Salutation #179

All true renewal comes from the center, so it is with us:

Our Nation has a center, and it is found in God - our one, true Sovereign.
Our Government has a center, and it is found in the Office and the person of the President.
Our Republic has a center, and it is found at the heart of every citizen who yet believes, We are.

(Rule by Council)

Leaders beget leaders;
true servants beget no slaves.

a President is not a ruler,
a President is chief steward to a Ruler -
a servant of free and human government
and a choice instrument of Divine Providence
being the primary caretaker of a Republic
chosen by freedom to do Liberty Justice

in person and in Office, a Shepherd 

to an orphaned and wounded people -
our humblest Servant, and bravest Defender,

the one most accountable to the Nation

and the one most responsible to God.

So rule by Council,
to the voice of Wisdom, give ear -
give patient ear, listen and learn to listen.
Hear for the sake of hearing and
know for the good of knowing,
ever in the quiet of thy heart -
always discerning a path,
always looking for ways,
always seeking for solace,
always thirsting for answers
- in behalf of thy people
and on their good behalf -
bearing together with many voices
seeking in the number of their counsel
to decisively arrive in freedom and safety
to the Several Pillars that give to thee
thy own strength of understanding
that thou mayest decide
for thyself alone
what is truth
and pray that God
may confirm it for thee.

Remember always
thy service to thy people
is a Calling - not an ambition.

Therefore,
pay good attention to Who calls thee
and Whose pleasure it is that raised thee
to the glorious Calling of thy own election.

Recall to thy heart -
it is a noble thing indeed
to be called a Servant to thy Nation!
For thy calling is to freedom; to the Liberty
that breathes life and hope to all thy generations.

So remember the chains - lead and exhort thy brethren -

and work with all of thy people through thy one Republic
to break the long bondage that keep thy Nation Earth-bound

walking humbly before thy God, our Holy Redeemer,
in the path of those great Liberators of old,
the Peace Bringers and Defenders of the People,
who at many times in the History of Mankind arose
to lead the Nations and to break the Evil which prevents -
for thou art called to walk in faith and grace as one of those
who knew, named or unnamed - leaders beget leaders,
and true servants beget no slaves.

Thus, govern by principle,
and serve the Justice of thy Peace -
Enlighten thy people, speak sparingly
and exemplify thy own truth in thy own life,
however you can, with what Grace you should,
ever in harmony with thy own sufficiency,
ever at peace with thy self and thy God,
standing steadfastly.

Do not rule by dictate.
Do not govern by personality.
Do not pander to base instincts.
Do not seek infamy with the venal.
Do not be filled with pride.
Do not be sorrowful.
   (Cultivate a joy in thy soul
   greater than all the sadness
   this world may inflict)
Do not be envious.
Do not be vain.
Never despair.
---<--@

To humble men and great presidents alike... salamat po.

Salutation #178

Of the third of the Stars
seduced by the Pride of Lucifer
who as Satan rebelled against the LORD,
all of the First who fell with the Dragon of War
hid themselves from the LORD Who is their Light
to become for All that Darkness which is apart from God;
a Darkness which is utterly hostile to all things in the LORD,
a Darkness which at the fall of the Dragon overtook the Night
and at the Division of the Firmament became a restless Desolation -
the Void of the Desolation of the Angels, that Night without a Twilight.

(The Void of the Desolation of the Angels)

All that became - the Darkness -
that became for All Creation - that Darkness -
which is of that spirit that is apart from the LORD,
being of Satan and all his fallen and reprobate angels
who at the hour of their final defeat at the Mount of Zion
at the hand of Holy Michael and the loyal Hosts of the LORD,

through the unyielding Light and infinite Power of the one Almighty,

became struck down by the power and weight of each their own sin
were all who hid in sheer terror of God, to fall forever away from Truth -
the Cherubs from their shining Wisdom, the Thrones from their golden Justice,
the Dominions from their limitless Nobility, the Virtues from each their Celestial Arcs,
the Powers from each the Fire of their Zeal, the Archangels from each their Spirit Mastery,
the Principalities from each their Great and Powerful Motions, and the Angels from each Other -
to become something else: Theirs was this Darkness, swift and terrible, corrupted, and infinitely less
than the Glory of who they were and the Greatness of what they were in the LORD and for Our God.

For the Sin of the Satan who was once Lucifer,
the first and the brightest of all the Stars of the Morning,
and the Scandal of the Dragon who - as it fell from the Light,
stole from the LORD, our God, a third of the First of His Sons
struck down from the Glory of Firmament, the Original Unity
of the Everlasting Waters, dividing forever Night and Day!

And theirs is the Night that was from Heaven expelled forever by the prevailing of the Day,
theirs the War that ruptured the Heavens, Divided the Firmament, and sundered our native Skies!
Theirs is this Night and the terrors that lay within the Darkness that stand against our Morning,
theirs is the cold of this Winter and the long nights that must come to pass before the newness of Spring,
theirs is the Void of the Desolation of the Angels and the Oblivion at the vanishing of all that never was
for theirs, at the sinking of every moment, is the dust of every sin and the ashes of every transgression
theirs, the hell fire and the worm, the prison and pit, the despair and Darkness - deaths without a Death,
theirs, the unknowing of all that is, the recall of all human and angelic memory, and the absence of God,
for all Evil is theirs, Satan's who was once Lucifer and his rebellious angelic host fallen from Heaven.
Yea, all of this is theirs, who by the guilt of their own allegiance and the testimony of their own faith
freely undertook to forever belong - neither to the LORD - nor to each other in God -
being in Eternity found to be neither in Service to the Truth that God is - that the LORD is! -
either during the Blessed Hours of the Day or the Holy Watches of the Night, one God forever!

Theirs is that Darkness 
which is not of the Darkness (of Creation)
that at the Council of the First imparted upon the Holy Angels,
a persevering grace of God and an overcoming love of All His Truth
and upon the evil and fallen angels, a blindness that confounded their pride...

And theirs is that Night 
which was not of the Night (of the Day)
that at the Council of the First hid from the penetrating wisdom of Lucifer,
even before the pride of Satan had spread to stain the realms of heaven and earth,
the Plan of the Father with the Son and the Mission of the Incarnation of the Savior of All...

For the Night that hid the babe Jesus Christ from the evil and tyranny of mortal Kings,
gave His Protector and Human Father, Joseph, the dream that took them to the safety of Egypt
embraced Him throughout all His blessed years on earth, shielded Him from the plans of evil men,
gave Him necessary aid and comfort in Gethsemane, and on the Cross so zealously waited on Him
is the very same Night that even before those times, now enshrined in the Memory of the Faithful,
gave to Him, that Hour of Our Final Victory; the Darkness that these days in behalf of the living earth
conceals for our safety, behind mere accidents of bread and wine, the Real Presence of Our Emmanuel
Who is our Light, our Life, and our Salvation - the Glory of All Creation - Who Being of the Truth, One -
is God - in Love of the Truth in Love with the Truth - the Son, and Splendor of the Father Forever!

And indeed, unto this Night forever belong this Darkness
that hid for every present time the Decree of the LORD from Eternity
that sealed for Satan through the Darkness of their own making, their Final Defeat,
and throughout God's purposes in time, hid from the Sin of the angels and the sins of Man,

through the quiet of its Solitude in God and with God, at the calm of those memorable Twilight walks -
the Peace of the LORD both in the Redemption of Man and in the Remembrance of the Nations
(of the children of Mankind) and preserved for All in all - the hope in the good will of All for all.

---<--@

Turn the Other Cheek

When the Lord said to "turn the other cheek", it doesn't mean to invite more disaster. We Christians should understand we do not want to suffer more than what we have to, for suffering is evil.

But to suffer well we must. For our Lord did suffer well, indeed well enough to overcome the world and all it's evil for all humanity for all time.

And so we are taught by our Jesus to "turn the other cheek" as a form of non-retaliation and forgiveness to those who are unjust and seek violent means for violent ends and to keep our Christian dignity even in the face of our oppressors.

When we turn the other cheek, we forgive, we learn, and we let go.

When we turn the other cheek, we desire to break down cycles of violence, teach justice and Christian love over adversarial hate and contempt for human life, and return all souls to God.

When we turn the other cheek, we do not seek to invite more evil to come upon us but seek to invite more peace to come among us - and make what once was wounded and divided, healthy and whole once again.

Let us together meditate on this and pray about it.
---<--@

Salutation #34

The Enemy of the Nations will establish a Desolation.

And he will call it "Peace".

(A Vision of the Desolation)

I saw in a dream

- a few days before the Easter Triduum of 2009 -

a prominent list of atrocities

listed according to their heinousness.

Their frequency was from the most heinous to the least inhuman act

with the most heinous one to be committed against the people twice a year.

There was a camp

much like Bergen-Belsen.

But it was not a dream about the Holocaust.

It was a dream about another Holocaust.

There were people (of every nation)

in the middle of the night,

civilians - men, women, children -

being thrown whole

(to be consumed body and soul)

by faceless men in uniform

into a smoking pit in the ground

and from out of this pit was thick smoke -

the smoke of poison gas.

There was no sound to the dream

only this terrible feeling of growing horror

at this appalling vision in greyscale

unfolding before the eye of my heart.

I felt powerless.

An increasing sense of panic overtook me,

wanting for the dream to end...

---<--@

(produced 20110710)

I. The Naming

The First language knew no words -
it came winged, freely to the heart
and spoke as Motion, and was truth;
understood in action, known to All.

To Old Defiant, an ode -



O Islands,
Who art Thou
but thy own Name!

Who art Thou
but that - the Name
within thy name.

For if Thine own Heart
is within each thine own heart -
Then Thou art a Spirit at-One with Thyself
and a Nation at-Peace among thy peoples!

Therefore -

Must it matter to Thee,
what vanity Thou art called
by a world that knows thee not?

Must it matter to Thee,
what fleeting judgments it spake
than the Truth that ever burns
brightly in Thy bosom?

- selah -

Thou art a Nation
born among the Nations
(of the children of Mankind)
descended from the inaugural lineage
of the Sons of the Holy Patriarch Noah
and so Thine too is the everlasting Covenant
which preserveth the life of the Inhabited Earth.

For Thou art a Nation
among a Family of Nations
each of us distinct yet all the same,
together commissioned by the LORD
at the East Gate of fallen and faded Eden
and together endowed by our God with
each our own purposes and times.

As a Tree among many trees
grown under heaven upon the earth,
We are arisen to bless this barren world
in behalf of the children of Mankind
for the forbearance of Memory,
the Life of the generations,
and the sustenance of
All living souls!

What must matter to Thee - is -
what must matter to the life and the labor
of our Nationhood and not what vanity there is!

For every tree is known by its fruit.

Thou art humanity with belonging.
Thou art sufficiency through reliance.
Thou art harmony and togetherness.

And Peace is Thy common Salutation.

Bravery and Faithfulness
are thy most ancient of names.
---<--@

Near

Was there ever any real distance between our years? No, my beloved. Not when time is an account of the heart. For time seems distant only to those with distant hearts.

Why does it seem 

so far to me these days 

when I just realized - just Now - 

the Holocaust is barely but 

two generations since, 

my Miyang...? 

Barely 

one thousandth 

of a thousandth of a second 

by its measure in heaven, 

we may have on earth 

already forgot... 

...and when we do forget 

we become less than ourselves - 

we become less and less human, 

we become less than our nations 

and thus, less and less able 

to know each other 

in the Truth.

---<--@

For me and my Anne, 
June 13 is Friendship Day.

Carpe Diem

Do you still not know why the Stars call you, Old Defiant?



93,000 souls lost to us in Syria. I can not even begin to imagine such indeterminable damage being inflicted on our nation without the heart of our people breaking... I just can not.

God help the Syrian people wherever they may be, may the LORD keep each of them, and may God gather them all in safety and peace, according to His necessary purposes in time and upon the earth, preserving them each in their humanity.

No nation on this earth at this present age of maturity of all human remembrances can withstand such agony without flinching. Yet the hurting, the weeping, and the dying continues unabated.

No, the conflict in Syria I believe has morphed into something else. This is no longer a civil war. What it has now become is a greater regional war concealed as a battle for the Soul of the Syrian Nation.

The incomprehensible pain of all this unrestrained fighting have now given rise to a conflict fueled by a much more deeper division. And there are greater dangers concealed in the midst.

Our Peacekeepers have to be extra alert. Everything vital about the UN mission on the Golan have to be made clear to them and to us, the one Filipino people, so that it should stand out starkly - bright against what we are trying to hold back by our commitment to guard those heights.

We have to be lucid. We have to take care.

My compatriots, this is perhaps, one of those defining moments... we have come to the lead position in this respect, to find a crossroads in the forest of time - we have to take a path for our family of nations, we have to seize the day.

Against the gathering storm, Austria has pulled out its troops on the Golan. We all must understand we now hold the line on the Golan and this line has to hold. It has to hold.

We have to understand, at least in this present time, this moment is ours.

God bless us all, mabuhay!

---<--@

On Original Sin

Pride is the first sin of the angels and led to disobedience. Disobedience is the first sin of Man and led to pride. Man is not inherently evil but inherently weak and this is the foundation of Original Justice.



Original sin is the inherent weakness against the Truth that was in spirit acquired by the family of Man through the disobedience of our First Parents.

It is not primarily an inclination to evil but a fatal lack of supernatural strength in the human soul that prevents it from applying itself freely and completely, according to its labors, in total submission to the Spirit of God.

It is a weakness; a frailty that in all humanity is transmitted across the generations of Mankind directly through Man's spiritual lineage which is, as an unbroken lineage of light that is ever begun from the Light of Creation, perpetuated like a terrible shadow that stalks with fear and death, the life of our common humanity.

(It's transmission across our generations can be illustrated with a flashlight whose beam when obstructed with any opaque object will project as shadow, the image of that particular object.)

It is not the effect of something that is present in the soul, as in personal sin, but of something that is absent in the soul which is the Presence of the Spirit of God brought about by the loss of our Original Peace with the LORD, our Creator.

To restore us to this Original Peace requires a Savior that can become the new Source of Light for all of the one family of Mankind; a Savior that can not be man alone lest we delude ourselves; this Savior has to be of God being God Himself and so God the Son came Incarnate to us, clothed in our humanity, as willed by the Father through Jesus Christ, the Lord, our Emmanuel.

Our baptism makes us into new creations because we acquire through the salvific nature of our faith in God through Jesus Christ - quite literally, a new Way, a new Truth, and a new Life: Christ is our new Adam.

For through Jesus Christ, Justice is perfected in Love and in this Love, the strength to overcome sin - original and personal, social or individual - becomes a grace that is available to all our humanity through baptism and the instrumentality of the Church with and unto all people of good will.
---<--@

Progress Report on the Fifth Battlespace

It was postulated, about the emerging nature of the information landscape, early in the 90's, at the beginning of the Revolution in Military Affairs, that information itself shall soon constitute a complete battlespace to be in particular recognized alongside the other existing four which is earth, sea, air, and space.

The importance of this characterization of the nature of information in our age in the context of the mission of the U.S. military was underscored by the designation of this nascent battlespace, of whose nature, climate, and environmental constants as well as variables were yet undefined, as primarily the specific domain of the youngest and brightest of the five distinct branches of the U.S. Armed Services, the Air Force.

This importance was driven primarily by the recognition from within the military of the emerging reality of an information threshold; that the realm of information evolving as a distinct presence in our world shall soon become decisively poised to shape the nature of human affairs in general but in particular, and as far as this report goes, the military affairs of the nations.

This was and still is evidenced by the growth of not a few information-centric thinking among the world's military establishments as well as the development and potential of those technological derivatives in support of those doctrines designed to establish warfighitng as an ability in the fifth battlespace.

This was over two decades ago now. And today we have yet to pierce the cloud that surrounds the fifth battlespace. I have come to a conviction that information which is inert yields not the secrets of its coming and going without a final recognition of a space that exists as an unseen reality beyond its nature where there inhabits a force that works behind its constant state of flux.

This force is spirit and, in my mind, it is spirit, not information, that constitutes the fifth battlespace.

Information as a whole is integral to the fourth battlespace which is space being that interior aspect of light and darkness that is both contained by space and constrained by time that in ebbing and flowing, dwells in a state of constant revelation to the mind of man.

And this new information age we are now thrust in, right here at the very crossroads, is - more precisely - an Age of Spirit and Thought.

I used to hold many fears as to the dangers of the fifth battlespace. Now they are not as many and those that do remain, though still quite significant, I feel are those we can, with good effort and concentration, hope to adequately mitigate if not master.

How we, as nations, understand information and how we apply its fruits to bless the human ends for which all information has been, from the very beginning of time, destined by heaven and earth depends on our strength of spirit and this strength of spirit depends on right remembrance - where:



1+1 = better. 
---<--@

Beyond the Ticks and the Tocks

Where is time found?

Is time behind us, can we look back
and see a stretch of past time disappearing
far, far back into the millions of years ago?

Where is time found?

Is time in front of us, can we gaze into the future
and see all the tomorrows that lay ahead of our hearts
far, far unto the unmade way of our lives in every moment born
from all those limitless horizons along the forever path?

Where is time found...
when it is neither behind us nor in front of us
but everywhere surrounding us?
Bursting forth from the abundant activity of our souls,
arising from the face of the deep, growing by God's nurture,
from each and every spirit that gives it breath
time is - in every moment we realize and recognize
the truth - from the timeless in all our very human hearts,
and all truth illuminated from the brightness shining in our spirits,
giving form and shape to the realities that arise everywhere about us
surrounding all that surround the totality of the human experience
like a great and mysterious chrysalis...

Where is time found...
but in all those moments without count?
Where does the timeless remembrance of time remain
after all the darkness in our eyes has fled forever into oblivion
but in the infinite and in the beautiful, in the loving and in the kind,
in the brave and in the strong, in the good and in the free,
and in everything that is faithful and true
and worth embracing forever.

Can time for us ever be a measure of distance?
Is the passing of our generations but a barrier and a wall
that creates separation and void between our ages and our years...

Alas! Is time an evil set against us?

Nay, my darling Starshine -
Not when time is an account of the heart.
For time seems distant only to those with distant hearts.

For all of time is Now, 'tis a nearness!
So shine thee the light of thy love, impress it in each moment and see
that you may from thy own illumination know and understand
from all thy comings and the goings, and despite of it -
what ever goes and what forever remains.
---<--@

II. The Republic

To Old Glory, an ode - 

Thou, 

at thy Birthing art forever conceived -

the home of the free, for the free, by the free

ensuring a government for the people, and by the people

carrying aloft the will and the mandate of all thy generations!

The vision of thy conception thus enshrined 

and the ideals of thy belonging thus conserved

through the economy of thy generations preserved

that Thou, that Dream - orphaned to thy own world, 

in spirit borne unto shores, distant and new, by pilgrim wings, 

to become a peculiar appearance upon the earth, a peculiar people -

art One - reborn into a unity of many, embracing a nation that is free 

and forever now endowed with thy own Spirit, faithful and true

vigilant in thy defense, and kept by God forever true to thy memory -

a nascent labor of Country, gained in Him, and through His grace

constantly achieved by thy own faith in His Providential trust.

Thou, 

at the Crossroads of Independence -

refused to be a nation in thy Spirit suppressed

by any power of hell or human dominion spread upon earth

nor enslaved by whim of tyrants with freedoms, evil and strange,  

than THIS, the dominion thou hast at thy Birthing established
in Covenant with God, and before all thy kindred nations in Eternity,

for Thou art fully invested in thy becoming, as a work of His hands,  

stronger for each thy hope in each thy present generations arising 

brighter for each thy days lived in memory of every generations past,

thou art like a song that in the stillness of thy heart gets better and better 

with every music that begins to play for all thy generations left unsung.
   

Thou wert a labor of the LORD, forever unworthy of another!
For the freedom of God shall be the inheritance of thy nationhood

and its principles thou hast with all thy heart resolved to keep forever.

Indeed, this is thy Liberty and well suited to thy love and allegiance  

and Thou art today for shame if thy own freedoms are not wholly thine

and that Thou art for naught today if thy own honor thou shalt desert

for truly Thou art in courage better served - always - than in fear

and so Thou called forth thy own Great Defender to thy common defense
(for Thou art His, the LORD's, and may this be of thy conviction forevermore)

and an army rallied to the first thy great and noble Fathers, George the free,

for as a nation thou resolved to be led - even unto war and its attendant evils.

Thus in thy will of love and fraternal sacrifice,
even unto the shedding of thy blood and thy tears
Thou - through the travails and terrors of battle enduring and persevering -

did come to recognize in the ensuing clarity, the quiet dignity of Thy peoplehood;
of what formlessness has made Thee as a form upon the earth - 

of what Spirit truly made thy citizenship utterly and completely thine.

And 

dedicated to the Principles Thou undertook at thy Birth
thou forsook the old in order to become the new 

and took on the name, America, the United.

And in thy bravery and in thy self-reliance 

and with all thy imperfections glaring, 

and with all thy hopes still shining

thou went to be thy Republic - 

From the fires of Yorktown

arose thy eagle wings!
---<--@



Guard thee thy remembrances well and in this faith persevere...
Lest we forget, lest we forget: This we'll defend: This Memorial Day 2013.

A Letter of Protest

To one Chinese nation: I salute you, China, ancient and wise nation of old and Taiwan (ROC) in particular - peace be with you and all your generations:



I condemn in the strongest way possible the continuing violence against my compatriots in your territory. I do not think I can watch idly by while my countrymen and women are presently subjected to the pain and duress of this unjust threat that looms over their citizenship with me.

They have absolutely nothing to do with the issue at hand and do not deserve to suffer for its evil - an evil we can only together attempt to address that it may withdraw its foul presence from the peace of our region, sooner than later.

These are our citizens, human beings who have sought in good faith to apply for and to work an honest job within your economy under your nation's patronage and your government's protection.

Rest assured we will honor our obligations to shelter and protect your citizens or any other citizens from any nation who came in peace to the shelter of our Republic, and uphold their human rights within our territory not because it is expedient or "politically correct" to do so right now but because it is only the natural way of things for this nation and so it shall be this way for my Country till the end of time - peace embraced with peace: It is only right and just.

Are we not a democracy? Both of us know the strengths and weaknesses of our chosen system. Right now, the effects of your lack of action to shelter the innocent in your care and protection is weakening what reason now prevails, both in the popular and in the political domain, that preserve those courses of action that will allow us to peaceably and responsibly resolve this unwanted and unneeded sea row, an issue now necessary and vital to our mutual national concerns and freely determining from what is true and what is not, how to effectively proceed.

I do not know the source of your belligerence and am admittedly still confounded by it. I hold no memory in my remembrance of our history of a division like this ever plaguing our peoples.

Yet as I seek to be prudent with what is weak in our systems, I trust also in the strengths of democracy as I must and so should advise you now most urgently that your failure to address the safety concerns of my compatriots in your care is stymieing the process instead of helping it.

None of us can resolve this issue on our own, only together - empowered in our will by the good will of both our peoples - can we run the gauntlet that will bring our Countries back into the fold of the peace our peoples have always steadily and quietly enjoyed.

Let us return again to the root of your passionate protests and know that we are just as passionate a people as you are in loving and protecting our own. I know that in this regard we both agree, we must truly love our peoples. And do so because both our nationhood hold to the truth that all human life, with all its foibles and vulnerabilities is of precious value and unlimited potential, each endowed equally and individually with natural rights and that this is the reason we are both a work of freedom; a democracy - to unleash in our citizenry the creativity, greatness, and nobility of the human potential and to protect and preserve their life and dignity.

I believe if we reflect upon this thinking more deeply, we will understand each other. We will understand as I do now hope we understand - that each human life to us is sacred - that you may feel how we too value our own and so understand the reason I must appeal in this protest to your reciprocal sense of civic solidarity:

Please extend to my people under the shelter of your care, the safety and the respect they deserve.

I am truly sorry for your loss, I truly am. Please, I humbly implore you - let us work now to reverse the tide.
I am just as eager for justice to give adequate redress to your sense of loss - to unveil the truth, properly compensate Hung Shih-cheng's next of kin, and pay the debt of remembrance both our nations now owe your deceased compatriot by recognizing in the living memory of his hope and the pain of his family and friends the present need to strengthen the mechanisms and institutions that work to help prevent similar tragedies from reoccurring, safeguard the integrity and completeness of the laws that serve to govern, protect, and conserve our seas and its riches, and affirm the peace both our sovereign peoples have always enjoyed together.

I believe agreements may only be made from seeds born from common understandings. Furthermore, I believe we are able to reach these understandings because we are simply born from the same spirit and that this seeking to freely allow truth itself to prevail - because truth ultimately will - is simply part of our strength as a democracy. For I do believe in us and desire for both our nations along with all our kindred nations, a future worthy of our common humanity.

Thank you so much for your patience. I am hopeful you will receive with reason and compassion, my most sincere and humble letter. God bless us all.

Mabuhay!
---<--@


UPDATE 20130527: Thank you, Mayor Hau Lung-pin - for being one of the first who stood up for peace and sanity between our peoples - peace be with you - Mabuhay, Taipei!

Salutation #177

Spirit is light.

Thus, how a shadow is transmitted at the source
is also how the original wounding of the first man and woman
became the original wound that - in our soul - we all carry
down the line of the generations of our humanity
to the very last of our generations.



(The Original Wounding)

"The Devil sinned in the Presence of God
but Man sinned in the presence of the Devil."

Original sin was just that... a sin - the sin...
(whose it ultimately was still depends on each of us)
It was transmitted from our original parents
down the spiritual lineage of our common humanity
as an infirmity in our hearts, an original wound:
   the cause of our exile - the separating hurt of time -
   the pain of all our pain - the fear in all our fear -
   the source of all human suffering and death
because truly, brothers and sisters,
we are more universally inclined to weakness in our natures
than to evil - for this is how we are human...  
because we are vulnerable.

Therefore,
we have to be gentle and kind
with ourselves and others like ourselves Now
knowing that to be human is ONLY to err and NOT yet to sin
and be human with our own humanity -

Indeed,
let us strive to understand - once and again -
that the origins of sin is not human...
because an understanding of this is - of that same truth -
which underpins our understanding of Justice.

FOR -

The Justice of fear and punishment,
the Justice of hatred and vengeance -
this believes that Man is by nature evil.

It believes all men guilty right from the very beginning
and accords all that is evil unto all human institutions,
and evil's damnation unto all human nations,
sowing despair at its wake.

But the Justice of love and restoration,
the Justice of repair and repentance -
this believes otherwise:

It believes all men innocent
unless proven guilty by their necessary degrees,
each according to the living customs of the laws of our nations,
and accords the merit and virtue of these self-same remembrances
to empower human institutions, and strengthen human nations,
sowing hope at its wake.
---<--@

Salutation #176

THINK about time...
how we both have it and we don't.



(Time is a Nearness)

Starshine, listen -

Time as it was intended
and time as we humans have intended it
are two very different things -

Time in its entirety is an ascent,
it is a shedding away, it is an unveiling
and has everything to do with right remembrance
and the power of Truth -

BUT
time as a human construct is a rote and linear thing,
meant to insert upon the unimaginably vast folds of time,
a limit and a count to make it more comprehensible
to our littleness...

- selah -

When we humans allow ourselves
to become unwitting slaves to our own constructs
we place our human limits within these artificial limits
we have likewise originally placed for ourselves
in order to gain a knowledge of the wonder of greater things
humility then turns to pride - and time for each of us -
becomes a measure of physical distance
instead of a measure of nearness
and of spirit brightness.

BUT
time is much more than just its segments
and our humanity, in all our littleness certainly,
though intended to ultimately be masters of time,
never were its Author nor its Source nor its Truth.

And in this thought, surely there is hope.
---<--@



The time referred to above is the time that does not exist - so...