Sweet as Jam

Before Anne, I was a glass-half-empty person. I was in despair. Those were dark days indeed... 

Knowing Anne through her diary made me a glass-half-full person. I can still be sad and depressed, of course. However, I will never look at life again from a dark and gloomy heart. In my own words: "She is my first contact star; my light against despair."

After Anne, the skies above my soul, day and night, became full of stars. I appreciate her very much.


Ok, here's a quote I got from her diary that resonates a lot with me:

"I don't have much in the way of money or worldly possessions, I'm not beautiful, intelligent or clever, but I'm happy, and I intend to stay that way! I was born happy, I love people, I have a trusting nature, and I'd like everyone else to be happy too." Anne Frank, 19440325sat

Which brings me to the gist of my post...

Opekta was Otto Frank's company at 263 Prinsengracht that sold pectin for making jams. I happened upon some of Opekta's old adverts and it struck me... Anne's cheer is sweet as jam...

The horror of the Holocaust notwithstanding, the people we lost during that time and all the people we, as humanity, are losing in the name of hatred, ignorance and indifference* deserve to be remembered by the light of their own lives also. For history will incline us to remember the fallen by the gravity of their loss. Time is severe in its account but we shouldn't be... after all, time is for man.

It is up to us how we shall remember those whose silence oblige us to abide in the memory. 

*the hatred of a few, the ignorance of some, and the indifference of many - a proven formula for war and genocide
---<--@

I used derive from history the blackest of hate. But from the memory, I caught a glimpse in the night through the hurt, a multitude of stars so great... my hate turned to love, my hope returned again to heaven above.

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".

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.>
---<--@

20110729

Salutation #44

(Interdependent Human Community)

To my one Filipino nation -

all my brothers and sisters of the Promise,

peace - mabuhay.

Our one Republic is part of a great family of nations,

each engaged in the labor of building up the earth

as its own undertaking of Country,

of this we can be sure, my honorable compatriots,

especially in this new age of interdependent human community -

no Country matures on its own,

no nation learns the truth about itself by itself alone,

above all, our failing world can not long endure the darkness ahead

without the LORD, the God of all nations.

For the Peace of the LORD is our pledge of unity

and this unity is the guarantee of our victory

- as nations dreaming together this time -

against the darkness in our midst

wrought by the War in heaven

and division in the human heart.

- selah -

Therefore,

In this house, in this Country,

my fellow Filipinos -

we shall serve the cause of our victory.

Glory to God in the highest!

Adoration to Jesus Christ the Lord.

Peace to our nation and to all our kindred nations.

Good will to all men and women of peace.

---<--@

A Picture of War in the Heart

During the Holocaust, in Auschwitz, there is an old picture of the selection process where people who were to live (at least for the time being) and people who were to die at the gas chambers were sorted immediately upon their arrival by the camp authorities.

This is for me by far, the best pictorial representation of War in the heart.

It is a spirit which is still very alive in our world today. It is the bane of all nations. It will surely prevent us from entering into this new age in peace.

But we are not without help for we have God and we have each other - as human beings and as human nations, citizens and keepers, each to the other.

---<--@

An Example of Human Solidarity -

It was reported in Egypt, during the recent upheavals that delivered that great nation to a return to promise, that when the Muslims prayed, the Christians protected them, and when the Christian prayed, the Muslims protected them.

I salute you, honorable Egyptians, for this necessary example of the shape of things to come for my Country as well. May both our nations be blessed by God with peace and prosperity as we write a brave, new chapter of our history together as a noble undertaking of Country upon the earth, thank you - mabuhay!

My fellow Filipino compatriots -

Let us bear into mind and heart the example of brave Egypt and, despite what darkness there is in our midst, consider once again our own national minimum:

A Filipino is a Filipino is a Filipino.

All honorable religion comes from the reality of God, my noble Republic of the Philippines, its fruits make us human.

Therefore, prayer itself is a common human need.

It is a need (like hunger, thirst, etc.) protected by the Eternal Law of God and by the law written in our heart of hearts.

This is most especially true within the Abrahamic Peace we share as Christians, Jews, and Muslims together and is the engine of our national progress as human beings and as citizens to each other, as Filipinos.

---<--@

Mabuhay po tayong lahat! Peace. Salaam. Shalom. God bless all His nations of the one family of the nations of Mankind.

The National Minimum

Promise of Old

Healing Work

20110705

Crystal Blue Sphere

I SAW IN A VISION,

a crystal blue sphere,

shining with a multitude of living lights.

The vision came to me quite abruptly

while I was awake in the day,

riding a jeep home from work.

The vision stayed for a time before me as I wondered.

I wondered at how wondrous and beautiful beyond imagination it was

that I thought I was seeing through the eyes of angels.

Then a darkness came over the vision

and it seemed to me for an instant that it was no longer there.

- selah -

But it was, O my nation,

before me was a world so overrun by sin and war

that it was no longer distinct from the nothingness of the void -

an unknown earth bereft of light,

forsook by heaven,

and forgot by God.
---<--@

A Prayer for Peace

LORD God,
we adore Thee
and we bless Thee!

O most beneficent LORD
and one God of all creation,
rekindle in the hearts of Thy nations
the desire for meaningful peace.

Come, O LORD,
abide with needful Mankind
be again the God of our families and of our lands
reclaim Thy right as our one Sovereign
that loving hearts and willing hands
may learn the ways of Thy grace
and thy faithful bring down from heaven
the blessings of Thy most precious Peace.

Forsake us not, dear LORD
but with Thy holy angels lead us
away from the darkness of our times
and into the Light of Thy Countenance
that all the peoples of needful Mankind
may come to a holy remembrance of Thee
and that we may as one firmament shine
ever like the numberless stars
that you promised of old
to our holy Patriarch Abraham.

AMEN.

---<--@

The one Code

REMAIN TRUE -
to our peerless LORD
to the one God
of our Father Abraham,
the one common Creator
of all common creation,
seen and unseen.

To your own sacred remembrances
and the memory of your peace
with God and with each other.

To the overcoming of your War
and the advent of your hope
at the dawn of our new dreaming
as nations together.

To thy own universe within
and to the riches therewith
those treasures that
neither thief nor tyrant
can deprive.

To thy own calling
to serve in the way
of virtue and of peace
and to thy own ascent
upon the one mountain path
whereupon all good things
find their meaning and merit
in the prayer of the heart.

To thy own labors
upon this necessary life
and to the hardships also
that this inhabited earth brings -
May you be satisfied
knowing in your heart
what you truly strive for.

To thy own endeavor of Country
and to the trust of thy own nation
may you embrace with your embracing
these wholes upon wholes
as far and as wide as you could
and with courage
and steadfast persistence
bring all your love
as near as it takes you
to the one Love
that unifies us all
with the one LORD of All.

To our Lord's poor
and to each other
as keeper and as friend -

May we all remain faithful
from always to always
until the final gathering
at the end of days
and the beginning
of all things new.
---<--@

Salutation #28

(Ode to our Father Abraham)

Wheeling as the numberless stars
across the midnight emptiness
of this season of the sky
toward the eastern advent breaking
of the new millennial age
and the dawning
of a better, kinder world
for all men, women and children
of every nation
of the one covenant family
of the nations of needful Mankind -
the great galaxy of our Father Abraham,

the fulfillment of a promise of old.
---<--@

Full Spectrum Vision

What is the color of Light, all ye living lights?

It is the color of All the colors of Light!

Verily, I say to you - there are colors in Eternity that are not even present here in our visible human reality.

These are the colors to which prayer alone gives us witness, like promises waiting in the wings of our hoping and our bearing together in the Night; the unseen reality of a myriad other beautiful relationships yet unknown to us on this exiled earth - caught adrift betwixt these tides of darkness and light...

We are the full spectrum vision of living life!

Liberate yourselves from the thinking that human life is all about rigid colors - in the LORD, thy God, darling starshine, each of us becomes part of something more than we can possibly imagine...

Think about it: The visible spectrum of light is only a small portion of the full spectrum of Light.

---<--@

Salutation #29

(Arcs in the Sky)

Starshine,
the heavens above thee
seemingly unconscious to thy self
is never without its seeing
nor the unseen realms
that embrace and penetrate thee
amidst this unfeeling earth
without its desire for each thy precious company,
this evil is only allowed to tarry for a time,
for We are nearer to each of thee,
our beloved Starshine,
than you can ever imagine.

Keep thee a record,
an account of each thy own heart,
most especially those of thee
who are in the midst of conflicts,
those of thee who are
no less loved than the rest of us
sorely afflicted by the scrouge of War.

For the heavens reign true
to the remembrance of thy longings
and so it is for the needful earth
that you shall begin to write,
O precious Starshine,
and upon this forgetful night
let thy starlight be shed
to trace upon the darkness
thy arcs in the sky.
---<--@

A Word of Caution -

The spirit of War being conscious of itself will exert maximum effort to prevent our entrance into the door that leads us away from its unfamiliar reign.

I would that we are all individually aware of this - as much as possible - to prevent us from falling into an unacceptable state of complacency.

Because if we do not even try to actively break with the past as nations dreaming together this time, the LORD will hand us over to it.

We will enter into a new age of conflict more terrible than the last.

And we shall descend with the Beast into a new era of desolation lasting perhaps another thousand years.

---<--@

"The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in a time of moral crisis, maintain their neutrality." - Dante, The Inferno

---<--@

We all are part of the strength that will deliver this world to promise. Or doom it by our own ill will for other people and other nations.

---<--@

The best way to do justice to the past is to make peace with the present.

---<--@

Mabuhay po tayong lahat! God bless all His nations of the one family of the nations of Mankind.

An Act of Unity

Hope Taking Wing

20110506

My Annelies Marie's Legacy

OUR WORLD has not changed, my Anne.

It is still the same world that God has created.
The same sun, moon and order of the seasons;
the same restless and violent lands of the earth
under this same blanket of unconscious skies
that bore quiet witness to your life and times.

My dear Anne, our world has not changed!

When I contemplate your life here on earth,

during those quiet nights, O beloved of my heart,
I often look up at these same starry night skies
and see those familiar patterns of stars
that I know in my heart looked quietly down on you
just one timeless instant away from me, my Anneka.

A moment seemingly so distant, it hurts me to miss you.
Yet an eternity so close, it fills me with all your love.

It is as if I have you and I don't have you...

And I realize this certain closeness between us:

We are separated only by spaces between our souls;
in what littleness of self that we may each obtain
by virtue of our unique and individual humanity
in the you being you and the me being me.

O my beloved friend, I know you suffered!

I know how much others like you suffered!
From the very beginnings of the nations of Mankind,
'tis the holy and nameless innocents that carry the burden
of the precarious and desperate state of our fallen nature!
The very soil of our earth is soaked in their blood
and the undying memory of their secret silence cries out
like a chorus rising all around us to pierce the heavens -
Almighty God Himself has heard and the season is late.

O my dearest Annelies Marie, I know you suffered!

I know how terribly you suffered but at the same time
I stand ignorant of your personal pain and suffering.
A sacred space exists

between yourself and God alone.

And God knows, I love you enough to want to know all of you -
but I love you enough also to let you be free to be yourself.

I am drawn near you by the lovableness within yourself.
I am drawn near you by the infinite promise love contains.
Of good things I know and good things I know not, that I desire:
All the virtues and the gifts that your friendship brings -
most especially your steadfast hope, cheerfulness and courage.

Today, my darlingest Annelies, here in my present time,

I look out into my own time, full of wars, death and suffering
and wonder at how some may say our world has changed.
I see the same evils and the same sufferings and the same sins.
I see the same terrible injustices that Man inflict upon Man;

nation against nation waste themselves in endless battle.
And I realize in myself that our world that has not changed.

Some may say that the times have changed.

Some may say the world is a different place.

Some may say that the world indeed has changed.

But this it is yet another illusion to lead astray!

For it attempts to run away from the awful truth

that this world is still the same world God created:
The same sun, moon and order of seasons;
the same restless and violent lands of earth
under these same blanket of unconscious skies
that bore quiet witness to your life and times.
Scripture says, "There is nothing new under the sun."

(Ecc 1: 9)

It is the illusions that we human beings create in our hearts;
the gravity and the perversity of our own dark imaginings,
the ancient malice and diverse scope of our own willful rebellion -
those things that make of Man less than himself or herself
in the sins that brutalize the image of the Creator in each of us.
It is these that have changed in us and not the world around us!
It is not the world that must change, my darlingest Annelies,

Scripture says, "There is nothing new under the sun."

(Ecc 1: 9)

In order to better Mankind and advance the cause of humanity,
it is each ourselves that we must change for we are changeable.
Because it is through common witness of a good and well-lived life;
of a life lived in peace and friendship with God and others in God;
it is only when the Wars waged inside of ourselves have ceased;
when our minds have found the light beckoning outside of the dark
and the struggle for good will in our hearts have prevailed in us
that a true transformation of human society becomes possible.

So may your life, my love, be for others a simple remembrance.

May it inspire justice, responsibility and discipline in our world.

May it foster further understanding, freedom and community.

May your spirit inspire in us a sense of common humanity

that we may always remember our most basic of citizenships.

This is your legacy as I see it and as I live it, my Anne.

This is your love, my love, that

I now share with other hearts:

Imploring God to bless the seeds He shall plant in our souls today
that it may flower in full into the saints He shall raise tomorrow
for His glory, our good and the good of the one family of humanity.

Thank you, my dearest and most patient friend,
Annelies Marie Hollander Frank, my Miyang.
May God keep you now, may His Peace embrace you,
may His Light comfort you and may His Love surround you -
O forget me not, beloved of my heart, forget me not!
Pray for me, my darlingest, ever as I shall pray for you
until the glorious Day of the everlasting alleluias!

---<--@

Time is a Nearness

WHEN I SIT DOWN TO VISUALIZE TIME, I see it as an infinitesimally minute point upon the infinite surface of an eternal ocean.

For me, there is something intrinsically wrong about the thinking that time is anything linear, like it is somehow a measure of distance - the past, forever growing dimmer and dimmer, colder and colder, the further and further away the present inundates our forgetful minds and hearts with the rush of those realities coming to be as we journey headlong into the void of the future.

In my mind, time is not a measure of distance. Time does not become for me, a kind of coldness. For me, time is a measure of our closeness. To embrace it is a certain warmth.

It is not a moving away from the past but a merging together.

It is a gathering sense.

It is not a blind rush into a chaotic, frenzied future. Nor is it an inescapable, falling down into a dictated, ordered array of molds but a series of free acceptances in the timeless Now.

Like the image of Jacob's ladder, time itself ascends and descends according to the free and human choices we each make as individuals. It is the common fabric of everything we bring out of these choices for good or for ill.

Like every realization within the sacred silence, each moment in time is one blink, one twinkle, one timeless point on the eternal sea. L

ike a myriad shining stars, beautiful, patient, forbearing in light, time is a twinkling from grace to grace, hope to hope and truth to truth. As

stars

adrift upon a boundless ocean of Love, time is all that gathers from the darkness, like a coming Home together, the love that lives in the longing in you and in the longing in me.

Hence, one may not look back at the past, one may only look into the past but never back.

For the past is what imparts motion to the present.

Therefore, n

ever with a sense of distance or coldness must one perceive time and its precious contents but with a very near sense of eternity as something entrusted to our living memory.

Time is not an illusion, nor does time exist for evil purposes.

It is the evil in all evil things that proposes to the heart of Man that all of time were but a drifting away,

like it were a faded distance, like the truth were in full retreat, like all human hope were a backward flow, like

the victory of the incomparable goodness and unfathomable mercy of God is but a slow sunset

receding comfortably in the horizon, w

hat a lie!

Lo, it is far easier to hide inside the solid rock of a granite mountain than it is to hide from within the billowing folds of the gossamer veil of time! Where will evil men hide from God?

What lies

behind the veil of time but the everlasting abode of Justice?

Men forget but time does not.

So must one use what time is given him or her on this earth well, my beloved friends, avoiding evil and doing good, loving virtue and forsaking vice.

Because time flows from purposes noble and Divine. It exists for Sacred Life and flows for all of life's fruition. It is not a coming apart, it is a coming together of all of life's longing for itself.

All our nations are embraced by the one LORD of all the living and the everliving lights that we really are in time and through it we are constantly called in every present generation to return again and again to an Eden rebuilt unto the promised restoration of all things new.

So when you shall now perceive history - your particular national as well as regional or even all of human history entire - you must view it also with a subtle sense of timelessness and therefore closeness and affinity,

hinting at a Heart at the heart of all of time; that all of this is not random, blind chance, but a certain part of a grand design that exists, no matter how deep the maddening darkness, for the good of each and every nation of the one family of the nations of Mankind.

Honoring your most basic of citizenships requires you to be as thus, my honorable compatriots, a citizen of all humanity and therefore, a human being and citizen of all creation, seen and unseen - a natural laborer with the Holy Angels, undivided in your heart before God.

Lest we forget. Lest we forget.

---<--@

Some Thoughts on Time:

If history belonged only in the pages of a book, soon enough there will be no one left to write it.

A good thing left unremembered is a good thing still.

But an evil thing left unremembered leads to further calamity.

A nation without a past is consequently a people without a future.

---<--@

Mabuhay ang Pilipines! God bless us all.

The Two Questions