A Note by Miep Gies

Starshine, none of us can walk away from the life we must live...

In our lives we are the heroes and heroines. Strangely enough, there will also be times when we seem to play the villain or villainess in our own epic tales as well...

Each human life never being one that is absolutely good nor absolutely evil; the story of our lives itself - to be real - must be able to brook the shadows in between. This is why it is never a good thing to judge the final merits of any one life while the story is still being told. It is simply presumptuous to do so.

Now as all these tales go, the story must always be told in behalf of the protagonist - as a record of either our victory or our defeat in the myth of our own making.

In the background of our lives, if we pay close attention, there are other heroes and heroines at work.

There are other "heavies" in the landscape of our human experiences at play as well.

While the role of bad people and their influence in our lives are significant, if our focus is on victory, then our focus should be on the good ones and their influences. Think about it.

(I think a certain movie Jedi said this to his Padawan once: Your focus determines your reality?)

To recognize the sources of good influences in our lives is therefore, paramount to the life of the hero and the heroine. Often influences that are benign in our lives are quite subtle, quite calm, and almost invisible. But invariably, the sources of all that is good in our lives are other heroes and heroines too.

In the life of Anne Frank, this was also true.

For there were indeed heroes and heroines too in the period in which Anne Frank lived, terrible and dark as it was... Miep Gies is one of these heroines in the story of our Anne.

Through this post I wish to share with you, an important thought from Miep.

This thought is from the book, "Anne Frank, The Biography" by Melissa Muller and it has certainly contributed to my own thinking about one of the defining events of the 20th century, an event to which I have a personal affinity to in the person of Anne Frank, herself a heroine in my own life.

The influence of the good in human history is subtle and often almost quiet.

Were it not for these influences however, we would be living a reality that is always far worse...

Above the constant din of the world, these guiding lights are ever present. If these influences are to be found and had, Starshine, as in those quests of old, they must often be bravely sought...
---<--@

A Note by Miep Gies

Over the past fifty years, ever since the publication of Anne Frank's diary, I have been asked again and again how I found the courage to help the Franks. This question, posed sometimes with admiration and sometimes with disbelief, has always made me uncomfortable. Yes, of course it takes courage to do one's duty as a human being, of course one had to be prepared to make certain sacrifices. But that's true in many life's situations.

Why then, I keep asking myself, do people ask such a question? Why do so many hesitate when the time comes to help their fellow human beings?

It took me a long time to understand. Most children are told by their parents from an early age on: "If you are good and well-behaved, everything will work out for you later in life." The logical reverse of this philosophy is: Anyone who gets into trouble must - must - have behaved badly and made some serious mistake. It's that simple. Everyone gets the life he or she deserves; it's that simple. If we really believe this, it's easy to go on minding our own business and to decide against helping people in need. But is it that simple?

My life taught me better. I learned early that people could find themselves in trouble without necessarily having done anything wrong. I was born in Vienna and was five years old at the beginning of World War I. My mother kept telling me that I was a good little girl, that she loved me, and that she was pleased with how I was doing at school.

When I was nine, we did not have enough to eat. I still remember the hunger pangs distinctly, the piercing pain in my stomach and the unpleasant fits of dizziness I had to try to overcome. And I shall never forget the shock when my parents sent me to Holland. A relief action to help starving children had been organized. On a bright and bitter-cold December day in 1920 my parents took me to a train, hung a big sign with a strange name on it around my neck, said good-bye, and left me. They had no other choice, of course, but I did not understand that till much later. I was extremely underweight and suffering from tuberculosis, and I felt terribly lonely. What had I done to deserve being so sick and alone? Hadn't my mother always assured me that I had done nothing wrong?

So I experienced as an eleven year old how quickly people can find themselves in difficulty - and through no fault of their own. That, I knew from personal experience, was exactly what was happening to the Jews in World War II. And therefore it was only natural for me to help as much as I could.

When we are shocked to think that six million children, women, and men were driven to their deaths and we ask ourselves, "How could such a thing happen?" we should keep in mind the indifference of normal human beings the world over, good, hard-working, God-fearing individuals. Of course, it was the Nazi regime that was responsible for the mass murder, but if not for the apathy of people not just in Germany and Austria but everywhere - basically decent people, no doubt - the horrible slaughter could never have assumed the proportions it did.

When, as actually happens even today, young people come to up to me saying they can not believe that Hitler could have murdered the Jews for no reason at all, I fear this remark reflects precisely the view that no such thing could befall truly innocent, blameless people. Then I tell them about Anne Frank and ask them if this child, this young girl, could conceivably have done anything that could justify the cruel fate she suffered,

"No, of course not," they answer, usually quite mortified. "Anne Frank was innocent."

"Just as innocent as the other six million victims," I then add.

Thus, Anne's life and death have special meaning for all those who are subject to prejudice, discrimination, and persecution today. Anne stands for the absolute innocence of all victims.

I should like to use the publication of this biography of Anne Frank as an opportunity to clear up another common misunderstanding. It is often said that Anne symbolizes the six million victims of the Holocaust. I consider this statement wrong. Anne's life and death were her own individual fate, an individual fate that happened six million times over. Anne cannot, and should not, stand for the many individuals whom the Nazis robbed of their lives. Each victim had his or her own outlook on life; each victim occupied a unique, personal place in the world and in the hearts of his or her relatives and friends.

In their racial madness, Hitler and his accomplices tried to claim just the opposite: they portrayed the Jews as a faceless enemy even as they annihilated six million individuals, extinguished six million individual lives. Most of humanity did not even want to know what was happening.

Anne Frank was only one of the Nazis' victims. But her fate helps us grasp the immense loss the world suffered because of the Holocaust. Anne has touched the hearts and minds of millions; she has enriched all of our lives. Let us hope she has also enlarged our horizons. It is important for all of us to realize how much Anne and all the other victims, each in his or her own way, would have contributed to our society had they been allowed to live.

To my great and abiding sorrow, I was not able to save Anne's life. But I was able to help her live two years longer. In those two years she wrote the diary that gives hope to people all over the world and calls for understanding and tolerance. It confirms my conviction that any attempt at action is better than inaction. An attempt can go wrong, but inaction inevitably results in failure.

I was able to save Anne's diary and thus make her greatest wish come true. "I want to be useful or give pleasure to people around me who don't really know me," she wrote in her diary on March 25, 1944, about one year before her death. "I want to go on living, even after my death!" And on May 11, she noted: "You've known for a long time that my greatest wish is to become a journalist someday and later on a famous writer."

Through her diary Anne really does live on. She stands for the triumph of the spirit over evil and death.

Amsterdam, January 1998

(Anne Frank, The Biography by Melissa Muller pp. 303-306)

Thank you, Miep... Via con Dios.
---<--@

Thoughts on "We, the People"

IF TODAY we were to mythologize the history of our Republic, the chief protagonist of the story would be "we, the people"; the one, the true, the brave.

Another hundred years from now, this would still be true.

If only we were fully aware of this...

As a believer in "we, the people", I affirm the virtues of the Philippine State reside always in the people; that wisdom substantial for the good of all is entrusted to the keeping of the Filipino public in every generation.

When power in human government being ever in need of a constant source of strength and renewal finds in the people, no better source; rule and reliance is established in a State that is Republican and Democratic.

For in whom sovereignty resides is through whom the national sovereignty must be constantly ensured and preserved and government that is made to recognize the source of its authority is made capable of bearing trustworthy fruit.

If all our troubles as a Republic were to lead to a peaceful awakening in ourselves; one that empowers the nation and thus, enables the government of the nation to advance our vision in time, then we owe it to our past to make a way for our tomorrow. And the present shall not seem so muddled and dim. 

Rizal's awakened pen and the awakened souls of our illustrious founding generations never had a hope so great as our freedoms to be such - a nation brightly lit.

There is nothing as fundamental to the justice of human community as life and to her laws as the right to live in peaceful communion with others living within her.

Thus, again we are returned in our quiet meanderings to the people - the life of the nation.

The people are to be defended, the nation preserved.

Human dignity is to be recognized in all Filipinos and the human potential in each our persons upheld.

That the law of the State and the justice of the State derive their fundamental natures from ideals original to and characteristic of all our citizens as human beings. That the law serve, for the people observe, and the people observe for justice both preserve them and persevere in them.

We shall always be served by finding our beginnings therefrom whenever we need to...

I also presently observe that we, the people, in not being fully aware of this, at times allow ourselves to be obsessed by some passing evil and spurred by diverse forms of desperation often act in haste and that grave consequences especially in matters of State follow in the usual and confound us in its wake.

An example of this is when we as an electorate elect, set apart and call into authority more than a few leaders unfit for the spirit and reality of the Country we are trying to establish for ourselves and our posterity.

We forget to recall the symbolic value of the vote in the same way we unconsciously profane the mythic vision of a people, free and fair, living within the embrace of a Republic that is the dominion of their own sovereign peace. We have a right to be here. 

The rich tapestry of our pre-history now remain largely unavailable to us, but the living memory that is spiritual (water) can never be denied our nation. T'was a blessing unto us before we were a people.

If we were a Country with artificial frontiers; that "we are" is Providential.

Were we to rebel against the dictates of Providence, our peace upon this earth shall always be one that is by the sword sustained. Never to us as Country shall be made known from heaven, a peace that is to itself sufficient - being of its own remembrance, alive and one.

So I understand the wounds of our colonial past. I try to, I have them within myself as well. I know that the wounding may not be by our own hand but the healing shall not come by any other hand but our own.

And if our hearts have become so familiar with the pain that our minds have come to think to ourselves we are no longer in need of the truth, why do each present time cry out still for a remedy to hurts time itself has left unforgot?

How do we reconcile ourselves to these labors?

Can we be hero and anti-hero at the same time?
---<--@

Thoughts on Peace and Anti-Semitism

A good sense of history seeks to address
the question of "where" more than "when"

History they say is written by the victors. But memory (national) is not. Remembrance is right that recalls the human cost (in all the names of those who fell along our journey of return) and makes a just and human account in the heart before God of all the things history seldom mentions... a present and living account. 

I used to study history but it was impersonal. I failed to impress upon myself that history is much more than pages of a book. The aim of history is to acquire a "sense of history". Not become all too familiar with the past but discern from a good knowledge of it, a clearer understanding of the living present. 

In this way, books become more valuable than just paper and ink. And what our teachers impart to us about history becomes for us a form of art than just ancient knowledge. We begin to have an appreciation... that history is not just a long tale of woe.

Anti-Semitism too is historical. Here is what I presently understand about it:

The Star of David corrupted into an anti-semitic label.
These labels are all of them devices intended
to dehumanize its victim.

First of all, anti-Semitism is easy. Maybe that's why small-minded people like it. Because it fits.

A says its better than Z to feel itself "the letter A".

A then proceeds to prove to the alphabetical realm that what A says is true, that Z is only half-a-letter. A then begins to persecute Z because A is "A" and A says so. Ludicrous!

The next in line for A after Z is laid low would be Y. Meaning after the Jews, the Gypsies... then the Blacks, Reds, Yellows, Whites, Browns, Grays, Blues, Muslims, Christians, Catholics - everything that doesn't conform to the "A"s own version of the alphabet right up to A's closest buddy, B.

In spirit, the relentless hatred that dwells behind all things anti-human shall only thrive on the victimization of our humanity - where ever and whenever we may allow it. This is the spirit that feeds on anti-semitism. Evil.

A's own version of the alphabet? A, A, A, A, A... get my drift? 

When everything is A, there will be peace. And it will make no sense. 

To A however, it really doesn't matter that in A's version of the alphabet, one can not even spell "peace". It is a paradox that will be rammed down every other letter's conception of itself.

I am not saying that the letter Z is better than A. 

What I'm saying is everybody is different and we should be knowledgeable enough of ourselves now (after enough of a span of time) to accept the fact that we can only be meaningful as letters (as nations) as we are and as a whole. That way we can spell anything (truthfully, meaningfully, and profitably).

The fuse that A needs to light that will cause the subsequent implosion of the synergistic diversity that is the real alphabet, of course, is Z.

That to me is Anti-Semitism.

Allow it into the soul of your nation and it will fester into all those other "isms" that a free and human people ought to always guard against.

Certainly it was never a part of our peace here in the Philippines and if I can help it, shall never prosper in the soul of this Nation.

Not just because of my memory of Anne Frank and her times but because the memory of the last 2000 years is full of destructively inhuman divisions like these... too many, too much. We are confronted with numbers so large and so terrible, it intimates to each our remembrances that we shall not even be enough to render unto the living God, an adequate account...


Go past 2000 years and we get more of the same... but 2000 years is all it takes.

Indeed, the last century as the culmination of the last 1900 years is a foretelling enough to understand that if we remain adamant in our clinging to old molds that need breaking, the momentum of the past shall sweep us into perhaps another century of more of the last age... if we can not account for that century then another one more terrible than the last shall be poured as fire down upon our heads.

Until everything is parched dry. Until the spirit of humanity is diminished enough and darkness overwhelm all nations utterly with the madness of war.

I do not want that... a world overrun by sin and war, dark and indistinct from the darkness of the void. In contrast, I choose another vision of peace. (As it were, one that spells p-e-a-c-e.)

The peace I want is the opposite, obtained through the opening of a new path into the morrow. One that leads to a vision apart from the one whose fruits (the bitterest of which is genocide and an absent sense of truth) we have experienced in the last century; a vision obtained through the closing of the door of the present - as completely as possible - from the evils of the past age.

Peace can be complicated at times, I agree.

We are being confused by so many truths about it even now, here in our Philippines. But if we stay on the path (knowing the firmness of its first principles) and keep our hearts focused on a shared vision of "something new and wonderful", I know determination and faith will take us to places in time we've never been as a Country... better places.

Together, only together. Without those ruinous "isms"... extremism, terrorism, racism, sexism, ageism, shapeism, etc. More wheat, less tares.

The peace of our times will never be a perfect peace, I definitely agree.

The national peace shall always be an unfolding work in time and will always mirror the truths about our common humanity. Knowing its foundation and its vision should be enough... for it is both location and destination, plus a compass of identity and memory to carry us through.

And vigilant trust; an agility to react and to innovate (ideals, principles and vision) properly. For we are as a nation still learning a new landscape and have yet to reach a safe distance down along the path to our new morning... a new dawn para sa lahat ng Pilipino (para na rin siguro sa lahat sa mundo).

Salaam. Shalom. Peace. 

Let us continue to work and pray for peace in our time, here in our Philippines and in our world...

Mabuhay po tayong lahat.
---<--@

JFK in a letter requesting his Secretary of Labor to deliver 
a wreath in their nation's behalf to the Anne Frank House wrote... 
"the hopeful and the gentle are the true makers of history".

Salutation #186

Fatalism, it is oft implied,
is a cultural predisposition in our Nation
that inclines our society
to accept evil with resignation.

(The Brave Resignation of the First Filipinos)

The first Filipinos,
all of our elder tribes that comprise
those ancient Barangays and their particular communions
that peopled our lands and navigated our seas
long before the advent of Colonial times,
came upon this realm of restless skies
restless earth, and restless seas
and realizing by the power of their own experiences
an understanding of the greatness of these natural forces
sought not to take them into their knowledge
but to dwell in harmony with the spirit of this dominion
and so came they to a knowledge the forces of this realm
by seeking not to bend these forces to their will,
giving to these forces none of their words.

For our first Fathers, the ancients of our Nation,
in knowing the vast forces that dwell within this realm
sought not by their knowledge to master them through earthly will
but unanimously allowed from within each their own cultures
an abiding form of common and equal respect, each according to each,
and all according to their elemental natures as they are to be understood
through their own enduring reality and the character of its freedom
- as they are - in the restless natures of sky, earth, and sea
along with all the bounteous life therein that dwell within this realm
and so worked to introduce themselves to the Providential wisdom
that brought the lightning to the clouds, and fire to the mountains,
thunder to the earth, subdued the skies according its proper measures,
and gave due season to the winds that brought in the Great Water
and thus, dictated the life cycles of the earth and nurtured its flowing rivers
allowing these forces, in due time, to reveal themselves to them,
and the will of Providence to take them freely into their own safety
introducing to them a knowledge of the truth of those things -
adding to their wisdom, and blessing their communities.

Our ancestral cultures
- the lineages of the First Filipinos -
by their free acceptance of the Hand of Providence
in the restless natures of our skies, our lands, and our seas
gained through courage and acceptance of greater forces
an understanding of words greater and more powerful,
adapted to its wisdom, and made it their own.

This is the primary source of that Surrender.

It arose from a very determined will
born of the discerning faith of our ancient Fathers
to harmonize with the unyielding peace of greater things.

It is, as taught by their common heritage in our Soul,
a surrender to the greater wisdom that abide in greater things
freely accepting of the Providence that rightly governs All
and the better knowledge of truths that prevail in Heaven,
recognizing these things as greater and far above
any knowledge that is of the earth.

So we have come
to accept the existence of physical evil
and surrender to the greater purpose for their existence
by accepting the wisdom and the existence of a Divine Providence
that rules over all our choices... and does see beyond them
as a Reality ever so greater than our own, but most of all,
infinitely better than us and more benign than the limits
by which our hearts allow us to perceive and to understand
the pain of their reality, and the tragedy of our familiarity with its evils -
particularly when it touches ours - in our own time -
and in every time.

For we have learned - in due time -
not to question the wrath of natural forces
and as a people have come to bend like the bamboo
to the unfathomable will of Divine Providence
and surrender our pain to the embrace of a Good God.

- selah -

In our own days, seemingly far removed
from the time of ages past - so far removed, as it were -
that we forget that time is not a measure of its merest count
but is always a passage from a dawn limits to an age of limitlessness.

So where time seem distant - the distance is the illusion.
There is no distance in time - only timeless remembrance:

Love and remembrance.

It is tragic what happened to Bohol, Cebu, -
and as we feel the pain of the recent earthquake that shook
the Visayas and parts of Mindanao - we may ask again
the question the first Filipinos first asked, "why?"

It is a right thing to be hurt? Because it is not.

But should we believe
we should again seek to question
the existence of these natural forces,
challenge their reality over our own,
and seek to apply our will of anger or regret
- no matter how righteous they really are -
over forces far above the power of our humanity
to overtly command, and therefore completely prevent?

Because it is also not.

Rather, these forces should exist to question us -

as they did exist during the time of the First Filipinos.

Not to surrender to them but to expect them,
and to learn how to prevail over them
by surrendering them to God.

- selah -

Moral evil though - the things of War,
and the Evil in all evil things.

These we must always question.

For these were always alien to our Surrender
for a surrender to an evil fate is not the Surrender
that was inculcated in the spirit of our Nation
by our First peoples.

They are the source of our Fatalism.

The real words to use is Brave Resignation.
---<--@

The Bow of the Infinite

Cowardly the heart
who longs not for remembrance -
whose soul have abandoned the hunger,
whose spirit have forsaken the thirst,
whose unfulfilled fire desires completeness no longer
and thus, forgot why it is a heart.

So be brave, O heart,
and in thy loneliness know
that thou wert made for Love to love -
thy constant longing, returning again and again

to the Seeker in thy dream, the unimaginable Beauty,

to the Seeker in thy dream - until -
in all thy coming and going,
thou findest in thou, a vision of thee -
asleep in the wilderness - and in thy awakening,
and in thy awakening, O my heart,
after all thy days are finally forever spent
blessing the earth with thy solitude,
awakening Home.



Listen, Starshine -

Those who do not remember the past - repeat it.
Those who do not respect the present - regret it.
Those who have no regard for the future - relinquish it.



Remembrance is a learning of the hope of communities past,
that it may lend its constant strength to the momentum of communities present,
so that all human community may gain a knowledge of each other
and find peace with one another, nation awakening nation -
peace which leads to an understanding of better days
and opens for all mankind, for the glory of God,
the way of our future.

A (labor of) country without a past is a nation without a present
and a nation without a present is a people without a future.

Draw back, feel the strength. 
Live it, accepting tension. 
Then trust, let fly.

---<--@

The Bitter Fruit



Woe to those who live in days without acceptance,
who dwells not in the Now of this present time,
dark shall be their sojourn upon the earth and their skies listless and without season,
trouble and mischief shall as twins dwell in their company as their brethren
they who rejoice only in seeing evil days and who number their days in the dust,
those who disdain the light and find no relief in the goodness of the LORD
who without gratitude rejoice not in their God and trample His creation underfoot
they who through the hardness of their hearts live yet are not alive,
and reject the common communities of the nations of Man,
for the knowledge of life itself shall utterly desert them,
all they whom wisdom hath spurned for hating the truth which is her voice
and shall partake forever of the fruit of their desolation.

Crossing Over into 2013

I believe we're coming to a point as a species of humanity where 

what we don't know is becoming more and more important 

than what we do know.

Remember,

what's ahead of us in 2013 

shall largely depend 

on what we shall be willing to leave behind 

in 2012.

This - in turn - shall depend 

on the completeness of our remembrances 

as a nation; 

on how much of ourselves 

we have managed to gather up 

into the present - together this time -

as we cross the line of today 

into tomorrow.

Are we ready to cross over?

---<--@

Return to Memory

What is in motion and what is not in motion when one recalls one's mind to the truth in all true things... this is the question. What is in stillness is stillness sought? What is waning and what is to remain.



Listen, starshine.

History will only benefit from our remembrance when we perceive from all that is shadow what is light and what is dark.

Everything in this life seems veiled in mist yet the choice is still ours what we see and what we refuse to see.

Everywhere people claim the right, everywhere people cry from the wrong, for all seems so easily forgot and nowhere does the labor of remembrance belong but to books and stone.

Alas! Remembrance belong not to books and stone but to the hearts of Man and to the souls of the nations of the children of Mankind!

Perceive the pages, see through the stone...
and choose to - know through - the grey rain tears of bitter things...
to seek in all thy stories - in and - across all thy nations to truly understand
what to thy plain and simple human heart - is light - to cast away the darkness
that creates trouble for all living souls.

   (War unleashes a terrible darkness
   and in its wake, a host of demons to dispel,
   but courage is to remain true to thy own humanity
   where all semblance of humanity have fled
   keeping true to thy own remembrance
   of a time within a time.

   For, my people -
   the peace of all nations is kin
   and the spirit of every labor of Country
   related both by covenant and by necessity -
   No one nation learns on its own
   and no Country matures by itself alone.)

Do you truly remember?
---<--@

Salutation #139

(Helping Hands)

My brother and sister Filipinos -

A nation who
has no remembrance of its own past
is like a man who
have lost the use of his legs.

A nation who
has no love of its own present
is like a man who
have lost the use of his heart.

A nation who
has no vision of its own future
is like a man who
have lost the use of his mind.

If we are this nation, 
what for are our hands?

What for are our hands, my people?

- selah -

What for the memory but the light?
What for the light but the life?
What for the life but the hope?
What for the hope but the love?
What for the love but the labor?
What for the labor but the peace?
What for the peace but the LORD?

And what for the LORD, our King,
but the victory of all these good things,
alleluia to God on high, my people! 

What for our independence if not our freedom?
What for our freedom if not our peace?
What for our peace if not each other?

What for are our hands, my people?

- selah -

Who has given us our nationhood but God?

Alleluia to God on high, my people!

Did any of us choose to be born with such a soul?

Who can take this spirit in our hearts away?

Alas! Only we, my people, you or I -
by our unremembrance, by our impenitence,
by our unpeaceful, and false ways.

So let us, as the stars,
in this time before the dawn,
awaken Now.
---<--@