Silver Lining

"Every cloud has a silver lining", we've often heard it said.

People who believe in heaven and the goodness of the God of heaven understand through cloud and rain the truth of perennial blue skies and golden sunshine...

Such are situations we at times find ourselves in.

One either sulks in the shadow of bad things and under overcast skies despair the will and the goodness of God and heaven or in seeing the silver lining behind every cloud say,

"yes, so be it... this too shall pass".

Because it will, it always does.
---<--@

Here I try in vain...

To those whose lives have been directly altered by the loss we suffered in Mamasapano, the SAF 44 families, the families of civilians and innocents involved...

Words uttered in deepest sympathy of your sorrow and grief will ultimately fall short... I'm so sorry for your loss. We can not bring them back.

What we can do as a Country is to make sure their sacrifices were not in vain.

Spiritual Desolation

Loneliness in the human soul kills.
Spiritual desolation is not a symptom. It is a diagnosis.
Fatal in most cases.

Let us not mistake spiritual desolation for spiritual solitude.

Depression may oft be a symptom of this interior state of loneliness.
Betraying an inward solitude unnatural to the human condition.
A state of "aloneness" not with the Alone - but just by itself -
a being so terribly, unspeakably, vulnerably alone.

Psychology can not tell one that one is spiritually desolate.
Psychiatry can not prescribe for one medication for an illness
the pathology of which lay beyond reach of either
its science or its professional ken.

They will try. They will fall short. You must know this.
Because people die of sheer loneliness - a little bit everyday.

Some people eventually lose all of themselves to it.
They dry up inside. They become utterly disconnected from within.

- selah -

Our souls are like fishes.

They must be able to swim freely in a spiritual ocean.
They must constantly find their breath in these unseen waters.

Spiritual things matter. Matter to all things living.

Everything that ultimately matters to life, above all human life,
arises from the infinite ocean of the Spirit.

Everything that uplifts. Everything that connects. These are substances of a purely spiritual nature.

So too are everything that seeks in the Seeker. All truths that is of the Truth.

A good and honorable religion teaches us about these things,
proposes it to the faith in our hearts as living waters
to quench the thirsting in our souls.

This is my conviction.

When we live to accept these things, as in my Catholic Faith, we will come to know them freely.

And the truth about our own religion becomes clear to our hearts.

That our souls are like fishes.

That no man is an island.

In our deepest depths, we seek God.

In our most enduring human connections, God seeks us.

In deeper waters, we discover permanent memories.

We find the Source of lasting relationships.

We find meaning to our being alone.

That we are never alone...

We never were.
---<--@

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.
---<--@