Thoughts on the Philippine Constitution

Nation is sovereign Foundation.
State is sovereign Expression.
Country is sovereign Motion.
---<--@

Our Constitution entrusts us with an outline of the Philippine State.

Every State is unique. No one State is ever the same.

In a Garden of Many Trees, each State speaks for a distinct type of tree, intended by Providence and its people to bear, harvests of good and edible fruit - each in its own due time, across seasons in time.

Each tree is particular to the nurture of its own Nation; each a labor of living life belonging to a unity of human peoples, and to their living and breathing economy (of generations). That all may in time be - in fullness gathered - by the Peace all their generations shall come to possess forever - as an everlasting heritage in the LORD and a present promise of His good will.

So shall it grow in time. We see this present promise of good will in the spirit of our Constitution - the words of which however splendidly stated and contained therein, we all instinctively know, shall never be enough. For an outline alone will not produce. Country is motion.

Peace is the soul of our nationhood. The fundamental spirituality of this Peace is connection. Our Nation is a formless spirit. We are always more than what appears to the external eyes of this world -

a peculiar labor we are indeed...
for as Nations together,
we are sown to the gathering,
sworn to sacred life, and dedicated
to those shining ideals (such as peace)
unintelligible to the darkness of this world.

Therefore, my beloved brother and sister Filipinos, any meaningful faith in our peoplehood must embrace the whole of our nationhood - past, present, and forever: here, now - in our hearts.

That the common trust of our generations be safeguarded by the good will of every generation, each in their own present time.

And the living economy of our common Posterity proceed to gather for all generations, the accumulation of the Means National, spiritual as well as material, to enable the present to prosper our Peace as well as our Peoplehood through the ages of our Country in time.

Wealth itself - where Country is faithful - may become a means to produce more Wealth.

We become citizens to each other when we belong. The peace in our souls is the soil of Country. The more faithful the Peace, the more sovereign the Being of our Nation in our souls.

Realizing the Peace of our Nation in ourselves makes our Labor and its Trust truly present upon the lands of our earth. We become a sovereign Nation upon the world.

We profess the Ideals of our Nationhood unto other sovereign Nations through the Philippine State. And in their Good Will, through the grace of Providence Divine, we are duly recognized before their Assembly for what they as Nations themselves possess - we claim our eternal Right to Family.

Our Constitution is not a rote study of history. One does not reach back to collect it.

It is the foundation of a great story.

Between its covers is the unfolding of an epic journey every generation must live, each in their own present time.

It is like a thing we must trust - to be more than what its pages are, containing a vision that has been ours forever.

If we are able to hear what it speaks, more than just read what it says - our Constitution, by its every present legal iteration, shall tell us something more about ourselves that is true.

It is up to each of us to discover what it is... it is different for each one.

Do not just study it. Trust yourself to love it enough... and receive it as if you already have.

If our Constitution merely stayed on the paper it is published on, my dear Compatriots and in particular to you, O youth of this Nation, there may come a day when there shall be none of us left but the ghost of a people on paper; a cautionary tale of a labor and a light of humanizing civilization that could have been.

And the world shall be a lesser place indeed - for every tree matters, every life matters; ever drop, every fruit is possessed of a value that is more than what the darkness of this world may ever understand.

Why were we Nations in the first place if our work was merely the annihilation of all life?

Why ponder on a circular thing that is not worth our time and our thought?

Furthermore, as we walk the Way of Amity with and among all our kindred Nations -

How we relate to other States is important. Just as vital, at times even more so, is how we relate to each other within our own Philippine State.

We come to a respect of other States through knowing our own labors, realizing the necessary battle we together stand - to obtain a maturity of peace - upon this world is hard for all peoples. That all States are weakened when every one of them absolutely believe they are strong - against each other.

We must always presuppose something human about all human States. That all Nations arrive - in a world intrinsically hostile to our common humanity, flawed and incomplete. That no Country springs up upon this world fully mature and fully armed.

For as Man is, so shall his Nations be.

War is an exception. War is a failure of peace. It is always an outcome of a battle we have already lost. And were we as Nations together to become so deceived as to think that War is a native of our earth, we will begin to believe all our necessary battles may be won through war. That this devouring beast was a faithful steward to our human realm. That it has precedence over us...

And we will certainly lose our place to it.

On earth and in heaven.

To sum it up, we have hope. Never despair.
---<--@

Journeying with Starshine

I do not believe in forcing the young to do things mechanically.

I want them to learn good judgment. Live their actions on their own merit and discover its outcomes on their own terms. More than anything else.

One must never cease to counsel them though. Whether they like it or not. Our job as I see it is to plant the trees that one day shall line the trail. Their job is to pave the road of their own lives.

One must always make sure though, there is always time for the young - for more time. That they should never run out of better choices to make.

Likewise, one must never allow the young to wander too far off their trails that they should accidentally have a mortal encounter with the hidden beasts of the wild. As I have. As many in my generation have.

Yet if they still do, we must fight it off alongside them. I know I will.

And if any of our young Starshine should come ask us, what may lie ahead - around a corner, in the dark, we might with them look ahead together, make decisions jointly, and walk the way together for a while...

Until they find their own feet again. Until they feel safe.

But the road they shall pave into the wilderness shall be their own. They shall walk all the way through the barren desert into the land of their own dreaming. And claim it.

And their victory shall truly be theirs.
---<--@

A Harvest of Hunger

The beauty of the Philippines
Locked in disbelief.
Afraid of herself.
She would rather sleep.

In poverty we must rise
Hungry but not surprised
Gathering together to pray and sing
A little bird taking wing.

We'll labor to eat
Fear will not defeat
A simple people
Breaking new bread for old wheat...

A harvest of hunger
We will meet.
---<--@

Salutation #194

Man is an extension of his community.

(The People Principle)

Salute the life of the people.
Salute also the life of their communities.

To love the people
love also their communities
each one - as it is -
not as one would have it be.

Exercise
human respect
in the Nation -
in this way.

Ponder in thy heart the people principle.

To respect the life of the people
is to honor the peace of their communities
and to do so where ever and whenever it may be found
drawing from thy own love for thy own community
arrive in peace - and leave in the same spirit.

Say to them in the stillness of thy own heart,
"Prosper the peace, prosper the people".

Then thy own Nation will know you
and love you.

For love of the people - as you do yourself.
For love of their communities - as you do your own.

So love all of our peoples
- as they are -
honor them across their communities
and then learn to love the act of loving itself.

Because
these things are not forgot.
The earth, t'is asleep -
but heaven is not.

Let go of the fear of being forgot.
The real fear is of being remembered
as you are not.

Fear for thy citizenship as it really is.
And of not living up to its bliss.
---<--@

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.

The Path of Plenty

Starshine,
the path into the way of many trees
is the path of plenty.

It is also one path.



Love your own and others like your own.

Love of Country

Starshine,
you can not love
what your own heart
does not understand...

This is why Country to thee
must be as the truth understood.

Because by our love of this work,
we shall by our own peace be sheltered.
---<--@

Gathering Sense

My fellow Filipinos,

how shall we know each other?

We shall know each other

by the love that we profess for this Republic - and -

to the people for whom we, together, stand

to serve and defend forever.

Fly Old Defiant,

arise like a swift and sure sunrise,

arise in hearts of all thy servants,

making us ready, making us one.