Thinking Forward 30 Years

So in a future world 30 years from now... 

When our technology has developed widely enough and deeply enough that the sum of all these innovations combined have become applications fully capable and mature enough to replace us in those fields of human endeavor traditionally reserved for the human professional...

What then?

If the maturity of our remembrances do not keep abreast with these advances, not to mention keep ahead of the evolution of the spirit of War, our own technology might eventually forget who we are and soon after become hostile to our common humanity.

Instead of being in our common service, our machines may become our masters and through them, War will gain another way of entering into our times.

The human realm is a temporal realm - time is for us what the timeless is for the angels. Time is the sea we human beings were created to swim in and prosper through - as a family of Nations.

Our exile was also a time not a place. Place is relative to time... 

Choice is important... The choice for peace. The choice to love. The choice to remember. The choice to accept. The choice to change and to be... The choice to say, "yes". 

Awakened freedoms awaken dreams and bring them forth in time.

These choices take us places... places arising from things we think about and do everyday.

Small indeed when compared to the immensity of the universe we inhabit...

A universe that itself was birthed from a single choice... a choice our Creator made for us... still makes with us and through us and for us - for the glory of His Name and for our good.

Here things rise and fall, but in the midst of all it's comings and goings, we know of things that stay and are for always - and these are not things.

Machines can never be made to understand or comprehend these deeper things of the Spirit. How can they? Our technologies are purely temporal constructs. But we human beings are not machines - a part of us shall always transcend, now and forever, of the physicality of all things temporal.

For we are the stewards of this realm of God's creation. This is how He made us. If we forget, it is our loss.

But how can we? All things seen and unseen proclaim His Peace.

Religion proposes this to our hearts - we react as if it were an expectation already in us, so that if we are generous to the call of faith, we are then made to discover the wonder of faith seeking understanding...

And we make a choice.

But even if one is not religious or have chosen to have no religion, it stands to naked human reason... If we do not take care of what we have on this planet, what little we do have left will soon leave us with the ebbing of the tides of time.

We are how we treat each other, and that is all.

- selah -

Here in the Philippines, our path in the short term as regards these takes us through to 2046... Half-way through, we have to prove our peace and pass the test, that we may carry on safely, assured of better times ahead.
---<--@

Wine of Remembrance

History is not memory.
To see the vessel is not to drink of it.
Many are the vessels. Many are our tastes.
But where ever the drinking of this particular wine is to be done.
It is one motion. And remembrance inebriates not.

Memory is not burdensome. Never as complicated as it may seem.
It does not cause the soul to become overly anxious about it.
Memory is light to the heart and easy to the mind.
Easily raised and easily placed down.
For we do not remember it as much as it remembers us.


Memory is simple because it seeks to meet us
when ever one should draw near to it.

As if coming from a far place,
memory welcomes us as if we never left.

We do not memorize memory. We take it to heart.
The true test of memory is not set down on paper.
It is written by the lives we lead in its behalf.
---<--@

When shall the future be...

When shall the future be... 

Corruption we can never banish entirely - we have to take man as he is. 

Our society ought not suffer its evils easily though. 

We should work to gain from these trying times, a vital tempering that shall steel our will of community. That corruption never again openly threaten our common labor of Country. 

The Filipino dream of freedom belong to all Filipinos. 

We will always behold this dream as if it were a future far away if our nation remains shackled by the many fears that hold us back. Our future is near as tomorrow once the Filipino can dream again. 

We should not fear to break out of old molds of thinking. We should not become comfortable with all too familiar pains. The ghosts of past things shall seem terrible to us indeed if we shall harden our hearts...

Nations have a right to be - forever. Therefore, every Country in our present world, properly established, expressed, and brought to fore in time, has a right to succeed. We must own what is ours.

We want better things for our nation. All things that better a nation ought always to last. If a thing is not such and after a while perishes, shall we call it a gain of happiness? Or a betrayal of it? 

Wealth to our community is enrichment - good and wholesome to the total being of man. Corruption and its propensity to multiply its sins against community is never a means to achieve such a wealth. Evil foundations shall never stand the test. Time itself shall pull its worthless idols down from this world. 

What we must dream and labor together to possess is the kind of riches that promises to profit our souls a happiness that is invincible. Material wealth yes. Most certainly! But the gain of its honorable pursuit as well. 

By the gain of virtues multiplied, the pursuit itself becomes a blessing unto every life's learning. We enable our citizens to become masters of their temporal possessions and therefore, captains of our national fortunes. 

Wages and salaries, benefits and allowances - everything that adds to every citizen's ability to move and to be - these are not survival options but economic necessities. 

It should not be such a hard decision to make - to increase the economic potential of the Filipino - IF the wealth we as a nation possess were to be established on the building up of good and abundant things that make our Country in the sight of Providence very good. 

But wealth born of the wrong things curse. It is naught but dust and earth in the end and shall leave for our generations nothing but bitterness and grief.

Our connections are human and valuable. Peace is the source of the national wealth.

Our citizenship in this Republic draws its sovereign reality from the strength of our connections with each other. How we esteem this sacred trust and how we honor our citizenship is one and the same duty. 

Betrayal of the public trust usually arises either indirectly through ignorance or directly through malice wrought against the sacred trust of our people. 

Simply put, our civic allegiances we profess to each other under God - through the Flag that rally our spirit unto the liberating work of our Country. 

From this we are emboldened and stand to gain much fortune. 

For the gaining of the earth for man is the original intention of our coming together as a nation. Before the fall it was, after exile it still is. 

---<--@

Cry in the Dark

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

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

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

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

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

How much pain must we endure?

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

How many lives will it take to teach us humility?

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

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

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

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

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

The Ghost of Things to Come

I hate it when I see beauty in things...

I hate it that beauty is fleeting...

I know beauty is fleeting however,
not because of the beautiful in ourselves
and in all creation...

Beauty is fleeting
because of what is not beautiful.

Beauty is fleeting
that we may better remember her.
---<--@

Alive to the Memory

In thy seeking, understand,
dearest Starshine -

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

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

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

No Remembrance

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

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

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

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

there shall our Country be found nowhere in creation.

Excerpt from Salutation #10

No remembrance, no timeless being, 

nor knowledge past nor present knowing, 

nor love, nor truth, nor freedom a space - 

to plant and stay, and to grow always; 

no primacy of persons nor significance of place, 

no sense of limitlessness, no sense of spirit, 

no timeless vision nor heavenly season, 

no sacredness, no sentience, no abiding grace, 

no reason, no rhyme, 

no trace...

---<--@

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

8 God spoke as follows to Noah and his sons,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

An Incident in Tokyo

Early this week, there was this incident in Japan that caught my eye. Apparently, more than 300 copies of "A Diary of a Young Girl" was vandalized in public libraries across more than 3 different wards in Tokyo. These were Japanese translation of Anne's diary, much appreciated by the Japanese people.

I had personally tried to translate her diary in Filipino but found that it was beyond my competence to do so. I have not given up on trying to reserve its lessons for our youth though. What is vital in this work is not that its Jewish (although it is) but that it is human - very human, in fact - as we should learn.

To politicize her Diary is a flagrant crime, in my mind - because of the many motives for doing so, holding true to a right Remembrance of Anne and of her times is not one of them.

In my opinion, what happened in Japan is most probably a stunt.

However, it still begs to be investigated. There is a slight chance that this incident is an appearance (a symptom, if you will) of a deeper and more dangerous undercurrent.

Anti-semitism - along with other "isms" akin to it - is patently dangerous - to its victims as well as to the hearts and minds of those who feel the need to be empowered (as we all do - because - Man is a social creature) - it is supremely easy to be swept up in diverse forms of hatred instead of swimming against the current - as we all should do - who are alive and in the water - to the Nations, it is always in the weakest amongst ourselves where weakness enters into our Peace... and where tragedy soon follows.

If Anne is not a human being - as the pain of her history and a Remembrance of those dark and tragic times teaches our memory, then who is?

One who learns to hate must always find reasons to exercise this hatred. Therefore, if it is not the Jews, it is the Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Atheists, Blacks, homosexuals, the disabled... you name it. 

Hatred will never and shall never empower us, my people - it shall enfeeble us.

<Recall now, Starshine - of the Four Faithful Causes, War will first subvert the Fourth Cause and work its way all the way up to the First Cause - to overthrow the sovereign will of the people and corrupt the sacred trust of the Nations - ALL THE TIME.>
---<--@

Salutation #187

The War in heaven is in the heart.

(Maturity of Remembrance)

God seeks to be near to all His Children!

In their Exile,
He has clothed them with Justice.

Justice
through each Nation
the LORD hath - together appointed -
at the autumnal Dusk of our Faded and Fallen Eden
to shelter with Peace the remnant peoples of all Mankind,

and who at the East Gate stands faithful guard to the Memory
that the lineages of Adam and Eve may hope to prevail - in time,
according to the great and mysterious designs of His Wisdom,

over the lands of an Unknown Earth, far away from familiar Sky,

cast adrift in the unyielding Darkness, across the Veil of Exile Time. 

And in despair of death, 

offered them Love and Mercy.

Love
in the one Redeemer
He hath appointed to save our souls,
- ever before any of our souls needed saving -
long before we were even souls - alive to the Alive -
deep in the waters of the Firmament, before the Earth.

And Mercy
through the Most Holy Incarnation
of that same timeless and ageless Redeemer,
in Our Emmanuel - Who is Jesus Christ the Lord -
Who through His Sacred Humanity, came upon our Earth
- to be with us - the God with us - in our poverty and suffering.

Christ 
Who as Word of the Father spake to all hearts of - the Truth -

that God is - across all realms of Earth - and unto all Ages of time,
one and for always - for Christ did love - the each of us, in each of us
- ever in spite of our smallness and despite the greatness of our sins,
with a Love that is forever - and did reveal to our needful world
the deepest and most profound expression of this Divine Love
in the Christian Mysteries - for the Salvation of all human Nations -
so that in Spirit and Truth, the LORD is, in all living hearts - as God is -
to be sought, loved, served, understood, praised, revered, and worshiped
without division - as one ascendant motion in time - for God is Love unyielding,
and in all things professed in honor of this Blessed and Eternal Unity
He dwells forever - as Father, Son, and Spirit.

- selah -

As Father to each orphaned human heart,
and the one Sovereign of all the Nations of Mankind
God seeks us - in the Peace we profess in our human communities;
in the National Belongings that are the direct expression
of His unyielding will of Unity, of Peace over War.

As Redeemer of all Mankind,
the Son comes to us - as a Servant of our common humanity -
to share in our littleness, and to drink of our bitterness,
and to join in our common human hopes.

Indeed,
Jesus came to call sinners to life,
and to gather all the lost to Himself.

And lived to serve and not to be served,
in a posture of offering, and laid down His life
through an act of His own Freedom - giving all -

- that the poor and the needy 

may receive sustenance and strength,

- the stranger and the outcast
may find the good will of Godly friends,
- the orphan and the widow
may come to the solace of a faithful Nation,
- and the weak of the Unknown Earth
may discover again the preserving salt of our tears
through Him Who wept for all our weeping
upon that lonely Cross on Calvary

for the Salvation of our common Humanity 

and the Redemption of our Mankind

with tears born of human compassion 

that flowed with the Blood of His Passion

and cleansed the Darkness of our Exile 

sealing forever the one Everlasting Covenant

that consummates the Promises of the Old 

of deeds by written word spoken in Scriptures 

by Prophets and Patriarchs of those times before

Passing them Over from weakness to strength

that Scripture may be professed as Light,

through Word of the Incarnate Truth, 

made Ageless and ever New. 

For Christ is our Prince, 

and everlasting above everlasting,

- the Defender of our Eternal Remembrances - 

mighty and able to save us - through height or depth,

in good times and in evil times, through illness and in health,

from weakness into strength, from grief to joy, despair to hope

across the desolation of the human soul and the troubles of this life,

Jesus is Emmanuel - in life and in death, forever - He is God with us.

And He seeks us - in the Good Will we must profess as a love of the Peace
He has entrusted to all those whose hearts have come to know the Truth, 

that God is, the LORD - one God alone.

- selah -

Yea, in the Spirit of the Father and the Son, we are sent - 

to be seekers of the Peace and witnesses in the Good Will of God thereof.

For as the Father sends the Son to call the Nations to Remembrance

and even as the Son speaks to each and every Nation about the Father 

- calling all human hearts unto an everlasting witness of the Truth -

the Spirit of the Truth rejoices in - the one Truth - that God is, 

and that He is God forever!

Alleluia to God, 

O Children of Mankind, 

alleluia to God, all ye Nations!

For thou wert a people saved - before thou needed saving -

and a Nation - gathered and justified - before God and each other,
long before thou wert ever alone and in need of His constant Peace.

Alleluia to God, 

O Angels of the LORD, 

alleluia to God, all ye Heavens!

For the LORD purposed - through time and all its Ages -
to bring unto all living hearts, a new rebirth of Freedom and Truth -

that the Original Glory of the Heavens and the Earths shine again forever;

in a time made new, of worlds made whole again, lit in golden glory.

Peace is over War.

---<--@

We are by each unique person 
Redeemed by our Holy Redeemer.

But the fullness of our Salvation comes 
through the strength of our common 
human communities.

In Peace we are purposed
and through it, we are obtained.

The LORD God therefore 

banished him from the garden of Eden, 

to till the ground from which he had been taken.

When He expelled the man, 

He settled him east of the garden of Eden; 

and He stationed the cherubim 

and the fiery revolving sword, 

to guard the way to the tree of life.

Genesis 3: 23-24