View in Review 20120324

We have got to buck up and support a pro-human rights stance in Syria.

We have to confront North Korea at the strategic level in a way that is clearly defensive in stance. (That missile is aimed at the route of least resistance and speaks volumes to my ears about the state of our own readiness.)

The DPRK's language is often symbolic and belies its intentions in a manner which is seldom direct. It is an unspoken language, however, always consistent with the spirit of that Country.

Thus, its not the satellite in showcase here, its the launch modality.

This threatens us only indirectly at this time however. Whether we respond or not (more importantly how to respond or how not to respond), must always be calculated to mitigate the threat that this becomes direct.

We must bear in mind and heart we belong on opposite sides of the 38th parallel and historically always have.

We have to be able to state a clear, cohesive, long-term plan of non-aggression, dialogue and de-escalation in the Spratlys as an integral part of the ASEAN regional community, with our allies in principle, and with China as an integral part of a continental whole (Asia).

We have to be both clear and consistent on what is ours (which can be jointly developed as a sovereign part of our Republic) and what is not ours (which can be jointly developed as part of a common trust territory solution).

War, in our age, can no longer be confined to particular regions, with specific or area combatants.

In an age where we, as the (free nations of the) one human race, are becoming closely related as a global community, conflagrations of any size shall be the concern of all our nations.

As in a forest of tress, War is the peril of all. (For War presents to our civilizations a threat as existential as fire is to wood.)

We have to stand on our own principles, clearly stated in our Constitution.

We have to be able to expound on these and understand them in depth from first principles.

It is from these principles that we may obtain certainty in a time of uncertainty.

It is upon these principles, we must return in order to build for our own generations the beginnings of an enduring, better capable, forward thinking, one and faithful Republic.

It is from an abiding understanding of these principles that the re-discovery of the truth that fills our nationhood with substance is made possible and this will fuel the rejuvenation of our great and noble society.

- selah -

Where does it all begin, my nation? At the heart - that is why, my brothers and sisters of the Promise, I can say to each of you, "we already have everything we need".

Now, if we should criticize each other, let it be. BUT let it be done so always with a sense of civic affection and indivisible loyalty to the nation.

Let it be understood by each Filipino that in the end, when push comes to shove, we will all fall onto but one belonging - to the last!

And that ultimately, we love each other for being Filipino, just for being Filipino.

---<--@

War Came

The War in heaven is in the heart.

War came for Palestine

- and I did nothing -

because I was not Palestinian.

War came for Israel

- and I did nothing -

because I was not Israeli.

War came for America

- and I did nothing -

because I was not American.

War came for Mexico

- and I did nothing -

because I was not Mexican.

War came for Europe

- and I did nothing -

because I was not European.

War came for Russia

- and I did nothing -

because I was not Russian.

War came for Africa

- and I did nothing -

because I was not African.

War came for India

- and I did nothing -

because I was not Indian.

War came for Korea

- and I did nothing -

because I was not Korean.

War came for China

- and I did nothing -

because I was not Chinese.

War came for Vietnam

- and I did nothing -

because I was not Vietnamese.

War came and I did nothing

for I am neither of those...

Then one day,

War came for the Philippines

and now,

I couldn't do a thing.

- selah -

My brothers and sisters of the Promise -

When War comes - repel it!
At the door of thy heart - hear it not!

Throw back its lies to its face

and make it drink its own poison.

For when the spirit of War

seeks to enter our world

it is through the human heart

- willing or unaware -

that it gains an entrance.

If you know War,

you know Peace.

---<--@

Revelation 12: 7-9

Salutation #68

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

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

(The Evil in all evil things)

If guns were the root of all evil,

we'd be fighting these wars

with sticks and stones instead.

If money were the root of all evil,

we'd still be poor for lack of love.

If people were the root of all evil,

why are there still people in this world

so much in need of our humanity?

For God does not suffer evil without a cause!

And if God were the root of all evil,

why do we suffer all these questions?

Alas! There is an Evil in all evil things -

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

causing the human spirit to turn against its own self;

inspiring the human heart with adulterous lies

and the promise of empty, defeated things

poisoning both the willing as well as the unwary of soul

with false inspirations wrought by the fallen vision

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

This spirit is the spirit of War -

the ancient adversary of all national community;

an emptiness that seeks to consume as if with fullness -

crafting division, sowing discord, scattering peoples,

and devouring generations entire.

- selah -

We shall not be useful against War.

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

is what War desires for us to do.

We are to build from upon these times,

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

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

defend it where we must, always being mindful -

to never exceed ourselves in our observance of peace.

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

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

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

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

ever the nearer we are to the breaking of the day

- where the new age awaits -

ever shall we also know Peace

in our heart of hearts.

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

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

and to build the foundation of things we shall never finish

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

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

in spite of all these things, we shall,

at the one final gathering of all our nations,

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

- selah -

O my beloved people -

remembrance is the bond

that binds together our lineages,

our families, tribes and our peoples,

into that one gathering sense

of a self-cognizant identity

that we recognize as our nationhood.

It is in our spirit;

a unity bound by our labors

to obtain from God and heaven,

the vision of our peace - here on earth -

in time - and - unto the fulfillment

of time as we know it.

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

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

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

endowed by our liberty with the same strength of diversity,

we would each be possessed by the same awareness

of what makes our belongings to each other

a valid and common reality.

We are children of the Promise

and born to this Land of Promise

unto a labor of common dreams

as citizens like unto each other.

We are Filipino

who by any other name

is what binds us together

as this one Filipino nation.

And this sense of belonging applies

so long as we exist as a people

together in time (our generations)

and across dimensional space (our families, our tribes)

so that if there were only two of us left,

it would still be the same truth.

Therefore, as a nation, when we forget,

it is worse than when we knew nothing.

For when we knew nothing,

there was nothing to forget.

But when we forget,

we are always divided against something.

Worse, it is always something

we should never have forgotten.

The War in Heaven is in the heart.

---<--@

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

Never Again!

Revelation 12: 7-9

O Holy Michael,

by the power of God,

the dragon prevailed not!

O Heavenly Hosts,

by thy swift and powerful ascent

to the unity of the LORD,

Satan and all his fallen angels

lost their place in heaven.

War is vanquished forever!

20110622

Salutation #19

(The War in Heaven, the Person of the Soldier, and the Responsibility of Peace)

Mankind was never meant

by the one LORD of all heaven and earth

to face the darkness and the desolation wrought by

the Adversary of God and of All Sacred Life.

Mankind was never meant to fight these battles.

War was never part of the plan for the nations of the children of Mankind.

Therefore, the craft of Peace

which is the craft of all human nations

is not a wholly human obligation.

Humanity (as the nations of Mankind)

shares this role (the person of the soldier)

and responsibility (the craft of soldiering)

of Peace with the Holy Angels of the LORD

for the mission of the Absolute Defense is a ministry

empowered and blessed by the victory

of our one, invulnerable and omnipotent God.

The War in heaven is in the heart.

But this Peace is just as ancient as the ancient of War.

If we forget this, O my beloved nations,

in this midnight darkness, we will lose our way.

For War takes responsibility only for itself.

But this Peace is the responsibility of All.

All Soldiers fight from the heart

alive to the eternal mission of the one Army

this is the person of the soldier -

it is a ministry of the defense of Sacred Life.

Blessed is the nation served by them.

For thou art a nation of Peace!

And truly, truly, truly,

the LORD prospers all of His own.

The uniform of every military service is sacred

but the person of the soldier is held in the highest esteem

by the noble military of all nations.

For the person of the soldier

does not dwell with War in the Heart.

He does not stand from a view

of permanent and irreconcilable divisions

that believes that the causes for conflict are many

and the enemy is everywhere.

He does not draw his elan vitale

from a will dominated by blind hatred

of vague and faceless opponents.

For all soldiers fight from the heart

but the person of the soldier does not fight

to maintain and advance the causes of a divided Mankind.

Nor exist to propagate the flames of conflict.

For he is not a taker of life but a preserver of the life of nations.

Truly blessed are those nations served by them.

For thou art nations of Peace!

And truly, truly, truly,

the LORD prospers all of His own.

(NOTE: The use of the word "soldier" in this body of work is always inclusive of all members of the armed services but specifically pertains to the Infantry).

---<--@

The Quest for Sustainable Peace

THERE IS NO OTHER TIME in human history where the need for peace is greater than our present time.

With the passing of the last century, we have seen the great tumult brought about by three global wars - the First, Second and the Cold War.

It must not be lost to our humanity that a war that is global in scope is a significant evolution in the nature of warfare.

For conflict and its paradigm run parallel in their course. War and its outbreaks in our world being determined both by the actual viability of waging war and the will to make war is indicative of the relationship between conflict and its paradigm.

The paradigm that exists today in our world is one of War (in the heart).

And this paradigm is prevalent not only in terms of the conflicts that plague our nations, this paradigm is now present also in our societies, in our markets and even in our places of worship - the one place where War should have no footing, it has entered.

Thus, because the paradigm of War is an absolute whole and as this paradigm has come to cover the whole of the earth, the very word, "peace", it can now be said, is both under appreciated and misunderstood in its meaning (i.e. it appears eclipsed to the eye of our souls).

To understand War as a paradigm whole, we must return to our roots.

To understand Peace as a paradigm whole, we must awaken to the eternal destiny of our nations.

If we are to include spiritual considerations with regards to War as a paradigm whole, it would be more sobering. But since I should like to make this a primarily secular statement, I thought not to include it as much as possible (without damaging or distorting the reality of our humanity) in this post.

For the reality of the times and the obvious trending of these things are indicative enough of the consequences to make the choice for Peace, a very reasonable one.

With the passing of the last millennium, after 2000 years of dwelling with War, we must (as nations dreaming together this time) complete our remembrances and bring our hopes forward for the favorable season for Peace is Now.

At the waning of the Industrial Age, there are yet problems that exist in our world that belong to that age, problems which shall prevent or preclude what benefits our world stand to reap from this Information Age as well as understand more closely the challenges that await us which are proper to this new age.

But the siege of War must be lifted even before our nations shall have the capacity to effectively address these problems.

We are nations because our responsibility to our world and to each other require us to dwell in the strength of our human communities.

And we will take this responsibility with us in this life and, if I may, in the one that is to come (for we shall also individually stand to final account before the bar of the Justice of God in Eternity for this manifest gift of nationhood).

Our human habitation is not just this inhabited earth, it is the reality that includes both spirit and earth, body and soul, for thus were we created, only thus can all things truly human be effectively understood.

Human reality is our habitation - our one visible universe and those universes within every human being. Our habitation, like ourselves, forms a one, indivisible whole. Therefore, there is nothing truly human that can be divided - much less the earth.

It is material possession not the truth that is relative. This is not to say that we should not practice prudence in our temporal affairs - it is a good thing to be able to hold on to material wealth for it is a reflection of entrepreneurial skill and virtue, but above all things, we should ever be mindful that our ultimate belonging is to each other.

True and lasting human happiness, in all realities, can only be achieved as a common destiny. And this destiny can never be won by ends that are purely material, entirely selfish, self-serving or willfully evil.

Our nations with their Responsible States respect borders not because our reality is divided but because this responsibility must be shared by all nations.

Nor does human responsibility end at every limit of a nation-state's sphere of influence. In fact, if I may, our human responsibility stretches ever onward across our generations and into eternity.

Our responsible stewardship of creation requires Mankind, in all our generations, to be thus arrayed - as nations. Indeed, our nations, albeit imperfect, were meant for more noble and worthwhile purposes than breeding grounds for those conflicts which in the end shall defeat the cause for which they were at the autumnal dusk of our faded Eden established - to prosper the Peace of the LORD, our God and one, true Sovereign.

The paradigm of War makes meaningful the lie that war can somehow be good - all war is evil - only human beings can obtain the grace to be good, no war is just, but there are just people who from every nation must fight in them.

War preys on other truths, corrupting them for its own ambitions in order to gain a footing in the human soul which shall otherwise perceive as incomprehensible the meaningless lie which is its one, true form and substance.

Neither War nor its agents, seen or unseen, can ever truly be good - for War, by nature of its violence and aggression as witnessed by all our nations in our history, must involve the willful taking away of human life, the destruction of created things, the annihilation of entire nations - the very definition of complete evil.

The spirit of War revels in meaningless opposition, division, deception, discord and blind hatred - everything that is foreign to our original human belongings both as nations and as individuals. It mires the people in despair and poverty.

Indeed, even our nations shall fail to take their flight if their spirit is afflicted by the descendant gravity of War.

There will be conflict, for we live in an imperfect reality, but it should not have to bear any more significant a weight so as to reduce any nation-state's capacity to provide for itself, advance the common good, make provisions to better aid other nation-states and secure the Peace that shall help mature its own Sheltering Wings to serve and to prosper all the generations of Sacred Life entrusted by God to each its own nurture and protection.

The sum total of all the ill will that humanity can muster on its own can not match the evils we have witnessed in the last 2000 years (or more if remembrance serves us well, right to the time of Abel when the Beast of War first entered into the earth).

And this Beast of War may only be gathering in force and maturity - at our expense.

Therefore, this is not to say that we will not employ military force in our defense as nations. For defense is the natural duty not only of every human individual as citizens to each other but also of the Angels of the LORD. Truly, even God Himself is committed to this cause (Sacred Life).

But no defense can ever survive if it arrives last and does not hold the ground.

For defense by its own nature must be fought from grounds that are understood and therefore, held by the line of the defense being certain of its own truth; ordered, organized, lawful and arrayed as thus, being noble in spirit and in form.

And Peace as a one paradigm whole is the grounds by which this defense shall be undertaken.

We must quest for sustainable peace in our world. Drive back the darkness of War and make room (in our hearts, in our lives, in our communities, and in our times) for a better, more worthwhile, albeit imperfect world for all the nations of our one family of the nations of Mankind.

Our humanity (in our nations as nations distinct but not apart from each other being bound by spirit and covenant as one family) must become alert to the fact that the generations that are to come after us depend on us today.

Their song must not remain unsung.

This is our fight, our longest night.
---<--@

Mabuhay po tayong lahat nang mga bansa! Long may our remembrance serve us. May God bless all the nations of our one family of the nations of Mankind.

The Hero of Tirad Pass

Remember,

O noble Filipino soul -

you gallant keepers of the peace,

the virtues that keep thee steadfast

in the spirit of the defense.

Love of God,

love of Country,

love of Sacred Life

even to the point of giving it

in the midst of the nation in thy selves

and the assembly of the nations before God

- freely and with joy -

with courage and honor intact

for that same cause.

Remember our own

General Gregorio del Pilar,

the Hero of Tirad Pass!

THE LAST FADING AWAY

O Soul of Army!
Defender of our Peace -
when in battle we weep
for those whose time has come
weep not because of anguish,
our tears are meant not for grief.

Cry not because they have fallen,
those sons and daughters of Country;
valorous souls who gave to us their utmost
and have bled their everlasting witness
to the universal mission of the eternal Army
from which all honorable armed professions
draw their great lineages of victory
Here, at the last fading away -
the quest for that one final sacrifice
the very last soldier to fall

before the breaking of the Day
in the name of Peace and for Sacred Life
in a relentless war that have lasted
from the dawn of Our exile time.

O Soldier of the Peace!
Noble Defender of Country -
You are life preserving life itself
for what is Country but a work of life.
Know you not why you respond
when duty calls you to battle?
Vague at times may your reasons be
especially amidst the desolation of war
and the darkness of war's attendant evils
but forget not what you love
and love shall forget not why you live
and none shall forget you if you shall fall
for in thy Country is thy longevity
Life itself shall be your resting place
and God will forever remember you
His Peace shall forever honor you
for the time you have given others -
more time for building,
more time for sowing,
more time for loving,
more time for hoping,
for kinder days to come.

O when shall the wounding stop
and the healing begin!
O beloved Soul of Army -
when is our last fading away?

Until mankind learns
to be better builders in peace
more than wanton destroyers in war;
until humanity learns
to value Sacred Life
than to seek those paths of death
Heaven and earth shall weep
with thee, O Soul of Army,
but never for those whose time has come
for the lost are never lost
so we must seek them not in vain.
Seek not our fallen with the dead
for life is life and death is death
so let the dead bury the dead!
Let us look for those who are triumphant
not with the defeated enemies of the Peace
but with the living as well as the everliving
for God Himself has declared Peace is over War.

It is for the oppressors of Country
and the enemy of Peace and Sacred Life
for whom the bell tolls
as we sing the songs of our fallen heroes
and their potent remembrance stir
in the hearts of those who yet believe
in the victory of the eternal Army
and in the timeless vision of God
to bring to bear in the name of All that is life
the final wrath that is to come
and bring to pass
Our last fading away;
that one final hymn of taps
at the joyful dawn of the Everlasting Peace
and the breaking of this midnight world.

So cry not because of the passing away
weep for loneliness but never for sorrow
for life is life and death is death.
Let us save most of our tears for those
who yet stubbornly cling to the lie
and believe in the heart in everything that is false
giving rise to all things that inflict evil to our poor world
and bring war and death to our suffering humanity.

For it is always for the reprobate that the bell tolls
to remind to those who sow in War what they shall reap.

The Peace of the Times