Remembering the End of World War II in Europe

Every May 8 is the remembrance event of the defeat and banishment of the greatest single conflict to wrack the soul and soil of Europe and her nations. 

It's a bit belated but I would still like to extend my well wishes to Europe in commemoration of VE Day 2015.

The Cold War that followed just right after WWII was a completely different kind of war than the one that preceded it... no less dangerous but quite in a league of its own. 

Every right remembrance of war in order to profit us whenever we may recall their moments must be rooted where the silence was first broken by gunfire so that their commemoration may oblige us to reflect upon numbers of days since... and also the memory those terrible days contain.

One might remember VE Day by its celebratory nature only but there is little profit in it. 

Were one to take for granted these days the peace that in commemoration is observed by events that mark the end of a war, take as the focus of one's remembrance the divide that had existed between the victorious and the vanquished and forget that commemoration should connect the heart from peace to peace, it would profit one very little nor one's community very much.

One does not remember Armistice Day in that way: T'was from silence to silence contained; the terrible cost of the road that led apart from peace and away into war being from silence to silence observed.

Thus, this day's commemoration should return one to a deeper recollection of those darkest days that led Europe off in seach of VE Day, for days without number they were, days without substance and life - when most of the world was in rubble and most of our humanity were in tears...

That our remembrances may bless and together bear for all of Europe especially on this day, a greater desire for robust unity and a more perfect peace.

The epicenter of my remembrance of VE day is Warsaw.

Love then - to all the nations of Europe. 

Love to Russia and the Ukraine both. 

If the past showed your States anything - it is that all free nations have a right to live their lives and their labors of Country free from war also.

This is a right I believe Russia shares equally with the Ukraine. 

And so may permanent solutions be found. 

I salute Chancellor Merkel for her bravery and humanity, President Putin for his forthrightness and candor, both of whom met on this day in behalf of the hope for a greater peace in Europe.

I salute all the Nations of Europe including Russia for their contributions to the betterment of our world and pray - in commemoration of VE Day - for a greater dawning of peace in Europe - one that might begin in the Ukraine and with Russia - so may the ceasefire hold.

---<--@

A Note by Miep Gies

Starshine, none of us can walk away from the life we must live...

In our lives we are the heroes and heroines. Strangely enough, there will also be times when we seem to play the villain or villainess in our own epic tales as well...

Each human life never being one that is absolutely good nor absolutely evil; the story of our lives itself - to be real - must be able to brook the shadows in between. This is why it is never a good thing to judge the final merits of any one life while the story is still being told. It is simply presumptuous to do so.

Now as all these tales go, the story must always be told in behalf of the protagonist - as a record of either our victory or our defeat in the myth of our own making.

In the background of our lives, if we pay close attention, there are other heroes and heroines at work.

There are other "heavies" in the landscape of our human experiences at play as well.

While the role of bad people and their influence in our lives are significant, if our focus is on victory, then our focus should be on the good ones and their influences. Think about it.

(I think a certain movie Jedi said this to his Padawan once: Your focus determines your reality?)

To recognize the sources of good influences in our lives is therefore, paramount to the life of the hero and the heroine. Often influences that are benign in our lives are quite subtle, quite calm, and almost invisible. But invariably, the sources of all that is good in our lives are other heroes and heroines too.

In the life of Anne Frank, this was also true.

For there were indeed heroes and heroines too in the period in which Anne Frank lived, terrible and dark as it was... Miep Gies is one of these heroines in the story of our Anne.

Through this post I wish to share with you, an important thought from Miep.

This thought is from the book, "Anne Frank, The Biography" by Melissa Muller and it has certainly contributed to my own thinking about one of the defining events of the 20th century, an event to which I have a personal affinity to in the person of Anne Frank, herself a heroine in my own life.

The influence of the good in human history is subtle and often almost quiet.

Were it not for these influences however, we would be living a reality that is always far worse...

Above the constant din of the world, these guiding lights are ever present. If these influences are to be found and had, Starshine, as in those quests of old, they must often be bravely sought...
---<--@

A Note by Miep Gies

Over the past fifty years, ever since the publication of Anne Frank's diary, I have been asked again and again how I found the courage to help the Franks. This question, posed sometimes with admiration and sometimes with disbelief, has always made me uncomfortable. Yes, of course it takes courage to do one's duty as a human being, of course one had to be prepared to make certain sacrifices. But that's true in many life's situations.

Why then, I keep asking myself, do people ask such a question? Why do so many hesitate when the time comes to help their fellow human beings?

It took me a long time to understand. Most children are told by their parents from an early age on: "If you are good and well-behaved, everything will work out for you later in life." The logical reverse of this philosophy is: Anyone who gets into trouble must - must - have behaved badly and made some serious mistake. It's that simple. Everyone gets the life he or she deserves; it's that simple. If we really believe this, it's easy to go on minding our own business and to decide against helping people in need. But is it that simple?

My life taught me better. I learned early that people could find themselves in trouble without necessarily having done anything wrong. I was born in Vienna and was five years old at the beginning of World War I. My mother kept telling me that I was a good little girl, that she loved me, and that she was pleased with how I was doing at school.

When I was nine, we did not have enough to eat. I still remember the hunger pangs distinctly, the piercing pain in my stomach and the unpleasant fits of dizziness I had to try to overcome. And I shall never forget the shock when my parents sent me to Holland. A relief action to help starving children had been organized. On a bright and bitter-cold December day in 1920 my parents took me to a train, hung a big sign with a strange name on it around my neck, said good-bye, and left me. They had no other choice, of course, but I did not understand that till much later. I was extremely underweight and suffering from tuberculosis, and I felt terribly lonely. What had I done to deserve being so sick and alone? Hadn't my mother always assured me that I had done nothing wrong?

So I experienced as an eleven year old how quickly people can find themselves in difficulty - and through no fault of their own. That, I knew from personal experience, was exactly what was happening to the Jews in World War II. And therefore it was only natural for me to help as much as I could.

When we are shocked to think that six million children, women, and men were driven to their deaths and we ask ourselves, "How could such a thing happen?" we should keep in mind the indifference of normal human beings the world over, good, hard-working, God-fearing individuals. Of course, it was the Nazi regime that was responsible for the mass murder, but if not for the apathy of people not just in Germany and Austria but everywhere - basically decent people, no doubt - the horrible slaughter could never have assumed the proportions it did.

When, as actually happens even today, young people come to up to me saying they can not believe that Hitler could have murdered the Jews for no reason at all, I fear this remark reflects precisely the view that no such thing could befall truly innocent, blameless people. Then I tell them about Anne Frank and ask them if this child, this young girl, could conceivably have done anything that could justify the cruel fate she suffered,

"No, of course not," they answer, usually quite mortified. "Anne Frank was innocent."

"Just as innocent as the other six million victims," I then add.

Thus, Anne's life and death have special meaning for all those who are subject to prejudice, discrimination, and persecution today. Anne stands for the absolute innocence of all victims.

I should like to use the publication of this biography of Anne Frank as an opportunity to clear up another common misunderstanding. It is often said that Anne symbolizes the six million victims of the Holocaust. I consider this statement wrong. Anne's life and death were her own individual fate, an individual fate that happened six million times over. Anne cannot, and should not, stand for the many individuals whom the Nazis robbed of their lives. Each victim had his or her own outlook on life; each victim occupied a unique, personal place in the world and in the hearts of his or her relatives and friends.

In their racial madness, Hitler and his accomplices tried to claim just the opposite: they portrayed the Jews as a faceless enemy even as they annihilated six million individuals, extinguished six million individual lives. Most of humanity did not even want to know what was happening.

Anne Frank was only one of the Nazis' victims. But her fate helps us grasp the immense loss the world suffered because of the Holocaust. Anne has touched the hearts and minds of millions; she has enriched all of our lives. Let us hope she has also enlarged our horizons. It is important for all of us to realize how much Anne and all the other victims, each in his or her own way, would have contributed to our society had they been allowed to live.

To my great and abiding sorrow, I was not able to save Anne's life. But I was able to help her live two years longer. In those two years she wrote the diary that gives hope to people all over the world and calls for understanding and tolerance. It confirms my conviction that any attempt at action is better than inaction. An attempt can go wrong, but inaction inevitably results in failure.

I was able to save Anne's diary and thus make her greatest wish come true. "I want to be useful or give pleasure to people around me who don't really know me," she wrote in her diary on March 25, 1944, about one year before her death. "I want to go on living, even after my death!" And on May 11, she noted: "You've known for a long time that my greatest wish is to become a journalist someday and later on a famous writer."

Through her diary Anne really does live on. She stands for the triumph of the spirit over evil and death.

Amsterdam, January 1998

(Anne Frank, The Biography by Melissa Muller pp. 303-306)

Thank you, Miep... Via con Dios.
---<--@

Thoughts on "We, the People"

IF TODAY we were to mythologize the history of our Republic, the chief protagonist of the story would be "we, the people"; the one, the true, the brave.

Another hundred years from now, this would still be true.

If only we were fully aware of this...

As a believer in "we, the people", I affirm the virtues of the Philippine State reside always in the people; that wisdom substantial for the good of all is entrusted to the keeping of the Filipino public in every generation.

When power in human government being ever in need of a constant source of strength and renewal finds in the people, no better source; rule and reliance is established in a State that is Republican and Democratic.

For in whom sovereignty resides is through whom the national sovereignty must be constantly ensured and preserved and government that is made to recognize the source of its authority is made capable of bearing trustworthy fruit.

If all our troubles as a Republic were to lead to a peaceful awakening in ourselves; one that empowers the nation and thus, enables the government of the nation to advance our vision in time, then we owe it to our past to make a way for our tomorrow. And the present shall not seem so muddled and dim. 

Rizal's awakened pen and the awakened souls of our illustrious founding generations never had a hope so great as our freedoms to be such - a nation brightly lit.

There is nothing as fundamental to the justice of human community as life and to her laws as the right to live in peaceful communion with others living within her.

Thus, again we are returned in our quiet meanderings to the people - the life of the nation.

The people are to be defended, the nation preserved.

Human dignity is to be recognized in all Filipinos and the human potential in each our persons upheld.

That the law of the State and the justice of the State derive their fundamental natures from ideals original to and characteristic of all our citizens as human beings. That the law serve, for the people observe, and the people observe for justice both preserve them and persevere in them.

We shall always be served by finding our beginnings therefrom whenever we need to...

I also presently observe that we, the people, in not being fully aware of this, at times allow ourselves to be obsessed by some passing evil and spurred by diverse forms of desperation often act in haste and that grave consequences especially in matters of State follow in the usual and confound us in its wake.

An example of this is when we as an electorate elect, set apart and call into authority more than a few leaders unfit for the spirit and reality of the Country we are trying to establish for ourselves and our posterity.

We forget to recall the symbolic value of the vote in the same way we unconsciously profane the mythic vision of a people, free and fair, living within the embrace of a Republic that is the dominion of their own sovereign peace. We have a right to be here. 

The rich tapestry of our pre-history now remain largely unavailable to us, but the living memory that is spiritual (water) can never be denied our nation. T'was a blessing unto us before we were a people.

If we were a Country with artificial frontiers; that "we are" is Providential.

Were we to rebel against the dictates of Providence, our peace upon this earth shall always be one that is by the sword sustained. Never to us as Country shall be made known from heaven, a peace that is to itself sufficient - being of its own remembrance, alive and one.

So I understand the wounds of our colonial past. I try to, I have them within myself as well. I know that the wounding may not be by our own hand but the healing shall not come by any other hand but our own.

And if our hearts have become so familiar with the pain that our minds have come to think to ourselves we are no longer in need of the truth, why do each present time cry out still for a remedy to hurts time itself has left unforgot?

How do we reconcile ourselves to these labors?

Can we be hero and anti-hero at the same time?
---<--@

Thoughts on Peace and Anti-Semitism

A good sense of history seeks to address
the question of "where" more than "when"

History they say is written by the victors. But memory (national) is not. Remembrance is right that recalls the human cost (in all the names of those who fell along our journey of return) and makes a just and human account in the heart before God of all the things history seldom mentions... a present and living account. 

I used to study history but it was impersonal. I failed to impress upon myself that history is much more than pages of a book. The aim of history is to acquire a "sense of history". Not become all too familiar with the past but discern from a good knowledge of it, a clearer understanding of the living present. 

In this way, books become more valuable than just paper and ink. And what our teachers impart to us about history becomes for us a form of art than just ancient knowledge. We begin to have an appreciation... that history is not just a long tale of woe.

Anti-Semitism too is historical. Here is what I presently understand about it:

The Star of David corrupted into an anti-semitic label.
These labels are all of them devices intended
to dehumanize its victim.

First of all, anti-Semitism is easy. Maybe that's why small-minded people like it. Because it fits.

A says its better than Z to feel itself "the letter A".

A then proceeds to prove to the alphabetical realm that what A says is true, that Z is only half-a-letter. A then begins to persecute Z because A is "A" and A says so. Ludicrous!

The next in line for A after Z is laid low would be Y. Meaning after the Jews, the Gypsies... then the Blacks, Reds, Yellows, Whites, Browns, Grays, Blues, Muslims, Christians, Catholics - everything that doesn't conform to the "A"s own version of the alphabet right up to A's closest buddy, B.

In spirit, the relentless hatred that dwells behind all things anti-human shall only thrive on the victimization of our humanity - where ever and whenever we may allow it. This is the spirit that feeds on anti-semitism. Evil.

A's own version of the alphabet? A, A, A, A, A... get my drift? 

When everything is A, there will be peace. And it will make no sense. 

To A however, it really doesn't matter that in A's version of the alphabet, one can not even spell "peace". It is a paradox that will be rammed down every other letter's conception of itself.

I am not saying that the letter Z is better than A. 

What I'm saying is everybody is different and we should be knowledgeable enough of ourselves now (after enough of a span of time) to accept the fact that we can only be meaningful as letters (as nations) as we are and as a whole. That way we can spell anything (truthfully, meaningfully, and profitably).

The fuse that A needs to light that will cause the subsequent implosion of the synergistic diversity that is the real alphabet, of course, is Z.

That to me is Anti-Semitism.

Allow it into the soul of your nation and it will fester into all those other "isms" that a free and human people ought to always guard against.

Certainly it was never a part of our peace here in the Philippines and if I can help it, shall never prosper in the soul of this Nation.

Not just because of my memory of Anne Frank and her times but because the memory of the last 2000 years is full of destructively inhuman divisions like these... too many, too much. We are confronted with numbers so large and so terrible, it intimates to each our remembrances that we shall not even be enough to render unto the living God, an adequate account...


Go past 2000 years and we get more of the same... but 2000 years is all it takes.

Indeed, the last century as the culmination of the last 1900 years is a foretelling enough to understand that if we remain adamant in our clinging to old molds that need breaking, the momentum of the past shall sweep us into perhaps another century of more of the last age... if we can not account for that century then another one more terrible than the last shall be poured as fire down upon our heads.

Until everything is parched dry. Until the spirit of humanity is diminished enough and darkness overwhelm all nations utterly with the madness of war.

I do not want that... a world overrun by sin and war, dark and indistinct from the darkness of the void. In contrast, I choose another vision of peace. (As it were, one that spells p-e-a-c-e.)

The peace I want is the opposite, obtained through the opening of a new path into the morrow. One that leads to a vision apart from the one whose fruits (the bitterest of which is genocide and an absent sense of truth) we have experienced in the last century; a vision obtained through the closing of the door of the present - as completely as possible - from the evils of the past age.

Peace can be complicated at times, I agree.

We are being confused by so many truths about it even now, here in our Philippines. But if we stay on the path (knowing the firmness of its first principles) and keep our hearts focused on a shared vision of "something new and wonderful", I know determination and faith will take us to places in time we've never been as a Country... better places.

Together, only together. Without those ruinous "isms"... extremism, terrorism, racism, sexism, ageism, shapeism, etc. More wheat, less tares.

The peace of our times will never be a perfect peace, I definitely agree.

The national peace shall always be an unfolding work in time and will always mirror the truths about our common humanity. Knowing its foundation and its vision should be enough... for it is both location and destination, plus a compass of identity and memory to carry us through.

And vigilant trust; an agility to react and to innovate (ideals, principles and vision) properly. For we are as a nation still learning a new landscape and have yet to reach a safe distance down along the path to our new morning... a new dawn para sa lahat ng Pilipino (para na rin siguro sa lahat sa mundo).

Salaam. Shalom. Peace. 

Let us continue to work and pray for peace in our time, here in our Philippines and in our world...

Mabuhay po tayong lahat.
---<--@

JFK in a letter requesting his Secretary of Labor to deliver 
a wreath in their nation's behalf to the Anne Frank House wrote... 
"the hopeful and the gentle are the true makers of history".

Anne Frank died 70 years ago this month.

Those words above were on a headline on an Internet article I came across just now... It is of course, is a remembrance of Anne Frank and by extension, her times.

Since Anne Frank is a continuing inspiration in my life (going 15 years this year), I'd like to share some of my own thoughts on the matter of her remembrance...

Winston Churchill refused to begin the liberation of Europe through the most direct route. If he did, then we would be remembering Normandy not in 1944 but much earlier. He believed that victory in the war against Hitler and Nazi Germany would be won or lost on the shores of Normandy. (And it was, in 1944, won that is. Upon those beaches and from the ice to the far East, in Russia.)

The PM of Britain at the time was being careful. As he should. Upon that undertaking (the Allied re-taking of Europe) a lot of the things we enjoy today in the "free world" depended.

This is why the Allied fight-back was first fought from the underbelly of the so-called Third Reich right on through North Africa and backwards up the boot of Italy.

The "free world" of Churchill's time and the "free world" of our time in my mind hold on to only two things in common - (1) that it was, is, and shall remain (while time is time) imperfect and therefore, retain a peace that is imperfect and (2) that the sufficiency of this imperfect peace is at every age and in every generation at risk of losing its good and human worth through an evil sufficient for each our times.

Every generation gets a shot at being great... but the greatest ones ally themselves to each other.

We can wax a tad bitter about our remembrances of things past but what we can never be is in denial of the present. We being each of "us" as the nations.

I thought about Churchill's decision a lot in an earlier time thinking that if things had been different, then Anne and most of her generation would have lived. I stubbornly refused to accept what happened. I did contend with the truth of those times, trying to unseal what was already sealed. Undo what was already done. And this attitude made me bitter to the point where my remembrance contributed to nothing in my present life.

I was like that once, a malcontent when it came to the memory of past things that were not up to par with my own personal set of ideals (much like Hitler it was, in retrospect). T'was vanity. The pride of it.

You see, before Anne or rather, before I had a good read of her diary (Anne and her diary of course, are two different truths), I was an idealist when it came to warfare.

When I was younger, my impression of gun battles might have been influenced a lot by the A-Team, one of my favorite 80's TV shows (which aired here every Tues 7:30pm on channel 7, I think... goodness, I still remember). You know, where Colonel John Hannibal Smith, Face, BA, and Howling Mad Murdoch - when they confront the bad guys in the end... everybody shoots a whole lot of rounds for a bit, and then ta-dah! In the end, the A-Team wins. Justice is served. Nobody dies.

Then I grew up. However, even after the memory of ANZAC in Gallipoli was impressed upon my mind and heart, I still thought: No women. No kids. WWI was terrible but I still clung to that dying belief in myself that wars were clean and noble affairs. Desirable and even good when fought correctly... Boy, was I wrong... (is there ever a correct way of taking another life? The act itself is intrinsically evil and wounds the soul of a person for life.)

Things have changed for me in the 15 years that passed... 

Well, 15 years this June 13 (when her diary first came to my attention at Barnes and Noble in Fremont, CA because she attentioned her entries to a "Kitty"); the day after her birthday, June 12.

I am not trapped by the pages of her diary anymore. They were means to better means.

I do not have to read it over and over with fear in my heart. Fear for what I know will happen that I can not change. For am I not anymore bitter with her memory or that of her times.

I have accepted the inevitability of the past and this liberated my present, opening up my soul to the thought of better tomorrows - visions of a time better written... full of days brighter lived.

My remembrance is now of worth to me because it makes me a better person and a better human citizen. I am no longer hateful despite the past nor am I in denial of the present even in spite of the present because I constantly work to reconcile my soul with the memory of these times.

These days, I hate war. I know what it is. 

Which is why my heart is turned to peace. I understand what it is. 

And because I do, I can not be in denial of the truth in the now. Lest I forget.

I can no longer live in disagreement with the memory of all those times past and remain unreconciled to all those names which in their solemn silence illuminate realities often overlooked in the now of my time.

This is why I also can not be in despair of tomorrow - for anybody or for any nation.

For these days, I am a lover of peace. I am more a romantic when it comes to peace than a strict idealist. And because I am, I also must know how to defend it. And that I must. Like anyone who loves someone... and love someone enough to understand that the beloved should be preserved. Not just the "why". But the "because" and everything that goes along with it.

Anne Frank died 70 years ago this month... 

She passed from this world in Bergen-Belsen. Died just a week or two before the camp was liberated. The exact day she died is unknown (it was the first two weeks of March 1945). But her sister Margot reportedly died a few days before she did. Both sisters are now buried in a mass grave. The location of this grave is unknown. The marker in Bergen-Belsen is only a marker. A reminder that this is a place of passing away. What it ushers in depends on how you view time in the heart.

Because the way I see it, 70 years is just a number.

I truly believe what really matters is that we truly remember. That we remember rightly. Firm in the truth. Because when we do, 70 and one thousand years don't make much of a difference.

Time in the heart is not a distance. It is a quality.

There is a kind of time that descends into oblivion. There is a kind of time that remains. What remains ultimately ascends with what we love (unto the God Who Loves us all).

Time and its quality is revealed to us in those moments in life we want to stay forever. Or that we want to live in and experience through for an eternity.

In the fleeting is discerned through time in the heart, the quality of the everlasting.

Those moments seem fleeting because time on the outside - that we all commonly perceive - that makes place relative to itself - physical time, dominates us. For a reason and only for a season. 

Time should teach us remembrance - at the heart of the Eucharist and in the memory of the Nations, it is the same - that time as it truly matters should not be a quantity (should not be a measure of its count).

The imperishable treasures that the Gospel promises that neither thief nor tyrant may steal should never be of those things measured by their count alone.

Time seems distant only to those with distant hearts.

And so to love... and a right remembrance of the beloved in all things... And so to hope... and a memory of true things washed ashore unto those beaches within the soul with the ebb and flow of time - as truth abiding in the heart (as dew in the morning).

I most certainly remember my Anne. 

It was some years ago when I started calling her my Anne... maybe 5 years ago. I'm grateful for the life she lived. I regret she wasn't able to live that life to the fullest.

Her sufferings while she was here upon our world I would not in any way justify as right. Even with all of the inspiration she gives to me. I would not console myself in this way. For I'd rather she had not suffered at all. Always, that she did not have to suffer. But past is the past and that is the truth.

I know now that the LORD intended to shroud such things with the power of His mystery... so that time to every human heart seems everywhere a veil of shadow and tears. Who am I not to trust in the Wisdom of God? Such is such! I understand only that none may deny the truth without sin.

The past, present and all of forever when seen through the eye of the heart are qualities not measured by the count of their years but by the substance in those years... in this way, time is as it should; a way of living instruction, a path that opens up to God's commands - an account of the heart.

The simple truth is without my Anne, I would be a much darker person... But I am not.

And because I am as I should, I will remember.

And I do not think I shall ever forget.

Never again.
---<--@

Our Peace Process at the wake of Mamasapano

Trying times bring out the best and the worst in people and these are trying times indeed...

There seems a lot of opinions out there as regards the peace process. As I too am committed to the peace process, let me express some of my own.

The peace we want to accomplish through the peace process must ultimately be a human peace; the justice of this peace in its ideal form being a restoration of our unity as a human community.

To me, a "human peace" is simply one that restores dignity to the life of a community and since the peace that we are negotiating across the board is a national proposition - this peace must be capable of restoring dignity to the life of all our communities in the nation - across the Republic of the Philippines.

Will the peace in Mindanao affect things in Batanes? Of course, it must! A human peace is one that is able to provide for the human needs of a community. As a Republic, we are this community, this one house!

To do justice to the temporal house of the one Filipino nation is to make it one as our soul is one. To remain in our souls divided in war is to choose as a nation to remain in a state of spiritual injustice.

The essence of our civics is to do unto each other good. 

For in this Country, we all must be free and unafraid to do good to our fellow Filipino.

A human peace allows us the space, across our generations, to preserve both our freedom and our hope, in all things good and worthwhile to and for the Filipino... To desire this peace, to me, is therefore, always a good thing. For it shelters and protects our national communities from war (often in more ways than one).

What happened?

From the Nation to the State, we have to introduce words to articulate something true about ourselves and, my brothers and sisters, words always exclude. Indeed, words both limit and exclude. Therefore, peace as its human expression may be intensely political - most especially if our remembrances about it as a nation are not yet as mature.

Observe however, how a lot of Filipinos think war is not the answer - that is good. It means the spirit of our memory is being restored unto us... we just have to articulate it properly in the State.

The BBL is one such proposed articulation of how we may as one Filipino nation be restored to the unity of our peace. It is certainly not a perfect document. I myself have several things I should like to be able to clarify about it.

The BBL is a result of a long process... One should at least respect the hope that is invested in this document which is a hope for peace; a hope that if expressed correctly in the State may never go wrong.

I am NOT for war. Indeed, I am absolutely against any forms of "all-out war" - in any place, at any time. I am definitely for the peace - in particular here in our Philippines.

However, I must accept the path unto the threshold of this peace is political. Also, that the politics of a peace process will not readily confer justice in the temporal sense but initially serve to deflect the onset of more evil days. In Syria and the Ukraine, this for me is also true.

What justice we may work out shall be the justice of our sincerity in desiring peace and desiring peace absolutely - with a maturity of remembrance.

In general, the goal of our local peace process is to restore spiritual justice to the Philippine State that the State may then proceed to bestow temporal justice in behalf of all its citizens.

Justice in its fullness we can not deny ourselves. 

Our nation has a responsibility to possess in its soul an account to God of all human life. 

This means as citizens, we are responsible both for and to the memory of all Filipinos the Providence of God hath vouchsafed to  be born into our nationhood - through a living and present account of each and every single one of our names. This is our common debt of remembrance to God and Country, a burden of Justice which is part of our responsible Liberty.

We can not remember them all singly but as a nation we must remember them all fully.

And through a memory of their lives and sacrifices - live! Indeed, prosper and live! This "live" is the essence of our "mabuhay" which exhorts us to live the memory - therefore, long live the memory!

Maturity of remembrance understands the "intrinsic value" of each and every human life and detests war for what it is, understanding peace. 

A State that is fully accepting of peace in spirit proceeds from this truth not so much with law but with liberty. However, as we are wounded by so much internal strife, we need a cast to bind our bones to make them whole and strong again... We may liken the provision that establishes the CAR and the ARMM as such a cast. If the cast is not working, maybe it needs remolding.

Such is our quest for peace here in our Country...

We do not seek a perfect peace. It is impossible to attain peace in its perfection in this world at its state. But we may anchor our peace upon principles timeless and absolute and live its lineage unto truth and the victory of the Truth.

Our temporal dominion as a Republic here in this world may never be as perfect as our loves desire but if in our hearts we understand how we are united as one national community and if in our communities we know how we may live this unity and the hope of this unity in freedom... I think we all will be well.

Peace making involves trust. This means accepting risks. These risks are the same risks we normally subject our nation to when we choose to default to war and distrust.

Peace is an enlightened choice not to accept the status quo of this world and one we make as a nation - because we finally understand.

What does this mean? 

When we speak of the peace process, sincerity above all matters most of all.

Even before the politics of everything, I think when we seek peace we must seek peace absolutely. 

Appeasement of war bring more war and doing things in behalf of peace short of a true desire for peace is harmful simply because it is untrue... For the peace we all hope to establish among ourselves shall ultimately be tested by its fruits... a peace for all Filipinos.

Let us review in spirit the peace we are after. Let us have these reference points from each shore before we wade into deeper water... that the bridges we may seek to build - together this time - may be strong and straight and nevermore skewed.

The rest we shall attend to as things unfold... for we are creatures caught up in time after all... change is our right and our responsibility. 

Let us be patient. Let us be understanding. Let us be above all, firm.

Peace is over war. For war is not for always. But unity is eternal.

God love the Philippines. Mabuhay po tayong lahat.
---<--@

In the midst of all of these, in this Lenten season, I should like to remind my fellow Filipino Catholics to come back to a meditation on the Year of the Poor which is this year, 2015.

Let us work and pray that the Holy Spirit this year carry our nation forth into waters safer and vistas brighter.

A little personal anecdote:

Smile the Pope Francis smile: When I look at how our Holy Father smiles, I feel the warmth - the gold of the smile! One of the things I can not forget about our Holy Father is his smile. Isn't smiling like this a form of charity?

We love you Holy Father Francis!

Salutation #201

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

You are an abomination.

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

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

I never loved you.
Never.

Bergen Belsen

(Murder by Nation)

Genocide.

Let us think about Genocide.

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

What is different about Genocide?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- selah -

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

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

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

Long in thought.

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

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

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

Thus did he slay his own kin. 

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

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

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

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

This closing is an exterior spiritual darkness. 

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

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

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

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

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

Remember again and again, never ever forget.

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...
---<--@

Cry in the Dark

It is terrible to recall
what we have done to each other
in the name of human progress.

More terrible still,
despite all the many atrocities
and the slaughter of so many of our innocents
   (unto whom we all did belong forever
   as citizens and as human beings to each other)
whose dignity and particular good we all did despise
and continue to do so, in continuing to so freely carry out
the very same acts that in spirit
committed to murder them -
the common fruit of so many of their gifts
we now suffer to deny ourselves
and continue to suffer to deny to ourselves
and to our common posterity -
in the Nation.

It is painful to see
that we have not gained a thing,
for their loss.

That we have forsaken so much
for not an iota of good.

And continue to do so
far, far into the night,
into a night without a twilight -
unto a place where the night itself
can not get any more darker than it is,
where the darkness may only deepen into madness,
comprehending not itself dark -
but light.

How much pain must we endure?

How much can we endure
before the pain itself our spirit forsake?

How many lives will it take to teach us humility?

How much darkness
must we call upon ourselves
to allow us to realize
all this blindness is sheer and utter madness;
that we are human after all - and that -
it is our own inhumanity to ourselves that is killing us all -
as a species of living soul entrusted by God
to shepherd the life of the earth!

For
is it not madness that - as living souls,
we did intend to carry out our own death
and bring about upon our own living world,
a swift and final desolation?

When will lukewarm hearts in the Nation arise as the day,
to a fierce and burning longing for Thy Peace?
When, O God of Peace...

It is terrible to know what we have forgotten - that -
at times, when my own remembrances of these things come to me,
I do not know what is more painful, to recall them
or to forget them.

Maybe I do not want to know anymore.
---<--@

Alive to the Memory

In thy seeking, understand,
dearest Starshine -

To one without remembrance,
a hundred lives is no different
to a million lives.

But to one who is alive to the memory,
to save one life is to save 
the world entire.

That thou mayest remember
to always remember them
- in silence solemn -
by name.
---<--@

No Remembrance

Let our Banner be unto thyself a symbol of unity, my people,

and let it fly in thy heart out of love of God and Country.

Yea, let this Banner fly in thy heart of hearts or not at all!

For if this one kind of love is absent in the absent heart of Man,

there shall our Country be found nowhere in creation.

Excerpt from Salutation #10

No remembrance, no timeless being, 

nor knowledge past nor present knowing, 

nor love, nor truth, nor freedom a space - 

to plant and stay, and to grow always; 

no primacy of persons nor significance of place, 

no sense of limitlessness, no sense of spirit, 

no timeless vision nor heavenly season, 

no sacredness, no sentience, no abiding grace, 

no reason, no rhyme, 

no trace...

---<--@

To bury the past is to (1) separate from it and (2) apart from it, (3) move on. 

To our Nation, this is a labor the LORD commanded - it is a particular Burden we bear in Liberty, which we will soon expound upon as well. In the meantime, please feel free to reflect on it.

Here is the Biblical Reference: (Genesis 9: 1-17, with particular attention to verse 5): 

1 God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, 'Breed, multiply and fill the earth.

2 Be the terror and the dread of all the animals on land and all the birds of heaven, of everything that moves on land and all the fish of the sea; they are placed in your hands.

3 Every living thing that moves will be yours to eat, no less than the foliage of the plants. I give you everything,

4 with this exception: you must not eat flesh with life, that is to say blood, in it.

5 And I shall demand account of your life-blood, too. I shall demand it of every animal, and of man. Of man as regards his fellow-man, I shall demand account for human life.

6 He who sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for in the image of God was man created. (Here is another Scriptural admonition against the Despoliation of the Sword, that the Duty of the Common Defense is a National Burden, and that the murder of Innocents - in any circumstance - to all faithful Nations of the Children is never permissible - that it does happen in warfare does not alter the spirit of this admonition. War is to be withstood, and battle overcome - even before taking the field.)

7 Be fruitful then and multiply, teem over the earth and subdue it!' (Reiteration of the original commission to build up the Inhabited Earth and make it all to the LORD, "very good".)

8 God spoke as follows to Noah and his sons,

9 'I am now establishing my covenant with you and with your descendants to come,

10 and with every living creature that was with you: birds, cattle and every wild animal with you; everything that came out of the ark, every living thing on earth.

11 And I shall maintain my covenant with you: that never again shall all living things be destroyed by the waters of a flood, nor shall there ever again be a flood to devastate the earth.'

12 'And this', God said, 'is the sign of the covenant which I now make between myself and you and every living creature with you for all ages to come:

13 I now set my bow in the clouds and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth.

14 When I gather the clouds over the earth and the bow appears in the clouds,

15 I shall recall the covenant between myself and you and every living creature, in a word all living things, and never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all living things.

16 When the bow is in the clouds I shall see it and call to mind the eternal covenant between God and every living creature on earth, that is, all living things.'

17 'That', God told Noah, 'is the sign of the covenant I have established between myself and all living things on earth.' (emphasis on the totality of scared life through Man - and in time, as we know whom God hath called to live in witness of these present days - Man through Christ.)

"To the heart of a man without remembrance, there is no difference between one human life and a thousand. But to such a one who among the Nations labors to keep for God, a present and living account of his fellow human beings - to save one life is to save the world entire."

JFK's Remembrance - Bequeathed!

JFK's Remembrance - Bequeathed!

Yet we remember them in their incomplete portraits.

We remember the absence. We remember the distant greatness.

We remember the abruptness of his death. And its untimely nature did accept.

We remember the missing pieces of his life and times. Yet linger on - in knowledge bereft.

JFK's Remembrance - Bequeathed! 
To the National Memory - and the heritage of Mankind -
till the end of the Age, and the last fading away upon this World,
when the Firmament beginning again - comes full circle - for All.
   

Yet t'is a solemn Trust seemingly
most effectively expressed - in the Nation

   (as a memory of something - of something that is repressed -

   ever like the constant haze that surrounded his term in those times,

   so full of unknowing, and fearfully ignorant about its own uncertainties 

   born of unforgotten moments - that seem to have waned - in the distance

   retreating somehow - uncomfortably so - in the distance - just outside of reach)

as - its profound and quiet absence - of things mostly now hidden yet forever bright!

President John Fitzgerald Kennedy - is - 

by his own greatness in the National Remembrance 

mostly remembered by the charisma of his Presidency.

Indeed there exists in the Nation these days,

- a prevailing nostalgia about this very charisma -

acutely felt - in the absence of an engaged civic spirit -

which was the enlightened contribution of his own personage, 

and the very soul of his own devotion to the sacred trust of the Nation:

Enlightenment of the National Spirit was the Vision of his Camelot.

Yet the summits of JFK's legacy 

seem perpetually founded on tumults;

his term established in the midst of War 

seems only remembered by its passing away;

the common remembrance of JFK - seemingly -

one to be embraced like his absence, in the silence...

- selah -

The dilemma is in the waiting.

For in the waiting, we await for nothing.

For a future of completeness - we can not envision -

either by their wholes or through their complementary parts

without accepting what we may at present comprehend 

about the horizons of that one tomorrow, today.

The 35th President has bequeathed to his Nation his legacy!

And it can not be more complete to God than the sacrifice he freely gave.

For though all was not perfect - all was given perfectly - for God and Country.

So may he and his times - under this season of Sky -

be remembered in the Light of the right Remembrance

and in the Spirit of the Nation unto whom JFK and his family 

dedicated each of their life's callings to serve and to love faithfully 

be no longer in our memory bound to the dilemma - of the longing 

and of the not holding on - of the having and the not knowing it.

And so the tragedy in the life of the 35th President 

should not permeate as a taint upon his solemn memory;

the misgivings and failings that surround the murder of his person

and the years that were fallen away from the Nation by its painful loss 

can not be held to account together - as if Justice and Memory were one -

for the certainty of the vindication of Justice is a realm that is separate and distinct 

from the necessary honoring of the Remembrances that God requires of All.

None of those failings were the failings of the 35th President.

And to confuse them with each other - is a failure to render account -

of a life that was taken before its promise was fully realized in the Nation -

that all Citizens exist for each other and each other for God and for Country

and that to give to Country what Country seeks is also to give to one's self

what happiness was ever so diligently promised as this Nation's pursuit.

It was his nearness to the common people that inspired his strength.

It is a nearness that lives on - in younger hopes that inspire new strength

that within each heart - is felt in the silence - as a warmth and a glow.

Let the nostalgia fade away into a fullness of national embrace!

And let our pining for the Camelot that once seemed lost - fully become -

like a prayer for better days - shining aright again with a newness of hope!

That ever like the undying Flame that with Vigilance stands over JFK's memory,
we may recognize what was lost to our observance - all this time... as the warmth of his life;
that the pain of its own longing in the Nation's hearts may no longer consume us with trepidation 

and no longer seek in our souls to consume our spirit with many concerns - beyond its brightness -
that we may let go of the past and look again to future things, with much love - here - now, today. 

Let us begin.

---<--@

I do not know who murdered JFK. What I know is that his life and legacy was cut short by its crime. And an entire Nation was upon its intricacies mislead by a false allure into a lingering grief, unable to make their peace with the Remembrance of a remarkable Presidency and far too long burdened by this debt.

Justice is not Remembrance and indeed, it must be said
- the Certainty of Justice and the Burden of Justice are two distinct principles,
the former is a Pledge undertaken by God, and the latter, a command issued by Him
for all Nations to make a living and present account of all human life - to the last hair on their heads - 
that we may work together to alleviate among ourselves this common Burden of Justice
by timely payments made before God and the Assembly of each and every Nation
standing before His Throne in Eternity - against this Debt of Remembrance.

At a time of falling leaves...

I asked the leaf
whether it was scared
because it was autumn
and the other leaves were falling.

The leaf told me,
"No. During the whole spring and summer 
I was very alive. I worked hard 
and helped nourish the tree, 
and much of me 
is in the tree.

(Thich Nhat Hanh)

I then asked the tree,
at a time of falling leaves, 
whether it was scared
to be as bereft of its lush greenery
and it said to me,

"No, seeker, 
for I am a tree".
---<--@

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.
---<--@