Some Thoughts on RH

Abortion is evil.
Life begins at conception.

True.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The negative choice is a passive choice.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is where the locus of Catholic education should be.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No to Homophobia

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

I embrace our gay community. 

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

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

My politics regarding this matter is simple:

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

But that is all. 

From this point, it is all civics.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Not our differences.

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

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

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

Differences make us the same

The Burden of Democracy

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

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


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

According to their relationships arranged as thus -

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

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

When shall the future be...

When shall the future be... 

Corruption we can never banish entirely - we have to take man as he is. 

Our society ought not suffer its evils easily though. 

We should work to gain from these trying times, a vital tempering that shall steel our will of community. That corruption never again openly threaten our common labor of Country. 

The Filipino dream of freedom belong to all Filipinos. 

We will always behold this dream as if it were a future far away if our nation remains shackled by the many fears that hold us back. Our future is near as tomorrow once the Filipino can dream again. 

We should not fear to break out of old molds of thinking. We should not become comfortable with all too familiar pains. The ghosts of past things shall seem terrible to us indeed if we shall harden our hearts...

Nations have a right to be - forever. Therefore, every Country in our present world, properly established, expressed, and brought to fore in time, has a right to succeed. We must own what is ours.

We want better things for our nation. All things that better a nation ought always to last. If a thing is not such and after a while perishes, shall we call it a gain of happiness? Or a betrayal of it? 

Wealth to our community is enrichment - good and wholesome to the total being of man. Corruption and its propensity to multiply its sins against community is never a means to achieve such a wealth. Evil foundations shall never stand the test. Time itself shall pull its worthless idols down from this world. 

What we must dream and labor together to possess is the kind of riches that promises to profit our souls a happiness that is invincible. Material wealth yes. Most certainly! But the gain of its honorable pursuit as well. 

By the gain of virtues multiplied, the pursuit itself becomes a blessing unto every life's learning. We enable our citizens to become masters of their temporal possessions and therefore, captains of our national fortunes. 

Wages and salaries, benefits and allowances - everything that adds to every citizen's ability to move and to be - these are not survival options but economic necessities. 

It should not be such a hard decision to make - to increase the economic potential of the Filipino - IF the wealth we as a nation possess were to be established on the building up of good and abundant things that make our Country in the sight of Providence very good. 

But wealth born of the wrong things curse. It is naught but dust and earth in the end and shall leave for our generations nothing but bitterness and grief.

Our connections are human and valuable. Peace is the source of the national wealth.

Our citizenship in this Republic draws its sovereign reality from the strength of our connections with each other. How we esteem this sacred trust and how we honor our citizenship is one and the same duty. 

Betrayal of the public trust usually arises either indirectly through ignorance or directly through malice wrought against the sacred trust of our people. 

Simply put, our civic allegiances we profess to each other under God - through the Flag that rally our spirit unto the liberating work of our Country. 

From this we are emboldened and stand to gain much fortune. 

For the gaining of the earth for man is the original intention of our coming together as a nation. Before the fall it was, after exile it still is. 

---<--@

Thoughts on Democracy

If we get this right, it will really be right for us.

Democracy is not a rule of State. The Republic is our system of rule.

Democracy is our way of nurture. It has everything to do with the peace that lives in the heart of our people. A people at peace with their freedoms is a people strong and steadfast, fully capable of building up the earth and of bettering their society.

Democracy is freedom kindled by the unfailing light of reason. Liberty is its sheltering burden. The rule of the State is thus received freely by the nation and popular government is enlightened by it.

Democracy is received by the soul of a people. It may only be sown by its own citizens and grown from out of the soil of its own nation. It must be received by the sovereign State. It is an unfolding of itself in time. It must therefore be directly experienced by the people.

It may be helped along in good will by learning of the shared successes and failures of Countries similarly nurtured by its guiding ideals - through reforms. It can not be safely transferred intact and complete from Country to Country.

Elections are not it's measure. What lasting wealth it establishes in the community of the nation and the fruits of it in the people are its true measure. Justice, Equality, Liberty, Humanity are some of its common ideals.

The way of amity among nations. The right of family with the nations. The duty of common defense and the ideal of dedicated arms. Sovereignty emanating from the unity of the people. Citizenship established through faith in God and faith in each other. Sufficiency through reliance with Providence as the highest Reliance.

Enlightened liberties as primary guarantor of justice and domestic tranquility. The dignity of the human being and the unleashing of the human potential. Human development led national development.

Human citizenship. Common rights and human responsibilities. Free expression. Rule of law. Equal protection under the law and equal justice before the law. The protection of minorities and representation of the dissenting voice.

Belief in human enterprise. Belief in an enterprise economy driven by capitalism. Economic cooperation in a free market structure driven by initiative, daring, entrepreneurship, opportunity, and competition. The pursuit of happiness. The multiplication of capital, the improvement of means. The alleviation of the humiliation and poverty of the human condition in the nation and also among the nations.

Love of the Flag and the symbols of Country. Deep regard for and recognition of civic virtues. Respect and appreciation for the power and glory of the human spirit. Pride and participation in the living communities of the people. Global sense, local presence.

Plurality of religion without hypocrisy or syncretism. Freedom from war. Civilian superiority over the military. Freedom of the national press. Freedom of academic thought. The establishment of National and Civic Endowments for the sciences and scientific research, technologies, arts, sports, humanities, and life values.

Reciprocity of the good both common and individual. The integrity of the family. The integrity of the national ecology and the preservation of indigenous flora and fauna. The conservation of the national will and culture through interdependent, plural and harmonious community.

The conservation of the national wealth through proper stewardship of resources. The common trust of the generations. Posterity as a living and spiritual economy.

Equal Taxation and responsible use of public funds through due representation in the formal affairs of State. The prudent preservation (through necessary transformation) of national institutions, laws, and infrastructures of State to guide the national progress and support the vision of the national success through changing times.

Food, water, power, human mobility (transportation and communication), and human safety (public health and public hygiene, medical emergency and healthcare access) as principal elements of human and national security. Physical elements of human and national security being only secondary.

Historical sensibility and a sense of sacred remembrance of the living and eternal memory of the nation. An understanding of the place and purpose of the nation among a family of nations. Love of friendship.

These are all principles of a free State. If we, the people, desire democracy we have to be willing to carry its burden with vigilance. Much depend on the spirit of our citizenship. And how steadfastly we identify truthfully with our labors, failures and successes.

There is no perfect democracy. It shall always be a work in progress while time is time...

Every generation shall be challenged by evils sufficient for their own days.

The LORD shall require a harvest of the fruits of these enlightened freedoms every season. He shall from every generation demand His portion of the life of our nation, according to the whole of each His intended good for each our generation.

Through covenant decreed by the Almighty from eternity, His Providence shall not increase or decrease His portion for each human life.

How it is we shall succeed depends much on our meeting the challenges of each present time as a lineage of human generations embraced and sheltered by our nation, represented and guided by our State, and fostered and served by our Country.

Thus, we shall never be able to triumph or fare well enough to raise the dignity and promise of our common humanity without abiding in a peace that does abide and prevail in us. For without peace we place ourselves under the dominion of war and it shall our troubles and woes multiply exceedingly with tears that make bitter the earth. We shall have no defense against the despoliation of the sword that wanders the earth as a restless spirit. It shall with violence and blood lust consume our people and destroy us from within.

Neither sky nor earth, night or day shall come to our aid until we remember in ourselves no more: That life is sacred. That each human life is to be cherished. That these are our values. That our society is in the service of man and woman as living souls made to shine for the earth, in behalf of the life of the earth; a little less than the stars in heaven but precious to God above all.

Adversity shall come against our democracy. It shall as a violent storm crash against our foundations and hurl itself against our labor of Country. Time and time again it shall test our generations - how deep are its roots? How much watered by the soul of our citizenship is our peace? How right are our freedoms? How sovereign our Liberty?

We will endure the test and leave things as they were, we will fall short and lose length to our days and light to our years, or we will together prevail over it, prosper our people in glorious triumph and add to age of our Country in time, the memory and sacrifice of our own life and times.

In our civics, unlike our politics, little things matter... small things count. From the exercise of little things - for ill or good - arise the magnificence of our values. Democracy is a way of awakening and of nurturing the seeds of these values.

That we become in time, surely as we must. 

If we get our democracy right, it will be really right for us.

If we get it wrong, we are always free to make it right.

Vigilant trust. Self-determined destiny.
---<--@

One Garden, One Door

You alone may enter the door to your own dreaming.

You must never seek to enter into your dreams by any other door.

You alone may nurture the garden within your own soul.

You must never seek to compare it. Nor must you abandon it for others.

There is only one garden. There is only one door.
---<--@

The Power of Belief

Whether we believe the Philippines can succeed or not.

We are right.
---<--@

Starshine dearest,

To the dreamer, the Dream -

and to the Nation, the dreaming.

To the beholder of dreams, the vision.

To the lovers of the Republic, the Republic
To the friends of tomorrow, tomorrow
To the stewards of Liberty, Liberty
To the keepers of hope, hope.

To the believer, everything.
---<--@

Salutation #197

A forward thinking nation, that is who we must be;
a people endowed through their generations with well-informed thought -
living, loving, learning, grieving, working, and playing as a society of citizens
constantly empowered by the power of their own good thinking.

(Forward Thinking Nation)

All souls that seek are living souls.

It is in our seeking that maketh us to feel alive.
Led by a light that beckon each from outside of the self.

And thought is the light that enlivens the soul of a thinking nation -

Thought that is good 

maketh the love in the heart 

shine in the mind!

Information enlightened by thought is knowledge. 

And knowledge blessed by the soul of a thoughtful nation 

leadeth all its citizens to be gathered together in peace.

A thoughtful people possesses 

a mind of prayer and a heart of faith; 

theirs is a science pure and free.

Just as the faith of a man or a woman 

allow their souls to seek the truth,

the soul of a faithful nation 

allows for all living souls 

to become gathered together 

and know peace.

This is who we have always been...

- selah -

What we need to do is return -

to a common memory of the little things,

the steadfast littleness of good things - those fine, fine things

that maketh the infinite, infinite in us.

Little acts of kindness builds a compassionate community.

Like mighty, little stones these nameless motions are 

which fastened together by the cement of our good will

become the great and courageous walls that rise up 

as a common shelter to our families and friends 

against the malice of the enemy.

Great power does not hold the beast back. 

Great love does.

And great love is never great without these little things

that maketh the infinite, infinite in us.

Let us begin.

---<--@

Exchange Fish

Happy, happy, fish, fish - sushi!

Me and my Miyang
gave each other
a fish today.

It was
the same kind of fish
of exactly the same size...
and it tasted the same, too.

Indeed,
the only thing
that made it different 
was the giving...

For it came from our hearts...
and made something ordinary
into something extraordinary.

It was all it took
to make us happy cats.
---<--@

Salutation #186

Fatalism, it is oft implied,
is a cultural predisposition in our Nation
that inclines our society
to accept evil with resignation.

(The Brave Resignation of the First Filipinos)

The first Filipinos,
all of our elder tribes that comprise
those ancient Barangays and their particular communions
that peopled our lands and navigated our seas
long before the advent of Colonial times,
came upon this realm of restless skies
restless earth, and restless seas
and realizing by the power of their own experiences
an understanding of the greatness of these natural forces
sought not to take them into their knowledge
but to dwell in harmony with the spirit of this dominion
and so came they to a knowledge the forces of this realm
by seeking not to bend these forces to their will,
giving to these forces none of their words.

For our first Fathers, the ancients of our Nation,
in knowing the vast forces that dwell within this realm
sought not by their knowledge to master them through earthly will
but unanimously allowed from within each their own cultures
an abiding form of common and equal respect, each according to each,
and all according to their elemental natures as they are to be understood
through their own enduring reality and the character of its freedom
- as they are - in the restless natures of sky, earth, and sea
along with all the bounteous life therein that dwell within this realm
and so worked to introduce themselves to the Providential wisdom
that brought the lightning to the clouds, and fire to the mountains,
thunder to the earth, subdued the skies according its proper measures,
and gave due season to the winds that brought in the Great Water
and thus, dictated the life cycles of the earth and nurtured its flowing rivers
allowing these forces, in due time, to reveal themselves to them,
and the will of Providence to take them freely into their own safety
introducing to them a knowledge of the truth of those things -
adding to their wisdom, and blessing their communities.

Our ancestral cultures
- the lineages of the First Filipinos -
by their free acceptance of the Hand of Providence
in the restless natures of our skies, our lands, and our seas
gained through courage and acceptance of greater forces
an understanding of words greater and more powerful,
adapted to its wisdom, and made it their own.

This is the primary source of that Surrender.

It arose from a very determined will
born of the discerning faith of our ancient Fathers
to harmonize with the unyielding peace of greater things.

It is, as taught by their common heritage in our Soul,
a surrender to the greater wisdom that abide in greater things
freely accepting of the Providence that rightly governs All
and the better knowledge of truths that prevail in Heaven,
recognizing these things as greater and far above
any knowledge that is of the earth.

So we have come
to accept the existence of physical evil
and surrender to the greater purpose for their existence
by accepting the wisdom and the existence of a Divine Providence
that rules over all our choices... and does see beyond them
as a Reality ever so greater than our own, but most of all,
infinitely better than us and more benign than the limits
by which our hearts allow us to perceive and to understand
the pain of their reality, and the tragedy of our familiarity with its evils -
particularly when it touches ours - in our own time -
and in every time.

For we have learned - in due time -
not to question the wrath of natural forces
and as a people have come to bend like the bamboo
to the unfathomable will of Divine Providence
and surrender our pain to the embrace of a Good God.

- selah -

In our own days, seemingly far removed
from the time of ages past - so far removed, as it were -
that we forget that time is not a measure of its merest count
but is always a passage from a dawn limits to an age of limitlessness.

So where time seem distant - the distance is the illusion.
There is no distance in time - only timeless remembrance:

Love and remembrance.

It is tragic what happened to Bohol, Cebu, -
and as we feel the pain of the recent earthquake that shook
the Visayas and parts of Mindanao - we may ask again
the question the first Filipinos first asked, "why?"

It is a right thing to be hurt? Because it is not.

But should we believe
we should again seek to question
the existence of these natural forces,
challenge their reality over our own,
and seek to apply our will of anger or regret
- no matter how righteous they really are -
over forces far above the power of our humanity
to overtly command, and therefore completely prevent?

Because it is also not.

Rather, these forces should exist to question us -

as they did exist during the time of the First Filipinos.

Not to surrender to them but to expect them,
and to learn how to prevail over them
by surrendering them to God.

- selah -

Moral evil though - the things of War,
and the Evil in all evil things.

These we must always question.

For these were always alien to our Surrender
for a surrender to an evil fate is not the Surrender
that was inculcated in the spirit of our Nation
by our First peoples.

They are the source of our Fatalism.

The real words to use is Brave Resignation.
---<--@

A Nation's Treasures

A Nation's wealth is the life and promise of its people - across all our generations.

My people, as we emerge as a Republic in our ages, before we are burdened more and more with the responsibility of material wealth - I want us to remember the simplicity of our happiness in this picture.

It is commonly said that one ought to find one's happiness before doing anything so that anything one does shall be of good profit to the self. This is true.

But lest the world anymore complicate it, this is true only if one can keep one's happiness in the soul and keep it there - present and abiding as a joy in thy spirit - without anything else.

So that in knowing this, we shall always know, as we together undertake to further progress our journey of Country, Earth from Sky - the bounds of our reach and the reach of our limits - where the freedom of Man ends and the Freedom of God begins.

For our freedoms
shall always be our bounds,
our happiness shall to each of us
always remain within their reach
appearing as limitless to our hearts as the Sky
only as far as their limits are known to us here on Earth -
therefore, to transgress the freedom that keep us real
is to distort the happiness that keep us free -
as the gravity of material things tend to do
to remind us of responsibility.

Let us always remain with the truth - we are a spiritual people and therefore, when it comes to our dream of happiness - simply, a simple people.

Everything we need is within each of us - from this unity, God-helping, we shall confidently build.

Now, let us carry on - into the morrow.

Salaam. Shalom. Peace.
---<--@

We are to be wealthy first before becoming wealthy.

Salutation #185

If you have been learning with me about politics,
you must now be able to agree
- with conviction - with me - and with each other
that our politics is an authentic human right
and therefore, a duty - expressed in our freedoms,
particular to each of us as citizens
integral to whose calling it is (within our Republic)
to be able to articulate and profess it
freely and accordingly.

(Politics and Violence)

The National Politics, our politics,
is not the rarefied domain of politicians.
We each, as citizens of this Republic of ours,
have a right and a duty to express our own politics.

Where politicians are our political thought leaders,
and very important to the vital workings of our Country -
they are only so because, we the people, must think politics.

And we must think politics to become convinced
- first and foremost, that they're truly ours -
more so than to convince others (that it's theirs).

Our politics must make us convinced citizens
and convinced citizens are citizens with conviction.

And these convictions
should make our politics clear - to each of us
for civic clarity and moral decisiveness are its first fruits.

- selah -

We do not as a Nation
possess in ourselves the National Politics
to argue endlessly about necessary matters
that involve the living life of our national communities
- at all levels across our fullest entirety, seen and unseen -
but to lend to these matters substance and popular weight

first and foremost - steadfastly, purposefully, and certainly

so that by sheer weight of our independent convictions alone

no matter how radically different they may naturally be

the Nation's priorities are accordingly and practically arranged
according to their constantly changing and dynamic realities -
from the ground (the very soil) of Country upward.

(And those of us who are formally called to be our politicians
by their vocations are the shepherds of these national priorities.)

For in politics,
we shall always have healthy disagreements
but we must - know and recognize - these disagreements
in the first place, by bearing the first fruits of our politics - first -
for these disagreements are like the natural bends in a river that flows,
futile without the water that must first agree on a direction forward.

Political disagreements are a natural consequence
of our common freedom of political thought and expression
and can not first exist without mechanisms of political agreement
for these disagreements are a consequence only of our much thinking
(of the things that the water seeks to avert and avoid at the river bends)
and are not by any means the fruit of meaningful political participation.

It is a strange feature of the realm of political thinking
that agreements - to responsibly own up to our Republic Vision -
must consequently lead to disagreements - but, brothers and sisters, they do -
for the strength of our will of politics must be constantly tempered and refined
by the disagreements that give itself sincerely as fuel that serve to fire the flames
of the vital national processes that lead to the betterment of our own convincing
so that in knowing where we stand across the political spectrum that define
the totality of the near infinite reach of our own Republic Vision -
we are reminded by our own freedoms - where we agree in principle -
and that our politics can only be strong - in as much as they shall agree
that within our Republic, under the sheltering skies of our Peace,
there is a season, a time, and a place for each and every good thing.
under heaven.

We who know our politics
know we implicitly agree on something -
that we are.

And that from these agreements must proceed,
even without resorting to any formal debating and/or open discussions
just by our standing still and embracing the reality of our citizenship together,
the challenge to further agree - over and above our disagreements -
because we must.

And therefore,
like Jacob and the Angel,
with every present generation,
come prepared for the necessary battle
of winning together from Providence, our Republic Vision.

- selah -

Citizens who know their politics never sell them out -
neither are their votes for sale nor do they vote on mere whim.

These are souls who walk the ground of Country with gravitas and purpose
and breathe from the very land and air and sea of our people, our sovereign spirit.

And so,
when, we the people, should think of - our politics -
we should not think that the National Politics is somehow dirty
or beyond the capacity of us lesser mortals to understand
(and give its intended victory without challenge
to the unversed, the uncouth and the pretentious)

we think - we are - and therefore, we must.

After all, my fellow Filipino compatriots,
are we not all commissioned by Providence Divine
to be citizens of this exact place in time?

- selah -

With an eye
toward the upcoming Barangay elections
this October 28, in the Blessed Year of our LORD, 2013
- in the Third Millennium of the Common Human Era -
I should like to be able to articulate another truth
about our politics - and one which proceeds
from the thoughts we have outlined above.

Violence (of the physical kind) and our politics
are like oil and water - tubig at langis.

They are two immiscible realities -
to mix them, my brothers and sisters of the Promise,
without stirring against the peace of our national communities
is impossible - one is a break from the other,
each takes different paths that lead to different outcomes.

It is said, my brothers and sisters,
that politics is a contact sport, this is true -
but it is not a sport of brutes - as brutes would like it to be -
the battle of our politics is played out in a human arena
and is a contest, because of the magnitude of its inherent good,
that must always and everywhere inspire the nobility of human beings;
spirit, virtue and truth are its ultimate measures -
and we enter into it because, we love.

Truly, political violence is ruinous to the Nation - to any Nation -
(we may feel this at present at the sad plight of the one Syrian Nation).

For as we are a labor of not a few - or even the many
but a labor of the millions across our generations - far into forever -
an inspired work of the citizenry - and a labor of enlightenment,
unto the very last of our generations - unto the Last Day,

we exist for the continuance and preservation of Sacred Life

as a Pledge not on behalf of Humankind's final defeat
but of the ultimate Triumph of our Cause to exist -
in the everlasting fullness of the Truth.

Violence - it's existence, outbreaks, and continuance -
and the harm it inflicts upon the dignity and promise of Man
- is - what our politics must always and everywhere together oppose
within our Nation and between the Nations within our Family of Nations.

The politics we must profess must unanimously consider violence as evil
unless in order to prevent its own demise, violence itself is deemed unavoidable

and thus, becomes a lesser evil undertaken to save the body politic.

This always holds true
in the case of those outbreaks of armed conflict
- that only becomes necessary -
when the existence of the Republic itself
comes into terrible and mortal danger of War
as an unavoidable duty of the Common Defense
and anywhere violent forces willfully breaks into our reality
against both our sovereign will and our deepest wishes -
as an integral part of our civic responsibility
to universally defend and preserve the National Peace;

a fact that was clearly recognizable just quite recently
by the crisis at our beloved City of Zamboanga.

(The craft of all nations is Peace - therefore,
not all wars must be fought - for not all of them can be just.)

Outside the manifestly ethical considerations expressed

in the duty of the Common Defense and the integrity of the National Peace -

All forms of political violence shall always be the sport and hidden recourse
of those adulterous brutes who have slept in their hearts with the Dragon of War
and shall always and forever - and everywhere - as far as our Nation is concerned
be considered for what it truly is - an abominable crime - a crime against all Nations.
---<--@

Fuel for Civic Thought

The question here is,
as we are cut from the same cloth as the American Republic -
(and can learn from their expression - if we are wise, God-helping,
to better express our own expression of Country):

Where and when will this revolution become an evolution?



This is not just a circle.

Let us not forget that this is also a spiral; an ascent
into the summit of our completion (or a descent).

For there are endless forms of Abundance
(once the material veil of these things
have been successfully breached by the national culture)
and all of these ultimately lead to absolute freedom
and ultimate forms of happiness.

BUT there are also - upon this world - endless forms of Bondage
(the existence of which is the exact reason why we are a Nation -
for we are meant to strive against it - not bow to it - or appease it).

The Separation of Church and State

No perfection without God



God made Religions many but the Waters that nourish them, God made one.

The LORD when He gifted with Free Will, the First Man, deigned to multiply his freedom - and secure his happiness forever, but caused Adam to grow only upward - unto Him - that He may know of the freedom of God and that God is his Freedom.

This was disrupted by the Devil (but not without the foreknowledge of God) and now we are, for our own safety and the forbearance of all human hope, exiled from our own Eden in a long darkness that is dark because the Truth to each our hearts is now veiled. But we are not without help.

- selah -

Wars of religion and the Remembrance they have - at such a great and terrible cost - afforded all our present generations, are not conflicts that are of the ordinary sense known to our Nations, nor can these Wars be contained by the Power of our States - these Wars, when they are allowed to break into our world and impose its will on the Peace of our Nations, are automatically wars of utter annihilation - their lust for violence, one that  burdens our need of Justice to such an extent that entire peoples lose sight of the Debt we must owe to the Memory of the lost and the fallen, who are our kin forever and responsibility under God as free Nations upon the earth and as such, one that only an act of Heaven - one short of tempting the LORD Himself, can bring to an end.

Religion is a requisite of the life of Man, through religion Man does Justice to God and God deigns to bless with truth, the faith He has sown in the Soul of every Man - the fruits of this intimate encounters from within the Soul of Man brings him to an understanding of Peace and this knowledge nurtures wisdom and the spirit of our humanity is made bright by it - all in its natural course, every variety of Religion musts produce fruits that withstand the darkness of time and the corruption of evil things; their strength, a necessary element of Nationhood, and their natural functioning, integral to the Peace of every Country.

Heaven and Earth can not be one Power (before the Last Day): To preclude the appearance of Wars of religion (and save our posterity from their unbearable burden of Justice) and to preserve the freedom of our religions, in the individual as well as in their necessary corporate exercises in human community, and the blessings of each its noble fruits necessary to the health and well-being of the spirit of our great and honorable Republic, it musts be necessary that Church and State are made distinct in their purpose and power and that their functions especially from within the State remain clear and separate from each other always.
---<--@



No religion shall be the State religion of the Republic nor shall the government require religion as a standard among themselves, whether elected or appointed, nor shall religion be a measure of the excellence of public service nor favored over each other in matters of State or through affinities, formal or informal, with any of the Offices Executive, Houses Legislative, Chambers Judiciary, Commissions Constitutional, and each their necessary Institutions and as a whole or through each their individual representations be given to transgress their equality in particular with each other being apart from the Powers and Purposes of the Republic State.

The government of the Republic shall reserve religious freedom as a distinct freedom granted to the exercise of individual choice exclusively and forever prohibit any form of grant within the State and among the religions that prevents or distorts the plurality, the fullness, the harmony, and depth of religious expression in the national community, that together enriches distinctly the human spirit of a common people - each their ageless wisdom strengthening the inherent Truth embodied by our Liberty through a unity in diversity that strengthen the freedoms integral to the functioning of our democracy and necessary to the well-being and civic virtue of a free and enlightened citizenry.

Therefore, religious prejudice, religious hatred, and the carrying on of the dishonors of the divisions that have marked with untold death and terrible suffering the memory of the past in all religions shall be the right or the province of no one.

All places of Religion shall be protected and preserved, all forms of prayer shall be allowed at all times to endure and persevere as a personal recourse - in private and public places together, religious equality and plurality and harmony being recognized and upheld by the government of the State - with neither fear, nor favor, nor prejudice - of or against any and all religions to their fullest expressions granted - save those who endanger these same freedoms and empower the past against which this Separation of Church and State has been established for the safety and progress of the life of the Nation and the Peace of the Republic that stands in its defense forever.

Thus, a Christian is to govern by the fruits of his or her religion and enriched by the common experience of the national community, establish by the virtue of its truth, him or herself in Public Service by a calling to serve all souls without distinction particularly in the State.

As such, the same degree of respect and courtesy of Republic Ideal and Tradition shall be required of faith traditions and their religions when they are likewise called to respond to the same life vocation to serve in the government of the State - to be human beings and citizens to each other alike - without any religious syncretism or hypocrisy but in fullness of truth; a faithful keeper and a loyal servant - bound to each other in peace and kinship by the freedoms that bind us together through all our generations, past, present and future, unto one Nation distinct among one great family of Nations - under God, the LORD, our one Sovereign.

For this is intended the Separation of Church and State - not to cause more confusion but to end it, not to make us vulnerable to the sins of the past, but to repent of it and, God-willing, be ever spared from a recurrence of their insufferable evil in our times and in every present time, preserved by the strength of human community and defended at all times by our Republic, prevailing as citizens together.
---<--@

The Separation of Powers

Tyranny (in all it's forms) which is a betrayal of sacred trust is the evil against which the Power of human and popular government  must constantly preserve itself from - that the authority of the State remain faithful in the service of the Nation.

Power is a function of authority which in the Republic resides in all its Offices of State - their Flags, Titles, and Symbols - that comprise the visible standards of a permanent lineage of government.

These Offices being established by a free people from among themselves embody the universal Ideals and particular Traditions of a single and united Nationhood universally enshrined in a writ Constitution bear by virtue of the life of all their generations, from first to last, in good will of their living Memory, at all times and places, the collective burden of responsible and effective governance.

This lineage of government (of the people, by the people, and for the people) shall be embodied in and by their persons variously raised by the enlightened will of the Electorate from among themselves in their due and appointed seasons through popular Elections and the responsible exercise of Suffrage rights.

The exercise of Power in government is the function of Public Service and the individual persons who duly and freely undertake the vital calling to serve their fellow citizens through the meritorious and compassionate administration of the duties variously established within all Institutions that serve the Offices of State - through authorities enacted by the Republic to willingly carry out, at all times and places, the Nation's mandate for a responsible and effective government - honorably to govern with the freedom of those who allow themselves to be governed by the freedom of their peers - humbly, ably, and faithfully.

Power in the Republic is the ability to recognize and preserve the sacred trust that binds together the souls of our citizenry in the freedom and strength of Nationhood - and in so doing prosper and persevere in good will of the Peace that endows with Truth, our sovereignty.

Power in the Nation is the action of Nationhood - fidelity to Truth and the Creative Ideal, awareness of the Human Condition and the First Principles of Nationhood, Stewardship of the Peace and the Public Trust, Love of God, Country and Common Humanity - and is the common exercise of every citizenship.

Criminals in desiring more freedom subvert freedom and corrupt their citizenship for the sake of their chains.

Tyrants in desiring more authority transgress authority and Power (in the Responsible State) is made futile and impotent by their betrayal.

A Tyrant is oppressive not because tyrants wield the Power of State but because they are bereft of it - hence, just as evil is a departure from good - tyrannies are likewise a departure from good governance.

Tyrants are vanquished but every Nation's permanent lineage of victory, and every labor of Country's singular right of ascent, and the Power that both forms and informs the Responsible State can neither be lost nor stolen nor the vision of these triumphs diminished through unjust and undeserving service of pretenders, murderers, and thieves.

A Republic is the chief consequence of the evils of Tyranny. It is a jealous Guardian of betrayed and wounded peoples - without Kings and Princes, without Peasants and Slaves, every Republic is sheltering wings to a Nation of citizens - a Country to an orphaned people - a human work called by the LORD and kept by the Providence of God in the safety of His Peace through a remembrance of the Truth.

There is no difference between Old Countries who survived their ancient lineages of eternal government in the Institutions of human Monarchies and the Republic - each face similar dangers, one the result of another danger - for each Republic is a continuation of the Old Country, reconstituting the advantages of constancy and continuity of a permanent lineage of victory by shifting Power from Crown to Office, not by human will or advantage but as a result of the Human Condition and the War against which all Nation's find a common and implacable enemy of their life and their every life's pursuits - all are allied against this danger - all aware of their principle endowment of building up the Inhabited Earth.

All tyrannies begin small as one act, one inscrutable motion of the human will, one choice made in the heart - quiet as a whisper that with the passage of time, under it's own season, mature into a deafening crescendo of evils - with the permission of the people.

A tyrant is the result of a preponderance of ignorance, complacency, and indifference in the people - the rise of a mature tyranny is made possible only with the complicity of Nations - certainly no people desire to be burdened with the unbearable burden of tyranny but those who know of this exercise a necessary vigilance.

Every tyrant once vanquished, leaves behind a dark, distorted, and deleterious web of invisible supports capable of propagating it's own evils - an under culture of malice and corruption whose sins have caused various falsities and distortions to emerge as tares from the enriching soil of our culture of Country, the collective richness of our diversity and freedoms challenged - and the reality of our own sense of truth questioned by the lingering presence of this burden of Justice - this is why the Nation itself must be restored to the Truth - that we may know ourselves as ourselves - that the legacy of tyrants may wane with the returning of sacred remembrance that a free people's triumph over tyranny may always and ever be final and complete.

The Separation of Powers - Executive - Legislative - Judiciary - in a Republic is primarily purposed by it's establishment in the Constitution of the Nation as principal safeguard against the disruption of tyrants and the evils of their tyranny.

It is essential that we know the order and the purpose of their Separation as a harmonious, synergistic, and necessary truth in the life of our Republic - that they are Powers separated to safeguard a singular lineage of victory, and that they all owe their ascent (unto realization) to only one Truth, nor are they at war with each other but exist to repel the very divisions that have produced their Separation.
---<--@

The Positive Freedoms - "freedom of"

Expression
Participation
Dissent or Non-Participation
Press and Academic
Suffrage

The Negative Freedoms - "freedom from"

War
Inordinate Want
Mortal Fear
Ignorance
Oppression

Three Facets of Human Equality in a Just Society

Political
Economic
Social
---<--@

We are, therefore, we must

The first were the angels, formed in light.
Beings of pure spirit, timeless, forever bright.

The last was mankind, known as the children.
Conceived in darkness and conceived in light.



My citizenship and your citizenship are neither more nor less than each other -
at the rising of each moment, a quality that is forever equal in our soul.

We know it as truth in our spirit and in our hearts,
we express it in the reality of the nationhood that we embrace as a people.

Together, we give each other identity, order, purpose, and strength -
that we may make of this gift of belonging together what we ought to make it.

Upon this equal pursuit we as citizens must rely on the nurture of human freedoms
and the quality of our individual happiness, in this world or the next one, depend on it...
on our learning of it - and from it - and of the freedom of God with it.

In this way, by the light of our liberty -
in that enlightening sense of truth, we as one nation, collectively posses -
the Light in the heart of darkness triumph in each of our living
and by each life lived to the fullest - we are so gathered under heaven -
a nation among one great family of nations - by our faith in God and faith in our people -
across our generations - worlds upon worlds - quenched in everlasting waters...
in the fullness of a forever we can only begin to imagine...
or even dare to inspire.

We are, therefore, we must.
---<--@

Ahimsa

Man while upon the earth weeps
and cries out to God for His Justice!

To the Nations of the LORD, we fly
for redress of this awful plight,
for Man's plight is suffering.

Man suffers evil upon the earth
because he is Man...

Because Man is by first principle a victim.

I never understood the power of non-violence until I read a short essay about it in "War Talk" by Arundhati Roy.

I never understood what I now understand because I never was able to fully apprehend the profound connection it had with violent resistance.

Non-violence is actually the purest form of dissent and when it is given ear, speaks its message clearly and simply - even gently, resounding like a bell.

When it is given ear... for Ahimsa always needs a partner to the dance.

The thing is, when non-violence, especially in a democracy (particularly in an emerging Country like ours - still awakening to the growing strength of its wood), becomes itself a prisoner to popular indifference, we unwittingly abandon a necessary part of our political process by default to violent resistance.

And who wants to dance with that?

Dissent and overcoming dissent is an integral part of the national dialogue. We are free to express our disagreements to a government who is also free to express its disagreements.

How skillful the dancers are define how graceful the dance of the politics of those and every time besides and in a democracy, we have to dance - else, we would reap no results and the nation will grow hungry for the truth. And so we are in constant need of these partnerships - to hope to fully realize each dream within everybody's dreaming, that our forever may be full.

I believe an integral part of our civic freedoms is to adequately understand what constitutes "peaceful protest" - small or large - and I put forward to you, my brothers and sisters of the Promise, that this is Ahimsa.

People Power was also Ahimsa... 

Yes, we know this dance, we just have to recognize that we do.

And should always give preference to it.
---<--@

Innermost Freedom

There are four basic powers professed in freedom - choice, thought, want and fear.



Of the four, the first three are enabling forms, and the fourth an empowering form - all four are governed by brightness or lack of the light - in the person of Man, the first three are rooted in the spiritual and the last one, distinctly in the physical.

These powers bend and incline the will, shape and give force to understanding and govern the ambition of the mind as regard to knowledge and the obtaining of the truth.

These are the freedoms located in the interior most space of the heart - where only the LORD may go - they are sacred, inviolable, and distinct per individual - Angels and Humans both possess them (and, wherever the grace of God permits, in varying degrees, may also become possessed by them).


Freedom is to know Freedom

When non-state actors detain individuals, do they adhere to international laws?

When non-state actors detain individuals, do they adhere to international laws? That question needs more research, argues Bruce Oswald. (United States Institute of Peace) http://owl.li/nwEVd

 

Sovereignty emanates from the will of the international community of nations, who in turn, in our will of recognition of each other, must likewise recognize in each other - each other's sovereignty.

This enabling sovereignty then is a common trust, shaped and defined by how each our nations, in reciprocity of this trust, wield it from within - in order to establish - on behalf of all our nations as one family - a just and lasting order among each our peoples.

Sovereignty then is all about peace (entrusted to each other) and the good will that MUST proceed from peace (as a common trust) - both within as well as without.

The prevailing of this good will then is that which makes any human community sovereign. For all sovereignty emanates from the people inasmuch as the reality of each their nationhood is alive and aware in them and the remembrance of their generations dwell in greater harmony with the peace of other nations.

Because the truth that is essential to the spirit of all that which is sovereign - which is also the only fruit fitting and proper to it - is peace - peace tempered and refined and translated from spirit and will unto matter and form - peace a priori manifest as truth in the heart of all nations forever and peace as the labor of the life and good will of each our nations, each arrayed in time and across all our generations as each our own particular undertaking of Country, each in our own particular Ages in time, each in relation to each other - and - All in relation to the one God of All Nations.

Nations and their Responsible States belong to each other in this relationship of mutual trust in behalf of all our nations who recognize each other through a sovereign bond of a common and universal peace.

Governments do not only have their respective elections, but just as importantly are also possessed of each their particular mandates to the people - both of which truths are necessary for the Responsible State to faithfully carry out and fulfill their functions effectively as well as efficiently - toward those true and human ends for which all earthly governments are raised, each from among their nations, by the will of Providence.

Non-state actors do represent a sovereign will and therefore, intrinsically lack the authority to act on its good behalf and so transgress a particular sovereignty when detaining a citizen of any particular nation when the detention of said person is an act intended absolutely, as an end, and not merely as a means, in order uphold the higher law of the nations.

My answer here is a resounding NO: Non-state actors not only transgress the rights of human individuals by unlawful detention of any of their peer in creation, they offend the sovereignty of All Nations.
---<--@

To each nation, a particular state -
these two components of Country
fit like lock and key... to succeed
or to not succeed
inasmuch as they belong.

To all nations, a particular way -
upon this way all are gathered together
through our knowing one another
and in our choosing to belong
in the Truth.

A Perfect Democracy?

No Perfection Without God



A perfect democracy can not exist in this world, as it is.

All we can hope for is
to achieve an optimal tension.
One that ensures within our society
- under the eternal vigilance of Almighty God -
that the responsible side of our freedom
- those authentic human freedoms -
are always - ALWAYS - well on their way
to winning the conflict - against their false and evil side:
That the truth is ever over untruth, light is ever over darkness,
good is ever over evil, spirit over matter, and Peace over War...

Thus, preserving the Creative Ideal - in every generation 

for All our generations to the very last generation.

For -

Freedom is to know freedom.
Democracy is to love it.
Liberty is to be guided by it
and Happiness is to be able to live it
- alone or with others -
under the eternal vigilance of God,
imperfectly in this world
and perfectly in the Next.
---<--@

Our slavery is a bond.
But our freedom too is a bond.
The former, of death and oppression.
The latter, of life and liberation.
One is a betrayal.
The other, a vindication of the betrayed.

II. The Republic

To Old Glory, an ode - 

Thou, 

at thy Birthing art forever conceived -

the home of the free, for the free, by the free

ensuring a government for the people, and by the people

carrying aloft the will and the mandate of all thy generations!

The vision of thy conception thus enshrined 

and the ideals of thy belonging thus conserved

through the economy of thy generations preserved

that Thou, that Dream - orphaned to thy own world, 

in spirit borne unto shores, distant and new, by pilgrim wings, 

to become a peculiar appearance upon the earth, a peculiar people -

art One - reborn into a unity of many, embracing a nation that is free 

and forever now endowed with thy own Spirit, faithful and true

vigilant in thy defense, and kept by God forever true to thy memory -

a nascent labor of Country, gained in Him, and through His grace

constantly achieved by thy own faith in His Providential trust.

Thou, 

at the Crossroads of Independence -

refused to be a nation in thy Spirit suppressed

by any power of hell or human dominion spread upon earth

nor enslaved by whim of tyrants with freedoms, evil and strange,  

than THIS, the dominion thou hast at thy Birthing established
in Covenant with God, and before all thy kindred nations in Eternity,

for Thou art fully invested in thy becoming, as a work of His hands,  

stronger for each thy hope in each thy present generations arising 

brighter for each thy days lived in memory of every generations past,

thou art like a song that in the stillness of thy heart gets better and better 

with every music that begins to play for all thy generations left unsung.
   

Thou wert a labor of the LORD, forever unworthy of another!
For the freedom of God shall be the inheritance of thy nationhood

and its principles thou hast with all thy heart resolved to keep forever.

Indeed, this is thy Liberty and well suited to thy love and allegiance  

and Thou art today for shame if thy own freedoms are not wholly thine

and that Thou art for naught today if thy own honor thou shalt desert

for truly Thou art in courage better served - always - than in fear

and so Thou called forth thy own Great Defender to thy common defense
(for Thou art His, the LORD's, and may this be of thy conviction forevermore)

and an army rallied to the first thy great and noble Fathers, George the free,

for as a nation thou resolved to be led - even unto war and its attendant evils.

Thus in thy will of love and fraternal sacrifice,
even unto the shedding of thy blood and thy tears
Thou - through the travails and terrors of battle enduring and persevering -

did come to recognize in the ensuing clarity, the quiet dignity of Thy peoplehood;
of what formlessness has made Thee as a form upon the earth - 

of what Spirit truly made thy citizenship utterly and completely thine.

And 

dedicated to the Principles Thou undertook at thy Birth
thou forsook the old in order to become the new 

and took on the name, America, the United.

And in thy bravery and in thy self-reliance 

and with all thy imperfections glaring, 

and with all thy hopes still shining

thou went to be thy Republic - 

From the fires of Yorktown

arose thy eagle wings!
---<--@



Guard thee thy remembrances well and in this faith persevere...
Lest we forget, lest we forget: This we'll defend: This Memorial Day 2013.