Salutation #153

Prudent stewardship of the temporal order does not disincline the wings of the soul to flight for a rightful love of the things of the earth is one that does not diminish the appetite of the spirit for virtue and truth.

Material prosperity is not undesirable, materialism is. 

For materialism breeds greed and greed is the real dirt.

Therefore, one must guard not against matter but the spirit for it is this dirt that soils the soul; it is this dirt that buries the spirit.

(Nation vs Materialism)

SIMPLY PUT,
economic prosperity
depends on two things:
matter and spirit.

THIS is why materialism
ultimately destroys national wealth.

- selah -

Virtue is currency!

The rich need the poor, the poor need the rich
for each may only prosper with the other
and this relationship, by it's own virtue,
sustains the middle classes
which is the surest foundation
of a strong and steadfast democracy
providing safe shelter - for all:

A community of striving souls
standing for a just and lasting peace
where freedom is nourished - for all -
and peace, though imperfect, is yet
strongly believed and understood - by many -
as an ideal to be perfected in practice
in vision as well as in mission
- in thought and in act -
as an expression of the good will
of all citizens - least to great,
past, present, and forever.

A society of citizens
living in a just equality with each other
where every and all opportunity
though offered and received in unequal parts
by each individual citizen quantitatively
becomes a quality in the nation
that creates wealth equally
for all.
---<--@

Of Virtue and Vice

Salutation #121

The Lord Christ said,

"The poor you will always have with you..." (Matthew 26: 11)

Starshine, there will always be a minority.
---<--@

(The 4th Cause: The Cause of Minorities - Benignity)

BENIGNITY is the practice of goodness.

Now,

goodness

in the company 

of the great, the strong, 

and the powerful, 

is not an extraordinary virtue.

Therefore, 

this Cause must concern itself 

with (1) the preferential treatment and care 

of minorities (i.e. the weak and the vulnerable)

and (2) the just distribution 

of the material goods of this world.

In the person of the stranger, 

the orphan, the widow, the unborn, 

the disabled, the elderly, and the poor 

whether transient, semi-permanent, or permanent, 

there shall always exist within our midst, 

a minority.

Indeed,

at one time or another 

in the lifespan of individual human beings 

as well as in the lifespan of individual human nations, 

we all become part of this minority.

Let us always bear this in mind and heart...

- selah - listen, think.

Have we forgotten our own roots, 

O numberless stars of our Father Abraham,

O ye children of the Peace, of the Light,
promised by the God of old 

to bless the national communities 

of our needful Mankind?

Were we not all 

drawn up by the LORD

from the poverty of the minority?

Were we not all 

uplifted from our lowliness

by the mercy and beneficence of God

to people the nations of the earth?

Let us always bear this 

- in mind and heart -

especially in these present times.

For this is how 

we shall fill the earth 

with living lights.

- selah -

We are by our poverty indistinguishable! 

How we shall each 

- distinguish ourselves -

in the midst of the darkness

is through virtue and the continual refinement 

of each our inherent human nobility.

This is important to remember, 

my brothers and sisters of the Promise, 

because the victimization (by the strong) 

of the marginalized (or the weak) 

will ultimately result in the implosion 

of our national communities 

and in the Last Day, 

it shall also bring about 

its final and irreversible destruction.

The marginalization 

- in any society - 

of any of one of its parts 

is always the effect of divisions 

(overt as well as covert) 

in the one heart of the people.

A social order built on disagreements 

(abiding in prejudices, misconceptions, fear and ignorance) 

is ever like a tyranny without a tyrant -

a culture of national self-destruction!

In this hostile atmosphere, 

the spirit of the nation itself

feels ever trodden underfoot 

until the burden of Justice 

becomes unbearable.

Indeed,

the will or the spirit of War 

always takes the easiest entrance 

into the midst of the people... 

And this it always does 

by subverting the 4th Cause.

- selah -

The one sin 

a nation can not abide by 

is the presence of War in the heart.

Indeed, 

we all shall stand before God 

to account for our gifts of nationhood! 

So let us not forget
to ask ourselves before God in prayer - each day -

what we have done or chosen not to do

to improve the life of our communities

and prosper the native peace 

of each our undertakings of Country.

Because Peace is our only path - 

it is the only choice we can really make

both as human beings and as human nations.

- selah -

The 4th Cause explicitly espouses 

the first principle - that -

the strong exists in defense of the weak.

The entire hierarchy of the Angelic realms 

is ordered by God around this first principle.

And since our nations (as they are) 

are a natural extension of the unseen realms, 

we too are expected by the Providence of God 

to faithfully imitate the heavenly order 

by formally uniting ourselves as a people 

to the will and the governance of the LORD, 

our God - the one Sovereign of all nations.

What the majority does in behalf of the minority 

dictates a nation's fidelity to the 4th Cause!

Wealth generation and long-term national prosperity 

is entirely dependent on the 4th Cause!

It is from the 4th Cause that we enter 

into an understanding of the higher Causes!

---<--@

The Circular Relationship of the Four Causes

20111022

The Soul Kitchen

"Virtue is currency."

---<--@

Today, I just want to sit down and tell you about this interesting article I've come across while browsing Yahoo News.

It's about Jon Bon Jovi's new charity restaurant.

It's called "The Soul Kitchen".

It's not your usual gourmet restaurant where you pay for food and service; money transfers hands, bellies are filled, wages are paid, profits are made and sometimes, just sometimes, experiences are had - good ones as well as bad.

In this establishment, virtue is currency.

There is a pre-condition: This pre-condition is that when you walk into Jon's new charity restaurant, you must walk out of that tired, old mentality that money makes the world go round. Because the new culture he has invested in The Soul Kitchen is that love and not money is currency and that gift and not gold rules the world.

I think it's riding on a wave - the wave of the future.

It is standing on a principle often neglected and overlooked in the daily pursuit of happiness that (1) one is made happy first in doing what one is doing, (2) money comes from the satisfaction of knowing one is happy, and (3) wealth comes from the understanding that life is more than just making money.

One realizes happiness first. Wealth comes after. Money is not wealth. And being wealthy is not the cause of happiness but the effect of it.

Nowadays in the United States, the brave home of that great American dream of happiness and Jon's home Country, the American dream is in a rut.

The Soul Kitchen grants its patrons a chance to release themselves from this rut.

Is the American dream dead? No, it is eclipsed. It needs redefinition in a way that returns it to its original form. It does not need to be reinvented.

Because the American dream is not a material dream (it never was) but a dream of freedom - freedom from undue fear, from inordinate want, from religious and political oppression, and from all forms of tyrannies that banish the truth and prevents the dreaming from coming true.

It is the same as the dreaming in our own Country. The only difference is that it is challenged by a set of circumstances that is peculiar to the American Republic. But the nature of the dream remains common in our peoples. This is why I can relate to Jon's vision.

Within the soul of that kindred nation, people are asking themselves about their dream or to be more precise, about their dreaming - their ability to dream - their ability to perceive the vision of themselves as one nation under Almighty God arrayed as a Republic faithful to its mission.

People are quietly asking themselves about their dreaming and this soul searching is evidenced by the nature of those current events now transpiring in America like the Occupy Wall Street movement and others like it (this national soul searching will surely have a significant effect on the tone of the Presidential campaigns leading up to the 2012 elections).

But today, my honorable compatriots, we shall not go that far.

I just want us to remain with the thought of Jon Bon Jovi's personal contribution to the greater dreaming of America - adding a little bit of salt to flavor the salty sea that is the reality of our common humanity - the Soul Kitchen.

I want us to learn from this and to be thankful.

The giving is the gift.

---<--@

Mabuhay ka, Jon Bon Jovi, at mabuhay po tayong lahat! God bless America and God bless the Philippines.

Real Stars

Some stars are fake, some are real -

of the fake ones, the heart can feel,

because of the real ones,

when one can tell -

it's their nearness to our earth

that makes it sell.

Real stars shine with a warmth

that often reaches us

and are full of genuine concern

but fake ones really don't connect

as much as we would like,

their light is not as warm and comforting

as far as the heart can tell

they could be as far from our earth

as heaven is to hell.

=^.^=

Here is the article completely reproduced (since if I post it as a link, it might get replaced by some other article) -

RED BANK, N.J. (AP) — In three decades as one of the world's biggest rock stars, Jon Bon Jovi has eaten in some of the world's best restaurants, savoring the best food the planet has to offer.

Yet there's no place he'd rather have dinner than The Soul Kitchen, a "pay-what-you-can" restaurant he and his wife Dorothea established in a former auto body shop near the Red Bank train station in central New Jersey.

The restaurant provides gourmet-quality meals to the hungry while enabling them to volunteer on community projects in return without the stigma of visiting a soup kitchen. Paying customers are encouraged to leave whatever they want in the envelopes on each table, where the menus never list a price.

The restaurant is the latest undertaking by the New Jersey rocker's Jon Bon Jovi Soul Foundation, which has built 260 homes for low-income residents in recent years.

"With the economic downturn, one of the things I noticed was that disposable income was one of the first things that went," Bon Jovi told The Associated Press in an interview Wednesday before the restaurant's grand opening ceremony. "Dining out, the family going out to a restaurant, mom not having to cook, dad not having to clean up — a lot of memories were made around restaurant tables.

"When I learned that one in six people in this country goes to bed hungry, I thought this was the next phase of the Foundation's work," he said.

It started several years ago when Dorothea Bongiovi (she uses the legal spelling of her husband's name) and Jon started helping out at a food pantry at nearby St. Anthony's Roman Catholic Church. They later moved their focus to the Lunch Break program, which feeds 80 to 120 people a day, dubbing it "The Soul Kitchen."

They brought that name with them to a former auto body shop down the street from the Count Basie Theater, where Jon and his self-titled band have played many fundraising shows for local charities.

It took a year and $250,000, but the restaurant now rivals any of its competitors in trendy Red Bank, with entrees like cornmeal crusted catfish with red beans and rice, grilled chicken breast with homemade basil mayo and rice pilaf, and grilled salmon with soul seasonings, sweet potato mash and sauteed greens, many of which were grown in the herb and vegetable garden right outside the restaurant's doors.

Bon Jovi, who has a home in next-door Middletown, is adamant about one thing.

"This is not a soup kitchen," he emphasizes. "You can come here with the dignity of linens and silver, and you're served a healthy, nutritious meal. This is not burgers and fries.

"There's no prices on our menu, so if you want to come and you want to make a difference, leave a $20 in the envelope on the table. If you can't afford to eat, you can bus tables, you can wait tables, you can work in the kitchen as a dishwasher or sous chef," he said. "If you say to me, 'I'm not a people person,' I say, 'That's not a problem. We'll take you back to Lunch Break to volunteer with those people. If you don't want to volunteer with that, we'll take you to the FoodBank."

After volunteering at one of those places, a person will be given a certificate good for a meal at The Soul Kitchen.

"If you come in and say, 'I'm hungry,' we'll feed you," Bon Jovi said. "But we're going to need you to do something. It's very important to what we're trying to achieve."

That includes making people feel part of a larger community that cares about them, while still expecting them to contribute to society at large.

"This is not an entitlement thing," Bon Jovi said. "This is about empowering people because you have to earn that gift certificate."

He and others at the restaurant want those who can afford to dine out to patronize the restaurant as well and pay what they consider market prices, or even a bit more than that, to help sustain The Soul Kitchen as a true community resource.

Bon Jovi said he is currently writing songs for his band's next album, due out in 2013, along with another typically massive Bon Jovi tour. He said many of the songs are inspired by the current economic downturn and the struggles of everyday people to make ends meet without losing hope.

In the meantime, he and his wife plan to stay active in the restaurant, where he estimates he has worked at least once a week in recent months. The Soul Kitchen is open for dinner Thursday through Saturday, and offers Sunday brunch.

How important is rolling up his sleeves and working in the restaurant to him?

"Last Friday, I was at the White House, serving on the Council for Community Solutions, got on a train, changed in the bathroom and got here in time to wash dishes Friday night," he said. "I'm the dishwasher, for real. I can't cook a lick."

- with thanks to Yahoo News and Associated Press.

20110702

Vigilant Trust

Of our leadership in government, it may be said that the merit of their service lies not in earthly perfection. For their calling consists primarily in the exercise of a necessary vigilance at the daily affairs of state.

Right is right not because somebody is wrong. Right is right because it works for everybody.

And it works for everybody because it is drawn from a reality which is submitted to the truth.

So we flock to it. We flock to it when we find it. And when we find it we know, because when we do, it also finds us.

Now, it is the job of our politicians to make this everybody as large as possible.

It is the job of the Responsible State (government) to make this reality work for everybody.

Because statecraft is primarily concerned with the actual good, political will with the necessary good. They are not the same things.

Politicizing government makes it run for popularity, making it vulnerable to divisive interests as well as mercenary causes.

Popular government in a democracy, especially in a Republic, is never exclusively political - it is popular only because its ultimate loyalty is to the needs of the common people, its nation.

Not all statesmen are politicians. But all politicians must be statesmen (no gender bias intended).

---<--@

Adam Smith: The Invisible Hand of God

A nation without God is not a nation but a mob - it has no order of being, no right of ascent, no clarity of vision, no lucidity of mission, no unity of motion, no spirit, no heart, no soul.

If a nation such as this undertakes to establish itself as an endeavor of Country, it will be one that is constantly restless and despoiling, providing neither nurture nor shelter to its elements.

It shall naturally take to its flight (like a relentless, pursuing dragon) against other nations, overtly or covertly, its sole unifying cause being War and War alone.

A Country can absorb a lot of damage indeed. But if War has entered into its heart, it shall turn into ashes from within.

---<--@

Salutation #26

(Mirroring)

A Republic is a Republic.

It is an undertaking of Country

imbued with one spirit and one mission.

It is a living work

wrought by God and Nation

and endowed with a soul of its own;

a guardian spirit to shepherd its peoples.

The only variances that exist between

a Republic and another Republic

arise from the substance of its own remembrances

which is particular each its own experiences

- in relation to -

its nearness or its distance to the image of itself

which is everything that binds it together

according to the freedom of its people

making it one lineage of hope

before the Eternal Throne of the LORD

and the assembly of the nations (before God).

For the quality of its yearning to succeed

in order to make present among its elements

- the Nation, the Responsible State, and the Common Market -

the unity of its Peace

depend on its nearness to its own timeless truth

being the lucidity of its own national vision

as it is enshrined in hearts of the common people,

in the laws that shape its present society,

and especially as it is embodied in its formal Constitution.

In this way, no two Republics are the same

some being less established in their freedom than others,

yet all Republics, each in their own ages in time

aspire toward that same liberating ascent

- from the many, one.

---<--@

Of the Responsible State, it must be said, there is no state more superior, regardless of its governing framework, than one that brings peace to the people.

Peace prospers the people and a prosperous nation is almost always ruled by a just state.

A state must be judged by the people and the people by their peace. A peaceful nation is a happy people ruled by a just state.

This state, regardless of its governing framework philosophy, is a just state.

It is a Responsible State.

---<--@

Mabuhay ang Pilipinas! God bless us all.

Service, Synergy and Sovereignty

To the Class of 2011

DREAM BIG DREAMS!

Your nation, dear starshine, is in need of your dreams. So you must dream big!

I kid you not, there is a strain of thinking in Filipino society these days that is so smallish, so restrictive, so constrained, so limited, it predisposes the unwary to a life of penury.

Don't you know you are the equal of any of your contemporaries on the planet? What dreams the youth of our world today are capable of - you are capable of.

So don't sell yourself short. My advice to you is to go and dream those dreams.

Dreams are all about possibilities. They are the "stuff" of yet unborn realities.

If you shall ask me what is this "stuff"?

I shall answer you with a question - "what are your possibilities"?

We are not a material (i.e. unspiritual) people, starshine. Everything you really need is already in yourself.

The plight of many of our poor people here in the Philippines is desperate indeed. But material poverty is no obstacle to the human heart. Many successful Filipinos will attest to that.

The only kind of poverty that truly impoverishes is the spiritual kind. Remember, we are not a material people, starshine.

Everything you really need is already in yourself.

Let go of the thinking that money is the goal of education. Better yet, let go of the thinking that wealth is about money. Money per se is not wealth. Wealth is much larger than money.

Learning itself is wealth. The ability to dream is wealth. Virtue is wealth. Health is wealth. A good friend is wealth. A good family is wealth. A lively faith is wealth. A healthy parish community is wealth. A vibrant and prospering barangay community is wealth. A strong and faithful nation is wealth. There are a lot of things other than money that make one rich indeed and you may add them all to this list.

So do not be restricted by the thinking that money is the ultimate end of your life's labors upon this world.

Let your dreaming be a dream of happiness. Let it be one of sweet release and of joyous realization.

What you believe in your heart, dearest starshine, are like seeds planted in your soul. So it is very important for you to know where these seeds come from and what these seeds are.

Because the souls of the young are fertile ground indeed. You must, especially in your youth, be aware to nurture only those things in yourself that shall lead you to your dreams that you may work sedulously to awaken these dreams in yourself - that you may bring it out into our needful world.

There are things - truths - proper to you. You must seek them and come to an understanding of them that you may come to know who you are as God intended you to be - who you must be and therefore, work to become.

You must become this person, dear starshine, and when you do, your dreams will come true.

Find yourself and the rest will follow.

The real secret to making money is not the desire to make money - it is simply the willingness to be yourself.

Money is a by product of the knowledge that comes with being happy with who you are - mature in your gifts, secure in your faith, steadfast in your hopes, and alive in your love.

It takes a lot of hard work to be happy - but isn't happiness the ultimate aim of all human labor? So why be skimpy?

Go and dream big dreams!Some people study with a view to making big money and end up sad and broken. They think with their minds by excluding their hearts.

There can be great desolation even in the midst of great material wealth. This is a sad fact indeed.

You must not be this way, dear starshine. You must always lead with your mind but think with your heart. For we are not a material people.

Jesus taught, "seek ye first the Kingdom of God and all these things shall be given you besides".

Isn't this the same as to say, "everything you really need is already in yourself"?

Think about it, our precious starshine, and don't forget to pray.

Find yourself, Beloved of God: Believe.

---<--@

Mabuhay ang Pilipinas! God bless the Class of 2011.


Dreamer of Dreams