thee.

O Beauty, Thou art Beautiful for Thy being Beautiful, who can resist Thee?

Bless me, convince me, lead me on and fulfill what Thou sees as Thy reflection in me. Become the fullness of Thy own image and likeness that Thou has imparted in me, and lose me forever into the depths of Thy Being.

Make use of me and recreate me into an instrument of Thy holy creation and a servant to all Thy beautiful works of divine artistry.

O wonderful God, O wonderful God! O what majesty! O what glory! O what Beauty! Thou art truly Beautiful for Thy being Beautiful.

Arise in the hearts of all Thy servants, arise in our poor world, that we may learn to see what is beautiful for being beheld by Thee.

Abide in us, O dearest LORD and Love of my love, spread upon our souls Thine infinite horizons and become for each one of us as the breaking of the new dawn from on high.

AMEN.

---<--@

One Heart, One People, One Destiny

My fellow Filipino compatriots,

in the Final Accounting of all things, it shall be shown and made known to to All that

we are a nation distinct

but not apart from all our other kindred nations - a human nation, allied to the kindred peace of all the other nations of our one family of nations.

We are a nation, my brothers and sisters of the Promise, and so it is as a nation

that we shall be held responsible by both heaven and earth before the God of all heaven and earth.

As a nation, O my people, we are by our individualities, families, tribes, communities and generations bound by one heart, one labor, and one destiny.

We are thus called, according to our fidelity to the truths of our nationhood, to make a shelter for our generations, the shelter of Country - a home away from Home for all living beings.

As a nation, we shall rise or fall upon the void of the unknown earth

according to the one peace of our peoples and the one economy of our generations to the very last of our generations.

As a nation, we shall build upon this world, the kindred peace of Country to the glory of Almighty God in heaven,

and fill it with living lights

or lay it to waste by our refusal to

subdue the darkness in and amidst ourselves - the evil in all evil things.

As a nation without its peace, we shall fail - a defeated Country, desolate and empty of promise, of broken, shattered skies, we shall remain in the dread embrace of this maddening darkness, falling forever into the void.

As a nation in possession of our peace, we shall persevere.

Victory shall in its time be restored to each of us by God Himself where w

e shall together with our own eyes behold

the triumph of an unimaginable abundance.

As a nation, we are called by weight of our history and by the call of our destiny to rise above our differences.

And to do so with courage and tenacity for h

ow else is peace to be defended?

Indeed, my honorable compatriots, it matters most what unites us than what divides us.

Our differences are diverse and the cause of many valid concerns,

but they are temporal.

Unity is eternal.

---<--@

Mabuhay ang Pilipinas! God bless us all.

Fly Old Defiant:

Defy War. Defy Darkness. Defy Evil. Defy Corruption. Defy Poverty.

Prosper the Peace! Prosper the People!