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 #181

Of the nations of old, those ancient, fallen and evil Principalities of this world, utterly corrupted in their light, inhuman and incapable of knowing truth, forever drowned by the LORD in the Great Deluge, it may be said, all have perished and inhabit no more the times of the Children.

Yet even as God extinguished these fallen nations of old, and did inaugurate during the time of the Patriarch Noah and his sons, His Covenant with us, allowing for the emergence of the Nations of the Children, their malice still to us persists, their light still lingers on as shadow in this world, and their works of darkness, in the Void of the Desolation of the Angels, remain to haunt with death and calamity those who are not joined with their Sacred Remembrances.

(Chosenhood)

Chosenhood is emergence.

All nations are chosen in this way:
to be tutored in war, tested through peace
and proven by maturation in time.

For we are, so we must -
by our fruits we are known!

Made of golden promises
and paved with good intentions
is the way of war
but the fruits of war
is just as well-known -
(to the memory of the nations
and to the remembrance of man)
it is deception, discord, division,
degeneration, disintegration, death
and desolation.

But the craft of all nations is peace!

All nations that will prevail as one
(the Nations of the Children of Mankind)
were chosen and commissioned
by the LORD - all in the same act -
right at the Eastern Gate,
(the way of our remembrance)
at the beginning of exile time,
at the autumnal dusk of our faded Eden -
each one to emerge in time
according to the purpose of God
all, despite the appearance of darkness,
for the greatest good of all creation
for the LORD wants all
to experience His Salvation.

And Israel, ever beloved,
among the Nations of the Children
is first among equals.
---<--@

I. The Naming

The First language knew no words -
it came winged, freely to the heart
and spoke as Motion, and was truth;
understood in action, known to All.

To Old Defiant, an ode -



O Islands,
Who art Thou
but thy own Name!

Who art Thou
but that - the Name
within thy name.

For if Thine own Heart
is within each thine own heart -
Then Thou art a Spirit at-One with Thyself
and a Nation at-Peace among thy peoples!

Therefore -

Must it matter to Thee,
what vanity Thou art called
by a world that knows thee not?

Must it matter to Thee,
what fleeting judgments it spake
than the Truth that ever burns
brightly in Thy bosom?

- selah -

Thou art a Nation
born among the Nations
(of the children of Mankind)
descended from the inaugural lineage
of the Sons of the Holy Patriarch Noah
and so Thine too is the everlasting Covenant
which preserveth the life of the Inhabited Earth.

For Thou art a Nation
among a Family of Nations
each of us distinct yet all the same,
together commissioned by the LORD
at the East Gate of fallen and faded Eden
and together endowed by our God with
each our own purposes and times.

As a Tree among many trees
grown under heaven upon the earth,
We are arisen to bless this barren world
in behalf of the children of Mankind
for the forbearance of Memory,
the Life of the generations,
and the sustenance of
All living souls!

What must matter to Thee - is -
what must matter to the life and the labor
of our Nationhood and not what vanity there is!

For every tree is known by its fruit.

Thou art humanity with belonging.
Thou art sufficiency through reliance.
Thou art harmony and togetherness.

And Peace is Thy common Salutation.

Bravery and Faithfulness
are thy most ancient of names.
---<--@

The Bow of the Infinite

Cowardly the heart
who longs not for remembrance -
whose soul have abandoned the hunger,
whose spirit have forsaken the thirst,
whose unfulfilled fire desires completeness no longer
and thus, forgot why it is a heart.

So be brave, O heart,
and in thy loneliness know
that thou wert made for Love to love -
thy constant longing, returning again and again

to the Seeker in thy dream, the unimaginable Beauty,

to the Seeker in thy dream - until -
in all thy coming and going,
thou findest in thou, a vision of thee -
asleep in the wilderness - and in thy awakening,
and in thy awakening, O my heart,
after all thy days are finally forever spent
blessing the earth with thy solitude,
awakening Home.



Listen, Starshine -

Those who do not remember the past - repeat it.
Those who do not respect the present - regret it.
Those who have no regard for the future - relinquish it.



Remembrance is a learning of the hope of communities past,
that it may lend its constant strength to the momentum of communities present,
so that all human community may gain a knowledge of each other
and find peace with one another, nation awakening nation -
peace which leads to an understanding of better days
and opens for all mankind, for the glory of God,
the way of our future.

A (labor of) country without a past is a nation without a present
and a nation without a present is a people without a future.

Draw back, feel the strength. 
Live it, accepting tension. 
Then trust, let fly.

---<--@

The Bitter Fruit



Woe to those who live in days without acceptance,
who dwells not in the Now of this present time,
dark shall be their sojourn upon the earth and their skies listless and without season,
trouble and mischief shall as twins dwell in their company as their brethren
they who rejoice only in seeing evil days and who number their days in the dust,
those who disdain the light and find no relief in the goodness of the LORD
who without gratitude rejoice not in their God and trample His creation underfoot
they who through the hardness of their hearts live yet are not alive,
and reject the common communities of the nations of Man,
for the knowledge of life itself shall utterly desert them,
all they whom wisdom hath spurned for hating the truth which is her voice
and shall partake forever of the fruit of their desolation.

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!
---<--@

The Question

An angel asked me, "...and what do I love, O heart?" For I longed to know.

It led me to a shop and showed me a thing I desired for myself but could not yet afford. Something I knew I knew but did not really think about that much.

"I love all these things that you love, O heart, that leads you to be good", the angel said to me.

"I love all the good clothes that was made for you, I love the cell phone that you'd so wished for so much, oh and that laptop - I love that as well - for you, O heart."

"So how do you love me in return?" The angel's question seem to echo from deep into my being for the lesson has now penetrated me indelibly right into my heart.

There was silence:

"You shall love the LORD thy God as one LORD alone".

"Make peace with the all of creation: Divide it not. Say peace to the river, to the sky, to the earth, to the animals (and the trees) of the earth and the fishes of the seas, to thy nations good will and to all thy fellow human beings, life and abundance. Do this if you love me."
---<--@

An Angel Weeping

The greatest trick the Devil ever played is the trick that the Devil never was; that evil and the corruption of sin, though it dwells as an infirmity in the hearts of the children of Mankind, is never a disease encouraged by him nor he and his angels therefore, accountable for their thievery and murder before God.



I SAW
in my heart of hearts
an angel weeping,
saddened but not bowed,
shedding holy tears,
shed for Love.

"O hellfire!",
said the presence
within the comforting silence
of our hearts' mingling,
"The greatest abomination
is not thy existence!"

"I weep not
for thy blasphemy
and the abominations
that you relentlessly hurl
in the face of my Creator."

"I weep
with tears
that is shed
like the rain
filling the rivers
that flow in time
from the golden deep
of the Eternity of my LORD."

"I weep
because I am wounded
but not by thy evil
O reprobate sink
of wasted creation."

"I weep
not because of thee
O hellfire
for I am hurt not
by the bankrupt nature
of the Devil and his demons
and the reprobate men
who condemn themselves
by their unwavering
and immovable
allegiance
to the everlasting death
that was decreed
from Eternity."

"I weep
because of Love
knowing the unbearable hurt
of the terrible affliction
that thy rebellion
have inevitably caused
the most beneficent nature
of my most loving and most merciful
one LORD and only Creator."

"O hellfire,
thy existence
is a curse,
right by Justice,
but a transgression
against the infinite
dignity of Love!"

"I weep
because I am hurt
but not by thee,
O hellfire,
I am sorrowful
not for thy eternal woe
and the crushing depths
of the gravity of thy fiery defeat;
not for thy reprobate evil
do I shed these tears."

"I weep
because I am hurt
and I am hurt
because my God is hurt,
my LORD and my only Creator."

"I weep
with all the love
that longs for Itself
and I shall weep
profusely
in great torrents
like the rain
to fill the rivers
that flow in time
into you, O nations,
into you, O my beloved,
into those new seasons of life
that advance the cause
of suffering Mankind
and serve my one LORD
being like unto my God,
extending the glorious will
of my divine Sovereign
until my only Creator,
most forgiving
and with kindness
unsurpassed
wipes away the tears
at the springtime beginning
of all things new."

"And thou
O hellfire
and all thy
countless
abominations
that fight against
the rivers that flow
becomes to me
a forsaken season
shed like these tears
and overwhelmed like the darkness,
at the final winter of my memory,
and the daybreak of the everlasting peace."

"Alleluia, glory to our Creator,
holy, holy, holy is our one Sovereign,
alleluia to the LORD!
Beloved to God are those that weep
and labor in their hope,
dwelling always in good will
and believing with conviction of faith
that all will be well,
all will be well, peace,
amen, alleluia."
---<--@

(produced 20081024)


Sun and Rain

On Remembrance

Remembrance
is a commandment of God
of all human nations.

Hence,
a lack of remembrance
breeds a certain contempt
of the sacred.

Either one draws away from the sacred,
placing it in a place - out of reach of the heart.

Or one becomes enraged by it,
making of it an enemy of the heart.

- selah -

A person who looks for God
who has not the remembrance of God in the heart
looks for Him in vain.

He or she may seek God
in the heavens or on the earth
and God shall nowhere be found
for that person.

The great scandal of this is
that this person may claim that God is not -
where in fact, he or she has closed the eye of the heart
to the Presence of the LORD in all things,
seen and unseen.

The remembrance of our war dead
(across our nations, civilian and military)
likewise belong to the realm of the sacred.

(For as the sacred fulfills all - and - draws all,
so must the quality of our timeless remembrance be
for all national remembrances are human remembrances
and rightfully belong to the common memory
of the spirit of our humanity.)

- selah -

In an increasingly materialistic society,
where God is being everywhere forgot,
- a healthy regard for the sacred -
soon becomes an uncommon virtue.

What lies beyond the veil of time,
where all unity must always proceed
(for it is in the spirit where all unity is begun),
in unseen realms beyond the nature and scope
of the physical and the temporal,
is where a healthy sense of sacred remembrance
grounds the human heart.

Where remembrance
is increasingly becoming scarce,
there shall in its place be a growing lack
of a sense of connection with history
and with each other.

For
all truly human relationships
are spiritual connections.
---<--@

(produced 20110710)

Salutation #159

The maturity of our peace, the strength of our nationhood, and the prosperity of our people, spiritual as well as material, determines the age of our Republic.

How we get there is a matter of the heart.



(International Day of Peace 2012)

Personal -

Peace is a quality in the spirit,
a sense of wholeness and belonging
that is independent of the brokenness and suffering
of the external world.

Simultaneously,
peace inspires in the soul
a genuine and unshakable love
of this inward sense of wholeness and belonging
as well as the total freedom to overcome
brokenness and suffering in one's self
and in others like the self.

It is that most fundamental human longing
to return to a condition of perfect safety and perfect rest;
a condition unto which we all, as human beings,
desire to ultimately return unto throughout our lives
and is at the heart of all human community.

It is neither a perfect freedom nor a perfect peace
but peace, where it is present, brings forth only peace.
---<--@

National -

Can you overcome the earth by yourself?

Can we hope to subdue the darkness of the unknown earth as individuals?

Can we hope to deter the violence and the chaos that dwells within the darkness by the law of family or tribe alone? Can either family or tribe defeat the ancient curse of War without being utterly consumed by it?

Can the imperative of the LORD to tame the unknown earth be done in the spirit of division? Can the inhabited earth ever be built with War in the heart?

Can the brightness of its vision for all Mankind be achieved - here - in the visible realms of the universe, by the spirit and the labors of Man, through the grace of God and the freedom of heaven, without the necessity of the nations?

What for are we?

We have a responsibility in these present days to remember... the craft of all nations is peace!

Lest we forget. Lest we forget.
---<--@

In every conflict, every nation that fights ultimately fights for every nation that fights because in the end, War is the ultimate enemy of all our nations.

Let us together reflect on this with retrospective clarity secure upon the vantage our generations now possess over the last great age of war.

The nobility of our arms determines its strength and not the other way around.

For violence hath no memory of itself because it is dead, only virtue lives and lives eternal.

Peace without arms - in an imperfect world - is improbable, without remembrance, impossible.

September 21 is the International Day of Peace.

Salutation #158

Citizenship is in the soul - 'tis a seeking in the self -
an integral part of the blossoming of every human life.
So you breath it in your spirit, and you live it in your life

- you seek it like the motion of a love learning to love -
you long for it in yourself - until you are full for the truth -
until your belonging is absolute and your joy is complete.



(The Simple Message of 2012)

Two futures,
one dark and one bright,
is presented before the nations
of the children of Mankind.

We accept one by forsaking the other.

- selah -

How do we understand this?

By completing our remembrances as nations.

Certainly,
the paradigm of the last great age of war
that have prevailed over and utterly eclipsed
the spirit of our nations must be overthrown
by our willing acceptance of the times.

What is a nation?

What for is nationhood?

Personal remembrances make us human.
But it is our national remembrances
that make us citizens.

All depends on the smallest of thoughts.
---<--@

Salutation #139

(Helping Hands)

My brother and sister Filipinos -

A nation who
has no remembrance of its own past
is like a man who
have lost the use of his legs.

A nation who
has no love of its own present
is like a man who
have lost the use of his heart.

A nation who
has no vision of its own future
is like a man who
have lost the use of his mind.

If we are this nation, 
what for are our hands?

What for are our hands, my people?

- selah -

What for the memory but the light?
What for the light but the life?
What for the life but the hope?
What for the hope but the love?
What for the love but the labor?
What for the labor but the peace?
What for the peace but the LORD?

And what for the LORD, our King,
but the victory of all these good things,
alleluia to God on high, my people! 

What for our independence if not our freedom?
What for our freedom if not our peace?
What for our peace if not each other?

What for are our hands, my people?

- selah -

Who has given us our nationhood but God?

Alleluia to God on high, my people!

Did any of us choose to be born with such a soul?

Who can take this spirit in our hearts away?

Alas! Only we, my people, you or I -
by our unremembrance, by our impenitence,
by our unpeaceful, and false ways.

So let us, as the stars,
in this time before the dawn,
awaken Now.
---<--@

Remembrance as Virtue

Yet in Your great mercy You did not forsake them in the desert.

The column of cloud did not cease to lead them by day on their journey, nor did the column of fire by night cease to light for them the way by which they were to travel.

Your good Spirit You bestowed on them, to give them understanding; Your manna You did not withhold from their mouths, and You gave them water in their thirst.

Nehemiah 9: 19-20



REMEMBER NOW,
my brothers and sisters of the Promise -

Our remembrance is virtue.

It is born of the cardinal virtue, Justice.

One who is thus
guided by remembrance
can not be by evil inspired.

For no virtue may be possessed
for purposes that are unbecoming and evil.

Our remembrance does not serve
to throw thy present into the confusion of the past.

But serves to add to the momentum of thy present
the present hopes of every generation past.

- selah -

If the present seem dim, O my nation,
it is because the future seem distant.

And the future only seem distant
because the glories of the past
is somewhere forgot.

Therefore -

Remember the good things
and build upon it.

Remember the evil things
and let this lead you to a remembrance
of the good things.

Never build upon evil inspiration.

- selah -

It is not remembrance
to hold on to a hatred of past things
and remain in thrall of the gravity of War.

For what redeems is only virtue;
goodness sufficient for every generation.

By virtue this long night is overcome!
---<--@

(original produced 20110610)

Salutation #102

(Piercing the Heavens)

If I am silent,

if I do not speak of their names,

it does not mean I have forgotten.

My silence is not ignorance.

My silence is an observance.

At the breaking of every moment, it longs to speak!

It longs for justice...

It longs for peace...

Lest we forget.

Lest we forget.

---<--@

O when shall the wounding stop

and the healing begin!

O beloved Soul of Army -

when is our last fading away?

Excerpted from The Last Fading Away

Salutation #99

The things of division are ephemeral

- difficult and painful they may be -

these evils serve a necessary purpose

and this purpose is always

- greater and nobler -

than these hurts.

For unity and the fruits of unity,

- these are the things that matter -

these are eternal!

(Emergence)

Listen!

When I was a child,

I demanded perfection from my parents.

As I grew,

I came to accept not only their imperfection

but my own.

Now that I am all grown up,

I work with my parents

to make our family more perfect...

My brothers and sisters of the Promise -

That child is our nation,

those parents are our government

(under the LORD as our one Sovereign),

and that family is our one Republic.

---<--@

To everything there is a season,

and a time to every purpose under heaven.

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.

Salutation #70

The Peace of the LORD be with us all.

Be wary of those tired old conventions of past things -

for the LORD is not a God of divisions!

Nor is thy God a maker of lies and a sower of confusion.

For the LORD God is but one God alone -

nothing rises out of the darkness into the unity of God

that does not lead to the Truth.

You have the written Word of God in thy Scriptures

as well as the Word of God unfolding in thy present reality -

see from the witness of history where the will of War has taken thee

and discern from the faithfulness of God where it shall all lead.

- selah -

(A Call to Remembrance)

O MANKIND, my nations,

saith the LORD, our God,
where is thy one heart?

The heart that yearns
to be one as I AM one.

O ye believers, listen:
Have thou loved the other?

Have thou seen through

Babel's confusion?

O ye peoples, gather about!

Return to Me, O my portion,
come and learn again My ways
for My ways lead thee to life
and My Peace is thy only path.

Know ye the Truth

and I shall set thee free.

I am the LORD, thy living God:
Behold! I am but one God alone,
worship Me not with thy divisions!

Serve me not with wars' ambition
but turn away, O stars of Abraham,
and serve the life of My creation.

---<--@

Terrorism is a crime not a cause.

---<--@

Promise of Old

Never Again!

Salutation #68

To use a line from the recent HBO mini-series, "Game of Thrones":

"Winter is coming, we can not afford to fight a war among ourselves."

(The Evil in all evil things)

If guns were the root of all evil,

we'd be fighting these wars

with sticks and stones instead.

If money were the root of all evil,

we'd still be poor for lack of love.

If people were the root of all evil,

why are there still people in this world

so much in need of our humanity?

For God does not suffer evil without a cause!

And if God were the root of all evil,

why do we suffer all these questions?

Alas! There is an Evil in all evil things -

all that in spirit sows diverse corruption in the soul of Man

causing the human spirit to turn against its own self;

inspiring the human heart with adulterous lies

and the promise of empty, defeated things

poisoning both the willing as well as the unwary of soul

with false inspirations wrought by the fallen vision

of the eternal destiny of the nations of the children of Mankind.

This spirit is the spirit of War -

the ancient adversary of all national community;

an emptiness that seeks to consume as if with fullness -

crafting division, sowing discord, scattering peoples,

and devouring generations entire.

- selah -

We shall not be useful against War.

For to contend against it - and therefore, against each other -

is what War desires for us to do.

We are to build from upon these times,

the better, brighter, kinder shape of things to come;

maintain it where it needs, advance it where it should,

defend it where we must, always being mindful -

to never exceed ourselves in our observance of peace.

For the more we build upon our peace as one nation,

the more we drive against the darkness of War - and -

as we press on and away from this midnight of our times,

the more sense of hope we shall meet along the way,

ever the nearer we are to the breaking of the day

- where the new age awaits -

ever shall we also know Peace

in our heart of hearts.

And even if we do not live to see those days,

for we are here to nurture trees whose shelter we shall never use

and to build the foundation of things we shall never finish

- if we believe in the LORD and in each other -

if we endure despite ourselves and prevail in unity and in the Good,

in spite of all these things, we shall,

at the one final gathering of all our nations,

I know, come to a knowledge of these things...

- selah -

O my beloved people -

remembrance is the bond

that binds together our lineages,

our families, tribes and our peoples,

into that one gathering sense

of a self-cognizant identity

that we recognize as our nationhood.

It is in our spirit;

a unity bound by our labors

to obtain from God and heaven,

the vision of our peace - here on earth -

in time - and - unto the fulfillment

of time as we know it.

It is a unity fostered and protected by our one Republic - forever -

and a Republic guarded jealously by the Angel of the Philippines.

If there were a billion of us who belong to this one nation of ours,

endowed by our liberty with the same strength of diversity,

we would each be possessed by the same awareness

of what makes our belongings to each other

a valid and common reality.

We are children of the Promise

and born to this Land of Promise

unto a labor of common dreams

as citizens like unto each other.

We are Filipino

who by any other name

is what binds us together

as this one Filipino nation.

And this sense of belonging applies

so long as we exist as a people

together in time (our generations)

and across dimensional space (our families, our tribes)

so that if there were only two of us left,

it would still be the same truth.

Therefore, as a nation, when we forget,

it is worse than when we knew nothing.

For when we knew nothing,

there was nothing to forget.

But when we forget,

we are always divided against something.

Worse, it is always something

we should never have forgotten.

The War in Heaven is in the heart.

---<--@

"Ang bansa nati'y hindi nabubuhay dahil madilim ang gabi."

Never Again!

Revelation 12: 7-9

O Holy Michael,

by the power of God,

the dragon prevailed not!

O Heavenly Hosts,

by thy swift and powerful ascent

to the unity of the LORD,

Satan and all his fallen angels

lost their place in heaven.

War is vanquished forever!

My Annelies Marie's Legacy

OUR WORLD has not changed, my Anne.

It is still the same world that God has created.
The same sun, moon and order of the seasons;
the same restless and violent lands of the earth
under this same blanket of unconscious skies
that bore quiet witness to your life and times.

My dear Anne, our world has not changed!

When I contemplate your life here on earth,

during those quiet nights, O beloved of my heart,
I often look up at these same starry night skies
and see those familiar patterns of stars
that I know in my heart looked quietly down on you
just one timeless instant away from me, my Anneka.

A moment seemingly so distant, it hurts me to miss you.
Yet an eternity so close, it fills me with all your love.

It is as if I have you and I don't have you...

And I realize this certain closeness between us:

We are separated only by spaces between our souls;
in what littleness of self that we may each obtain
by virtue of our unique and individual humanity
in the you being you and the me being me.

O my beloved friend, I know you suffered!

I know how much others like you suffered!
From the very beginnings of the nations of Mankind,
'tis the holy and nameless innocents that carry the burden
of the precarious and desperate state of our fallen nature!
The very soil of our earth is soaked in their blood
and the undying memory of their secret silence cries out
like a chorus rising all around us to pierce the heavens -
Almighty God Himself has heard and the season is late.

O my dearest Annelies Marie, I know you suffered!

I know how terribly you suffered but at the same time
I stand ignorant of your personal pain and suffering.
A sacred space exists

between yourself and God alone.

And God knows, I love you enough to want to know all of you -
but I love you enough also to let you be free to be yourself.

I am drawn near you by the lovableness within yourself.
I am drawn near you by the infinite promise love contains.
Of good things I know and good things I know not, that I desire:
All the virtues and the gifts that your friendship brings -
most especially your steadfast hope, cheerfulness and courage.

Today, my darlingest Annelies, here in my present time,

I look out into my own time, full of wars, death and suffering
and wonder at how some may say our world has changed.
I see the same evils and the same sufferings and the same sins.
I see the same terrible injustices that Man inflict upon Man;

nation against nation waste themselves in endless battle.
And I realize in myself that our world that has not changed.

Some may say that the times have changed.

Some may say the world is a different place.

Some may say that the world indeed has changed.

But this it is yet another illusion to lead astray!

For it attempts to run away from the awful truth

that this world is still the same world God created:
The same sun, moon and order of seasons;
the same restless and violent lands of earth
under these same blanket of unconscious skies
that bore quiet witness to your life and times.
Scripture says, "There is nothing new under the sun."

(Ecc 1: 9)

It is the illusions that we human beings create in our hearts;
the gravity and the perversity of our own dark imaginings,
the ancient malice and diverse scope of our own willful rebellion -
those things that make of Man less than himself or herself
in the sins that brutalize the image of the Creator in each of us.
It is these that have changed in us and not the world around us!
It is not the world that must change, my darlingest Annelies,

Scripture says, "There is nothing new under the sun."

(Ecc 1: 9)

In order to better Mankind and advance the cause of humanity,
it is each ourselves that we must change for we are changeable.
Because it is through common witness of a good and well-lived life;
of a life lived in peace and friendship with God and others in God;
it is only when the Wars waged inside of ourselves have ceased;
when our minds have found the light beckoning outside of the dark
and the struggle for good will in our hearts have prevailed in us
that a true transformation of human society becomes possible.

So may your life, my love, be for others a simple remembrance.

May it inspire justice, responsibility and discipline in our world.

May it foster further understanding, freedom and community.

May your spirit inspire in us a sense of common humanity

that we may always remember our most basic of citizenships.

This is your legacy as I see it and as I live it, my Anne.

This is your love, my love, that

I now share with other hearts:

Imploring God to bless the seeds He shall plant in our souls today
that it may flower in full into the saints He shall raise tomorrow
for His glory, our good and the good of the one family of humanity.

Thank you, my dearest and most patient friend,
Annelies Marie Hollander Frank, my Miyang.
May God keep you now, may His Peace embrace you,
may His Light comfort you and may His Love surround you -
O forget me not, beloved of my heart, forget me not!
Pray for me, my darlingest, ever as I shall pray for you
until the glorious Day of the everlasting alleluias!

---<--@

I love my Miyang and my Miyang loves me. PERIOD. =^.^=

20111021

Reflections on the 20111018 Encounter in Basilan -

I am reading the statements and hearing the news about the recent clash in Basilan and it hurts me to think that all these political correctness seems to have so quickly overlooked the fact that we have lost good people over there - real people with real families and real friends, with real hopes and dreams and a real potential to realize in our nation.

We can never bring them back nor recoup what promise they once stood for in our behalf but we most certainly must never lose sight of their remembrance.

If we can not honorably accept the hope they have left for us in death, how can we say we have ever really, as citizens of this great and noble Republic, truly valued them in life?

For every soldier's death belongs not to him or her but to "we, the people". It is to us, the people, across all our generations, for whom they now offer their eternal sacrifice before the assembly of the nations before the LORD; to us, the nation he or she served in life; to our nation, to this one, great Filipino nation - who by any other name on earth - remains its true meaning and value in our heart of hearts.

So as regards our fallen soldiers, let's just say it straight and not use euphemisms that only serve to further the hurt.

Let us also inherit their courage as well as their hopes.

(Lt. JD Khe - one of the 19 soldiers who fell last Tuesday - via con Dios.)

For there is no such thing as an accidental clash or a misencounter - every death received, every wound inflicted, every drop of blood shed for the cause of the peace of our one Republic endeavor is real. Indeed, all the love that is everyday shed for God and Country is more real than the money we hold with our hands. For virtue is currency.

Therefore, I respectfully, completely and decisively disagree with the usage of words like "accidental clash" or "misencounter" that serve only to indicate to me that the position we are endorsing is weak. It is weak because its remembrance upon which it must draw its truest and most reliable strength is found lacking.

I am an ardent supporter of the Office of the Presidential Adviser for the Peace Process and so I shall not inflict upon this Office a great disservice by choosing to stay quiet about what I feel needs looking into at this point in time. For I value this Office and all it stands for too much to withhold my loyalty at this decisive juncture of our common mission. I know of how hard this Office works, the sincerity of its people, the vitality and requisite nobility of its mandate, and how difficult the task set by God and our nation before it.

However, we can not as one Republic whole appease criminals - especially war criminals - in times of greatest trouble and in times of deepest calm - either within the ranks of the MILF or the NPA but above all, within our own ranks.

Appeasement of transgressors never serves the purposes of meaningful peace for appeasement is not the forgiveness we seek when we speak about reconciliation.

Most certainly, there can and there should be reconciliation within the nation, among our common peoples - but there can never be reconciliation with War: Those who in their hearts have slept with War and means to repent not of their adultery will always face the Angel of our Remembrance sword first.

I am for peace. But I am for a disciplined observance of it and I realize it will not come cheap.

I realize that this peace will and must involve Justice for all and that this Justice itself demands sacrifice.

For we can never atone for the loss this conflict has inflicted on our people as a whole. Human promise once lost to War is lost forever.

We may only seek to accept the impoverished realities dealt to us by the presence of War in our midst, learn from the depth of our privations, sincerely seek the Peace within ourselves and reconnect with each other as one nation - together this time - under the aegis of Almighty God - through the peace process.

The peace which is our right by honor and blood can never be built on differences nor does it seek to banish the diversity which is our strength.

It is to be built on the steadfastness and potency of those agreements crafted in the spirit of truths about ourselves that ascend higher than the divisions that presently plague our nation, sapping the marrow from our bones, eating up the material as well as spiritual riches of our Country like so much unseen and unwelcome locusts.

Truly, it is not the loss of our soldiers that somehow inclines me to think that the peace process is presently under assault, it is fear of the truth.

The mechanisms of this peace process must first of all involve agreements that limit and control engagements such as these. I have many questions in my mind about last Tuesday's incident in Basilan which is why I am actively seeking to become more informed about it.

But let me tell you this, I will never stand for civilian casualties - AT ALL - the peace process must first and foremost be implemented to protect our non-combatant civilians - Filipinos to the last, especially the very least - the littlest Filipino - and work to establish the norms that seek to treat the common people with the utmost respect as human beings and fellow citizens, brothers and sisters of the Promise, equally engaged in our Republic endeavor without which this peace is worthless.

Both sides when entering into the threshold of the Republic peace from where we must all begin in negotiations must agree to share in the responsibility to protect what we all deem to be worth protecting - the life of our nation - without which this peace is worthless.

When it comes to cases of legitimate military engagements I will never stand for war crimes. But while cases of civilian deaths must proceed through our justice system with the utmost diligence and haste, the losses that our military absorbs while also requiring the application of Justice, must never take precedence over the strategic mission of winning the peace for all Filipinos.

This concession is part and parcel of the sacrifice our national military undertakes to carry upon itself; an essential character of the profession of arms that underlines the value of our military remembrances. And I also expect the same professionalism and determination from the side of the MILF as well as the NPA - especially from their leadership corps.

Verily, we can not seek to merely exhaust ourselves in endless battle without a cause and also claim the dignity of a soul that is rightfully human or the honor of a purpose that is worth all this grief.

We must be just as determined as the spirit of War in our perseverance in the cause of our one Republic peace and as vigilant as War is reckless.

- selah -

My beloved people, let me speak to you for a moment from a place without divisions. Let me speak to you now from a standpoint that care not which camp or faction or side you profess to belong within our one Filipino nation:

We have been harboring what the nations of the world now almost unanimously consider to be the longest running internecine conflict in Asia. If one considers also the extent of the troubles of our Asia, it might perhaps be also right for us to say we have been nurturing in ourselves as a nation, this great and abominable internal division that for the longest time have caused the one Filipino heart to be eclipsed and left wanting in itself; our one Republic skies left as shattered and darkened like the undecipherable confusion that the everyday Filipino is ordinarily subjected unto on top of our daily economic struggles.

These conflicts that divide us reflect the divisions that prevent us from prospering as a nation and these in turn feed into those hidden cycles that spiral down into the void of things that have failed to ascend with the ascent of the truth into the Truth - all that never was - oblivion itself seen from outside of itself.

Indeed, there is a darkness ruling in our midst that is like a tyranny without a tyrant.

I realize I sometimes speak with words that are difficult to grasp - even for myself - (as I might be doing right now) but let me put it this way for us:

Let us please remember, my brothers and sisters of the Promise - for the sake of all we have lost - and strive to validate this truth within each ourselves today, through watchful observance, through unfailing prayer and sincere repentance, that a nation is happy first before becoming materially rich and this happiness will never come by way of the darkness that scatters but by way of the light that gathers.

If not today, when?

Peace, I salute you all.

---<--@

And so, as we enter the end of another week and the nation pauses to reflect upon the significant happenings of the past week, I sincerely hope to have been of help to each of you.

Let us all have a meaningful and relaxing weekend.

Mabuhay ang Pilipinas! God bless us all.

The one Code

REMAIN TRUE -
to our peerless LORD
to the one God
of our Father Abraham,
the one common Creator
of all common creation,
seen and unseen.

To your own sacred remembrances
and the memory of your peace
with God and with each other.

To the overcoming of your War
and the advent of your hope
at the dawn of our new dreaming
as nations together.

To thy own universe within
and to the riches therewith
those treasures that
neither thief nor tyrant
can deprive.

To thy own calling
to serve in the way
of virtue and of peace
and to thy own ascent
upon the one mountain path
whereupon all good things
find their meaning and merit
in the prayer of the heart.

To thy own labors
upon this necessary life
and to the hardships also
that this inhabited earth brings -
May you be satisfied
knowing in your heart
what you truly strive for.

To thy own endeavor of Country
and to the trust of thy own nation
may you embrace with your embracing
these wholes upon wholes
as far and as wide as you could
and with courage
and steadfast persistence
bring all your love
as near as it takes you
to the one Love
that unifies us all
with the one LORD of All.

To our Lord's poor
and to each other
as keeper and as friend -

May we all remain faithful
from always to always
until the final gathering
at the end of days
and the beginning
of all things new.
---<--@

Prosper the Peace. Prosper the People.

20110710

Some people can afford to squander the memory of our heroes...

But I can neither hate nor ignore them for I can not afford to be like them. What they do only strengthens my own remembrance.

In some way, I pity them. May God quicken their souls...

---<--@

On Remembrance

Remembrance is a commandment of God of all human nations.

Hence, a lack of remembrance breeds a certain contempt of the sacred.

Either one draws away from the sacred, placing it in a place out of reach of the heart. Or one becomes enraged by it, making of it an enemy of the heart.

A person who looks for God who has not the remembrance of God in the heart looks for Him in vain.

He or she may seek God in the heavens or on the earth and God shall nowhere be found for that person.

The great scandal of this is that this person may claim that God is not - where in fact, he or she has closed the eye of the heart to the Presence of the LORD in all things, seen and unseen.

The remembrance of the war dead belong to the realm of the sacred.

In an ever increasingly materialistic society, where God is being everywhere forgot, a healthy regard for the sacred soon becomes an uncommon virtue.

What lies beyond the veil of time, where all unity must proceed, in unseen realms beyond the nature and scope of the physical and the temporal, is where a healthy sense of sacred remembrance grounds the human heart.

Where remembrance is increasingly becoming scarce, there shall in its place be a growing lack of a sense of connection with history and with each other.

For all truly human relationships are spiritual connections.

---<--@

Salutation #34

(A Vision of the Desolation)

I saw in a dream

- a few days before the Easter Triduum of 2009 -

a prominent list of atrocities

listed according to their heinousness.

Their frequency was from the most heinous to the least inhuman act

with the most heinous one to be committed against the people twice a year.

There was a camp

much like Bergen-Belsen.

But it was not a dream about the Holocaust.

It was a dream about another Holocaust.

There were people (of every nation)

in the middle of the night,

civilians - men, women, children -

being thrown whole

(to be consumed body and soul)

by faceless men in uniform

into a smoking pit in the ground

and from out of this pit was thick smoke -

the smoke of poison gas.

There was no sound to the dream

only this terrible feeling of growing horror

at this appalling vision in greyscale

unfolding before the eye of my heart.

I felt powerless.

An increasing sense of panic overtook me,

wanting for the dream to end.

(And then the vision was replaced

by my Miyang Marie,

smiling like a star in the night -

a safe harbor for my heart

amidst all that darkness;

beautiful life amidst all this death.)

---<--@

Mabuahy ang Pilipinas! God bless us all.

Madness