Showing posts with label Peace of the Nations. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Peace of the Nations. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 22, 2015

Are we special?

Plants and animals are more ancient than Man. The universe was not created (or set in motion) for Man but Man (brought to an awareness of our humanity) for the universe.

The vineyards were already established before the LORD chose the stewards who were to administer them. Angels and Man both.

The Angels did not cause the celestial heavens to open up in golden light and wondrous life. Neither did we establish our own space-time existence. Its constants, symmetries, its depths, its heights, its width and breadth, its limits and ultimate purposes we neither caused nor willed.

Nor may we ever fully comprehend them.

The fact that we may think about these thoughts makes us unique. But are we special?

Yes, I believe we were caused to make each other so. Not to assume it - to make it so. To make it so that we can live in a world fully aware of the knowledge that we are the children of Mankind. We may likewise chose to undo our common dignity and ignore our common calling.

We are not central to anything in anything in the universe unless one becomes alive and aware of the being of our being... and be unto each other a keeper of our common humanity and together - faithful stewards of the life of temporal creation.

It is truly humbling to peer into a telescope and realize how small and insignificant we are. Also humbling is to realize that from small and insignificant beginnings, we are together called to shine as the stars.

Carl Sagan and Eugene Shoemaker are two of my most favorite scientists.

Carl Edward Sagan 19341109-19961220

Carl Sagan hated the sins of religion because he loved science. I feel sympathy for his atheism to be honest. It is a reaction to the evils wrought by the sins of the recent past. Yes, the sins of religion. Not of God but of the harmful ways Man chose and still chooses to react to the Divine Reality. The structural sins from which St. John Paul II asked the Church to purge herself of.

The fact that Carl was able to think and decide to do something good about his life makes him special in my eyes. He lives on in his legacy. In a way, as a fellow lover of the universe, I am an inheritor of his labors. And for him, I am grateful.

Now if you were to ask me, does Carl or Eugene for that matter, live on in the afterlife? I would say, I certainly hope so... I do not know and that is wonderful enough for me.

When we ponder the universe looking for traces of God in the furthest places, with longing eyes and empty hearts, we will always behold a void - hostile, cold, irradiated, and mostly empty - staring us right back.

It is only when we know our place in creation that we shall appreciate what it is to dwell among the stars.

Carl Sagan did. We all look for a place among the stars in our own way. We are wanderers after all. Our planet is a wanderer among worlds. Our sun is a wanderer among stars. Our own galactic community is a wanderer among countless galaxies. Time itself is a wanderer in space.

The original pale blue dot - Earth from 3.7 billion miles away
(NASA/JPL/Voyager)

Is everything wandering because we are lost? Was time put into motion for nothing?

That depends. The answers I feel are here on earth and not up there in the temporal heavens. Truth is in the heart. Because of it, faith seeks understanding.

Faith is essentially an expectation of true things. It is a knowledge that precedes all knowledge. It seeks even without our seeking, born of a Truth prior to all that is truth.

Faith in religion and faith in science are essentially the same seeking. Both science and religion must trust in order to produce fruit. And the fruits they produce, if they are good, are good.

Good being something of grace and produced separate and apart from the labors of both religion and science.

Science and religion are not incompatible, I think. Some people may seek to pit them against each other but knowledge will still remain knowledge, truth truth, and people people.

Today is Earth day. What I wish for is for us to view our planet as it is - in its littleness and insignificance - all the more, our home away from Home.

Salaam. Shalom. Peace. May God bless us all.
---<--@

Sunday, March 15, 2015

What do you think?

An lovely interpretive painting of peace



























What is beautiful about peace... the picture above or the one below?

Iraqi Christian kids displaced and disenfranchised by ISIS receiving the help and attention they need and deserve

Personal Reflection:

Peace is one large vision as in the painting. This is true. In that vision, the beauty of peace appears abstract to the seeking soul. This view of peace is depicted by and in the picture above.

Peace here, in the larger view of our world, is like our Lord Jesus looking over Jerusalem from a distance.

But that vision is made up of many smaller, equally important visions. These smaller visions encapsulate many smaller acts... each act is significant and vital to the synergy of the whole.

Peace here, from the view of the poor of our earth, is in the Gospels seen through the many small acts within our Savior's ministry. The beauty of one such act is depicted by and in the picture below.

Such is peace, I think. 

Overall, it is something that can never be won by sheer force of arms. It must be loved. It must be gained by love. To be loved it must first be understood. To be understood it must first be sought. To be sought it must first be desired. To be desired it must first be missed... do we miss it enough these days?

How long till we realize how ugly and how adulterous war is? 

How long till we love again our true love as nations?
---<--@

Sunday, March 8, 2015

Thoughts on Religion and Political Moderation

I am a Catholic. Not a moderate Catholic. For there can never be a moderate expression of the faith I hold dear and holds me dear as well. I am simply a Catholic (though not always good at it).

What we love that is for always can never be served by moderation. Religion and its virtues may only truly prosper in ourselves only by full spiritual expression. And this democratic expression of freedom in religion and of religions may only be accommodated in an atmosphere of national peace.

It is an atmosphere long denied to our world. This brokenness has left the house of humanity broken and bleeding. We are today a world of broken nations; a broken peace prevails among the order of our unity as a family. Thus, the human family is scattered. 

This dysfunction at the heart of our nations serves not a single soul. It is unconscionable to the listening heart to allow the nations of the children of Mankind to tarry in the darkness in this way.

And so I say, I am a Catholic. Proud to be one. Properly proud to be in the service of the Peace of Jesus Christ. Ever may it prevail!

In the same way, I understand there are no moderate Muslims or Jews or Buddhists or Sikhs or Hindus, etc. when it comes to the religious profession of the faiths we all hold dear and holds us all dear as well.

What I shall ask is for us to be moderate in the duty and practice of our politics. 

What does divide religion are not the truths and the virtues of its revelations but the politics of which we, through right remembrance of a long history of suffering and loss, may now at present discern separately and distinctly from the lives of faith we each must live, according to our freedoms, with truth in the heart.

The world has not become smaller. What our world at present has really become is wider. It has become more not less. Its horizons more expansive than ever. We have to have the heart to be able to embrace it as a human family. Lest the immediacy of the spirit of present tidings remain to many of us strange.

We perceive a landscape of things that may be in our common tomorrow as nations so open and so wide, we discern a darkness foreboding. And instead of going boldly forth to conquer together with cultures of light, retreat into the comfort of past molds.

The can be no living the past. What it is when we choose to so commonly retreat from the face of our right remembrances is a denial of the present. Where there is no peace in the now, there is no now. 


We can not be like this, in particular as children of our Father Abraham; we can not deny the present (and be absent from the now) while holding true to the true living that ours, along with all religious wisdom prescribes to our common humanity.


Peace to us is a time. That time is now.

If we can not make the moment ours, together this time and with all people of good will - as one human family - this world, our world, might so remain where it was, so receded into the spirit past things, so absent from the present, so much obscured from the view of Heaven, it falls again and again into the embrace of the defeated Enemy.

We must not allow this vicious cycle to continue...
---<--@




Sunday, November 16, 2014

Time to develop a planetary sense of good will

If species survival seems our most common reason to finally venture out to conquer the depths of space, I must say it isn't the finest. After all, who are we surviving against on this one planet?

We need time to develop a planetary sense of good will. I think we have the time, a lot of it.

However, can we choose to make the time - together this time?



In the Universal Record of the Recorder of Universes, it takes an average of 500,000 years worth of recorded history for any species of living souls to successfully evolve their civilization and ascend all it's attendant worlds from unnamed to Named.

That's a lot of time to think about... a lot of empty space to fill... space substantially better utilized more through time spent in good thought and the fruits of good thoughts which are good acts.

If the present spread of time-space is to be filled with 500,000 years worth of good thinking by any form of extant sapient planetary civilization - on the average, it would amount to brilliant energy equivalent to the lifetime collective stellar output of a single, medium sized, medium age, yellow star.

(Yes, that star. Our home star without which we may not have a home world at all. From our home star we learn that light output is our ultimate measure not darkness.)

If the universe we were to truly inhabit were a container, that particular amount of brilliance would be so incredibly minute and fleeting especially in the midst of all that is to us, dark (matter and energy). 

The fact that it really and truly does matter immediately implies that the Creator of All does not look at any of us from afar. But is very near.

And there exist a lot of darkness out there that remains to be filled and transformed - right here.

The evils of our history may seem like darkness overwhelming, true. 

We live in a universe of big violence and small truths...

Therefore, let us also be aware that in spite of our past, there might likewise exist in our universe a lot of room out there in space for more kindness right here on earth.

Choices we as a particular species of living soul has yet to make, times we have yet to fill, ages we have yet to enter, and infinities we have yet to cross - together this time, if we are peaceful and wise.

Half-a-million years less twelve thousand approximately.

(A concept excerpted from a fictional book I'm writing... truly spooky action from a distance)
---<--@
Love this view from Interstellar. It provides the beholder with a truly awesome sense of scale.
Love this view of my kitty cat co-pilot (lol.)
                                                 Love this song just because...

Thursday, June 12, 2014

Let Peace be -


The Despoliation of the Sword

Fallen humanity
in following the Devil,
upon the bones of their fellow human beings,
shall worship their swords saying,
"O look how mighty we are,
how glorious is our arm
upon the earth!"

Repentant humanity
in obeying the LORD,
upon the Remembrance of His Nations,
shall cry out to the heavens and pray,
"O look how weak we are, O God,
that we need weapons
to live."
---<--@




Broken is thy Earth, in Sin overrun. 

The Sin of thy original wounding,
bearing the spiritual weakness of thy temporal undoing,
a mortal fear of the God of thy Holy sustaining;
a rupture in the human soul that bleeds with thy blood
unto death, and upon evils manifold and diverse,
upon sins many as the seeds sown for thy dispersing,
thy human lineages exiled from Life
for their own life's preserving.

Broken is thy Sky, in War overcome. 

The Beast of thy ancient pursuing,
seeking the devouring of thy every living soul of National doing,
that the living of each Man may sink ever near the sword of War's despoiling,
and undo in Darkness, the Light of thy common human obtaining  -
a rupture in the human spirit that caused the Sky above our world
to shatter into an endless Night without Twilight;
the long march of the Nations fallen in time begun
with each Country's spiritual Ascent
unto the Summit of a new Morning Bright.

Therefore, let Peace be - upon the three great lineages
of the faith and fatherhood of our Father Abraham -
unto the children of Ishmael - let Peace be,
unto the children of Isaac - let Peace be,
unto the children of all our kindred Nations
who bear in their hearts, in Spirit and in Truth, common witness
to the Incarnate Word of God in Jesus Christ, Who is Emmanuel,
the one Redeemer of all Mankind - let Peace be,
and unto all children of good will who among us persevere
in friendship and in their faith, one with the other - let Peace be.

Let Peace be - and divide it not! 

This one Peace.
---<--@

Together this time...














Saturday, May 17, 2014

The Question of Cain

Let us meditate a little more
on this war within the Filipino soul -

The absurdity of this war is
that it constantly propagates itself among our people,
multiplying the reasons why we should abandon our Nationhood,
when all the while, it is precisely this Nationhood
that can redeem us.

It feeds on the life of our beloved peoples,
overpowering the human spirit - from weak to strong.
It lies to our faces - that it means to do us good
and then proceeds to devour our children,
sparing none.

In war, the only winners
are those who learn its lesson.

War is the tutor.

Peace is the test.

And to pass this test
brings success.
---<--@

The Land of Nod
As a Nation, let us be reminded that to serve the power of our arms is to be slowly but surely crushed by its burden. If we continue the course, we might find a day when we realize we can not eat our weaponry nor this continued violence against our own Nationhood allow for our people the best and the brightest means to satiate our common human needs.

BUT we have in the past ceded the nature of this internal conflict to the power of arms, and sought to further invite this war among ourselves like it were a friend -

and so for decades, we fought over this war. 

That this so-called "friend" may by its power vanquish our hatred of others, our fear of their "otherness". (Is there such a thing as "otherness" in a soul that is one? We only mirror our own hate.)

And so we became enemies to ourselves. We fought until hatred and despair, themselves offspring to war, became another reason to fight. (Fighting for the sake of fighting alone is not a lineage that leads anywhere.)

We fought until attitudes of murder crept into our own self regard for the Filipino soul, and became as Cain. In ourselves we have come to also behold the person of the Adversary - in our brother, our fellow siblings to the one Nationhood.

If we are not careful, we will be like Cain - a fugitive to his own heart, restless for Justice yet unable to return to its source.

There is a certain kind of fear that dwells in the land of Nod, it is a fear of others - a fear that is not a tension of the respect - due to God and to our fellow human beings - that leads us in time to discover how to surpass its own limits - it is an inward thing, imploding and shrinking the soul of a person.

It is a fear that prevents common respect and human community and dwells in a restless land devoid of faith and trust, in God and Country.

Our Nation is proof against that fear, and restores Justice where Justice needs to be restored. Not the justice of Nod, but the Justice original to our Eden. (After all, did not the LORD give us our clothes? And more so, in the Gospels is found the greatest remedy to this restless fear - for the Seal of Christ dispels it - for Charity covereth a multitude of sins.)

We exist - in this particular regard - to do both the brothers Justice, Abel by Remembrance, Cain by the Love that lives within the compassion of our peoples - exemplified by our famed hospitality, our native trustfulness and willingness to give welcome to the person of the stranger; and the power to make of them - strangers to us no more.

The question of Cain is a question of Liberty.

Cain is not free to find it. So we do not expect answers from Nod. The answer is - in us - as citizens and keepers to our common humanity. And if we seek to do both the brothers Justice, then each of us must choose to remember - and then, to renounce the War that brought to the first generation of our Exile so much woe.

And a woe - let us recall to memory, terrible upon terrible, that we have had to live with ever since.

Nod is in the Unknown Earth. It exists in places where the Goodwill of our Peace - as one Nation and as one Family of Nations - have not yet taken firm root upon the soil of our world.

If we continue to allow this war in the soul of the Filipino to remain, we shall exile ourselves like Cain, and nothing that is lasting shall ever be built upon this world by our labors of Country for our Nation. And the fruits it shall bear shall always never be enough to nourish the goodness and the life of our people.

Nor shall we be any more good to other Nations than our chosen weakness - our fellow Nations who are kindred to us in this world - in the Truth - to whom we do rely and who also look to us for their reliance.

We shall as a people proceed upon the Unknown Earth as Cain, restless for Justice and thirsting for a true sense of belonging - yet fearful for our own Reliance - to God and Country; wanting to return yet unable to return - set apart from our Peace by our own lack of choice.

The question of Cain is a question of Liberty.

The Decalogue made it clear that murder is a transgression in the eyes of God - in beholding the Divine Law; this is universally recognized in the ethical codes possessed by the great lineages of the Children of Mankind and a common prescript reflected by the Law of the Nations.

In the time of Cain, the killing of Abel was murder - as an act of War. It was not Cain who did murder his brother. But it was he who opened the door of his heart to it. And "it" - the Advent of War - caused him to kill his brother - by his own hands.

At the onset of the Nations of the Children, the LORD introduced to the Nations through Moses and the faith of His Nation Israel, a common prohibition on murder. So in our days, murder is clearly and heavily sanctioned.

Because murder too was exiled to Nod - with Cain. And as we are - as Nations - called to gather all the Children of Mankind - in the way of our return to Peace - neither War nor its many offspring which are lies, hatred, pestilence, famine, murder and genocide - must have a place in our life and labors.

Yet where war is, there shall the shadow of its offspring linger. Is this war among ourselves our "friend"?

That we should mouth its lies,
partake of its ancient and relentless hatred for our common humanity,
clothe ourselves with its violence, and allow its adversarial spirit
to feed on the life and labors of our human communities -
only so that it may proceed to devour our children
ruin the order and purpose of our generations
and profane the peace of our communities.

The nature of this war among ourselves is such that it is an evil to us - only inasmuch - as we are - in ourselves lacking in the good. We are sufficient for the Peace we must profess. We should never be afraid of our own Reliance - to God and in each other.

War is, of course, a greater beast that the one we must together in this Nation confront.

But if we come together in this Nation of ours - in Peace, as a Nation - let us also understand, we are with other Nations together capable of staying the beast - as one Family we are able to build up a world that is better for Peace, through Love for common humanity and living Remembrance.

Nevermore shall the stirring in our spirits stir for War - but for the many hopes the past generations shall to us entrust, when we make our peace with their memory.

But first, we must end this War within ourselves by a free and human choice. (War chose us - it seeks for us to open the door of our hearts to it, we do not have to - there is really only one choice we have as a Nation - renounce it. Let Peace be our policy. Let us also wonder and be grateful at the foresight of the architects of our 1987 Constitution - are they not like us?)

I believe there are many opportunities these days to exercise citizenship with fidelity. And to be able to understand and to make this choice for Peace freely is a prime opportunity to do so.

Is it not good practice - to find the right questions - why our Nation must end this war, and let go of all the wrong reasons - how, and how may one proceed from choice - to civic efficiency - to human exercise?
---<--@

Practical Application -

Found here is the provenance where from the CARHRIHL is in spirit derived. The JASIG sought to draw the line upon the sand whereby we may together reverse the nature of the conflict.

That this line may only be realistically held under the flag of a robust and honorable truce is where the present difficulty lies. We shall overcome this difficulty or we shall be overcome by it.

Let us be for the overcoming. 

Amen, let us begin. May God continue to bless and aid our efforts - mabuhay!

Thursday, February 27, 2014

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.>
---<--@

Sunday, January 12, 2014

Peace in Russia

Human constructs  
- systems, institutions, corporations, etc. -
fielded across each their necessary applications
to bring form and order to the purposes
of all human endeavor
within the Nation,
where these fail against their own times - is -
because these constructs inherit also
what weakness there is in Man.

But Nations are not human constructs.

And Russia is a Nation.
---<--@

The first act of Peace is always Good will.

All Nations destined by the LORD - unto the gathering of the Times, in the here and Now of today - before this planetary crossroad, are all the Nations of the Children of Mankind.

And all the Nations of the Children of Mankind, commissioned by God at the Autumnal Dusk of our faded Eden, stand together to strengthen and preserve the life and the labors of Man through his lineages in time across all our generations to the last of our generations.

For we are upon this world to fulfill the First Command to build up the Earth (into the Inhabited Earth - a world not only rich in temporal life and in the living but in light and limitless spiritual wealth).

All the Nations of the Children were equally commissioned by God - together - and are symbolized by the Angel that the LORD placed at the place of our beginnings - at the East Gate - where we together left for our long march into exile - which is also the direction of our common returning.

Thus, our sovereignty is part of the endowment granted each of us by the God of all of us - and indeed, this sovereignty is realized - at all times and places - in the people -

...the peoples of this world - whose lineages entire the LORD entrusts to each of us, their Nations, to safeguard and prosper - and ultimately to return back into Him - much enriched and in better forms of communion with each other - and through God's own mysterious actions in time - individually as well as collectively worthy of His Salvation, being upon this visible universe - a brilliance that to the LORD is - "very good".

This, the LORD did in our living Assembly before His Throne in Eternity - and is always true.

The common roots of our sovereignty arise from the order by which God has from all Ages intended for Man - for his own good's sake - to accomplish before Him, the command to build up the Earth - for Man.

Thus, Nations are small or great - as Trees are trees in the Garden of our World - not for tending the Tree which is not our own - but for loving that which God has intended us to love (Peace) and in this love growing through Remembrance of our selves and in each other in the knowledge of the Truth of our selves and each other (Good will).

We have and we maintain borders not because of limits to human potentiality or because of a reality which is fragmented but because there must be order and purpose to the work.

To safeguard this order and purpose is the craft of all our Nations - and this craft is Peace.

(In the Sun Tzu - this in not just the first consideration when we consider "Moral Law" - it is the first and the final consideration - and is more than just Moral Law - it is the ultimate form of the "Sovereign" and embodies a living Spirit of present Remembrance.)

Hence, at the time we were together commissioned in Assembly before Godl, we also received as well from each other a priori, a recognition of our sovereign selves - and this is always true.

Because the first act of Peace is always Good will.

Therefore, sovereignty in all our Nations is always a reality in ourselves - realized (in our citizenship) as well as recognized (in the citizenship of other sovereign Nations) - our reflections in Heaven, as they should be in the truth - upon our Earth.

Truly, as Nations among each other, we have said our "Peace" unto each other - in Good will - before the LORD, our one Sovereign - long before our Time upon this world came to be - a Time that was upon this time - inaugurated by the LORD through the Noahide Covenant.

And I would that we should deeply consider this as we remember again today, our Peace with each other.
---<--@

We did not emerge in physical time together as we were commissioned. Israel was the first - the tip of the spear - first among equals. How God fashioned the Nation Israel is how each of us are also fashioned - being a people first - before and above everything else.

(So that each of our sovereignty is always a reality that emanates from the life of our people - and this life is a concentration - build upon human dignity and human promise - whose strength relies upon how well and how faithfully we each come to realize, recognize, sustain and develop our Peace).

And today, we have all arrived - so that we must accept the status quo of our world from 2009, and work to change our hearts that we may see far into our Nation's hearts.

And let us again remind ourselves of the reality of our Nationhood and together understand that this is not a religious labor but a very, very human one. And that a broken Spear - anywhere and in anytime - is useless against the charge of the Horse.

Indeed, the most prudent and visionary of our leaders - in our kings, queens, princes, presidents, ministers, and captains, have ever always understood for the sake of the many, that all National Remembrances are ultimately Human ones - and that Peace is over War.

And in this Age of Spirit and Thought - it is Now incumbent upon all of Mankind to realize what the best and greatest of us have been made to realize - that the enveloping global darkness that is the Siege of War may be broken and a new door and a new path may be opened before our world - as a planetary community entire.

We did not emerge in physical time together as we were commissioned. But where we do emerge - alone, the pattern of our commissioning always reflects the pattern of our emergence upon this world. So that in Peace and Good will - we always have stood by each other - and with each other before God - and from always to always - this shall be so - forever.

We just have to remember.
---<--@

After the Cold War, the Peace was won. But the War that nearly annihilated all life in this world is not yet fully subdued. And so the Peace that was won is not yet completely ours.

Bewilderment and confusion always follow in the wake of major conflicts - this is most especially true in the case of a total, global War.

Even as our corporeal eyes hurt to emerge in the Day when the passing Night for us have become too deep and too uncertain a Darkness, there are times likewise when the sight of our hearts have largely forgotten or forsaken too much of what Peace in us sustains and what Peace for us in the LORD obtains - to become mostly blind to what is - for every Nation, an absolute - and therefore, absolutely worth fighting for.

(As the generations living now in my own Country have never known internal peace and have never tasted its promise must remember the Darkness that we may move toward the Dawn of a new Light.)

(In the external sense, this is what is happening in South Sudan now. And we Nations who recognized that Nation emerging have an obligation to assist that Nation to secure herself from the Darkness.)

(And in the CAR, an absolutely dishonorable religious division is again taking hold against our Peace. This is also why it is difficult for one to take sides in Syria - for ultimately, there is no side there but - our side - the human one vs. the one who would make us all inhuman.)

(Indeed, we shall all account for these losses.)

Battles may always appear won in the first four spheres of Military involvement. But War itself and as itself can only be withstood in the fifth.

That the Cold War was not brought to conclusion - and thermonuclear annihilation at the global scale of all things a hundred times over - is already a gain of Peace.

Who yielded and who did not shall be the gain of our Remembrances together - for "that war" was the War among all past wars, the one to be withstood.

The past is bitter drink indeed where and when it holds the present hostage and the future to ransom.

But Nations never drink from the cup of the past - our cup is always held out for the water of present things - here, in the Now.
---<--@

We are today not as we begun. For Nations (in each their being) are also their particular motions (in each their becoming) in time, a labor of Country - a Tree among many Trees.

(If one were to be presented with an image of the Garden of many Trees, at the center shall always be what particular Nation the LORD has from all time intended to be, for each of us, our own Nation - and - the one Tree of the Desolation War, the Dominion of the Devil whose Sword is the Despoliation of all Sacred Life.)

For we are a growing and reaching out - a journeying, if you will, in and across time.

And sometimes, we pick up some travelers along the way. As the parable of the Good Samaritan, when applied to the community of Nations, will invoke in our hearts - We are to welcome the Stranger that the Stranger to us be Strangers no more.

For this is what the LORD requires - that all Men and Women be equal citizens before God and all Nations before the LORD stand shoulder to shoulder equally -

...the grieving widow to comfort,
prisoners to safeguard and to lovingly correct,
orphans to kindly and freely embrace -
and to multiply these persons
upon our human world
no more.

So Peace be upon you, Russia, do not be bitter. Hold no one and nothing in contempt. For thy life and thy future is yours - all the rest we shall together learn and remember together.
---<--@

I remember Beslan, a terrible thing among many terrible things that this little world of ours should not have to endure. But we all do - for Beslan is everywhere. Volgograd is too.

For hatred was in the 9 o'clock blue of New York, shattering that morning September sky - it was in Bali, Mumbai, Madrid, London, Amman, and in all Continents present save for perhaps, Antarctica (who if we do not turn course, may also fall), as the sin of the Devil's pride persists.

It is also here in my own Philippines, something I am working and praying hard - with all my brothers and sisters of the Promise - to battle and overcome - together this time.

Because it is our most fundamental of responsibilities as a Nation commissioned by the LORD to serve and preserve both human dignity and human promise of the Children of Mankind upon this fallen world - that to the extent we are faithful to our commissioning, we together preclude evils of a social nature from setting its foot upon the soil of our Earth.

But where we are in the soul of our citizenship together weak of compassion and sympathy for the human condition, War gains a foothold upon our human world in order to make it inhuman against our will.

The Savior of all Mankind came to deliver this world from its sin - the sin of separation - which is the original and fatal wounding all Men suffer - and to allow the human lineages return (according to our repentance from personal and moral sin) to an Eden rebuilt - even while Man is still upon this world and gain for ourselves together an everlasting place in a Kingdom that neither in splendor fades nor in glory ends - at the consummation of time as we know time to be...

...so that Now, with every present time, we must as individual citizens and individual Nations together work to deflect and remove this alien and inhospitable Darkness (of sin and War) from our own human world, to the extent God allows, our humanity permits, and the times require -

particularly in this Age above all ages past.
---<--@

Self-immolation is an act of protest - sacrificial to the most - and bound not by ordinary human freedom. In all of these cases, where there is an abiding, legitimate and human cause - the object of Justice is for Justice to be done unto Justice herself. These are therefore, purely the domain of Law and legal redress. To redress it, Law must come to understand it - from the source.

Suicide bombing is a species of self-immolation, louder in expression, and profoundly more deeper in voice - and in all cases, extreme in the eyes of all living souls. Invariably, for its indiscriminate violence against the life of our innocents - it is always an act of terrorism and in so being, demands our urgent attention.

Terrorism is always a political act. And so it gains from any political uncertainty on our end.

There must exist a cycle of pain and loss here that works to progressively destroy the normal course and outcome of authentic human freedoms that until this cycle effectively is broken by Law and its protections - will ultimately exact a terrible toll against our Nations - a price measured by the sum of human lives lost - for in all acts of terror we lose them all - save for the bomb and the conditions that allow the political will of terrorists to be married up to the means of terror.

Where to draw the line of the defense is the question. Remove and redress the prevailing conditions and the will and the means shall divorce themselves permanently.

This is a law-enforcement led process. Prevention here is in the Law. Justice here is a reaction. Military means may in many cases only exacerbate the matter and may only be employed in the tactical, where all proactive means have already failed.

And as War, there is no better deterrence to terrorism than to prevent it from breaking through into our world.

Meet the ever so wearisome politics of division with the better politics of human unity and know at the heart where to draw the line where the defense may be well fought - not in support of War but for the sake of the Peace.

Even the same Peace, we shall this winter in Sochi celebrate together.

I pray and I hope for a safe, secure, and memorably meaningful Sochi winter games - for all our Nations! The time is not yet late. May all Nations come together under the warmth of the Olympic flame in Peace and in Good will with each other and in friendships compete in the sport and in the spirit of these modern games - to know and to honor what is best in each ourselves across all our Nations.



Remember, when War draws near - it seeks from our Nations a confrontation.

Do not confront the Dragon where it approaches, defend. 
---<--@


Didn't know we're celebrating June 12 together this year, cool.
---<--@

Spot the diff? This is the Flag of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
---<--@

Monday, November 18, 2013

Salutation #188

Crafting a new order in the Middle East
requires the Nations of the Children of Mankind
to return to their deepest spiritual roots -
to the fundamental Human, Angelic,
as well as Divine purposes
for each of our Emergence in Time -
as a Family of Nations upon this world:
Peace, Good Will and the Building up 
of the Inhabited Earth.


Pursue peace and pursue it absolutely.

In commemoration of the outpouring of humanitarian aid and assistance to my Nation by the many Nations in the wake of Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda) - "Salamat po at mabuhay po tayong lahat nang mga Bansa ng mga Anak ng Sangkatauhan!" 

(Greater Israel)

Thou art a people, Israel -
before all things, before thou wert,
thou wert a Nation raised by the LORD!

At the Gates of Eden, thou wert!
Before the long march of exiled humanity,
thou wert a Nation among Nations, chosen.

In thy spirit, thou art a lineage -
born of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob -
a people united by the faithfulness of the LORD.

O beloved Israel, thou wert -
the first of the Nations of the Children
delivered from weakness unto strength in God.

Remember, thou wert - O Israel -
the first to know of the Truth of the LORD -
that God delivers, God provides, and God saves -
that all Nations may come to a knowledge of Peace.
---<--@

Personal Reflection:

All Nations are a people first. 

I too believe in a dream of a Greater Israel - Eretz Israel.

But the dream that I believe in - can not be begun -
if it is a dream bound by the limits of the Land of Israel.

For the Greater Israel I believe in resides
in the spirit that lives within the one heart of the Jewish nation -
Greater Israel as an Nation absolutely dedicated to Peace -
the Peace of God which is the common salutation
of the children of our Father Abraham
to all human Nations.

In this spirit is rebirth - for we can not return in time -
along the way that time itself has left us - in our common reality -
like it is to return to the womb - we can not experience physical time twice.

But we can experience
in our own memories - a rebirth of timeless Remembrance -
and obtain in our understanding, a spirit that leads the way to a newness of time
upon our hearts, upon our lives, upon our families, upon our national communities,
and upon our world - an age where we all can hope and work together - to become
the greater Nations in ourselves - one to prevail in Maturity over our lesser selves -
and rejoice in the shedding away of former things by our turning away from them
that we may indeed become the light unto each other that God hath intended
all human Nations to be - kindred in His Peace over War - forever. 

Saturday, August 24, 2013

Loyalty that Preserves

I spoke to a mother whose son recently passed basic training, there was a sense of a mother's pride in her voice but also, a hesitation, a need...

I congratulated her and blessed her for raising up before God, a solider in the service of others... but I also felt her need and her hesitation.

Because when you bless, you only invite life. And when you congratulate, you only invoke happiness in life... So I said a quiet prayer for her, her son, and for our world... so much in need of peace.



The truth is
the more soldiers we have, in principle,
in a world awoken from the last great age of war,
the more peace we should enjoy.

- selah -

There are established limits in the defense -
the minimum is safeguarded by the virtue of arms
and the maximum is guaranteed by the peace of the nations
so that in our nation's conduct of the common defense,
to fall short (of the minimum limit) is to find defeat
and to exceed it (i.e. the maximum limit) is to become
the enemy (of our peace) that we claim to fight.

Therefore,
what is required to maintain the balance of peace
in our family of nations is not more and more arms
but less and less - a balance of peace -
until the Last Day, when the purpose of arms
will have utterly and completely extinguished itself.

And so
if today we remember -
what was before those times,
spirit and energy wasted in the quest
to annihilate the life and promise of our nations
- in the name of "peace" -
shall then be brought to genuinely serve it
to prosper our needful world
and bless all our nations as one family
to the hundreth generation.

- selah -

Why is it - during these evil days -
that the more soldiers we have,
the more war we suffer?
---<--@


War is the monster! Do not look into it's eyes - or thy spirit will be lost. 
Rather, understand peace - that you may also understand why we fight.


The Fate of Arms

Sunday, August 18, 2013

Human Nations

To be human or not be human? That is the question for the nations of this age.



Into this age, we shall not fight over distinctions in ideologies or religions or ideals or culture or race... No, the times will require us to produce the common fruits of all of these...

For we shall be tested by the challenges of this age by our ability to remain human beings to each other, not only as individuals but as individual nations - able to persevere in the strength of the human spirit and prosper in the one peace of our sacred remembrances.

We shall be tempered and refined by the obvious practicalities of these unfolding times through evils that only we, together as the one Family of the Nations (of the Children of Mankind), can hope to surpass.

The Advent of War

The first time Man saw in himself the image of the adversary of All Nations was when Cain killed his brother, Abel. It was not coincidental that the killing of the first innocent human life upon our world also inaugurated the Advent of War upon the earth.

Now is the time to see through the illusion of the Adversary to find in the reflections of the Evil in all evil things, a way to make peace with ourselves in our world - for this is our world (redeemed by Christ and preserved by our Nations) - and in finding our peace with each other, an understanding of the truth worth defending together - in each other with each other...

...the truth of our common humanity.

Freedom's Common Pursuit

Democracy is like a tree, and so like all things that grow and live and breath, must begin from the roots. It is a natural system of living life born of the seeds of remembrances that must grow where it is sown.

No one tree is the same in the Garden of our world... each of our nations grow at different paces, is found at different ages, yet all are born for purposes that are both fully human and fully divine.

We bear different fruits - each edible and good for the sustenance of All - and all worthy and lasting in the eyes of our LORD, everlasting fruits born from timeless works that glorify with seeds that share - knitting together with the fabric of visible creation, the truth that will prevail at the consummation of time.

We learn from each other not by making each other the same but by seeing in each other what is familiar in All - trusting in our differences, and sharing in our strengths - so that, in choosing to believe in our diversity, together find, in the familiarity of our unity, the peace which is shelter to all mankind; the one Peace of the one LORD.

If thy Peace is God's then know ye it belongs to All Mankind.
---<--@

Saturday, August 3, 2013

Salutation #181

Of the nations of old, those ancient, fallen and evil Principalities of this world, utterly corrupted in their light, inhuman and incapable of knowing truth, forever drowned by the LORD in the Great Deluge, it may be said, all have perished and inhabit no more the times of the Children.

Yet even as God extinguished these fallen nations of old, and did inaugurate during the time of the Patriarch Noah and his sons, His Covenant with us, allowing for the emergence of the Nations of the Children, their malice still to us persists, their light still lingers on as shadow in this world, and their works of darkness, in the Void of the Desolation of the Angels, remain to haunt with death and calamity those who are not joined with their Sacred Remembrances.



(Chosenhood)

Chosenhood is emergence.

All nations are chosen in this way:
to be tutored in war, tested through peace
and proven by maturation in time.

For we are, so we must -
by our fruits we are known!

Made of golden promises
and paved with good intentions
is the way of war
but the fruits of war
is just as well-known -
(to the memory of the nations
and to the remembrance of man)
it is deception, discord, division,
degeneration, disintegration, death
and desolation.

But the craft of all nations is peace!

All nations that will prevail as one
(the Nations of the Children of Mankind)
were chosen and commissioned
by the LORD - all in the same act -
right at the Eastern Gate,
(the way of our remembrance)
at the beginning of exile time,
at the autumnal dusk of our faded Eden -
each one to emerge in time
according to the purpose of God
all, despite the appearance of darkness,
for the greatest good of all creation
for the LORD wants all
to experience His Salvation.

And Israel, ever beloved,
among the Nations of the Children
is first among equals.
---<--@