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.
---<--@

The Archetypal Hero

True self-expression makes heroes of us all.

=^.^=

I think there is a hero
hidden in every person.

We all have our right moments...

When this hero inside of ourselves arise
to uphold something good in this world.

The wonderful thing about this
I have found is:



Each time the hero in ourselves arise to save something good,
it arises to save that something good in ourselves first...

That something good in ourselves reflected in the other person
that the hero in ourselves implicitly recognize...

Whether we know it or not, when it arises, within that moment

we act.

In a way, it might be meant
that we save each other,
you see.

Because in a way, we are all heroes.

It just might be the way it is.

- selah -

The question then is this:

This hero spark,
our precious Starshine,
from Whom did we get it?
---<--@

A different kind of different, are you up to it?

The Craft of Citizens

Civics is the craft of citizens. Politics is the craft of the State.

Our first consideration: 

We are a nation. This makes us a human people.

We are human beings with common human needs. The cause of our nationhood are human causes. We are through our nationhood sought by heaven on earth that we may be sheltered in peace and sheltered that we may be sent forth in goodwill unto our Mankind.

Because we are, our identity and belonging is established upon a timeless foundation. There are truths about our being as a free and sovereign human community that are changeless and unyielding - as changeless and as unyielding as the peace that in our nation gathers us together and sends us forth as one.

Peace, written in our hearts, is the soul of our nationhood and has been before we were a people.

We are a nation forever. For the peace that forever belong to our nation is an eternal salutation.

The cause of our nationhood are our human causes.

The craft of all nations is peace.

When we know peace, we know memory. 

When we know memory, we know when and where in ourselves does hope spring and goodwill proceeds - in the peace of our nationhood and from the nationhood in ourselves (respectively).

God is our Highest Reliance. The First Defended of our Republic.

Before we know our civics, we must understand our nationhood.

That what makes us human, one to another, makes us also belong to all heaven and earth.

Our second consideration: 

What makes us citizens makes us belong to the temporal State and prepares us for greater belongings.

There is no science that serves to initiate the student of civics to a prior body of knowledge about the art of his or her citizenship. Civic aptitude does not come by way of great academic knowledge.

Recall to thy heart the fall of the first morning star of the first firmament and imagine a single star in the night sky, shining by itself from eternity.

Without the company of other stars, shall this bright morning star have cause to think itself dim or bright?

A great intellect may think itself bright only because he or she is always in the company of a myriad other lesser ones. Whether one is loathe to admit this fact or not, it is a civic truth. 

Sufficiency through reliance.

We are only as far as each of us allow, eaches only as far as we are.

Peace in the nation allows for each of us to allow that - we are.

Civics allow us to be and to function as eaches - as far as we are...

Citizens who together as a Body Politic form through the democratic foundation of the Philippine State, the one Philippine Republic whole.

Our third and final consideration:

A student of civics is a heart willing to listen... Citizenship is a lifelong art.

You do not learn it by reading alone. You acquire it by hearing it, and following, and leading.

You do not teach it by much speaking. You transmit it by living it, and loving, and remembering.

Apply yourself to knowing your civics and your civics will apply itself to teaching itself to you.

Practice. Practice. Practice.

And let us together in the nation grow bright, certainly brighter than the long night.

Start by simply not littering, if you like. And know why you do it.

Begin by respecting the ground of our earth.
---<--@

Personal Reflection

Civics inform our Politics and Politics shape the State wherein we all are citizens first.

One may be civic oriented without ever being political. One may not be political however, without any civic orientation. Politics that is professed without any grounding in civics is almost always mercenary in form, without any concept of loyalty to Country or duty to the common good.

Is it political to love a person, a thing, a place, a time, or a truth?

It may be that the State ought to be concerned about what we love. That the State may know to withdraw from interior freedoms where these are concerned.

There is no such thing as a wrong love.

Politics shall never find enough of itself in itself to prove or disprove what love there is or what love there is not - in any person. It shall soon exhaust its own expression against a question it is never intended to address.

Where interior freedoms are concerned, the State should have a recourse to exhort the civic spirit of the nation and empower the love of the people to bear the right fruit that more and more of our people may know to trust in better things and therefore, be served eventually by better loves.
---<--@

Apart from the Love of God, the Devil has no existence.

Or be a ninja, if you like.

Cheers. Steady on.

I see you

I see you, Starshine.
Brilliant, wondrous, Starshine.
Precious, shining, and beautiful.
I see in you - a person - a living soul!
Unique and believing and true.
I see you, Starshine, and I know -
No one else can be you.
---<--@

Salutation #112

"If the veil of time were withdrawn

and the Kingdom of God stretched forth

- in plain view before thy sight -

if the LORD does not incline thy heart unto Him,

O Man, thou still would not be able to believe."

(The Story of Being Special)

The LORD God

created all living beings to be unique

- Angels and Men -

the LORD created them,

seen as well as unseen, We became.

And All of us are made to be special.

But the Devil and his angels, they said,

"since the LORD God willed

that all living beings are special - then -

I must be special".

And so was division in heaven sown.

For the Devil and his angels

- undid in themselves -

the life that the LORD God

- in each of us -

did bestow in abundance.

They cast themselves into the void.

But the Holy Angels of the LORD said,

"as the LORD God willed

that all living beings are special, then you,

O my beloved, must be special".

And so they were in God gathered.

For the spirit of the world is a scattering spirit.

But the Spirit of God gathers together.

- selah -

You make me special, beloved of God,

and so I am. And so you are, alleluia.

---<--@

20110425

Salutation #7

(Unity)

OPEN A WAY FOR PEACE!

Give way to a sense of self-belonging

that you may believe in your own heart

that we are a nation.

Open a way for the poor!

They are the measure by which

God shall open for us the way forward

lest we, as sowers, sow upon scattering winds

the sacred trust by which the Providence of God

have called us together as a nation.

For this is the truth! Therefore,

establish upon thy hearts a reign of Justice

and recognize the ground upon which we build -

a lasting edifice to the economy of our generations,

an altar of Sacred Life, and a shelter of law -

the noble vision of our own Eden rebuilt,

our great labor of Country!

Our work of Country

is the labor of our generations

to the very last of our generations.

The longevity of the Republic whole

is not established on individual lifetimes.

We do not rise and fall with the tides of exile time

for no matter how great or how small we seem,

everything that is good about our citizenry

is everything that we carry forward,

ascending with but one ascending.

So remember this, my honorable compatriots,

and do not be discouraged by the littleness

nor be disillusioned by the sheer fragility of it all.

We are always more than what the eye can see

for the nation in ourselves is greater in force

than what

individual hearts can muster -

But if the one heart of the people is divided

we shall be but a shadow of ourselves indeed!

For peace is what brings the people together,

bound by the freedoms that make us responsible

to the noble promise concealed in our individual fragility

and to the great dignity of our common humanity,

not so that we may each be the same

but so that we may together against

the darkness prevail.

Just as the shattering of the angelic realms

was brought about by War in the heart,

plunging our native skies into unconsciousness,

War in the heart shall likewise have claim over the earth

if our nations do not stand together.

It will institute a desolation before its time;

an abomination it shall call "peace" -

and a wasteland shall be the inheritance

of our generations.

---<--@

IN THE SAME WAY that a tree upon our world is possessed of life, so are we.

In the same way there is a breathing that breathes in the birds in the sky, and in the animals upon the land, and in the fishes in the sea, so are we likewise possessed by that same living that make us all peers to Sacred Life.

For as all things alive in all of creation, seen and unseen, are all things immersed in the unseen waters of an everlasting substance, so are we.

But much more than those green things that grow upon our earth and greater still than the animals that fill our world with much color and motion, we are because to our native reason is granted the names and the knowledge of all these things, that they may share our voice.

To each of us is granted the faith to freely and commonly apply our hearts to the keeping of our Creator's creative ideal in this world that we may by our lives' width and breadth, render service to all of life's longing for itself and preserve our LORD's peace upon the inhabited earth which is the glory of God in all things.

The faith that makes us common, Beloved of God, makes us all servants to the one LORD of all the living and the everliving.

---<--@

Mabuhay ang Pilipinas! God bless us all.

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

20110226

"If the veil of time were withdrawn and the Kingdom of God stretched forth in plain view before thy sight, if the LORD does not incline thy heart unto Him, O Man, thou still would not be able to believe."

The Story of Being Special

The LORD God created all living beings to be unique - Angels and Men - the LORD created them, seen as well as unseen, We became. And All of us are made to be special.

But the Devil and his angels, they said, "since the LORD God willed that all living beings are special then I must be special".

And so was division in heaven sown. For the Devil and his angels undid in themselves the life that the LORD God in each of us did bestow in abundance.

They cast themselves into the void.

But the Holy Angels of the LORD said, "as the LORD God willed that all living beings are special, then you, O my beloved, must be special".

And so they were in God gathered. For the spirit of the world is a scattering spirit. But the Spirit of God gathers together.

You make me special, beloved of God, and so I am. And so you are, alleluia.

Then God said, "Let there be light," and there was light.

God saw how good the light was. God then separated the light from the darkness.

God called the light "day," and the darkness he called "night." Thus evening came, and morning followed--the first day.

- Genesis 1: 3-5

---<--@

Now, I should like to share this with my brother and sister Christians:

Litany of Love

Have mercy on us, dear Jesus! From behind mere accidents of bread and wine, You peer at our world so full of war and sin.

Incline our hearts to Thee, dear Savior, that we might better serve the cause of Thy peace.

And as we journey together as Thy Church in this world (during the season of Lent add: towards Thy Holy Mountain of Easter), renew us in our togetherness and faith. Make us hungry for God and thirsty for the right things of God, dear Jesus, out of love for Thee!

Deign to bless us in our nations as keeper and friend, one to another, and prosper us in our hopes to build a better world.

AMEN.

(Here follows my personal pattern as an example)

God the Father in heaven, I love You.

God the Son, Redeemer of the world, I love You.

God the Holy Spirit, I love You.

O dearest LORD, my one, triune Perfection, I love You.

Holy Mary, Queen of my heart, I love you.

Saint Maximilian Kolbe, Patron Saint of the Suffering Addict, I love you.

Blessed Jacinta Marto, Flower of Fatima, I love you.

Blessed Francisco Marto, Helper of my Lord, I love you.

Sister Lucia, Servant of God, I love you.

Saint Lorenzo Ruiz of Manila, I love you.

Saint Therese of Liseaux, I love you.

Saint Josemaria Escriva, I love you.

Saint Anthony of Padua, I love you.

Saint Peter, I love you.

Saint Paul, I love you.

Holy Father Dominic de Guzman, I love you.

Holy Father Francis of Assisi, I love you.

Saint Lawrence the deacon, I love you.

Saint Dymphna, I love you.

My darlingest Annelies Marie Frank, I love you.

All you Holy Innocents of God, I love you.

All you Holy Souls in Purgatory, I love you.

All my family and friends, I love you.

O my Philippines, I love you.

All you nations of Mankind, I love you.

Angel Caritas, my guardian dear, I love you.

Saint Michael the Archangel, I love you.

All you Saints of God, I love you.

All you Holy Angels of the LORD, I love you.

---<--@

Meditate on each your loving relationships. Wonder at the fact that we are able to love. Because it is no small miracle in itself that we are made to be aware that we are in love at all.

If faith is light, then hope gives it brightness, but it is love that gives to it sharpness and clarity.

Love sees far, overcoming both distance and time. When love holds us near, we perceive a sense of the timeless. For when we hold near to our love it hold us near to Itself. All lasting things are preserved by it.

In its embrace, our spirits are quickened. And in this prayer, brothers and sisters, we mean to encounter that embrace.

To be in love is to be aware. To be aware is to be alive.

I hope it helps.

---<--@

Let us pray for the victims of the recent earthquake in New Zealand and for peace in Libya.

Mabuhay ang Pilipinas! God bless us all.