Salutation #196

(Egalitarianism as a Civic Virtue)

Peace be with you, 
our beloved Starshine -



All human beings are
equal creations before God.

This we are
along with all the flesh of the earth.

We exist. 

And we exist because we have a right to exist.

In all other living things with Man upon with earth,
this right to exist resides in each their common natures.

In both plants and animals alike it equally resides,
and is expressed as a common survival instinct.

In Man above all other living things of the earth,
this right to exist resides in each our persons individually.

In both male and female alike it equally resides,
and is expressed as a common longing -
not only for all of life to survive and persist
but for all of life to ultimately triumph and prevail.

We neither caused our own existence as a whole
nor did we individually sought to exist
in our world, at its present course,
before our time.

Yet here we are - we are here.

We are - because we have life.
And we are here - because we are
of the human lineages of our Mankind.

Our right to exist is a natural right. 

Our right to life is a human right. 

And proceeds from our natural right to exist.

This is our most fundamental equality.

It is a moral reality
founded upon a spiritual truth
about ourselves.

For what is natural
is inalienable
to its own reality.

What is human therefore,
is inalienable
to the reality of Man.

The preservation of this right in Man is therefore,
an ethical imperative that is universal in character.

It is also among our Nations, a sacred duty.

As citizens,
beloved of the one Creator,
we are bound to each other in the freedom
to preserve, nurture, and improve upon
our natural rights to life - and thus, to live that life
in order to advance in and among our Nation/s,
a quality of life suitable
to the progress of our Liberty.
---<--@

Further Reflection -

Here in the Philippines, in this present day, we are witnessing multiculturalism anew.

Our Nation - by nature - is already a multicultural society but only on a hitherto local scale. For within our borders we enjoy a human diversity that is equal to or even exceeds what diversity the Providence of God intended from the beginning to abide within the souls of our other kindred Nations.

The richness of our human diversity should be a source of both wonder and joy to this Nation of ours... 

This is so because this self-same human diversity and its appreciation is both the cause as well as the hope of other forms of diversity in the life of lower creation.

We only impress upon the life of our animals and plants, our own understanding about life and its truths; that they were made to exist for us. And we for them.

Again, these days, we are beginning to see multiculturalism in our Nation that is regional, continental, and global in nature. And we, as a grateful people before God, should know how to welcome human diversity - and to actually love it knowing what a blessing.it is to truly understand that in this Nation of ours there is no unity without diversity.

This unity in diversity is built on our most fundamental of equality as human beings - to exist. 

And in our Nation, this is unity is made to prevail in time besides - through our citizenship with each other as we work through the economy of our generations to improve quality of life for all Filipinos - to the last of our generations at the Last Day.

(Our most fundamental civic equality being to know, seek, and do what is human, and true, and good for the other - as ourselves. That citizenship begins with the self. This is also was in essence what JFK was asking the American Nation when he said his most famous statement, "ask not...)

There truly can be no civic clarity where there exists no just human equality before God and in Country.

In animals or plants, when they shall take a life - they do so only with a knowledge of their own life.

In Man, when we shall take a life, we do so not only with a knowledge of our own life but also with that of the life of others - whether plant, animal, or human.

Any human life, each in person unique and meant by God always for completion, once willfully took by the hand of Man can not and will never be replaced. Its intended good shall always be missing in our midst... this is true - no matter what the externals may seem.

Yet the same challenges we will as a Nation face - undiminished; the same demand for virtue and its fruits God shall require of our labor of Country - in every generation.

Let us remember this, my Country, that we may thwart among ourselves the unbecoming devices of the evil and unwelcome spirit of past times -

Skin is innocent. Sin is not. (i.e. the sin of inequality)

Racism, in all its ugly appearances, has no place here in the Philippines.

We are all the colors of life. What is superior here is what is - in spirit and truth - faithful.

For the color of Gold is in our national standard.

It is the color of all things about ourselves - true and everlasting.
---<--@

Genesis 9:16

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."

Salutation #190

Of the elements of Country, there are three -
the Nation, the Responsible State, and the Common Market.

(On the Country of the Philippines)

The Nation that we are, my people,
is founded on a Covenantal obligation
between God and the Children of Mankind
which is the Covenant that the LORD made forever
with all of the Nations of the Children of Mankind
that our God inaugurated in time
through Noah and his sons.

The Noahide Covenant
binds our generations to the freedoms
that ensure the preservation of sacred life
- the whole spectrum of it - that upon "our world"
   (as a realm apart from "the world" of the fallen Nations of old),
water shall never again consume the life of the Earth -
but shall through the life of our Nations
be nourished and sustained by it.

For we are through bonds of water and blood established.

Sacred Life is our sacred obligation -
and its preservation in ourselves and therefore,
throughout all of lower creation - is -
the fire that animates our spirits.

This "world - as our world"
that we are each as Nations is commissioned
to build together for all of the Children of Mankind
   (as God's own human peoples - arising from lineages apart -
   from the inhuman and irreparably corrupt spiritual lineages
   of the fallen Nations of old who sinned with the pride of Satan)
upon the Unknown Earth - which is likewise -
God's primary command to all the Nations of Mankind
   (including those fallen Nations of old
   whose life He utterly destroyed during the Great Flood,
   whose spiritual lineages the LORD disowned,
   and irrevocably unseeded in them)
is what we call the Inhabited Earth
that Crystal Blue Sphere that
   (it is blue because it is immersed in water)
from the spiritual realm
is a wonder for all
to behold.

This is our Covenant
- the Covenant of the Children -
and we are never free to break it.

To preserve the dignity and promise of Man - in all our Nations - is -
to do Justice to the image and likeness of Man - reflected upon the life of the world
and make it, "our world". Thus, making the Earth to the LORD, "very good".
Because to do Justice to the sacred life of this world - from the person of Man
right down to the very least of all of Man's animals and Man's plants
is the fundamental reason we are called to exist as Nations.

The existence of life in our world
- is - the soul that gives our Nation breath,
and the living up to the very wonder of this life,
along with the most profound existential questions
that specifically pertains to the mystery of life
and to the living of this life in this world,
- is - the spirit that is our breathing -
the truths of life's Salvation and its Redemption
is the fire that animates both our water and our blood.

The preservation of "the all" of sacred life
in this way - is the mission and the commission -
entrusted to all National communities of the Earth.
It is our Peace and the Goodwill of our Peace.

For the Universe
is not created for Man
Man is created for the Universe.

We as the Children exist for the labor.
Everything else exists for the glory of God.

- selah -

As a National community -
we are called of spirit and of blood born.
However, it is from water that our lineages upon the Earth are established.
For it is from the formless - that - the form of our citizenship
constantly renew itself and arise: Our truest citizenship is in our soul.

And from it proceeds the spiritual truths
where from we derive the first principles
that shape and define our Social Contract.

This Social Contract establishes - our labors as truth -
and - our truth upon the Earth - as a Sovereign Presence
before the LORD and the Assembly of the Nations before God
both in Eternity - and also upon the Earth.

This Social Contract is known as Democracy.

- selah -

We - as human beings -
do not practice our freedoms in a vacuum.

Freedom is a profoundly spiritual reality in Man.

Where in the life of lower creation, freedom is but a physical act,
completely reliant upon the nurture of freedoms ever greater than theirs,
our freedom is beholden to a spiritual dimension - because as human beings,
we implicitly know in our hearts that we must reach out to the only other freedom
reaching out to us, the freedom of God - in much the same way
that the life of the Earth reaches out to us.

The universe was not created for Man.
Man is created for the universe:
We belong to its labor
   (as common laborers upon the Master's field)
and only to its labor we belong -
particularly as Nations of the Children.

For example,
a dog whom we love or the plant that we nurture
- in the most immediate and real sense -
belong not to us.

For is it not also true
that it is Providence that speaks for its life?

We belong to it - or more specifically speaking,
to the labor of making it ours again.

And so inasmuch as we quicken our souls
to the work that we owe to the life in ourselves and to the life of all of lower creation -
in God and with each other, they become ours and they awaken again and learn our voice.

Else, this world - above the din of all other things that seek to confuse us -
will roar in silence deafening: For this world will never speak its secrets to our hearts.

And we will never know of it as our First Parents did intimately know of it
and so remain - very uncomfortably - strangers to the wonders of our own living Earth,
- trespassers and invaders to the varied realms that lay within our own Human Habitation.

If we love anything in lower creation - in the Truth,
they - like the Truth - become our possession forever. 

This is a freedom no animal or plant possess.

And it is never practiced like animals and plants practice their freedom.

It is never practiced in a vacuum.

And so
from Covenant proceeds Social Contract
and for us, my brothers and sisters of the Promise,
this is simply all about - Life and Liberty -
and so specifically - we are - as a Nation among Nations -
a participatory, constitutional Democracy;
a people brave, and free, and fair.

- selah - 

Why participatory?

Stronger freedoms require Liberty that we may exercise rights that exist to make our personal freedoms strong and also guarantee those same rights commonly preserved for other citizens not unlike ourselves.

Weak freedoms fall prey to any number of dangers and calamities, and the labor that we must fulfill is not easy.

If we do not hold on to our Nationhood, or worse - if we do not know how - it becomes impossible for any of us to build up the Earth.

Everything that in exile time progresses in Time without the Truth shall appear as an unremitting retreat into a devouring darkness - as the world gets darker and darker - meaninglessness becomes bitterness, bitterness turns into despair of self, despair of self becomes despair of others not unlike the self, and so - as the years become empty of their substance - Country will seem as nothing else but a madness that devours, and what once was in our common humanity precious as our hopes for all sacred life become abased into a sheer tyranny of beliefs founded in falsities and illusions.

The gravity of these things we must fight against - it is not our way of return: Ours is an Ascent in Time and unto the Truth.

We were never free to not fly upon Eagle Wings. For the LORD God saith that saying of the Nations, not of individuals. So when you shall sing to thy soul the popular song, "On Eagle Wings", make an effort to see that song as dedicated to Nations entire and not merely to individuals.

Our Nation, my beloved people, is one of those Nations. In this Nationhood, we are impelled to participate. We are therefore, we must.

But we can not build the right world with the wrong values.

- selah -

Why constitutional?

The Nations of the Children of Mankind is one great Peerage before the LORD.

And indeed, we are each - as human individuals, a peer to one another - through our personal and individual distinctions, equally - a keeper and a friend to our common humanity.

We all have - and have forever possessed - a basic, human citizenship.

Our communities too, are such as we - a Peerage of the Nations, for unequal each Nation may be in spiritual maturity and material strength, but as a Plenary Global Community - being as one Family of Nations - we are each enabled to equally overcome that we may together prevail against this world, and make of the Earth, our home away from Home.

For we are all here for a reason exclusive only to the fulfillment of a dream of happiness, and it is not even our dream, it is God's dream for us, and it is wonderful beyond wonderful indeed!

The authority to govern our peers whether from within the Nation or from among the Nations themselves is not a human authority, but a Divine authority.

And this authority is vested in a Responsible State and the structure of this State, as it applies to our Nation, is established in our prevailing Constitution - this binds us - in spirit - to a particular undertaking of Country that is in form - a Republic - and which therefore possess in itself - a very specific spirit.

We move like a Republic moves.

However, it is our personal freedoms that determine its Ascent - into its ages in Time - from emerging, developing, developed, and mature - and our Right of Ascent is likewise determined by the rightness of these freedoms.

Each Nation only has one Right of Ascent, each Country only has one freedom or Way of Ascent - all else falls into the gravity of the unveiling of the darkness of the desolation - and Democracy as a whole - is the Social Contract we specifically have - with each other, that we owe - for each other, and that our generations owe - to each other - that we will secure for ourselves and our Posterity this Republic, and it's Liberty.

It imposes a Burden
   (which we shall also expound upon very soon),
because our freedoms are neither cheap -
nor are they ever free.

- selah (pause and think) -

Now we come to review the Engine of our Economic Progression.

For to liberate our souls to pursue those spiritual freedoms that is our happiness,
we must first liberate our minds and our bodies from the physicality that in material weakness
mires us individually and prevents our communities from securing for themselves within the Nation,
our Republic Vision (as it arises from the Maturity of our Love and Remembrances together).

This engine is human enterprise Capitalism,
and it establishes upon our Common Market within the Nation,
a Free Enterprise Market structure.

It is the Engine naturally compatible with our Democracy and its sheltering Republic,
driving its Progress forward, against the flow of exile time, that we may secure - at the helm -
for all our generations to the last, through an Economy of matter and grace,
the wealth of our Nation - which is wealth already established in us
being in everything already dedicated as our possession forever.

The full breadth of the Vision of human enterprise Capitalism is to perfect the drive of human enterprise and liberate Man from the poverty and the humiliation of the human condition.

It creates material wealth as a means to secure and obtain - in the Nation - for each and every individual, the freedom to individually pursue a happiness that is fully and completely human - so each Man may know to be free - to learn to be happy, even in this world - securing and obtaining for himself or herself true riches - from perishable means to imperishable ends.

The full breadth of this Vision does not create more poverty. It makes the poor wealthy and the wealthy truly wealthy and leads all and involves all in the Real Economy of the Nation.

Furthermore, Capitalism is - a National proposition - and therefore, may not exist to serve only the interests of a few citizens, particularly in a Democracy. Else it should falter and fail - to the everlasting regret of all.

Also, as it serves a primordial need in Man's own being - to be truly free and truly happy, Capitalism - as an Engine of Economic Progress - must naturally possess a spiritual dimension. It's promise of happiness never was a material dream, for its dream of happiness is an invincible one.

People drown in riches because their souls can not be filled by gold alone.

Greed has no part nor place in a free enterprise Market.

And as ours is such a one - our free Market structure must naturally react to expel greediness - as tares are beaten from the wheat.

Indeed, it must be intrinsic to our Economic structures and strictures that inordinate wants and the many lusts that support them are not only counterproductive but also counter-intuitive to our National Economy and run counter to our economic good as citizens - being usually not only corrupted but criminal.

Truly, truly, virtue is currency.

Greed in our Economy is like having termites in the wood of our tree.

All of that which places the value of Man's things over the things of Man give nor possess no value and only exists to take from Country; it shortens the length of our days (making it appear to our hearts we're getting nowhere fast), is useless to the fostering of our sovereign freedoms, and is quite destructive to the labor of securing the National wealth.

We can be as rich as we want to be in our Economy, provided it does not make any of us filthy - but only truly happy.

In fact, in the most ideal sense - everyone should own capital, multiply it, and have a successful business so that we should all be billionaires, rich with good things besides, and wealthy at the same time.

A Capitalist does not value imprudence in the use of material resources and despises greed because greed is reckless. Greed is narrow and selfish and suffocates both human creativity and personal initiative. It is the saw that ultimately saws off the branch it is sitting on - calamitous to the Market it preys upon.

Capitalism values not how much money is in the bank but on how much capital enterprise is in the works, it values chutzpah, and rewards honest, dedicated and inspired work, no matter how small it may be, seeking to succeed not on how well and how bravely one runs from business - but on how well and how bravely a business is run.

The capital in capitalization, and the exclusive proprietary rights of those who own the means of work is only the result and not the source of the capital in capitalism. It is a myth that Capitalism is prejudicial to workers' rights; a legend propagated by the greediness of a few.

The human capital is crucial to the success of Capitalism, so that it's betterment - both in the labor force and in the management corps that serve each proprietary trust - in business and other market venture entities - that comprise our Free Market is vital to the success of our Economy.

But the value of the human element may only be as valuable as we recognize it. Fairness is what makes our Markets free. Therefore, a degraded economic identity in our citizenry will - and shall - imperil our Market Freedoms. When honesty in the small seem to count for nothing when the truth is that honesty can never be measured by any material dimension. Honesty is honesty in all persons.

And this in turn shall slow or even stop the many human gears that drive forward the popular engine of our Economic Progress. It will produce disparities in the way we view wealth and poverty, polarize it into an unnatural state of division - so that wealth and poverty are no longer connected - in both our minds and our hearts.

(That wealth and poverty as they exist - exists not harmoniously but are inimical to each other - like hydrogen refusing to bind with oxygen to make water.)

Indeed, there is now in our Nation, and perhaps also in other Nations not unlike ours, that selfsame unfamiliarity; a sense of unbalanced imbalances that seems so unnatural to the Economic evolution of any free, fair, and brave enterprising people - and one that prevents each our Country from taking wing, leaving us all earth-bound - below the clouds, under the darkness, out of sight of the stars and the skies.

This is not a deficiency in our people's virtue and good. There is so much bravery in a magbabalut or a fish ball vendor, or an honest taxi driver or airport porter - or any enterprising Pinoy who invests in the smallest of seeds - his or her citizenry - to dream of a better life - in this Nation - it is this spark that we should be looking for... 

(The author also has a specific proposal to make common for all Filipinos - the practical means to enter into our National Economy and strengthen our City's common ability to build up the National wealth which shall also be posted in this blog at a later time.)

For it is this spark that we may use it to jump start our Engine back to life - it is found in the here, there, and everywhere, just raring to go - in each of us, because all of this is - in the heart of the Filipino - and - in the soul of our Nation.

And Now is our Time.
---<--@

I. The Naming

The First language knew no words -
it came winged, freely to the heart
and spoke as Motion, and was truth;
understood in action, known to All.

To Old Defiant, an ode -



O Islands,
Who art Thou
but thy own Name!

Who art Thou
but that - the Name
within thy name.

For if Thine own Heart
is within each thine own heart -
Then Thou art a Spirit at-One with Thyself
and a Nation at-Peace among thy peoples!

Therefore -

Must it matter to Thee,
what vanity Thou art called
by a world that knows thee not?

Must it matter to Thee,
what fleeting judgments it spake
than the Truth that ever burns
brightly in Thy bosom?

- selah -

Thou art a Nation
born among the Nations
(of the children of Mankind)
descended from the inaugural lineage
of the Sons of the Holy Patriarch Noah
and so Thine too is the everlasting Covenant
which preserveth the life of the Inhabited Earth.

For Thou art a Nation
among a Family of Nations
each of us distinct yet all the same,
together commissioned by the LORD
at the East Gate of fallen and faded Eden
and together endowed by our God with
each our own purposes and times.

As a Tree among many trees
grown under heaven upon the earth,
We are arisen to bless this barren world
in behalf of the children of Mankind
for the forbearance of Memory,
the Life of the generations,
and the sustenance of
All living souls!

What must matter to Thee - is -
what must matter to the life and the labor
of our Nationhood and not what vanity there is!

For every tree is known by its fruit.

Thou art humanity with belonging.
Thou art sufficiency through reliance.
Thou art harmony and togetherness.

And Peace is Thy common Salutation.

Bravery and Faithfulness
are thy most ancient of names.
---<--@

Salutation #173

Wings that work
are wings that lift - aloft -
they fly not merely
because they can, or they must;
they fly because
they carry something that belong
to the skies!



(Burden of Justice)

A nation's burden of justice - is -
all its unaccounted for losses
   (these losses being all that was given us
   that was taken by force from among our midst)
measured in terms of individual human life
each in their own distinct and unrepeatable persons,
each with their own particular names known to the LORD,
the God Who commanded all nations to keep them all,
ever in their entirety, each in spirit preserved
in the sacred remembrance of every nation of the children of Mankind
as a debt of remembrance owed to the God of all life - and -
as a work of peace to be kept - in common trust -
on behalf of all the life of living creation itself.

To each nation God has provided a right of ascent,
a way through which a nation may attain to a knowledge of itself
   (being a way of our returning from the exile darkness -
   in spirit - through - the easternmost gate of faded Eden)
and to every nation there is only one right of ascent.

It is therefore crucial
especially in these present times
that every nation know - as well as -
understand the (1) truth that abides within itself;
   (in general, that every nation is distinct yet the same;
   that every nation though it may long for many things long for only one thing;
   that though the spirit of war marches to threaten,
      in every time, place, and in every age, the peace of all nations,
      that every nation exists for the good and only for the good;
   that every nation exists for the other and that, in the economy of grace,
      there is no other but the self alone;)
and (2) that the power of this ascent is directly affected
in proportion to every nation's burden of justice
and that the weight of this necessary burden
is carried by all of our citizens,
   (each of us according to the measure
   by which we receive them from the Providence of God)
to be shared - as a common labor of peace - across all our generations,
according to our national debt of remembrance -
   (so that it may be heavy - the people choose to forget their hope -
   or it may be light - the people choose to take responsibility for their hope.)

Failure to responsibly carry
this burden of justice - in a nation -
is failure itself.

For a nation overtook by the darkness
is no longer itself.

And every spirit of Country
that has become utterly corrupted
by the adversarial nature
of the enemy of all nations
shall perish forever
from the earth!
---<--@

Salutation #85

Lead us back to you, O LORD, that we may be restored:

give us anew such days as we had of old.

For now you have indeed rejected us,

and in full measure turned your wrath against us.

Lamentations 5: 21-22

(Law and Justice)

The practice of law is the practice of justice.

It is one act of charity.

Law is the breadth

and justice is the depth,

mercy is the awesome completeness

of its embrace in Man.

The depths of Man knows justice

- where and when it is present -

but more acutely

when and where it is absent.

The breadth of law

is the force that shapes

the destiny of nations

and guides each the order of it - across time,

keeping its necessary discipline

and exact form distinct

from the chaos

and the emptiness of the void.

Both law and justice is completed in mercy

and mercy perfected in charity,

even the charity of God.

For as long the soul of Man pines for God,

the heart of Man longs for justice;

for as long the heart of Man longs for justice,

the Law of the LORD exists!

And the laws of the nations derive their authority from it.

---<--@

For further reflection -



If law is a container,
then justice is the water.

How full it is depends on the water.
How satisfying it is depends on the container.
One can not be without the other. 

For a container without water
brings no comfort to the thirsty
and water without a container
sinks afoul into corruption.
---<--@

Salutation #66

How long before we can bring them relief?

To many it shall be too late...

How shall we stand accountable

- for our gift of belonging to each other -

to the God of all heaven and earth?

How shall we explain

our claim to rightful citizenship?

(Identifying with the Peace)

I am for Peace.

I am passionate for the peace.

I will always be for peace.

But I am not for endless talk without fruit.

And the fruit I am seeking

is every form of good

- both in heaven and on the earth -

which is edible to our people

and eternally pleasing to the God of all peoples:

the LORD - our King - and one Sovereign of all nations;

fruit which is especially wholesome - for the littlest Filipino -

on the ground of our Land of the Morning.

I am the same as War - in that -

I do not discriminate between distinctions

that make a Filipino into his or her own unique person.

A hungry Filipino is a hungry Filipino

- no matter the differences -

that make us into Christians, Muslims, or Lumads;

male or female, young or old, better or worse, richer or poorer -

for we are one nation, my beloved people!

All our generations is entrusted by the LORD to the care of each other

and our singular consecration before the God in Eternity is to life;

unto the life of our nation is invested the hope of Sacred Life

all plant and all animal life, both great and small,

especially those who are native to our lands

- above all human life!

Peace is our common salutation.

---<--@

Fly Old Defiant:

Defy War. Defy Darkness. Defy Evil. Defy Corruption. Defy Poverty.

Prosper the Peace! Prosper the People!

Salutation #61

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20111003

The Last Quarter of 2011

We have now reached the last quarter of 2011. Let's start with a little review.

At the very beginning of this year, we set out in this blog what is to be expected of the year 2011.

I made it clear to each of us that 2011 is a time set aside for preparation and that 2011 is going to be a year of remembering what it really means to be the nation in ourselves; a year of choices.

Truly, we are the nation in ourselves - the love in our hearts for God and Country makes our one Republic undertaking visible to the eye of the spirit. It places us on the map so far as the Angels of the LORD are concerned.

It makes us easier to find in the darkness.

- selah -

I want you to recall all of the lessons we have learned so far...

Love creates the conditions for peace and our peace is a love of common good will. For the peace we profess as a nation is an affinity to unity and the highest unity of all is the unity of the LORD.

Therefore, the peace of the Philippines is a peace that must ascend being a peace that is beyond our understanding. What is meant by this is that our belonging is a unity that obtains to all of creation and more.

It is a religious peace. It is an economic peace. It is a political peace. It is a cultural peace. It is a social peace. It is a generational peace. It is a human peace.

It is the peace we offer to each other as citizens.

It is also the peace we offer to others like ourselves as a nation of citizens.

And all of these things repel the beast of War for all of these things draw us close to the memory of our people. It brings us near to the LORD, our King, Who remembers us first. Light attracts light. Love attracts love. Truth cleaves unto truth. Abundance creating abundance.

War can not understand Peace and so this peace professed is the end of the spirit of division.

This is what I mean by completing our remembrances.

All these things must begin with peace in the Filipino heart - your heart, my fellow Filipino compatriots, and mine. This one heart makes us children of the Promise.

It binds us to the dawning of our Land of Promise.

For the War in heaven is in the heart. And as War found no place in heaven, it certainly has no place among the nations. For the earth is not the abode of War: Peace is the responsibility of all.

I am telling you this because by 2012 there shall be many more crisis and conflicts that shall take on the outward appearance of anything but the central proposition being made to us by the Providence of God under this season of heaven: That (1) the problems Mankind currently face is a problem of the human heart and that (2) all of these crises and divisions find their root in the spirit.

God is making a call for the exiles to return.

If we do not heed the call of these present days, we shall certainly lose our way and our nations shall plunge deeper into the embrace of War. For how long shall our generations linger in darkness and in division, I can not tell you. For I do not know.

All I know is that if it took 2000 years for us to arrive at this choice for peace, how much longer will it take for us to listen to the LORD?

Nay, my brothers and sisters of the Promise.

We must shine in the Night as one whole sky.

- selah -

Remember this now, Beloved of God, for the time shall come when you shall seek to understand these things:

These are all external manifestations of a spiritual requirement...

...and that the answers to these questions are within ourselves.

For the core issue of 2012 phenomenon is the peace of the human heart.

---<--@

An Application of the Heart -

Having said all of the above, I take it these two previous facebook postings of mine will wax all the more clearer to us today.

The first one concerns the national peace:

"Never take your focus off the peace process, do not delude yourself in thinking that war and poverty is the reason we stand together as one nation.

Peace is the reason we are Filipino. It is the purpose for which Providence brought us forth through our parents into this time and place.

If we fail to believe it now, how then shall this generation be remembered?

But if we succeed in turning the tide today, my brothers and sisters of the Promise, how many generations shall tell of this gift when indeed, peace is at the beginning and peace is at the end of the long march of our nations?

We only have to choose and choose absolutely."

- selah -

And the second one concerns the regional/continental peace:

"This Spratly Issue could become a thing of War or a thing of Peace; a thing of War if we miss the bigger picture and a thing of Peace if we succeed in grasping it."

- selah -

Let us try to pray and reflect about these things.

Also, let us try to validate in ourselves this week the fact that all our nations, being born of the one lineage of victory, also subscribe to a common wisdom and this is the wisdom of peace.

I am not aiming for all to be convinced. I am aiming only for each of you who are called by God to be convinced to be convinced. God be with us all.

---<--@

One who understands War understands Peace.

---<--@

We will stand with each other. We will stand with our friends.

Mabuhay ang Pilipinas! God bless us all.

Revelation 12: 7-9

20110522

The 1st Cause: The Cause of Sacred Life - God

"Sacred Life is all of life, plant and animal, above all human life."

This is the Cause for which all the other Causes exist:

Sacred Life is All of life, seen and unseen, as well as all of life's distinctly individual relationships with and to the LORD, our God, the one Creator of all of life, first of all and then to each other - Angels first, then Man, then animals, then trees, then plants.

It includes both being (dignity) and becoming (potential) especially in the visible realms of Man.

To this Cause belong the exercise of Christian charity - as a sacred duty - which is compassion, kindness, and mercy tempering truth, common humanity, and justice in that order.

It bids all human hearts - Love first, all else follows.

Because Our God, O my beloved of my heart, is a God of relationships.

---<--@

The Noahide Covenant: The Covenant of the Nations

"You shall love the LORD, thy God, O my nation, with everything and in everything."

Reading: Genesis 9: 1-17 -

God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them: "Be fertile and multiply and fill the earth.

Dread fear of you shall come upon all the animals of the earth and all the birds of the air, upon all the creatures that move about on the ground and all the fishes of the sea; into your power they are delivered.

Every creature that is alive shall be yours to eat; I give them all to you as I did the green plants.

Only flesh with its lifeblood still in it you shall not eat.

For your own lifeblood, too, I will demand an accounting: from every animal I will demand it, and from man in regard to his fellow man I will demand an accounting for human life.

If anyone sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; For in the image of God has man been made.

Be fertile, then, and multiply; abound on earth and subdue it."

God said to Noah and to his sons with him:

"See, I am now establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you

and with every living creature that was with you: all the birds, and the various tame and wild animals that were with you and came out of the ark.

I will establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all bodily creatures be destroyed by the waters of a flood; there shall not be another flood to devastate the earth."

God added: "This is the sign that I am giving for all ages to come, of the covenant between me and you and every living creature with you:

I set my bow in the clouds to serve as a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.

When I bring clouds over the earth, and the bow appears in the clouds,

I will recall the covenant I have made between me and you and all living beings, so that the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all mortal beings.

As the bow appears in the clouds, I will see it and recall the everlasting covenant that I have established between God and all living beings--all mortal creatures that are on earth."

God told Noah: "This is the sign of the covenant I have established between me and all mortal creatures that are on earth."

---<--@

O Unspeakable Beauty

O UNSPEAKABLE BEAUTY that surrounds, penetrates and transcends into eternity, O Beauty that shines forever brightly, ever here and ever there, ever always present in places sacred to Thy holy remembrance, in places found within the soul of every creature in need of Thee.

Arise in me and cure me of my deformity, my perversity, my ugliness, my constant rebellion.

Though I weep with guilt and shame at every thought of Thee, though I should recede back into the darkness where I truly belong, Thou has seen into my soul and my soul has caught a glimpse of Thee!

O what can a mere creature do at the hint of Thee, O unspeakable Beauty?

By Thy own Truth, Thou hast enraptured my heart and now I am madly in love with Thee.

I reject all that is not Thee!

Ever in spite of me, I constantly long for Thee, I thirst and I hunger for Thee.

O Beauty, Thou art Beautiful for Thy being Beautiful, who can resist Thee?

Bless me, convince me, lead me on and fulfill what Thou sees as Thy reflection in me. Become the fullness of Thy own image and likeness that Thou has imparted in me, and lose me forever into the depths of Thy Being.

Make use of me and recreate me into an instrument of Thy holy creation and a servant to all Thy beautiful works of divine artistry.

O wonderful God, O wonderful God! O what majesty! O what glory! O what Beauty! Thou art truly Beautiful for Thy being Beautiful.

Arise in the hearts of all Thy servants, arise in our poor world, that we may learn to see what is beautiful for being beheld by Thee.

Abide in us, O dearest LORD and Love of my love, spread upon our souls Thine infinite horizons and become for each one of us as the breaking of the new dawn from on high.

AMEN.

---<--@

One Heart, One People, One Destiny

My fellow Filipino compatriots,

in the Final Accounting of all things, it shall be shown and made known to to All that

we are a nation distinct

but not apart from all our other kindred nations - a human nation, allied to the kindred peace of all the other nations of our one family of nations.

We are a nation, my brothers and sisters of the Promise, and so it is as a nation

that we shall be held responsible by both heaven and earth before the God of all heaven and earth.

As a nation, O my people, we are by our individualities, families, tribes, communities and generations bound by one heart, one labor, and one destiny.

We are thus called, according to our fidelity to the truths of our nationhood, to make a shelter for our generations, the shelter of Country - a home away from Home for all living beings.

As a nation, we shall rise or fall upon the void of the unknown earth

according to the one peace of our peoples and the one economy of our generations to the very last of our generations.

As a nation, we shall build upon this world, the kindred peace of Country to the glory of Almighty God in heaven,

and fill it with living lights

or lay it to waste by our refusal to

subdue the darkness in and amidst ourselves - the evil in all evil things.

As a nation without its peace, we shall fail - a defeated Country, desolate and empty of promise, of broken, shattered skies, we shall remain in the dread embrace of this maddening darkness, falling forever into the void.

As a nation in possession of our peace, we shall persevere.

Victory shall in its time be restored to each of us by God Himself where w

e shall together with our own eyes behold

the triumph of an unimaginable abundance.

As a nation, we are called by weight of our history and by the call of our destiny to rise above our differences.

And to do so with courage and tenacity for h

ow else is peace to be defended?

Indeed, my honorable compatriots, it matters most what unites us than what divides us.

Our differences are diverse and the cause of many valid concerns,

but they are temporal.

Unity is eternal.

---<--@

Mabuhay ang Pilipinas! God bless us all.

Fly Old Defiant:

Defy War. Defy Darkness. Defy Evil. Defy Corruption. Defy Poverty.

Prosper the Peace! Prosper the People!