Love of Family, Love of Community

Self-interest is an exact definition of national interest. 

The national interest as self-interest is intrinsically selfish but the center of its will lies illumined in the life of the national community. A community must be self-interested else it shall not last long. 



All human beings are naturally self-interested creatures the same with all creatures in God's creation. 

We must be or else, we have a problem. There is no backing out of being. No physical coming back to the womb. Else, life and living itself can not progress and evolve. 

Self-interest here is not an evil, lack of it is.  

Now, there are forms of self-interest greater than the person of the self. 

An example of this is the institution of the family. Man and Woman as a unified whole is invested in a form of self-interest that is distinct from Man and Woman as their individual persons.

Religion regards this union as sacred and it is. 

Religion blesses those who bless life even at its conception and regards with holy esteem those who receive with the welcome of peace the life of those who are born to this world.

Nations regard this union as necessary. 

Ours is the trust that protects and prospers the life of the family and the communities that bless, provide for, and accept tribe and family with a greater welcome of peace. 

- selah -

Family is our basic introduction to life in the national community. 

It forms the ground of our civics. 

As individual citizens we must know without our fathers and mothers who as Family gave to us the choice we could not make at birth, we would simply not be. 

No babe is born with a freedom that is complete. In fact, we were the least free among God's creatures at the very moment of our birth. As babes, not one of us could even make the choice to live.

It is family who gave us the choice to live. 

And these choices often come at the expense of other choices that our fathers and mothers willingly subordinated to that form of self-interest greater and maturer than what their persons usually demanded of them as individuals alone. 

Regardless of how everything proceeded from that moment therefore, to honor thy father and mother is pre-requisite to the knowledge of life in the national community. 

The common instruction to the value of the choices we make in community - we learn simply from the action of family and as not all families are the same, we honor father and mother still for that one choice they had to make for us as babes. 

For none of us could ever truly make that choice. Nor boast about it without sin.

So in civics it is the same; that those of us who are without choices is served in society by those of us who are able to make those choices - to live - so that none of us should ever be so poor so as to live without liberty or be so fated by the random nature of this world to endure without hope or live without peace. 

- selah -

I think the saying that those who have least in life should have more in law is one better illumined by the first principle of sufficiency through reliance. And this principle better understood simply by honoring our fathers and our mothers in the light of the right remembrance.

Through life in the family, love and memory is from generation to generation brought forth into the nation so that in our civics, we may make good choices in each other's behalf - that all of us in the land may live long and the nation prosper in peace.
 ---<--@

Getting Clear

=^.^=

I am a believer in free choice. I was molded this way.
I believe in the importance of living your own experiences.

And of living up to them.

Our elders may offer up advice. Whether we listen or not.
They are like seeds they sow, you know, in the soil of young hearts.

As we live on. And in our soul, the orchard of our memories begin to grow.
We will one day recognize those truths, they wanted us to know.

These days, you see, I came to know better...
For all the choices I made. Right and wrong. The trail never fades.

Those words once said, you know. Come a time. They will in your life come aglow.
And in time, like the mighty seeds of tall and steadfast trees.

Their wisdom will in you grow.

For the road ahead seem tamer for me now. Along with the wanderer in me somehow.
Lined with those trees. Once not much higher than my knees. Planted a half-a-time ago.

These were the noble seeds of many truths placed in my soul long before.
Some from dear old voices I shall never upon this world hear evermore.

Now, upon this road I pave with my peers - siblings, cousins, and friends, I shall travel on.
From a time always near. As the stars become clear. By the memory of better things, I shall.

And so hallowed moments, never may it fade. With each fading year, may they only grow near.
For these are my lolos and lolas, my papa/s and my mom/s, ninongs and ninangs, titos and titas...

O the salt of so many tears! Shining together. Wept as one. From past to present gathered.

Thus, didst salt preserve. The memory. Coming sweetly now. From evil delivered somehow.
Ever with each hurt overgrown, by the fruits of wiser fears. Better came my days, getting clear.

---<--@

The Nine Common Human Needs: Shelter in the Nation

Of the 9 common human needs, persistent deficiency - in the first three (hunger, thirst, and clothing) indicate material poverty, in the next three (shelter, human security [i.e. security of person and property], and functional literacy) - spiritual poverty, and in the last three (just society, authentic human freedom, and meaningful existence) - an unspecified immature form of tyranny.

Now let us move on to the next three, beginning with Shelter...

Tacloban is a community whose soul is a soul of sheltering. As such, the City itself bears the very name that dedicates her life - to the life of her people. Let us always remember what she teaches. Let us - just for a moment, stand apart from the politics of it. And see it straightforwardly.

After our First Parents were exiled out of our Eden. Shelter for Mankind became a necessity. And this is a reflection of our spiritual state: We all needed a "Tacloban", so to speak.

So Man sought first the natural shelter of caves. And this gradually developed - after the first human implementation of farming - to huts, houses, towns, cities, among the nations - into civilizations entire, across horizons and hemispheres, east, west, north, and south.

Everything that sheltered the soul of our human communities grew - only - because Man had Woman and Woman had Man. We must remember that the First Human Community is the First Family which is the nuclear Community of our First Parents - Man and Woman.

Exile and the conditions it produced in Man and upon our world - produced a very real need to shelter this precious Institution, completely human in nature but completely Divine of origin.

Adam and Eve needed a Tacloban.

And so when we shall speak of Shelter in the Nation - let us understand the fruit of this vision that it may be edible and good to the whole of our being human - that while we do need good, strong, secure houses and the modern benefits of hearth and home - a house shall always be a house - if the Filipino Family is left out.

And we, among the people of our world, have one of the strongest familial ties - our tribal essence is virile, and this makes our blood ties quite enduring. This of course, may go both ways. (For it may also be an evil visited upon our generations) Which is why we have to understand in Shelter - that -

a true Filipino - in his heart of sheltering - would desire for all Filipino families the best Tacloban there is - because - the beginning and the end of it - is - that we are all citizens of our Republic which is only one House.

And only one Peace maketh this House, our home away from Home.



The fruit of this Vision 
in the reality of the Nation is 
National Housing, Home and Family Life Services.
---<--@

God bless the Visayas, thou art of the three Foundation Stars of this Republic most patient of all, none may ever forget thee. 


The Nine Common Human Needs

Was it worth it?

Yes, a thousand times over... I share in this timeless moment of love and offer it as praise to the glory and the goodness of God to all our brave and intrepid OFW's who work away from home so we could all have a home... mabuhay po kayong lahat at patuloy na manalig sa diwa nang ating pagkabansa.

Don't we all deserve a better place to call our own home (away from Home)? I think so too.

Together we will build, together this time.

---<--@

Meeting in the Middle in a Post-RH Philippines

There must be a time
in every political dialogue
that we must as - one nation - step back
and allow for the necessary choices to be made, for good or ill,
and for the changes to implement themselves.

We have to trust in our democracy.

We have to trust in our ability as a Republic
to make either the wrong or the right decisions
and to profit from them both.

Our collective freedoms of self-expression in the Republic forum
must naturally be complemented by an abiding respect
for our individual rights to choose freely -
without fear of final judgement (of our peers).

The foundation of our electoral culture
which raises from among our midst,
at appointed times in the life of our Republic,
a government of the people, for the people,
and at-one with the people,
relies on our ability
to both freely express as well as
to responsibly defend our common freedoms.

One of our inherent strength as a liberal democracy
is our ability to self-reflect as a Republic whole;
we are a people capable of following old and proven paths,
of creating new ones, or of forsaking the wrong ones.

All of this is threatened by
a partisanship in our political life
- that - when it is allowed to endure,
becomes a thing above the liberty of our nation
and a hindrance to the freedom of the individual citizen,
most especially the very least of us all -
whose needs are the most urgent
but whose voices are
weakest of all.
---<--@



I have always thought that the RH issue is all about the empowerment of the right choices; that these right choices must be enabled through education to bend to the will of the God of life.

And that there can be no clear cut answers that will fit every situation.

Every incidence may only be judged by their individual realities.

Central to the argument of contraception is the fact that contraception denies from the intimacy of conjugal love, the ability to be open to the transmission of human life.

It is a choice to NOT be open to the choice of having children brought into this world through the marriage covenant before God.

BUT central to the argument of poverty is the choice itself to be open to the transmission of human life; that the poor, consumed and weakened by the evils of their condition, CAN NOT make the choice to be open to the transmission of human life.

A young mother in the depths of poverty who vows that her 12th or 14th child will be the last one if she has her way is a person who CAN NOT make the choice to be open to the transmission of human life.

The argument in Humanae Vitae about the lesser evil of rendering non-fecund acts permissible within the greater ensemble of fecund acts within the marriage covenant can not apply if the choice itself to be open to the transmission of life is a choice one is unable to freely and responsibly make (else long-term provisions for the arrival of the newborn are also made alongside that choice).

This leaves us with the normal argument of the lesser and the greater evil as well as a better appreciation of the bravery of our women and the resilience and character of our poorer folk (materially speaking).

Pope Benedict XVI admitted it may be permissible to allow the use of condoms to limit the transmission of AIDS (as a temporary condition that is understood a priori to be allowed only until such a time as the work of the rehabilitation of free human choice through Catholic education and eradication of the existing evils of poverty has become sufficient in itself to overcome it).

The condition of the incidence of poverty, like the condition of the spread of AIDS, is - if we as citizens to each other can help it - only temporary and for as long as this condition exists (as a threat to the greater wholes), a compromise that will allow us to more effectively battle to reverse its trends may be in order.

IF we, though well-meaning, so thoughtlessly surrender those who can not rightly choose for themselves to the evil of randomness and chance, do we heap upon ourselves as a nation, a greater or a lesser evil than by a temporary compromise made to allow for forms of contraception that are proscribed by our faith? 

We must be mindful of that fatalism that is already ingrained in our culture. For it might indeed be an evil that is already encouraging the incidence and the depth of the poverty that both the pro-life and the pro-choice camps are battling to reverse that we might all together be a better and a more freer people.

As law has its limits, it also presupposes a purpose.

As regards the RH law and its implementation, we must always consider -

Choice: Does it encourage the right choices?

Abortion: Is it a danger to the unborn?

Contraception: Does it promote a disposable view of human sexuality?

Sexual Education: Does it permit or promote sexual immorality or sexual amorality?

Maternal Health: Is it a danger to the institution of motherhood?

Women's Rights: Is it a danger to women, especially mothers?

Burden of Taxation: Does it open public funds to corruption or waste?

The Institution of the Family: Is it a danger to the institution of the family?

The National Culture: Will it permit our nationhood to further enable our Country to advance in its ages in time?
---<--@

Let us be vigilant and continue on. For the only way to go is forward!

Mabuhay ang Pilipinas! God bless us all.

Salutation #107

A COMMUNITY DEPRIVED
of the feminine expression is barren and desolate.

It knows of no hearth,
no home, no place of rest...

no company to renew,

no heart to come home into;

no cheer to grace with solace,

no warmth to bless with courage;

no gaze to remind of beauty,

no love to bear with injury;

no touch to soften the harshness,

no fire to tame the wilderness;

no peace to prosper life,

no strength to ward off strife.

---<--@

(Woman)

When God made Woman,

the LORD fashioned her as a companion to Man;

a faithful helper, equal in dignity and promise,

without which Man

shall never be complete

as himself.

For there are no creatures

- upon the earth -

like Woman is to Man.

From this new community

God fashioned out of Man in Woman

comes the lineages

of all the generations

of the children of Mankind.

The truths established by God

in the story of the joining of Man and Woman

form the common foundations

of the institution of the human family.

It is the strength of the family

that determines the strength of the nations

unto which the preservation

of both human dignity and human promise

is universally entrusted by God

for the sustenance and protection

of all our generations

to the very last of our generations.

When the dignity of Woman

is left unprotected - and her promise -

is left undefended,

Man is not elevated but diminished.

When Man and Woman

exist in conflict with each other,

no nation will hope to survive the test of time.

That is the truth.

- selah -

Truly, truly,
each human relationship, no matter how humble,
have a lasting impact on individuals.

For these are the bonds
that God deigns to place in our way
not to entangle our spirits
and create more brokenness in our lives
but to liberate us
and allow us to freely enter
into the Truth with Him
and in Him.

Community is the LORD's way
of enlarging the love kept in our souls,
because our God is a great and good God.

We can see this in the way
God created the first community
in Adam and Eve.

Let us ask ourselves
how instead of reprogramming Adam,
which was not beyond the LORD's power to do,
why did our God choose to bless him
with a partner in Eve?

- selah -

Relationships matter
just as much as individuals -
each creates and recreates the other
and does so in a way and a fashion
that only the LORD can generate and perfect
with our willing cooperation.

One who seeks maturity
and longs for wholeness in the self
should always tread the holy ground of relationships
(either thine own or others like thine own)
carefully, gently, and with love.

- selah -

This is why

it is important for us to celebrate

International Women's Day -

We must ever be reminded

of this fundamental community of Man and Woman

and must always live in remembrance

of this most vital of all human relationships

- established by God Himself -

which forms the nucleus of every human family.

The success of any nation depends on it.

The ultimate destiny of all Countries is shaped

by how deeply we understand its truth.

Man and Woman

together form a common bond

and this bond guarantees

not only the order of our generations

but the quality of our everyday human living.

Man and Woman

together form a common witness
for the universal example

of the peace of their marital togetherness

- safeguards -

not only the transmission of human life

but the divinely ordained purpose

of the nations of the children of Mankind.

---<--@

Think about it -

I once thought that Filipina hair

was just plain black hair and that was all.

Obviously,

I was not at all in love

with my Philippines then.

I never really noticed

that our women sported not just plain black hair!

Framed by the warm light of our tropical sun,

our women's hair is actually cast

- in many subtle hues -

in darkest shades of golden brown.

Subtle, not obvious -

and pretty but

- only when -

love is in the eye of the beholder.

Exactly in keeping with our conservative nature.

As far as I am concerned,

all our Filipinas are princesses.

Beauty being what it is, inherited.

We should work to make sure

- this Country of ours -

is more a suitable place for all our women!

---<--@

March 8 is International Women's Day.

I love my Miyang. PERIOD.

20111110

The National Peace

Hi there!

You know as well as I do that I am (as well as you are) fully committed to the peace of our Philippines.

Now then, my brothers and sisters of the Promise, restoring the native peace of our beloved Country is not just about fighting and negotiations.

Though we hear so much about it in the news, the peace that we speak about here - when we talk about peace - is much, much more than that...

You'd be surprised.

The peace we desire does not require every one of us to possess a soldier's heart and acquire a warrior's skill.

Winning the peace for our Philippines does not require every one of us to become involved in politics or any of those high-level, hush-hush things that seem beyond the power and scope of the everyday, ordinary Filipino on the ground.

99% of us are not directly involved in the peace process. We are the other 99. This is so since, the political peace is distinct from the national peace.

So let me be clear on this - peace is essentially all about relationships.

To impress upon the nation, our conviction of the right things, as ordinary citizens, we must each understand in the broadest sense that our civic peace is all about loving and caring - all things and all persons both great and small - as well as each those places in time and their associated memories - families, friends, compatriots - least to great - which is everything that connects us together across our generations in one timeless, seamless remembrance.

Remember when I told you that a Filipino is a kind of love and this love binds us together into one nation? Well, its true. Its not just a romantic myth, its a basic fact of our national life.

Truly, we are to love our our own and others like our own...

So from today, we're also going to talk about love... (And I might even begin a new series of open salutations just about love - love in all its wondrous forms - from the romantic to the practical, from the sweet to the bitter but necessary kind - especially that love which must be between Man and Woman.)

I - Love Dares -

Can you hide it when you are in love?

Would you be a fool and feign affection when there is none?

For love is like a song that must be heard!

When love sings, there is harmony and it knits every word.

When there is no love, there are only words and no rhyme.

When a fool sings, it is without meaning.

For only a lover can sing to the heart.

Love is wise that makes itself vulnerable.

So when you are in love, make sure to let thy beloved know.

In the midst of the din and the haste

of thy everyday living, let thy beloved know -

with words but especially without, sing her a song.

Let thy beloved know of thy love -

let the whole world hear of thy sweet, sweet melody

and everything will soon fall quiet as your hearts begin to sing...

---<--@

II - Love Happens -

If I myself can not accept you

- for who you really are -

then, who am I?

If I myself can not accept you

for what you have done or have failed to do

- whether good or bad -

then, what is good and what is bad?

Am I not only a reflection of the love I offer?

If I feign love, I am unsure.

But if I am true,

I will see you - for all that you are.

And I will say, "yes indeed!"

Beauty is when love is in the heart.

---<--@

Often when all that we care to remember is how huge the darkness and how frail and tiny the light, we weep bitterly unto despair and completely forget which one is pure substance and which one is pure illusion.

---<--@

Mabuhay ang Pilipinas! God bless us all.

Yes to NO Political Graffiti!

On Loyalty

Starshine,

the things of Loyalty
are the relationships
that shall remain
forever with thee;
so defend your friendships
with courage and tenacity.

For we are not Loyal
if we do not remain
true to each other,
moment to moment,
from always to always
appreciating those things
that we share in our humanity
and respecting the things
that make us unique as persons,
seen as well as unseen,
in ourselves and in our nations
in the vision of our timeless belonging
with one another in God and Country
as each our own true self -
as each our own true names
written in heaven.

From the descendant gravity
of the spirit of war and division;
against things born of the darkness
defeated and empty of promise
stand fast in thy friendships!

Guard thy peace with each other
and in thy togetherness hope.

Never be Loyal
to inanimate and empty things;
those fickle and ephemeral
things of vanity!

But only to each other
and in the ascendant motions
of Sacred Life.

For the realization of all our hope

rests in the glory of our LORD
in all creation.

And all these created things
are made by our one common Creator
to be Loyal to all of these.
---<--@

On Friendship

The Angels of the LORD,
my precious Starshine,
each of which is distinct
in Beauty and Light,
being individually endowed
with splendor of truths
unique to each their gifts
possessed by each their person
from the very beginning
of their swift flight
across the timeless void
and into eternity
into the wholeness
which is God
for lack of human words
to define the strength of a relationship
that transcend the all of time
from across that veil of shadow and tears
beyond the sum total of human experience
call each other "friends".

Each of our family
who are related to us
by corporal bonds of blood
are the friends that our LORD
has chosen for us.

Each of our friends
who become part of us
by spiritual bonds of truth
are the family that we learn to choose
in the course of each our lives
to complete what our LORD
has begun for us
in our families.

Both bonds bind us together
in the strength of human relationships
that nurture life and sustain hope
through action of community
and the service of life.

You must love,
my precious Starshine,
to transform these bonds
into that one friendship alone.

And make these bonds
into the bonds of angels
who are each in God
spirits united in their freedom
created by the strength of friendships
bound in timeless truth.

So with each other,
my precious Starshine,
you must build on the good,
and give to the need of thy beloved
recognizing in thy shared humanity
the giving of the LORD
Who is the singular Source
of all our relationships.

Be thankful for friendship wings
human, angelic and Divine,
that take us all across
from moment to moment
into an understanding of its peace
lifting us into the unity
of those wholes upon wholes
from hope to hope
and strength to strength
past, into present
and into every present
across the void
into eternity.

Starshine,

there is always a reason to smile.

---<--@

Beauty and Industry

Hang on to the things in your life that doesn't change. Hang on to them till it hurts. For if life is all about change then the secret to living well must be this - stand still.

Starshine, dearest Starshine,
the labor of our heart - must -
always preceed the work of our hands.

So if you shall desire happiness
you must first know in your heart
what it is that you seek
even before you shall desire it.

For desire in and of itself offers
neither sight to thy heart
nor light to thy understanding
which you must require,

Beloved of God,
to know thy own truth by heart.

And seeking it not by sight
but through the eye of thy love
that in thy seeking believes

with conviction of faith
you will come to know thy happiness

by the grace of God
even before desire bears thee away
to where thy feet must follow.

For you work hard, dear Starshine,
you deserve to profit from thy labors.
But yet many are the times
that you fail to find thy love
which reduce thy labors into tears
and deprive thy heart of life's purpose.
Yet while there is yet longing in our life
precious Starshine, believe -
there is nothing in this world
that can ever undo
in thy heart of hearts
what Love for thee has already done.

So return again to thy longing
but know also to trust this time
in the Love that longs for thee back
and work hard, dear Starshine,
knowing to be happy with every hope
striving to always be free
to find thy peace and to prosper,
far into yonder horizons,

our beautiful forever.
---<--@

Justice for Given

The color black is the color of hope. Green is the color of the perennial nature of hope.

For hope is upon the earth, in a constant state of subtle transformation, rising and falling as all things ascend to God, in steady cycles of loss and fulfillment.

When black is used to remember death, it is not used to signal the finality of death, but to remind us of the hope that is invested in death - for black is also the color of the expectation of life.

- selah -

Justice for Given

This hurt is bigger than UPLB...

When God made Woman, the LORD fashioned her as a companion to Man; a faithful helper, equal in dignity and promise, without which Man shall never be complete as himself. For there are no creatures upon the earth like Woman is to Man. From this new community God fashioned out of Man in Woman comes the lineages of all the generations of the children of Mankind.

The truths established by God in the story of the joining of Man and Woman form the common foundations of the institution of the human family.

It is the strength of the family that determines the strength of the nations unto which the preservation of both human dignity and human promise is universally entrusted by God for the sustenance and protection of all our generations to the very last of our generations.

Why do I say this? Because the ripples felt by the stealing away of the promise of Given Grace Cebanico touches exactly those truths. When the criminal case is presented, it shall be animated by the fact that this crime affects all Filipinos.

When the dignity of Woman is left unprotected and her promise is left undefended, Man is not elevated but diminished. When Man and Woman exist in conflict with each other, no nation will hope to survive the test of time. That is the truth.

I am saddened by the loss of one so young and promising because we can never take back what she stands for - there shall always be a missing life that our nation has to account for in time as well as before God in Eternity.

For us as one nation, my brothers and sisters of the Promise, the pain of this crime shall never go away but we can as a Republic work as one Country to assist in the healing and recovery of Given's family, pray for her soul, convict the transgressor/s, and protect our community from this evil.

This is why Justice for Given is vital. May she find her way back to God and through God to our Home in Eternity with the LORD. The only way that remains to show our love for her now is to expedite her final hopes on earth.

---<--@

To all my Roman Catholic brothers and sisters, let us please take all of this to God in prayer especially at Holy Mass today.

Mabuhay ang Pilipinas! God bless us all.

Peace be with you, Given Grace - via con Dios -

taken so young, now young forever.

You hope is now our hope.

20111010

Salutation # 55

"Saints and Addicts are the same -

both are born of great loves;

one is a love born of things below,

the other a love of all things above.

And freedom is to know.

(13 Responses to the Evil of Drug Addiction: A Salutation to Recovery and Personal Transformation)

These 13 Responses I write

for all who suffer from drug addiction,

the victims and their victims.

To those who prayed for me,

my thanks and appreciation -

I send you all my love.

I write this primarily for those

who are suffering as I am

from the scourge of drug addiction.

For your inspiration...

(1) To the Addict Soul -

So may Peace be unto your heart

- as pristine as the dew of the early morning -

my heart speaking unto your heart, O my precious beloved,

about the evils inherent to the global problem of drug addiction,

addressed to relevant segments of our suffering humanity,

as an aid to our one whole understanding

in behalf of those who still suffer in the darkness -

for the danger of drug abuse affects all human beings.

I do not blame you

nor do I pretend to judge you

for I am to you as I really am,

a peer and an equal in common creation.

I am here not for your sins but for your hope.

Do not empower the past.

Whatever the cause of your addiction to drugs,

it belongs - Now - to the past.

Let the past go and accept it as it is, gone.

It shall never serve you to dwell on things

- that have already moved on -

for there is nothing to be found by looking back,

we stand only to lose ourselves in the attempt.

Never forsake the choice that leads out of the darkness

even though it is difficult to see where the darkness ends.

Believe in your recovery and your recovery will believe in you.

Never believe in your addiction,

however deeply you find yourself mired in it,

it is an illusion that will rob you of your chance to be truly happy.

Look deeply into the present

and you will find hope where you once had none.

For many people in this world suffer - as we do -

and from various ills and pains

but it is not the severity of their suffering

nor the degrees that we are better off than others

that should console us - it is their common hope;

a hope all human beings may meaningfully understand.

For in the hope of our family and friends

we are empowered - despite ourselves -

to give remedy to the evil that plague our soul

making us blind to our own need to recover.

Believe in the person who believes in your recovery.

For hope empowers hope,

hope being the very language of the human spirit,

it is communicated freely among our souls

as a network of common relief

that save against despair

the truth that lives in other people's lives.

As our ability to accept help from others grow,

we witness our own hopes begin to grow.

There is a certain solidarity in human suffering

but there can never be any consolation to be had

from every and all forms of human suffering

whether one suffers more or less than others.

Suffering does not serve to empower

those who are outside it's fold of experience - as a matter of fact,

it is a cause of much of our complacency.

Those who do nothing in the name of anything

- in the face of human suffering -

do not understand what it means to be human.

For to be human is to be defined by common needs.

- selah -

What then is above you

and what is there below you, O Man,

that you should forsake yourself?

Shall you be what you are not

and relinquish the hope of your existence?

Drugs are an evil,

commit that this evil shall meet it's end with you,

never introduce this evil to other souls.

Pray and then pray for each other.

As human beings,

we are powerless against the overwhelming evil of drug addiction,

let us humbly admit to this powerlessness

and willingly relinquish control of this part of our lives over to God -

to the LORD Who knows

- when and how -

to deliver Man from every evil.

And commit to do this sooner than later.

(2) To the Unconcerned world of empty promises -

The world at large is a vast and empty wilderness,

- it is a desolation of war -

dangerous for our isolation

as wild and as rugged as the tracts of our inhabited earth

and made even more dangerous by the predatory malignancy

of the cognizant evil that intelligently prowl

the darkness of this open landscape

for those souls - who -

with complete disregard for it's own safety

have wandered too far away from the LORD

and the shelter of our communities.

Will the world show concern

- for those unhappy souls -

who have wandered too close

to the gaping maw of the beast?

Perhaps it will

- but often -

with a certain flimsiness that betray it's true colors.

For in principle,

- the world at large -

will never side with the weak.

There is a kind of superiority

in the world at large

that with much thunder and noise

hide the cowardly will

behind the shallow action and token gestures

that does so little for the Sacred Life

of the very least of our one family of humanity.

It will be foolhardy to place our sacred trust

onto the unproven conventions of the Unconcerned world;

a world that without us, become empty of it's own promise.

Until we have regained a sovereign majority

- under this greater season of heaven -

until we have reclaimed those vast tracts of the human spirit

that we have in the past been compelled to abandon

- to the ravages of war as a whole -

we will never be sure about this world and it's conventions.

Therefore,

the world as it is today - will never understand -

that the evil that is endemic to drug addiction

- is not the human being -

of whose hopes we wish to redeem;

it will see the evil, condemn it, stigmatize and ridicule the victim

and push it out of way and out of sight.

(3) To the Broken Family about the aftermath -

Those so-called modern trends

the degrade and devalue the synergistic strength

of the complementary unity between male and female

- are just that - they are trends,

an indication of the fickle nature of the world at large.

Those who are deceived by the easy convenience

of these so-called modern trends

resort to bargain away

the infinitely precious calling of the human family

in exchange for an uncertain future that one perceives to be happiness

- all because of a failure to meet the Beloved -

in those private precincts of the timeless heart

within those specific places where it really matters.

As a result,

these families will never attain to their greatest potency.

And the children will suffer through what in these evil days

are called social sins and will be weeded out

not according to our common spirit of humanity

that believes not in depriving them of their dignity and promise

but according to the law of the jungle.

This failure of the family - will then -

become transmitted onto the greater communities

as a certain subtle belligerence pervades

like a hidden, festering, spreading rot

borne by the greater body of any society

of whose significant potential for the future

that it entrusts to the human family

has already been effectively precluded

from the reality of our common human hopes.

The stronger the trend, the greater the effect.

Indeed, to sum it all up,

divorce trends are nothing more than failures

that are enabled to perpetuate itself.

Who bears the burdens?

(4) To the Family who is concerned about drug abuse -

Indeed,

this is an evil that all concerned human families

must be able to effectively defend from

and completely repel right at the very threshold of the family home.

(I have significantly dealt with this subject in my previous work.)

(5) To the Youth who questions the evil of drug abuse -

Hear no evil, speak no evil and see no evil.

Have your parents ever told you

that this saying goes for a particular form of evil?

This is the evil of drug abuse;

an evil whose allure is it's greatest peril!

Of the many evils in this day,

this one is dealt with specifically by our ignoring it's presence

where it directly concerns our lives.

Hear no evil, speak no evil and see no evil.

However to ignore this in the lives of others

without even connecting to - even a glimmer - of their hope

is inhuman.

(6) To the Addict who still doesn't know -

If you give in to the void of illusion

and accede - in your will -

to the slavery - of the lie -

at the core of every evil,

specifically the evil of drug abuse,

- you effectively commit -

one of the greatest crimes you may inflict

- against your own humanity -

for you will stand to lose yourself

within the confines of the darkness

within your own self.

You will become the lie within the lie.

The void of illusion

- once the choice waxes absolute -

is a hellish existence;

completely empty of any glimmer

of a meaningfulness that assure the soul

and gives breath to the body.

Amidst even the deepest of darkness

where the grace of God is greatest

thou shalt be unmindful of thy salvation

being unable to reach out with thy own power

- to the freedom of the truth -

that there is a wonderful reason for thy being;

that thy life is meant to fulfill thy purpose of happiness

- upon our native earth and sky -

and that this purpose has our good in Mind

because the LORD is God!

What have led you to betray your own self;

what have caused you to commit this treason?

Admit to the problem

and acknowledge thy own confusion

and let yourself be grounded upon the truth

before your own realities turn into those falsities

that will imprison you and throw away the keys.

No one will be cognizant enough

to know where you really stand

- within your own heart -

to be able to help your soul.

(7) To the Addict who is still suffering -

Do not empower the habit.

Let go of your own rational control

and admit that you are powerless against this evil.

This habit responds by degrees

that we draw near to this evil

- it has great allure -

but at it's core is an emptiness

- which is actually the body of the lie itself -

commensurate in size

to the greatness of it's temptation.

(8) To the Addict who admits to the problem -

Admit to Almighty God the problem.

Admit to Almighty God all of the problem.

Surrender control of this part of your life

to the care of the Divine Will and cling to this trust,

taking it day by day, moment by moment,

rebuilding and regenerating your integral whole,

with hope upon hope, grace upon grace,

and strength upon strength.

Prepare yourself.

It will be difficult - before it gets even close -

to getting any better.

Speak to a safe person.

(9) To the Addict who seeks for solutions -

This evil escapes the power of reason

- and eludes faith -

do not seek for answers

- by searching for it -

for in so doing you empower

- it's temptation -

to cast it's adulterous stench upon your soul.

Admit to the problem

and forgo all understanding of this evil.

Make it an integral part of your necessary surrender

to the will of the Almighty Who knows

when and how to deliver all men from evil.

Repair all relationships -

vertical and then horizontal.

(10) To the Addict who aspires to greater evil -

Do not become the illusion that you pretend to be -

we are real human beings

who live in a real world

with real concerns

and a real potential with God's grace

for doing an infinite amount of good.

Have We become your own illusion

or have the tiny confines of the lie

become your one absolute reality?

Never be compatible with evil - actively resist it,

even where your are in the very thick of it all,

even when it seems you have exhausted all ways and means,

until your realize the truth,

you must never cease to struggle against

the evil in all evil things.

(11) To the Addict who deceives the innocent into drugs -

A murderer who deceives his or her victims

- into the snare -

in order to take away their lives

is about the same in terms of gravity

to one who deceives others into losing

the completeness of their integrity,

for it is an integrity you can never bring back.

A human being has three lives,

one is the life in the soul,

the other is the life of the body

and the third is the life of his or her name;

the honor of a person's reputation

- that enable and empower -

every person's connection with other persons.

All three once taken away,

as one does who recklessly murder the innocence of our youth

and plunder the integrity of our brothers and sisters in Creation,

only an act of God, can ever restore.

Think about your own incompatibility with evil

and where you are deceived into thinking that you are

one of those who are compatible with evil,

think about your own incompatibility with death

for that is the permanent destination of all evil things.

(12) To the Pusher who deceives the innocent into drugs -

Why do you forsake your own nobility?

Or have you already lost your own sense of humanity?

You pretend to speak in the tongue of the truth

while the intentions within your own heart

contain something else completely!

Have you two hearts to contain your double mindedness?

Or a forked tongue that is sundered like the peace within yourself?

- selah -

Ponder your own thoughts

and return to your own sense of honorable remembrance,

DO NOT disturb the waters of our common community.

(13) To the Dealer who profits from dangerous drugs -

Everything turns to ashes eventually - but as for evil,

it has been a decree from Eternity,

your Satan will turn into ashes from the inside,

and the Devil who is your defeated lord

will stand as your own tormentor after he leads you

and all the reprobate angels and men into very bowels of hell.

For the wages of thy sin is thus - unless thou repent -

you will die an everlasting death.

- selah -

Glory to God the Father in the highest

Adoration to Jesus Christ

may the LORD restore - all addict souls -

to sanity and may the Spirit of God

bring us back to the hard and narrow way of salvation;

a way that though - as hard and as narrow -

as the old way of our active addiction

is the only way that leads away from the past

into to the life and the happiness

that we all desire - and desire so intensely -

so as to burn with the overwhelming power of our addictions.

May we learn to love the right things -

may we learn to be truly free

and to find happiness and security

- in the knowledge of the Truth -

that to love the LORD is to forsake the idolatry of drugs.

Ultimately,

after our convictions are proven in time

- by the grace of God -

and the help of family, friends, community and nation

we shall become who we must be...

---<--@

Saint Maximilian Kolbe, Patron Saint of the Suffering Addict and Refuge of the Recovering Addict, pray for us who have recourse to thee!

---<--@

A Bruised Wing

I saw half an angel wing once...

glimmering in the quiet of a corner;

I sought to fight off the vision -

or I thought I could for I was an ignorant fool

now I know what the vision was for.

God gave me a bruised wing

that I may be able to more sweetly sing

of His great love for me.

He fettered me with pain

to see me through the storm

and limited my powers of flight

to see me through the night.

God gave me a bruised wing

that I may be able to more sweetly sing

of His great love for me.

---<--@

If my recovery is the only gift I can give, then let it be the greatest gift I can give.

---<--@

Mabuhay ka kapatid ko, at mabuhay ang Pilipinas nating lahat. God bless us all!

Hope Taking wing

NOTE: For more on this particular issue (addiction and recovery) please refer to my secondary blog: My Recovery First Journal

My Miyang believed in my recovery long before I ever did.

20110511

RH Bill:

A Humane Population Policy?

Philippine population policy is the primary domain of the Filipino family.

By population policy here, I mean the natural human freedom of a husband with his wife within the institution of the Filipino family not only to plan for a sensible number of children but also to safeguard the intimacy of their conjugal love.

The transmission of human life and security of the order of our generations is not a power that ordinarily lies within the purview of the Responsible State.

That we are now concerning ourselves as a nation entire with this looming State regulation (the RH Bill) as regards to our population policy is worrying because it indicates an erosion of Filipino family values.

Furthermore, I do not believe we can effectively arrest this erosion of values and secure the Filipino family as a social institution fundamental to the life of our nation by dumbing it down further with a contraceptive mentality.

My fellow Filipino compatriots, I am not against poverty alleviation in our Country.

In fact, I consider poverty alleviation to be a significant social justice issue that we must as one Republic whole work to address in the near term as a pressing national security concern.

In this way, I completely understand the desires of our fellow compatriots who are proponents of the RH Bill.

But I will not accept short-term gains for longer-term losses that will only serve to stunt our near-infinite potential as a nation.

It is quite easy to accept a contraceptive mentality: Therein lies its allure.

But the straight path is a mountain road. It is not an easy road to take. It demands sacrifice.

It is also not a simple road to take. It is an ascendant way. It requires a certain strength.

It's summit usually disappears beyond a cover of clouds. It requires a certain trust.

And there are storms and high winds all along its length. It demands a constant vigilance of heart.

Is this not our path, my honorable compatriots? Though some might say this is but a similitude it still mirrors what can not otherwise be described in words.

The proponents of the RH Bill, may God bless them all, are mistaken in the thinking that a contraceptive mentality which only transfers the intellectual burden of the "population problem" to the poor will serve to either adequately address their needs or sufficiently redress their legitimate grievances.

It is the poor who are the least equipped of all to effectively adapt to the challenge of introducing the necessary safeguards to arrest the decline of the institution of the Filipino family.

In any case, is our nation actually in the grip of a "population problem"?

The proponents of the RH Bill would point out that we do. Because it is from this "problem" that they tend to legitimize their argument.

But I shall beg to disagree with them. It is the underdevelopment of our human capital that is the real problem here.

There are of course, vested economic interests involved here as well. But these interests too may be directed toward a path that is mutually beneficial to both the Common Market as well as to the Nation if only our Responsible State act to protect these longer-term national interests like our human capital.

Is the RH Bill really a better alternative over the slow but certain revival of proven national traditions inherent in every Filipino families, young or old, rich or poor, even in the face of an intermediate surge in population?

Perhaps in a perfect world, where all our citizens are empowered in their hearts and minds to make the right choices, the debate on population policy would be simple - we would all be one in the spirit of the divine command to subdue and fill the earth with living life.

But we do not live in a perfect world.

Let me tell you now, my fellow Filipino compatriots, that our human capital is at stake in this debate.

The most precious resource that this Country has is its people. Our population - our particular character, youthfulness, strength and nature as a people - is a resource more precious than gold.

This is an important consideration I should like to point out to you: The highest value that we should move to safeguard here is the individual freedom to choose rightly; our authentic human freedom.

This freedom is underpinned by a properly formed conscience.

As such, freedom of conscience is the freedom to seek its proper formation through a complete moral education. Freedom of conscience here is not a freedom to justify what should otherwise be wrong. Nor is freedom of choice a freedom to arbitrarily choose between good and evil acts.

Different individuals are naturally in different stages of moral formation. It is these natural differences in the socio-spiritual development of our people as individuals that complicates the debate on the RH bill and is basically a question of moral education.

In my own view, we are faced with a choice (economic as well as spiritual) through this debate on the RH Bill between moral education as an integral component of a good and competitive system of education for our nation and the wholesale introduction of a contraceptive mentality.

Having said all of that, I should now affirm to you that I am not for the RH Bill at all. Inasmuch as its provisions shall contravene the spirit of the beliefs I have stated here, I stand against it.

I am not saying that couples should NOT plan for a sensible number of children.

But to do it wisely, in the context of the totality of their marriage relationship, respecting their inherent dignity as husband and wife as well as the natural constraints which they themselves possess which they have received from God.

A contraceptive mentality is consistent only with a disposable, material view of life. The damage being suffered by our environment and the damage that will be inflicted to our culture arising from a blind acceptance of this contraceptive mentality have at their source the same error.

We should instead place the bulk of our worthwhile investments in the furtherance and development of our human capital through good governance, good advocacies, and a complete and competitive system of education.

It will get worse before it gets better, my honorable compatriots. This however, in my own view, is the greatest good - not a wholesale contraception of the poorest of our population.

The easy way out is usually not the right way forward.

We should never use our laws to bind what good there is.

I am personally against spending a single centavo of public funds on artificial contraception or contraceptive education other than Natural Family Planning (NPF).

Rather, I would put the burden on private advocacies that seek to promote these means (other than NPF) and shift the tax burden against those contraceptive practices that go against the life-affirming practices ingrained in our national culture.

I am not against making these other means available to the public - for as long as these means are not abortifacient or downright illegal - only because to make them illegal only removes them further from the necessary control of our Responsible State.

---<--@

Mabuhay ang Pilipinas! God bless us all.

The Principle of Totality:

The LORD makes all things whole.

The LORD makes all things one.

For God is a God of relationships.

He called Man to be one with Woman

and He joined them by their hearts

so that they would be one flesh.

He then made their happiness whole

through the union that joined them in love

by the children that made it complete.

(openness to the transmission of life)

The Beginnings of Human Life:

Life begins at conception: At the moment of conception, Man becomes a soul and the body comes to life.

The 4th Cause - Benignity:

It is not life per se that is the problem here but how we treat life: It is the strong that makes these problems persist not the weak.

Lessons Learned:

There are nations (mostly belonging with developed Countries) in our world today who are suffering because of this lack in vitality (i.e. their populations are aging out) so that we are not left wanting in those lessons we can not afford to learn ourselves.