Showing posts with label Peace. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Peace. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 10, 2015

Wars of Religion

Wars of religion are never entered into. If memory serves and history is accounted for - there are wars that go beyond the pale of the conventional spectrum of conflict: unlimited, unrestricted wars.

Conversely, to think of peace is to think about people in human terms.


Religion ought to enable us to more closely reflect in our common humanity what makes the human family better belong. What commits to war and what commits to peace.

Christianity is not lacking in violent history.

Historically, where conflicts between Christians were the most terrible, it was always very much politically concerned. In those days, religious war was less an existential contradiction than a political pretext. So much was prevented by those conflicts... 

Indeed, through whatever door it gains entry into the times - war seeks no other greater inspiration than violence. Once the killing starts, war becomes its own appearance upon our world.

These days, I hold to the view that keeps with the memory of those days: religion must never again be used as a weapon against other people.

Wars of religion fought by any which religion burns with the same relentless hate that burned our world in times past - and makes no promises it shall ever change.

In my remembrance, Christianity is not compatible with war and never was.

To me, all war is - is political. Religion can be political at times. But religion is also deeply human. War is not human and never was human. No terrorist claim will convince me otherwise.

The division in Islam and the divisions in Christianity arose from issues apart and distinct - but seems afflicted with the same vulnerability. This vulnerability - to the spirit of war - appears the same, and it exploits it the same also.

I do not know how these divisions will ultimately find their way again back into unity. I do know that unity is eternal. And were these divisions to remain in the domain of war, no nation will be able to contain its appearances as wars upon the earth. For in this day and age, war is not what it once was. 

Nations are in spirit made simpler. For we on earth must live out a more complex reality.

All nations answer to the one, same human accounting - and, as its own labors of Country, allows the space for its peoples - oppressed by war - to build up the earth and to better their times. That war may flee where none pursueth.

The maturity of the peace of nations must be helped by religion. 

For matters of religion must necessarily involve greater realities.
---<--@

Sunday, April 19, 2015

Happy Sunday

Let us give thanks... rest, refresh, renew.


























Let us pray for peace in our Country, in our region, in the Middle East, across Asia, in Europe, in Africa, in the Americas, in Australia and across Oceania. Let us pray also for Mary Jane Veloso and those who are in prison with her.

Let us pray for Persecuted Christians and all human beings who suffer unjustly for their faith.

Let us pray for more good will in the world, between nations and between human persons; more acts of kindness, more appreciation for the blessings of life, liberty, and Country; and more trust in the infinite goodness and Providential grace of God among all peoples of the earth.

Yes, let us be strong in diversity. united in adversity, and steadfast in hope!

Things change. It does not rain everyday. Behind gray skies, above the storm clouds, beyond reach of the tempest... perennial blue skies endure in golden days embraced by the sun.

Tomorrow could be worse, but let it not be today.
Today we will decide to act to make things better.
---<--@

























Monday, March 16, 2015

Salutation #202




















(Blessed are the Peacemakers)

Peacemaker,

Consider how
War in Heaven abideth not. 

Consider the choice
with which the Holy Angels chose
to freely honor the one LORD.

Consider how
Michael and his angels
fought against the Dragon and his angels;
how the Holy Angels turned away
form the lies of the Devil
and thus,
attained Peace
with the Eternal God.

Consider the Peace
that the Holy Angels attained
through the LORD, our one God,
and the everlasting Unity through which
the Devil and his corrupted angels
lost their place in Heaven
forever. 

All children of the light
in Heaven and upon the Earth
are known as thus, peacemakers!

Therefore,
let us live not to contend against War
but to become united in the Truth.

Consider how
the Holy Angels
in knowing not the truth
in humility were vindicated
in the Truth.

As thus
did the Sky of Day
come restored
in Peace over War.

For not as judges
against each other in Heaven
did Michael and his Angels obtain
an everlasting Victory
over the Dragon and his corrupted angels
but through humility before the LORD.

Let us be builders 
of human communities
and defenders of the peace!

Let us build 
(especially as nations)
and let us do this together 
that through human community
we may know what we may defend
in the peace we shall through God obtain
in behalf of each other's human good - forever!

Let us be united
(especially as nations)
in peace upon the earth
with good will in our hearts
before the LORD, our one God,
until War in all Creation
is no more.
---<--@


























The war in heaven is in our hearts. 

Heaven is not upon a distant sky or shore but in the soul, an intimate and limitless treasure.

It is not above, not below, not beyond our reality but very much closer by, within ourselves. 
---<--@













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...
---<--@




Wednesday, February 25, 2015

I am for peace

That we as a nation have a choice for peace 
while other nations struggling as we are
may not or can not have this choice 
is itself a constant wonder to me. 

It is something I think about often 
that we - in the here and now - 
are able to desire peace...

It is a truth I never take for granted.
It means the favorable time for peace is now.

This is the most apolitical picture I can post... I think it fits right in.




Peace may also be won by a contest of arms. 

However, let us remember to consider the field upon which these battles shall be fought and won.

Nation-States have been shaped by wars fought among themselves. These wars are common in our history. But those wars fought from within a Nation-State are different. These internal divides do not shape destiny, they predicate destiny. The longer it happens, the darker that destiny becomes.

If a contest of arms were the solution to peace reform in our Philippines, why is it taking us so long to arrive at a decisive outcome? Our internal conflict have been the longest running in the history of the world. And so much pain and loss it has cost this nation, across the generations.

How easily some of us dismiss the blessings a season of peace might afford our nation's children. How easily some of us would rather trust in the power of arms than believe in the power of peace.

When shall we ever tire of killing our fellow Filipinos in defense of the very Republic sworn forever to our common defense?

Among ourselves, where individuals seem to kill others without responsibility, is it not because the very presence of war ultimately allows it?

As a nation where we seem to view all these individual tragedies as obscure, being without a sense of common accountability, is it not because the absence of peace ultimately precludes it?

Those who advocate a course of war do not understand the cost of war. Nor its nature in particular that we must everyday contend against here within our Republic of the Philippines.


No, I am for peace. 

I am for a just, meaningful and durable peace in Mindanao and across the whole of our Philippines; peace as a cornerstone of the national success.

I am for a peace gained through faith in God and unity through Country; peace that serves and defends all Filipinos with virtue, humanity, and maturity of remembrance.

I think we have suffered enough to merit this peace, I think it is within reach of our memory, and by grace of God and love of our people, we shall have it.
---<--@

Today, we commemorate the miracle of 1986. I was 13 years old then and even then, I had an idea that something big was happening... something bold.

I think many things happened to allow for that miracle in EDSA to occur. God did not just bless us with a miracle from out of the blue in 1986.

If the Gospel has taught my own heart anything, it is that miracles had to be owned first before it is owed to us by God - that faith is always first before fruition.

Today, I remember that truly peaceful revolution our nation was empowered by God to pull from out of the blue through our collective faith and unity as a people... a real crossing of a threshold.

I say it is one of a kind... and I respect it as such... unique. It is special not only in the memory of this nation but in the history of our family of nations. A great movement in the soul of a people... ours.

Saturday, February 21, 2015

Our Peace Process at the wake of Mamasapano

Trying times bring out the best and the worst in people and these are trying times indeed...

There seems a lot of opinions out there as regards the peace process. As I too am committed to the peace process, let me express some of my own.

The peace we want to accomplish through the peace process must ultimately be a human peace; the justice of this peace in its ideal form being a restoration of our unity as a human community.

To me, a "human peace" is simply one that restores dignity to the life of a community and since the peace that we are negotiating across the board is a national proposition - this peace must be capable of restoring dignity to the life of all our communities in the nation - across the Republic of the Philippines.

Will the peace in Mindanao affect things in Batanes? Of course, it must! A human peace is one that is able to provide for the human needs of a community. As a Republic, we are this community, this one house!

To do justice to the temporal house of the one Filipino nation is to make it one as our soul is one. To remain in our souls divided in war is to choose as a nation to remain in a state of spiritual injustice.

The essence of our civics is to do unto each other good. 

For in this Country, we all must be free and unafraid to do good to our fellow Filipino.

A human peace allows us the space, across our generations, to preserve both our freedom and our hope, in all things good and worthwhile to and for the Filipino... To desire this peace, to me, is therefore, always a good thing. For it shelters and protects our national communities from war (often in more ways than one).

What happened?

From the Nation to the State, we have to introduce words to articulate something true about ourselves and, my brothers and sisters, words always exclude. Indeed, words both limit and exclude. Therefore, peace as its human expression may be intensely political - most especially if our remembrances about it as a nation are not yet as mature.

Observe however, how a lot of Filipinos think war is not the answer - that is good. It means the spirit of our memory is being restored unto us... we just have to articulate it properly in the State.

The BBL is one such proposed articulation of how we may as one Filipino nation be restored to the unity of our peace. It is certainly not a perfect document. I myself have several things I should like to be able to clarify about it.

The BBL is a result of a long process... One should at least respect the hope that is invested in this document which is a hope for peace; a hope that if expressed correctly in the State may never go wrong.

I am NOT for war. Indeed, I am absolutely against any forms of "all-out war" - in any place, at any time. I am definitely for the peace - in particular here in our Philippines.

However, I must accept the path unto the threshold of this peace is political. Also, that the politics of a peace process will not readily confer justice in the temporal sense but initially serve to deflect the onset of more evil days. In Syria and the Ukraine, this for me is also true.

What justice we may work out shall be the justice of our sincerity in desiring peace and desiring peace absolutely - with a maturity of remembrance.

In general, the goal of our local peace process is to restore spiritual justice to the Philippine State that the State may then proceed to bestow temporal justice in behalf of all its citizens.

Justice in its fullness we can not deny ourselves. 

Our nation has a responsibility to possess in its soul an account to God of all human life. 

This means as citizens, we are responsible both for and to the memory of all Filipinos the Providence of God hath vouchsafed to  be born into our nationhood - through a living and present account of each and every single one of our names. This is our common debt of remembrance to God and Country, a burden of Justice which is part of our responsible Liberty.

We can not remember them all singly but as a nation we must remember them all fully.

And through a memory of their lives and sacrifices - live! Indeed, prosper and live! This "live" is the essence of our "mabuhay" which exhorts us to live the memory - therefore, long live the memory!

Maturity of remembrance understands the "intrinsic value" of each and every human life and detests war for what it is, understanding peace. 

A State that is fully accepting of peace in spirit proceeds from this truth not so much with law but with liberty. However, as we are wounded by so much internal strife, we need a cast to bind our bones to make them whole and strong again... We may liken the provision that establishes the CAR and the ARMM as such a cast. If the cast is not working, maybe it needs remolding.

Such is our quest for peace here in our Country...

We do not seek a perfect peace. It is impossible to attain peace in its perfection in this world at its state. But we may anchor our peace upon principles timeless and absolute and live its lineage unto truth and the victory of the Truth.

Our temporal dominion as a Republic here in this world may never be as perfect as our loves desire but if in our hearts we understand how we are united as one national community and if in our communities we know how we may live this unity and the hope of this unity in freedom... I think we all will be well.

Peace making involves trust. This means accepting risks. These risks are the same risks we normally subject our nation to when we choose to default to war and distrust.

Peace is an enlightened choice not to accept the status quo of this world and one we make as a nation - because we finally understand.

What does this mean? 

When we speak of the peace process, sincerity above all matters most of all.

Even before the politics of everything, I think when we seek peace we must seek peace absolutely. 

Appeasement of war bring more war and doing things in behalf of peace short of a true desire for peace is harmful simply because it is untrue... For the peace we all hope to establish among ourselves shall ultimately be tested by its fruits... a peace for all Filipinos.

Let us review in spirit the peace we are after. Let us have these reference points from each shore before we wade into deeper water... that the bridges we may seek to build - together this time - may be strong and straight and nevermore skewed.

The rest we shall attend to as things unfold... for we are creatures caught up in time after all... change is our right and our responsibility. 

Let us be patient. Let us be understanding. Let us be above all, firm.

Peace is over war. For war is not for always. But unity is eternal.

God love the Philippines. Mabuhay po tayong lahat.
---<--@


In the midst of all of these, in this Lenten season, I should like to remind my fellow Filipino Catholics to come back to a meditation on the Year of the Poor which is this year, 2015.

Let us work and pray that the Holy Spirit this year carry our nation forth into waters safer and vistas brighter.

A little personal anecdote:

Smile the Pope Francis smile: When I look at how our Holy Father smiles, I feel the warmth - the gold of the smile! One of the things I can not forget about our Holy Father is his smile. Isn't smiling like this a form of charity?

We love you Holy Father Francis!

Sunday, November 16, 2014

Peace is not a place









Our exile is not a place.

Our exile is a time.

Therefore,
peace upon the earth to us
is not a place.

Peace to us is a time.

Peace to us is a truth.

Peace to us is a season under heaven
and the knowledge of this season on earth

Let us seek peace therefore, not as a place.

Let peace be for us a willing choice... 

And let this be the time.

Filipinos,
if in each our hearts there is no peace,
there shall be no peace to be found for us
upon this earth under heaven.

Unless there is no peace in our hearts,
we shall find no peace here in our nation
nor among the nations to whom we are kin.

And shall persist to wander this world
without a home... restless of heart, 
restless of hope.

Home is where the heart is!

Whenever peace is in the heart -
everywhere love shall lead us,
we shall always find a home
and shall never be left
wanting of rest...

Most especially here 
in this Country of ours.

So let peace
be our inspiration
to renew our spirit
and build!

Let this time be the time
we make ourselves belong...

One lineage of hope,
7,107 islands strong.

Let this time be our time.

Let peace be everywhere we are.

Because 
if not here, where?
If not now, when?
---<--@


Monday, September 29, 2014

Pushing the Limits of Sky

This century, we might be establishing the fundamentals of space travel.



After this century, space travel might be developed enough for humanity to become an established presence in and around our local star system.

In the century after the next one, the possibility of interstellar exploration might open itself to the pioneering spirit of our mankind.

When we first broke free of the bounds of our planet, new horizons of learning and discovery became available to the human spirit.

When we break free of the bounds of our solar system, it is not unreasonable to expect to see and experience even greater horizons.

If we survive ourselves.


Believe.

Saturday, September 20, 2014

Salutation #200

The spirituality of peace is connection.
It is a common human striving. Known to all peoples.
It seeks wholeness in the self and unity with the community.




























(The Eternal Salutation)

Peace is the eternal salutation.
Before all things were, peace was with God.
Peace preceded heaven and earth from the beginning.
Peace is foundation, deeper than one might think... 
Peace is a blessing, it is the primordial grace of creation.

Peace is sown in community and reaped in good will.
It is what gathers the wandering tribes of the earth.
It is what sends them forth as a human people.
Peace grounds the mystical reality of human community.

A nation grows its roots deep into its living memory.
And withstands the scattering winds of the restless enemy.
---<--@

Tuesday, September 9, 2014

Broken Freedoms

With all your heart, do you remember?


"The spirituality of peace is connection."

The 4 Ruptures

Man-God
Man-Woman
Man-Creation
Man-Man
---<--@




Friday, September 5, 2014

Peace is one

Peace is one
When the many understand this
There will be peace
---<--@

Peace as a flower

We used to get these as a wreath in Baguio City, they last for ages...

If peace in the Philippines
were a flower...

I think it would be
the Everlasting Flower.

Why?

Because it is lasting,
durable, and meaningful.

Just like the peace we are,
as one nation, working towards.
---<--@

Peace is gladness

Let us drink to national sobriety.

Peace is gladness. It must be!
She's a sweet song of vict'ry!

The difficult wine of a triumph
so sweet... Of which we drink 
to intoxication. 

Together...

That we might sing...
---<--@

Seek peace and seek it absolutely.

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Month of the Rosary

We can not build the right world with the wrong values.



October is the Month of the Rosary and October 7, the Feast Day of our Lady of the Rosary.

The history that runs parallel to the spirituality of the Rosary is one of hope, battle, and victory. It is a history that is - in itself - also in constant need of the transformative power of prayer!

For all of human history is in need of Redemption. Let us think about this when we look at the problems that beset our family of Nations in our present time. We need to make the past bury the past - a lot.

Our present time needs prayer, for where the present seem dark, it needs to be won through prayer - and an attitude of spirit and thought - one of holy communion and therefore, illumination. 

For the eye of the heart sees by shining outward not in. And so we perceive the present - spiritually - not as what it is but always by the light of what it should - hence, the blind can not lead the blind. 

Man must have recourse to prayer - as a common human need. And so let us know in our hearts today - all human hearts, for as long as they are human, must pray. And let us together universally develop an abiding respect of those who pray - for all prayer is battle.

Indeed, O Christian soul, we must together fight for these necessary things and the interior rewards they promise in the battle of prayer - joined with the common prayer of all Mankind.

That in our seeking for the LORD, our God, we may be found by Him in a posture that is truly becoming of our inward relationship with the Father of all our hearts, in a posture of freely giving (Christ-love) and therefore, of freely receiving (Christ-joy).

We win these things (and more) not in shallow waters - but by setting our souls forth into deep water - deeply immersing ourselves in our thoughts - nearer and nearer to our Lord, Jesus Christ, as Word of the Father, accompanied by our Lady of the Rosary - with hearts alive to the Love of the Holy Spirit -

Seeking to set the world on fire.

The month of the Rosary is a month dedicated to the battle of prayer - and the little victories that can be won through the Mother to the Son - unto the Final Victory no less of Peace over War -

And the realization of the hope of all human Nations - in the glory of God forever!

So let us together pray the Rosary this month for peace in our times... and peace around our world...
---<--@

I myself am not a perfect vessel to deliver to you these words, my brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus. My prayer life is quite lacking for I am a sinner in need of God's constant care and mercy.

But I never give up. I have always been stubborn like this... but God broke me and made me His. I fall and I fall and I fall but I simply can not be not Christ's.

And so, despite everything, we should also never give up on making ourselves better instruments of God - souls made straight and hearts made new - alight with the right values, loving spirits ready to raise up for the LORD, a braver, better world for our humanity - true to our common salutation, Peace.

Saturday, December 29, 2012

No Peace without Adversity

Peace does not mean we shall not be challenged.
It means we have resolved to overcome them all - today.



Remember, 
no peace without adversity -
the peace of our nations is an imperfect peace!

For it is this remembrance 
that allows us to walk in humility before the LORD
that we may by His redeeming Light 
know our way ahead.

It is this remembrance 
that makes us strong in our unity.

It is this remembrance 
that makes us brave in the defense.
---<--@


Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Hanukkah 2012

Hanukkah means dedication.

This 2012, let this dedication
again bring us peace...



May the lights of Hanukkah remind us
of the need for more warmth to permeate deeply
into our families, friendships, and societies.

May it renew and reinvigorate old relationships,
may it create new and ever more meaningful ones,
and draw us ever closer together in love and in peace.

May it uplift those who are in the depth of despair.

May it recall back to the LORD those who are cold
and far away from Him, that He may return them
to a memory of each their own hearts
unto a remembrance of God
and of others in God.

May it drive away the cold spell
of old hatreds and lingering prejudices;
may it dispel those divisions among brethren
and among our kindred nations.

May it bring a new vision to our humanity,
one that is far-seeing, completely life-giving,
meaningful, peaceful, durable
and utterly human.

Hanukkah this year begins on Dec 8, 2012.



Along with Purim, I commemorate this holiday quietly
with my Anne (Papa Frank, Mama Frank, and Margot) -
year after year since 2000.

Mazel Tov!

The Autumn Gate

How do we know where it leads?



I have written enough now
about the December 21 terminus of the age
to deflect much of the fear and paranoia
that precedes these kinds
of greater movements of things...

...things that are beyond our realm of earth,
things beyond the current spread of our world,
but are yet things that are not beyond the realm
of our Mankind which is the universe entire.



It is not a time of great fear,
it is a time of great faith -
of prayer and not of panic;

of the spirit
and not an ignorance of the spirit;

of reason
and not an ignorance of reason;

of our common humanity
and not of common inhumanity;

of peace
and not of war...

For it is a time of light
and nevermore the darkness!

It begins, my darling Starshine,
as all great feats of freedom oft begins,
with a plain and simple choice -

to be one or the other.
---<--@



The unfulfilled dreams of Mankind and the freedom of God -
these are the primary causes for the expansion of space and time.

We are, therefore, we must.

Monday, October 1, 2012

Salutation #161

My brothers and sisters of the Promise, I have always stressed both the importance of prayer as well as the universality of prayer.

Prayer is as necessary to the soul of Man as breathing is to his body.

There is no Man on earth - past, present, or future - who, having seen creation in a constant state of prayer, has never thought to look inward and gaze into the depths of that irresistible Silence within himself without asking the questions he knows in his heart he may only address to God.

No human heart is fool enough to resist the power of prayer. Indeed, all of creation around us - seen and unseen - exists in a constant state of prayer.

Therefore, no Man who has ever existed, exists or shall ever exist may ever truly claim to have never prayed; to have never gazed with his heart into the depths of mysteries unseen, to have never experienced the buoyancy of hope, nor sensed the immediacy of faith, nor the timelessness of love.

What is common to all our prayer regardless of externals is that universal human desire to experience the reality of the Divine.

For prayer is a common human need. It is an attitude of the human heart.

In a faithful Republic, prayer is protected and this protection extends especially to all places of holy worship - temples, churches, synagogues, and mosques.



In prayer is Peace because its results are the works of peace.

(On Prayer)

AS A RULE, my precious Starshine,
prayer is always more
than the sum of all that we can see
with our unseeing eyes.

A soul in prayer is a heart present to its thought;
a walk across the vast, empty deserts within;
a reaching out to places beyond self;
a looking above from within.

It is silence contemplating Silence -
alone with the Alone.

It is a growing, persevering,
often times frustrating work
born of great necessity,
out of thy love of God.

Prayer is an ascent to the timeless,
anchored upon ageless truth,
of all the things we love
and of the Love that all created things hope for,
most especially by the truth of thy heart of love,
and of thy faith yearning to God in prayer.

The way to God is a crooked line,
for we are all but human.
But the way of prayer
makes this way certain.

For the soul that perseveres in prayer
shall indeed profit
from the LORD Who rewards all things,
great and small, known and known to God alone,
when done out of love and fear
of the one common Creator
of all common creation, seen and unseen.

It is not only important that we pray,
and persevere in this way, my precious friend,
in private, above all in community with each other,
it is simply necessary for human happiness
and the well-being of the still small truth that lives,
like a mustard seed,
inside of every self
for all things true and everlasting
depend on a heart of prayer.

Prayer is spiritual.

Therefore,
there are seasons within the soul that range
from sweet to dry or empty
but never must thy heart stay still,
you must gather when it needs gathering
and to know also when to look beyond these seasons;
you must be vigilant,
pressing on till you reach the heart of God
to lay your hopes in the LORD.

So prayer may be long
or it may be short
but it must always be timeless,
its substance is the motion
that lives like a love longing for Itself.

And when the Silence shall to your bowed heart speak,
It shall do so swift as light,
being Spoken without words
and instantly manifest to your soul as winged truth -
then you shall seek to forget all other things
but God and God alone.

And in God you shall range far,
self cognizant of self,
intimate with the Intimate,
to dwell in holy remembrance of all things.

For far may your wandering heart be
but to love and in Love
you shall forever remain
when you shall in prayer persevere.

So do so, dearest Starshine,
and say AMEN:
Know for thy own self
why the heart that believes
believes only because it prays.
---<--@

(produced 20090223)


Prayer is the first thing. It is also the last thing.

Thursday, September 20, 2012

Salutation #159

The maturity of our peace, the strength of our nationhood, and the prosperity of our people, spiritual as well as material, determines the age of our Republic.

How we get there is a matter of the heart.



(International Day of Peace 2012)

Personal -

Peace is a quality in the spirit,
a sense of wholeness and belonging
that is independent of the brokenness and suffering
of the external world.

Simultaneously,
peace inspires in the soul
a genuine and unshakable love
of this inward sense of wholeness and belonging
as well as the total freedom to overcome
brokenness and suffering in one's self
and in others like the self.

It is that most fundamental human longing
to return to a condition of perfect safety and perfect rest;
a condition unto which we all, as human beings,
desire to ultimately return unto throughout our lives
and is at the heart of all human community.

It is neither a perfect freedom nor a perfect peace
but peace, where it is present, brings forth only peace.
---<--@

National -

Can you overcome the earth by yourself?

Can we hope to subdue the darkness of the unknown earth as individuals?

Can we hope to deter the violence and the chaos that dwells within the darkness by the law of family or tribe alone? Can either family or tribe defeat the ancient curse of War without being utterly consumed by it?

Can the imperative of the LORD to tame the unknown earth be done in the spirit of division? Can the inhabited earth ever be built with War in the heart?

Can the brightness of its vision for all Mankind be achieved - here - in the visible realms of the universe, by the spirit and the labors of Man, through the grace of God and the freedom of heaven, without the necessity of the nations?

What for are we?

We have a responsibility in these present days to remember... the craft of all nations is peace!

Lest we forget. Lest we forget.
---<--@

In every conflict, every nation that fights ultimately fights for every nation that fights because in the end, War is the ultimate enemy of all our nations.

Let us together reflect on this with retrospective clarity secure upon the vantage our generations now possess over the last great age of war.

The nobility of our arms determines its strength and not the other way around.

For violence hath no memory of itself because it is dead, only virtue lives and lives eternal.

Peace without arms - in an imperfect world - is improbable, without remembrance, impossible.


September 21 is the International Day of Peace.

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Never Forget

Dawn will come, this night will wane...
and it shall be 9/12/2001 all over again.



I promised to never forget and so
as for my own remembrance of this day,
I seek to banish hatred.

May all hatred whither and die! 
May all hatred find a place in our nations no more... 

May the reason of Man find its reason, 
may the purpose of the nations of the children of Mankind find its purpose. 
May the right remembrances be everywhere sought... 

And may it be the kind of remembrance 
that recalls all human hearts unto citizenship with the all of creation; 
that makes us builders in the LORD, nations under God, 
and lovers of the work of living life!

May we all be lovers of the work of living life! 
May our Mankind be joined in Justice and in Love 
and may all the nations of the children of Mankind find Peace
with each other - and  - in each other.

May we all be a family once again.
May good will triumph over division.
May this longest night end...

May the Day Star rise again in our hearts 
and may this awakening bring our midnight world 
unto the promised Morning of the new...

May the spirit of our humanity, 
by the grace of God and the aid of heaven, 
prevail forever over the spirit of War 
and may this unity break our bondage to the earth, 
that we may soar upon wings of eagles 
unto oneness with the sky...

May the glory of God be on earth as it is in heaven.... 

Alleluia!
---<--@


When anger is allowed to fester in the heart, an inhospitable and alien darkness eclipses the soul, shrouding all things in death...

For what is hatred but an ignorance of love? An enforced absence of sunlight in the soul of Man.


Embracing the Embracing