Thursday, February 27, 2014

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.>
---<--@

Some Thoughts on the Bangsamoro



The Bangsamoro is a National Initiative: It is therefore, the concern of all Filipino citizens. It is an effort to evolve the ARMM and learn from its lessons - and make it work.

Mindanao is endowed with much abundance. But it is run like a frontier - 'tis a place ever awash in a sea of uncertainty, its communities trapped between the ebbing and flowing tides of random sky and restless earth - never seeming to be able to change to master change.

But the Island of Mindanao does not constitute our Southernmost frontier, in fact, it is a center of gravity of our Republic - it owns one of the three Foundation Stars that form our National sufficiency.

What is it that make us sufficient as a Nation?

Our Republic is not random nor blind. Neither is the Peace that it promises empty.

Our Republic is a shelter of Peace. Its labor with ours, as a Nation across our generations, is to constantly ensure that the sovereign will of our people rise above random sky and conquer restless earth.

To be sufficient as a sovereign and free people is to be capable of sustaining this Peace. Not as a product of  strings of random events, the whim of tyrants, or an obscure fate but as the sum of our free and independent choices.

Indeed, this ability to ponder "what we are" (being) and "who we are" (becoming) came at a high cost in personal sacrifice and heroic dedication. Let us always remember - to Remember them - and seek to know them by their names.

We have suffered too much indeed in our struggle for self-determination to abandon our common destiny. The Bangsamoro is a result of this realization. It is a deliberate National effort to re-establish a meaningful, durable Peace in Mindanao.

AND is one of the many processes now taking place - in our hearts and minds - to take back from the brink - the soul of our Country and the spirit of our Republic center. It is a process that along with (1) the National Rebuild in the Visayas, (2) the difficult fight against Corruption in Luzon, (3) the labor to balance the ecological promise of Palawan with our Energy needs and stabilize our western frontier constitute the four main areas - under the Eternal vigilance of Almighty God - wherein this Peace is likewise being advanced - on a broad front - all across our Nation.

PEACE which is not an absence of conflict but a return to the Memory - of what we are - and - of who we are - that we are a "we" and that as a "we", we have belonged forever. Peace which overturns War - that the life of our people may find rest - and the enemies of our Peace find only restlessness. Peace which is the truth of something real to love, something real to defend with a zeal that can never be lost or misplaced.

For we can no longer allow ourselves to be divided by the idols of chance or the gods of ignorance. For this Nation answers to God alone and this House (Republic) serves the LORD, the one Sovereign of all Nations, above and beyond all things, seen and unseen.

- selah -

The one constant that may be presumed from the nature of frontier areas are that they are always peripheral to the politics of the central government - this to our Republic represents a problem of perspective. In the political arena, this tragically mistaken sense have denied from many of our common generations, the abundance of Mindanao, spawning policies and laws self-prejudicial to the well-being of our Republic and detrimental to the common weal of our being as a National whole - past, present, and forever.

This near-sighted politics of the frontier exists as a constant challenge to competent Ambassadorship - for what is peripheral to the National consciousness and what is central to the International consciousness are almost always in need of political synchronicity as well as human reciprocity - and so as a rule, good Ambassadors are always good managers of frontier politics - from the center - transforming them in accordance with specific foreign policy goals and specified state interests.

And most certainly, Mindanao does not require an Ambassador from Luzon. What we need to do is to draw Mindanao into the Republic center - where the Island, its peoples, and its star rightfully belongs - equally - with Luzon and the Visayas. We can not do this without winning the Peace in Mindanao for we can not win back to our Republic center that vital Foundation Star by remaining with the rule of War.

- selah -

As a direct result of a misguided perspective, the Island is trapped in poverty. Its people never knowing the enabling peace of our Republic sky and the life of its communities never knowing the empowering Good will of our Nationhood.

Poverty is the lot of Man and the labor of the Nations is to overcome it. We are here to work to be happy and be free to be wealthy. Simply put, the labor of our coming together as a Nation upon this world is to become rich - both - in the more lasting spiritual as well as in the more immediate material (or temporal) sense.

Our Republic exists not only to establish Peace, but to overcome poverty. But not artificial poverty. For we can not become fully established - as a Nation - in the sovereign labor of obtaining from Heaven - in behalf of the Earth, our legacy of Justice and the heritage of our National Wealth - without Peace among ourselves.

Coincidentally, the former secessionist spirit of both the MNLF and the MILF were fed by this problem of perspective. Because this problem - compounded by increasingly provincial politics - espoused a sense of inequality that is uncomfortable in a Republic.

It is uncomfortable because we were already established as a Nation before God. Else, we would feel no compunction. It is uncomfortable to us as a Nation because it is unjust before God and inhuman before the Memory of our people.

It is uncomfortable to the point of bitterness and the shedding of so much blood and tears. Both factions have heretofore, according to all our understanding - repudiated this separatist mission. Because now we are pursuing a common mission of Peace - together this time - in the Bangsamoro vision.

The fact that there are deep and ancient divisions between the two great Abrahamic religions of Christianity and Islam that together shape the living culture of our Republic - in the past - often did nothing to heal all those simmering political rifts, many a time adding only to the heat of those many fires that in the darkness consume instead of shedding more of the light that in the darkness leads out into the Truth. And so we have fought among ourselves to dismiss and disown the Truth for so long...

Until this new time, until this new season under heaven...

Indeed, these present days - it would be a sin not to recognize the fact that we can, as a Nation - accomplish nothing further by being divided in our hearts and in Mindanao we may find the main epicenter of this division - this fragmentation in our soul of Country. (The Visayas may feel it too, to a lesser extent - but at large, we are faced with a different set of challenges to win for ourselves that Star).

And it can all be explained by the fact that we have not done enough to draw Mindanao to the center of our Republic and address this fundamental sense of inequality that leaves so many of the least and littlest among our peoples in the shadow - apart from the light of our three stars, and away from the reach of our one sun.

To become sufficient in our Nationhood, we must in spirit - become one people - to become this, as our 1987 Constitution does not include within it, a deeper reflection on the spirit and the character of our citizenship (as it relates to the fundamental natures of our democracy and of our Republic), we must come to a deeper REALIZATION in ourselves of the spirit and character of our citizenship - one with another.

AND we are, as a Nation, the most sufficient when we do our utmost for God and Country - when we seek the good, know the good, and do the good - and to be citizens not unlike each other in this way.

None of us is a Filipino citizen unless one accepts this basic equality - to do unto each other - equal Justice before God - through our one Republic undertaking of Country - and to fear no evil - by virtue of a common civic spirit.

This common civic spirit binds us deeper than blood ties and liberates us from tribal limitations that we may - as citizens of creation - come to know greater freedoms.

These bonds of citizenship are what makes us a cohesive democratic society - it is this fundamental equality as citizens that allow us to endure and in freedom prevail.

BUT what make us truly a Republic is the constancy with which we learn to freely and humanly live out this sufficiency to allow us - with every cycle of our generations - to ascend the way of our Maturity and obtain from the Truth its fullness - in the all of us - for the All of us.

- selah -

Those three stars on Old Defiant represent to us - our being - as a Nation, and its relationship to our sun represents - our becoming - in our Republic.

Before God - at every time and place, all Filipinos true to our Memory profess this as truth - that before the LORD and the assembly of the Nations before God in Eternity - we receive freely in our souls - this being - and - this becoming - as citizens not unlike to each other.

AND our sun is the symbol of the unconquerable Dream of freedom (in God and through God's Country) within which every single Filipino dream of happiness is to be forever possessed in its golden pursuit.

This is our basic equality as citizens before God and its fundamental activity is - to seek to be good, to know to be good and to do what is good - to proceed from Benignity to establish - a dominion of Justice upon our souls - and the rule of Law upon our soil - and the realms of Sacred Life preserve upon this Earth - and to make it all "very good" before the LORD - and on each other's behalf - through His Peace - and in Good will of our common humanity - forever as Nations - of the one Family of the Nations of the Children of Mankind.
---<--@


Wednesday, February 26, 2014

Say Peace to the River...

Imagine, if you will, a river that flows through your own heart - is it a nurturing river with waters refreshing to your soul? or is it a polluted river with waters stinking up your spirit?

Imagine all our rivers this way, flowing out in time from our hearts of life and living community - are we at peace with these waters that flow or not?

Any river that flows through the life of any of our community, if it doesn't flow through our hearts does not (and will not) answer to our voice.

How then do we say peace to our rivers, to our skies, and to our seas?


Darling Starshine -

A river flows out into the sea, into heaven, and around again - through you and through me.

How do you say peace to a river without setting it free?

And how do you set a river free without letting its waters come full circle...

from the mountains, through the earth, and to the salty sea - where every river ascends again - invisibly - into the heavens - through the clouds...

...and back again from above - from love to love - through you and through me?

How can you say peace to a river if you do not let it run through thy heart...

Can anything be set free without love?

Can any river long endure being chained? It will either go home to heaven, or exact a terrible revenge upon the human communities of our earth.

How do you say peace to a river?
---<--@


Hope Taking Wing

Personal reflection: The pollutants in our rivers are mostly sewage and non-industrial waste. This means, our rivers are mostly in good shape. We do not have to deal with toxic and radioactive pollutants and their expensive clean up costs. All it shall take is OWNERSHIP of our natural bodies of water and waterways.

If we take care of our rivers in this present time and learn to say peace to them - when we become a more mechanized and industrialized Republic, we will grow in a way that is friendly to the vital living ecology that surrounds and sustains our natural human habitat. We will become a more happier people.

Code of Cooperation

Can all the concerned parties agree that the implementation of a Code is -

(1) for purposes of stabilizing and demilitarizing the area of concern to pave the way for a diplomatic resolution of the points of conflict (which we shall work to discern from the area concern) -

(2) and the prevention of open hostilities upon that beleaguered sea around which all of us share a common shore?


As it is, the 9-dash line is diplomatically untenable and entirely unacceptable to my Republic and while this Code does not intend to resolve this issue, it seeks to create conditions that are better suited towards a resolution that will redound to the benefit of all parties, including the regional and the international community.

This Code of Cooperation recognizes two strategic premises -

(1) Uncertainty is our most immediate threat.

(2) War - as the agent of the last 2000 years - is our greatest enemy.

The two principal aims of this Code is - (1) to undo uncertainty and (2) to withstand War - that we may, as claimant parties together more effectively preserve the sovereign rights of our Nations and ensure freedom of navigation along the sea lanes leading in and out of the area concern.

Its primary directive is singularly and unequivocally Cooperation.

1. Distinguish economic interests and disentangle them from the political dialogue.

2. Preserve in the political dialogue a means to better express the parameters of a singularly economic concern (as distinguished from an existential demand.)

3. Observe again the SEA issue and identify these economic points of intersection (wherein the Code is preeminent and automatically applicable).

4. Identify all presently distinguishable economic points of intersection across the whole area of concern and number them systematically by count.

5. Prepare to pilot the most average issue. Agree to politically dignify regional economic cooperation where decisive national means exist - than to allow the crisis control over matters crucial to the future of our region.

6. Reach out in good will, and in smaller ways build a new consensus that is regional in scope - in behalf of the many and not in spite of them.

7. Observe and conserve the ends that favor peace over war.

8. Let us do this together in agreement and break the preponderance of conflict over the region.



In our EEZ's the primacy of decisions initial and fundamental to establishing shared responsibility and common reward for equal development will be retained by the GPH and the initiative of the Filipino people.

In return, know that we are equally and quite profoundly invested in resolutions that preclude conflicts (1) fought for lack of trust - that may have been bridged without exacting a great and terrible cost by diplomatic skill and a common, overriding focus - words spoken truthfully and sincerely always read better, and in the long-term, speak clearer to our memory than blood (2) or conflicts fought for fear of discovering what is truly human in the other - that preclude the knowledge of common ways and familiar needs by a belief that is not served in reward of learning but is nevertheless present and unconnected, floating as it were - conveniently over the reality of truths inconvenient.

For the Tao of War is deception - to undertake the resolution we desire in this Code require us to emerge from this Tao - and speak plainly - to make the circuitous straight - in the language of true things.

The Art of War constitutes victory over War - which is Peace over War - Peace as the craft of all human Nations. And the Tao of  Peace is the Truth - therefore, within this Code we shall speak sincerely only of true things - restrain and contain our politics within our borders and reach out to the other in the truth.






Some initial recommendations: Approach ASEAN partners first - Vietnam, Malaysia, and Brunei simultaneously. Consult with Thailand and Cambodia on the Preah Vihear issue and seek to understand their lessons learned. Offer advice and support to help Thailand obtain political stability - within the framework of ASEAN, according to the level of bilateral good will Thailand will accept. Then approach the PRC with the ROC together. Explore if applicable to the East China Sea issue.



Personal reflection: To be honest, it is very difficult for me to complete this Code. First of all, I do not have all the information I should like to know to be able to support my larger premises with factual evidence in their details. What I do have are entirely from open sources as well as my internal guidance which is profoundly inclined toward the prevention of any outbreaks of War in our region.

This Code therefore, is an extension of my larger efforts to promote Peace and Peace reform through this blog - in preparation for the next age of our world.

Finally, let this Code and its vision be a work in progress. Let us stop hating each other and start looking after each other, dreaming together as Nations this time.

God bless the PRC and the ROC, my Republic, our ASEAN, Japan, Korea, the Pacific-rim region, and all Countries involved in the task of re-building and re-balancing for Peace.

Mabuhay po tayong lahat!
---<--@

Monday, January 20, 2014

Nation at Prayer

My brothers and sisters of the Promise, today at 5:00 pm, our Nation will pray. We shall pray for those who were lost to us from natural and man-made disasters last year - for indeed there were too many.















They were
our fellow men and women;
fellow citizens the LORD intended
for the great labor of this Country
- human beings not unlike ourselves -
who, male and female, young and old, 
dreamt with us a common Dream 
of a better Republic for all Filipinos.  

Living souls whose fruits we shall never now know or taste  -
Promised lives whose fruition we shall never now see or hear -
whose fullness of good renown this world shall never now enjoy.

All of them we shall now commit to the one God of all Nations - each of them by their name - ever by a space in the heart we shall solemnly recall them - and resolve before the LORD as one Nation that their loss shall not have been in vain.

And as we remember them now, let us be sure to remember them as they were - always. So full of the things we shall today - in prayer before God - commit to the memory of our common humanity - so full of the things of life - so certain of the promise of the Peace which is our Nation's original birthright.

For indeed we shall remember them - we shall ensure their hopes do not remain unheard and their lives do not remain fallen. For we shall indeed bury with the past - the evil of those days.

None shall remain behind us but the dust.

For every thing that is to us everything we shall carry with us - in our hearts - into 2014; and the rest we shall commit before God unto tomorrows we shall as one Nation in Peace continue to reach for - together this time.

We thank you LORD God for this time to pray unto Thee!

We thank you God for the lineage, instrumentality and the unique person of our 15th President Noynoy, we thank you God for our Nation and for our Nation's Republic, we thank you God for family and friends, and for this Family of Friends - united in thy Peace - upon a journey of greater belonging and of learning to know each other in Thee.



Salaam. Shalom. Peace. For Thou art God, above and beyond all things, and there is no other, AMEN.
---<--@

Sunday, January 12, 2014

Peace in Russia

Human constructs  
- systems, institutions, corporations, etc. -
fielded across each their necessary applications
to bring form and order to the purposes
of all human endeavor
within the Nation,
where these fail against their own times - is -
because these constructs inherit also
what weakness there is in Man.

But Nations are not human constructs.

And Russia is a Nation.
---<--@

The first act of Peace is always Good will.

All Nations destined by the LORD - unto the gathering of the Times, in the here and Now of today - before this planetary crossroad, are all the Nations of the Children of Mankind.

And all the Nations of the Children of Mankind, commissioned by God at the Autumnal Dusk of our faded Eden, stand together to strengthen and preserve the life and the labors of Man through his lineages in time across all our generations to the last of our generations.

For we are upon this world to fulfill the First Command to build up the Earth (into the Inhabited Earth - a world not only rich in temporal life and in the living but in light and limitless spiritual wealth).

All the Nations of the Children were equally commissioned by God - together - and are symbolized by the Angel that the LORD placed at the place of our beginnings - at the East Gate - where we together left for our long march into exile - which is also the direction of our common returning.

Thus, our sovereignty is part of the endowment granted each of us by the God of all of us - and indeed, this sovereignty is realized - at all times and places - in the people -

...the peoples of this world - whose lineages entire the LORD entrusts to each of us, their Nations, to safeguard and prosper - and ultimately to return back into Him - much enriched and in better forms of communion with each other - and through God's own mysterious actions in time - individually as well as collectively worthy of His Salvation, being upon this visible universe - a brilliance that to the LORD is - "very good".

This, the LORD did in our living Assembly before His Throne in Eternity - and is always true.

The common roots of our sovereignty arise from the order by which God has from all Ages intended for Man - for his own good's sake - to accomplish before Him, the command to build up the Earth - for Man.

Thus, Nations are small or great - as Trees are trees in the Garden of our World - not for tending the Tree which is not our own - but for loving that which God has intended us to love (Peace) and in this love growing through Remembrance of our selves and in each other in the knowledge of the Truth of our selves and each other (Good will).

We have and we maintain borders not because of limits to human potentiality or because of a reality which is fragmented but because there must be order and purpose to the work.

To safeguard this order and purpose is the craft of all our Nations - and this craft is Peace.

(In the Sun Tzu - this in not just the first consideration when we consider "Moral Law" - it is the first and the final consideration - and is more than just Moral Law - it is the ultimate form of the "Sovereign" and embodies a living Spirit of present Remembrance.)

Hence, at the time we were together commissioned in Assembly before Godl, we also received as well from each other a priori, a recognition of our sovereign selves - and this is always true.

Because the first act of Peace is always Good will.

Therefore, sovereignty in all our Nations is always a reality in ourselves - realized (in our citizenship) as well as recognized (in the citizenship of other sovereign Nations) - our reflections in Heaven, as they should be in the truth - upon our Earth.

Truly, as Nations among each other, we have said our "Peace" unto each other - in Good will - before the LORD, our one Sovereign - long before our Time upon this world came to be - a Time that was upon this time - inaugurated by the LORD through the Noahide Covenant.

And I would that we should deeply consider this as we remember again today, our Peace with each other.
---<--@

We did not emerge in physical time together as we were commissioned. Israel was the first - the tip of the spear - first among equals. How God fashioned the Nation Israel is how each of us are also fashioned - being a people first - before and above everything else.

(So that each of our sovereignty is always a reality that emanates from the life of our people - and this life is a concentration - build upon human dignity and human promise - whose strength relies upon how well and how faithfully we each come to realize, recognize, sustain and develop our Peace).

And today, we have all arrived - so that we must accept the status quo of our world from 2009, and work to change our hearts that we may see far into our Nation's hearts.

And let us again remind ourselves of the reality of our Nationhood and together understand that this is not a religious labor but a very, very human one. And that a broken Spear - anywhere and in anytime - is useless against the charge of the Horse.

Indeed, the most prudent and visionary of our leaders - in our kings, queens, princes, presidents, ministers, and captains, have ever always understood for the sake of the many, that all National Remembrances are ultimately Human ones - and that Peace is over War.

And in this Age of Spirit and Thought - it is Now incumbent upon all of Mankind to realize what the best and greatest of us have been made to realize - that the enveloping global darkness that is the Siege of War may be broken and a new door and a new path may be opened before our world - as a planetary community entire.

We did not emerge in physical time together as we were commissioned. But where we do emerge - alone, the pattern of our commissioning always reflects the pattern of our emergence upon this world. So that in Peace and Good will - we always have stood by each other - and with each other before God - and from always to always - this shall be so - forever.

We just have to remember.
---<--@

After the Cold War, the Peace was won. But the War that nearly annihilated all life in this world is not yet fully subdued. And so the Peace that was won is not yet completely ours.

Bewilderment and confusion always follow in the wake of major conflicts - this is most especially true in the case of a total, global War.

Even as our corporeal eyes hurt to emerge in the Day when the passing Night for us have become too deep and too uncertain a Darkness, there are times likewise when the sight of our hearts have largely forgotten or forsaken too much of what Peace in us sustains and what Peace for us in the LORD obtains - to become mostly blind to what is - for every Nation, an absolute - and therefore, absolutely worth fighting for.

(As the generations living now in my own Country have never known internal peace and have never tasted its promise must remember the Darkness that we may move toward the Dawn of a new Light.)

(In the external sense, this is what is happening in South Sudan now. And we Nations who recognized that Nation emerging have an obligation to assist that Nation to secure herself from the Darkness.)

(And in the CAR, an absolutely dishonorable religious division is again taking hold against our Peace. This is also why it is difficult for one to take sides in Syria - for ultimately, there is no side there but - our side - the human one vs. the one who would make us all inhuman.)

(Indeed, we shall all account for these losses.)

Battles may always appear won in the first four spheres of Military involvement. But War itself and as itself can only be withstood in the fifth.

That the Cold War was not brought to conclusion - and thermonuclear annihilation at the global scale of all things a hundred times over - is already a gain of Peace.

Who yielded and who did not shall be the gain of our Remembrances together - for "that war" was the War among all past wars, the one to be withstood.

The past is bitter drink indeed where and when it holds the present hostage and the future to ransom.

But Nations never drink from the cup of the past - our cup is always held out for the water of present things - here, in the Now.
---<--@

We are today not as we begun. For Nations (in each their being) are also their particular motions (in each their becoming) in time, a labor of Country - a Tree among many Trees.

(If one were to be presented with an image of the Garden of many Trees, at the center shall always be what particular Nation the LORD has from all time intended to be, for each of us, our own Nation - and - the one Tree of the Desolation War, the Dominion of the Devil whose Sword is the Despoliation of all Sacred Life.)

For we are a growing and reaching out - a journeying, if you will, in and across time.

And sometimes, we pick up some travelers along the way. As the parable of the Good Samaritan, when applied to the community of Nations, will invoke in our hearts - We are to welcome the Stranger that the Stranger to us be Strangers no more.

For this is what the LORD requires - that all Men and Women be equal citizens before God and all Nations before the LORD stand shoulder to shoulder equally -

...the grieving widow to comfort,
prisoners to safeguard and to lovingly correct,
orphans to kindly and freely embrace -
and to multiply these persons
upon our human world
no more.

So Peace be upon you, Russia, do not be bitter. Hold no one and nothing in contempt. For thy life and thy future is yours - all the rest we shall together learn and remember together.
---<--@

I remember Beslan, a terrible thing among many terrible things that this little world of ours should not have to endure. But we all do - for Beslan is everywhere. Volgograd is too.

For hatred was in the 9 o'clock blue of New York, shattering that morning September sky - it was in Bali, Mumbai, Madrid, London, Amman, and in all Continents present save for perhaps, Antarctica (who if we do not turn course, may also fall), as the sin of the Devil's pride persists.

It is also here in my own Philippines, something I am working and praying hard - with all my brothers and sisters of the Promise - to battle and overcome - together this time.

Because it is our most fundamental of responsibilities as a Nation commissioned by the LORD to serve and preserve both human dignity and human promise of the Children of Mankind upon this fallen world - that to the extent we are faithful to our commissioning, we together preclude evils of a social nature from setting its foot upon the soil of our Earth.

But where we are in the soul of our citizenship together weak of compassion and sympathy for the human condition, War gains a foothold upon our human world in order to make it inhuman against our will.

The Savior of all Mankind came to deliver this world from its sin - the sin of separation - which is the original and fatal wounding all Men suffer - and to allow the human lineages return (according to our repentance from personal and moral sin) to an Eden rebuilt - even while Man is still upon this world and gain for ourselves together an everlasting place in a Kingdom that neither in splendor fades nor in glory ends - at the consummation of time as we know time to be...

...so that Now, with every present time, we must as individual citizens and individual Nations together work to deflect and remove this alien and inhospitable Darkness (of sin and War) from our own human world, to the extent God allows, our humanity permits, and the times require -

particularly in this Age above all ages past.
---<--@

Self-immolation is an act of protest - sacrificial to the most - and bound not by ordinary human freedom. In all of these cases, where there is an abiding, legitimate and human cause - the object of Justice is for Justice to be done unto Justice herself. These are therefore, purely the domain of Law and legal redress. To redress it, Law must come to understand it - from the source.

Suicide bombing is a species of self-immolation, louder in expression, and profoundly more deeper in voice - and in all cases, extreme in the eyes of all living souls. Invariably, for its indiscriminate violence against the life of our innocents - it is always an act of terrorism and in so being, demands our urgent attention.

Terrorism is always a political act. And so it gains from any political uncertainty on our end.

There must exist a cycle of pain and loss here that works to progressively destroy the normal course and outcome of authentic human freedoms that until this cycle effectively is broken by Law and its protections - will ultimately exact a terrible toll against our Nations - a price measured by the sum of human lives lost - for in all acts of terror we lose them all - save for the bomb and the conditions that allow the political will of terrorists to be married up to the means of terror.

Where to draw the line of the defense is the question. Remove and redress the prevailing conditions and the will and the means shall divorce themselves permanently.

This is a law-enforcement led process. Prevention here is in the Law. Justice here is a reaction. Military means may in many cases only exacerbate the matter and may only be employed in the tactical, where all proactive means have already failed.

And as War, there is no better deterrence to terrorism than to prevent it from breaking through into our world.

Meet the ever so wearisome politics of division with the better politics of human unity and know at the heart where to draw the line where the defense may be well fought - not in support of War but for the sake of the Peace.

Even the same Peace, we shall this winter in Sochi celebrate together.

I pray and I hope for a safe, secure, and memorably meaningful Sochi winter games - for all our Nations! The time is not yet late. May all Nations come together under the warmth of the Olympic flame in Peace and in Good will with each other and in friendships compete in the sport and in the spirit of these modern games - to know and to honor what is best in each ourselves across all our Nations.



Remember, when War draws near - it seeks from our Nations a confrontation.

Do not confront the Dragon where it approaches, defend. 
---<--@


Didn't know we're celebrating June 12 together this year, cool.
---<--@

Spot the diff? This is the Flag of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
---<--@

Wednesday, November 27, 2013

The Nine Common Human Needs: Clothing in the Nation

The Devil and his angels 
hid from the LORD 
for the same reason 
our First Parents 
hid from God.



For it had never occurred
to either Lucifer or his corrupt angels
before the onset in their awareness of evil 
that the mortal dread that must arise in terror of God
was to be born of the coming swift realization
- of the real consequence of their own treason -
that they, by so choosing to freely cast themselves
- as realities distinct and apart - from the one Sovereignty
of their one Creator, did come to fully recognize
to their everlasting shame - that their own impotence
was - and shall forever be for them - the very real cost -
of their futile act of betrayal against the Omnipotence
of the one, true, and always-victorious LORD, our God. 

The most apparently visible cause
of the nakedness in Man and in his Enemy
(being the Devil and his fallen angels - who are all likewise
the Enemy of God, all the Holy Angels, and all of Mankind)
seem but one and the same - a betrayal of a most Sacred Trust.

But the conditions that have arisen from this sin
   as they have been decreed by God to prevail in Justice
   forever - in the beings of the Devil and his fallen angels
   and for a time - in the beings born of the lineages of Man
   that Divine Providence have reserved to long in sorrow endure
   and eventually - through the shedding away of our many tears,
   prevail from the fallen state of our Exile - upon an Unknown Earth -
   far across the generations of the Nations of the Children of all Mankind
are wrought not in similar forms, nor are they one act of Judgment.

For the roots of this sin of betrayal were born
from very different motives - and the grounds upon which
these seeds of treason were sown - are of two very distinct natures -
which neither Man nor the Devil can adequately comprehend
in the attempt to fully understand or relate with the other.

For in not understanding the other, 
one is lead - unto an understanding - in the self.

So that each act of Divine Judgment 
are wrought for either Man or Devil alone 
and have nothing to do with the other. 

For the Pride that leads to Perdition
and for the Humility that worketh 
unto Repentance and Salvation.
---<--@



Nakedness is another condition of our Exile. 

It is expressive of Man's fear of his human vulnerability
essentially expressed as a deep and profound fear
of all things life-giving and salvific (in God and in Goodness)
but seamlessly proceeds to rise into the surface
of our everyday human understanding as bodily fear 
of the many evils that abound on the unfamiliar
and hostile ground of an Unknown Earth.

And proceeds
as a realization in the human awareness - that -
as Man alone, each of us are weak and vulnerable of being.

The symptoms of these are fear (and daring), despair (and hope),
and our very human need to seek the safety of living shelters
of God - in our family, in friends, and in human community.

For we are naked
and we know that we are naked -
and in need of clothing - for our nakedness -
clothing fit to preserve our inherent
dignity and promise.

And so God gave us 
the initial clothing to wear... 
and so we are, and so we must.

The fruit of this Vision 
in the reality of the Nation is 
Access to Universal Human Healthcare  
and Public Hygiene Services.
---<--@

Taxes we bear with money;
Remembrance, with memory;
Poverty, with wealth and posterity;
Death, with the life of our humanity.


The Nine Common Human Needs

Saturday, November 23, 2013

JFK's Remembrance - Bequeathed!

JFK's Remembrance - Bequeathed!
Yet we remember them in their incomplete portraits.
We remember the absence. We remember the distant greatness.
We remember the abruptness of his death. And its untimely nature did accept.
We remember the missing pieces of his life and times. Yet linger on - in knowledge bereft.


JFK's Remembrance - Bequeathed! 
To the National Memory - and the heritage of Mankind -
till the end of the Age, and the last fading away upon this World,
when the Firmament beginning again - comes full circle - for All.
   
Yet t'is a solemn Trust seemingly
most effectively expressed - in the Nation
   (as a memory of something - of something that is repressed -
   ever like the constant haze that surrounded his term in those times,
   so full of unknowing, and fearfully ignorant about its own uncertainties 
   born of unforgotten moments - that seem to have waned - in the distance
   retreating somehow - uncomfortably so - in the distance - just outside of reach)
as - its profound and quiet absence - of things mostly now hidden yet forever bright!

President John Fitzgerald Kennedy - is - 
by his own greatness in the National Remembrance 
mostly remembered by the charisma of his Presidency.

Indeed there exists in the Nation these days,
- a prevailing nostalgia about this very charisma -
acutely felt - in the absence of an engaged civic spirit -
which was the enlightened contribution of his own personage, 
and the very soul of his own devotion to the sacred trust of the Nation:
Enlightenment of the National Spirit was the Vision of his Camelot.

Yet the summits of JFK's legacy 
seem perpetually founded on tumults;
his term established in the midst of War 
seems only remembered by its passing away;
the common remembrance of JFK - seemingly -
one to be embraced like his absence, in the silence...

- selah -

The dilemma is in the waiting.
For in the waiting, we await for nothing.
For a future of completeness - we can not envision -
either by their wholes or through their complementary parts
without accepting what we may at present comprehend 
about the horizons of that one tomorrow, today.

The 35th President has bequeathed to his Nation his legacy!
And it can not be more complete to God than the sacrifice he freely gave.
For though all was not perfect - all was given perfectly - for God and Country.

So may he and his times - under this season of Sky -
be remembered in the Light of the right Remembrance
and in the Spirit of the Nation unto whom JFK and his family 
dedicated each of their life's callings to serve and to love faithfully 
be no longer in our memory bound to the dilemma - of the longing 
and of the not holding on - of the having and the not knowing it.

And so the tragedy in the life of the 35th President 
should not permeate as a taint upon his solemn memory;
the misgivings and failings that surround the murder of his person
and the years that were fallen away from the Nation by its painful loss 
can not be held to account together - as if Justice and Memory were one -
for the certainty of the vindication of Justice is a realm that is separate and distinct 
from the necessary honoring of the Remembrances that God requires of All.

None of those failings were the failings of the 35th President.
And to confuse them with each other - is a failure to render account -
of a life that was taken before its promise was fully realized in the Nation -
that all Citizens exist for each other and each other for God and for Country
and that to give to Country what Country seeks is also to give to one's self
what happiness was ever so diligently promised as this Nation's pursuit.

It was his nearness to the common people that inspired his strength.
It is a nearness that lives on - in younger hopes that inspire new strength
that within each heart - is felt in the silence - as a warmth and a glow.

Let the nostalgia fade away into a fullness of national embrace!
And let our pining for the Camelot that once seemed lost - fully become -
like a prayer for better days - shining aright again with a newness of hope!

That ever like the undying Flame that with Vigilance stands over JFK's memory,
we may recognize what was lost to our observance - all this time... as the warmth of his life;
that the pain of its own longing in the Nation's hearts may no longer consume us with trepidation 
and no longer seek in our souls to consume our spirit with many concerns - beyond its brightness -
that we may let go of the past and look again to future things, with much love - here - now, today. 

Let us begin.
---<--@


I do not know who murdered JFK. What I know is that his life and legacy was cut short by its crime. And an entire Nation was upon its intricacies mislead by a false allure into a lingering grief, unable to make their peace with the Remembrance of a remarkable Presidency and far too long burdened by this debt.

Justice is not Remembrance and indeed, it must be said
- the Certainty of Justice and the Burden of Justice are two distinct principles,
the former is a Pledge undertaken by God, and the latter, a command issued by Him
for all Nations to make a living and present account of all human life - to the last hair on their heads
that we may work together to alleviate among ourselves this common Burden of Justice
by timely payments made before God and the Assembly of each and every Nation
standing before His Throne in Eternity - against this Debt of Remembrance.

The Nine Common Human Needs: Thirst in the Nation

As blood is thicker than water and as water runs deeper than blood -
Hunger in Man weighs more heavily upon his soul than his Thirst
but Thirst in Man runs deeper in his soul than does his Hunger -
and can kill him more quickly than his Hunger ever can.



The thirst in Man is deeper than our hunger. 

Yet this thirst is also material in its form.

The need to quench the thirst
in the corporeal body in Man
is a reflection of the state
- of the human soul -
arid, parched, 
barren as a desert wilderness -
devoid of life and 
desolate of the waters 
of living life. 

For there is an absence in the soul of Man,
- a principal consequence of our Exile -
the sin of our separation from God.

This drive in Man is the result
of our very human quenching for God
that is manifest in the whole of our being
as thirst - and is the most profoundly human
of all the nine common needs.

It is an evil Man did not intend 
and exists to remind us
of our common need of the Truth
and the constancy of the living waters 
that flow from Its Hidden 
Abundance.

For we are in our hearts, 
its tributaries in time and throughout - 
called in common to fill the desolation of the Void,
expanding it - and filling it with the waters of living life
unto the completion of the purposes of God - for this universe
and - for time itself as we know it.

When we look
at the universe and into our souls,
thirst reminds us of our need of the Truth -
to quench the absence in our hearts
and fill our loneliness with togetherness
and satiate with God, the human quenching
for the everlasting waters that quenches with life
the deepest and most profound quenching in ourselves
and the purposes for which we exist -
alive to the Alive.

Man's thirst left unanswered and unrecognized
leaves him diminished in his humanity
and leaves him weak of spirit and of will
and this lack of concentration of the human spirit 
- leaves the national communities of Mankind restless -
vulnerable to stir with the stirring of the spirit of War
and the consuming flames that seek to endanger
with swift and terrible destruction 
what parched and dry timbers yet remain standing fast
in the national communities of Mankind.

The fruit of this Vision 
in the reality of the Nation is 
Water Access and Management.
---<--@


The Nine Common Human Needs

GunSMART: A Mature Steward

Every
GunSMART
Citizen - is a -

S - Safe
Mature
A - Able
R - Responsible
T - Trustworthy

Steward of the Gun.
---<--@



Every
GunSMART
Citizen - is therefore -

2. A Mature Steward
adequately cognizant of his or her
personal role in the keeping of the Public Trust
as a public Citizen bearing private witness
of our Liberty in the Virtue of Arms.

That the Vision of Gun Maturity is - in spirit -
fully realized in the National Remembrance
and in the living Traditions of the Republic
as a common duty to the Common Defense
and the Stewardship of the National Arms.

Mature Stewardship 
fully cognizant of the antecedent reality 
that continually forms and informs the Gun culture
stands to safeguard this reality at its source.

So that all evil
as it pertains to the Gun culture
as it should - presently must always exist - may
ever find its efficacious remedies not through Laws
that endanger its intrinsic accountabilities in Liberty
but through Mature Stewardship of its Freedom
and the Duties and Responsibilities particular to it
that are in keeping with the National Common Weal.

A Gun Mature Steward
therefore, exercises Gun Maturity
as an affirmation of the Second Amendment.

And recognizes from this Maturity 
- in the spirit and virtue of the Nation's Arms -
what is necessary in Liberty and what is extraneous in Legality
specifically as it pertains to the Gun culture in the Republic -
its conservation, adaptations and necessary evolution.
---<--@



To my beloved nieces 
- Aleksis, Clara and Leila -
and their common generations
utterly deserving of safer schools,
saner communities, and abler mentors -
upon a brighter world, under nobler skies.

GunSMART: A Safe Steward

Every
GunSMART
Citizen - is a -

S - Safe
M - Mature
A - Able
R - Responsible
T - Trustworthy

Steward of the Gun.
---<--@



Every
GunSMART
Citizen - is therefore -

1. A Safe Steward 
and knowledgeable of Gun Safety
rules and principles - specifically
in the National sense.

That the Vision of Gun Safety is - in principle -
fully expressed in the Second Amendment
as necessary to "the Security of a Free State".

This implies
that the Gun is - firstly -
an instrument of the Common Defense.

And
that the Gun is - lastly -
only the extension of its first purpose.

So that all evil 
as it pertains to the Gun per se
that is specific to the free expression 
of the National Spirit and its Sovereignty
begins from Unsafe Stewardship.

- selah -

A GunSafe Steward 
therefore, exercises Gun Safety
as a vindication of the Second Amendment.

And recognizes from
this awareness in the Nation
what in spirit must animate all other
derivative Gun Safety rules and principles
in their individual and personal sense.
---<--@



To my beloved nieces 
- Aleksis, Clara and Leila -
and their common generations
utterly deserving of safer schools,
saner communities, and abler mentors -
upon a brighter world, under nobler skies.

The Nine Common Human Needs: Hunger in the Nation



The hunger in Man is material. 

It is a condition of our Exile
and the most basic of all human needs.

The need to sustain the corporeal body
with the life of the earth - drive the hunger in Man
who takes so he can eat - and eats so he can live -
and lives so he can master his hunger.

It is - in itself - not evil.

And finds efficacious remedy
in the salutary nature of human labor
and the work of the Earth 
commanded by God 
of all Nations.

However,
hunger in the Nation,
when taken for granted 
may become for Man,
a source of material poverty
and exist as a social evil
contrary to the growth and development
of the human community.

This denial of hunger
(in all its forms, from slight to serious)
when in our own midst - feeds unto itself -
and give rise to the various social sins -
that worketh to prevent in the Nation,
the material prosperity necessary
to sustain and foster - even in our midst -
the individual human development
of our common Citizenry.

Material wealth - in any Nation -
is always a result of a people's
spiritual strength.

For there are two forms of poverty in Man;
the first one is physical and the other one is spiritual -
the former is always preceded by the latter.

When the condition is that the spiritual needs 
required to alleviate material poverty is present in the people -
then this kind of poverty is the physical kind.

And this is remedied by the work of the earth.

We are then,
by and with our connections
- with and among ourselves -
in God through our Nation,
prospered by our citizenship 
and material prosperity becomes for us naturally,
as an occurrence of our need to master
the hunger in each ourselves.

But when the same physical poverty is likewise
the result of ignorance or corruption of the spiritual needs 
required to address hunger, as the most basic of human needs,
and the soul of the Nation is dim and weak,
this kind of poverty is the organic kind
and dwells with the life
of the people.

If the Republic - were to mount a defense -
against Poverty in the Nation, it would be undertaken
specifically against this aforementioned kind of poverty
as a means to obtain for Social Justice in the Nation
a better expression of the Equality of our peoples.

The fruit of this Vision 
in the reality of the Nation 
is Food Security.
---<--@


The Nine Common Human Needs

Friday, November 22, 2013

Exchange Fish

Happy, happy, fish, fish - sushi!



Me and my Miyang
gave each other
a fish today.

It was
the same kind of fish
of exactly the same size...
and it tasted the same, too.

Indeed,
the only thing
that made it different 
was the giving...

For it came from our hearts...
and made something ordinary
into something extraordinary.

It was all it took
to make us happy cats.
---<--@

Monday, November 18, 2013

Salutation #189

God replied, "I am who am." 
Then He added, "This is what you shall tell the Israelites:
I AM sent me to you."

God spoke further to Moses,
"Thus shall you say to the Israelites: The LORD,
the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham,
the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob,
has sent me to you. "

This is my Name forever; 
this is my Title for all generations.

Exodus 3: 14-15


Pursue peace and pursue it absolutely.

In commemoration of the outpouring of humanitarian aid and assistance to my Nation by the many Nations in the wake of Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda) - "Salamat po at mabuhay po tayong lahat nang mga Bansa ng mga Anak ng Sangkatauhan!" 

(God is, and that is all!)

God is, and that is all!
The LORD is His Name.
And this is the Truth -
He is God forever!

God is, as He is!
And all creation bears witness to God,
the LORD Who is - Creator to all that is,
was, and ever will be, worlds upon worlds
without end, and glorious for God forever.

The LORD is One
and jealous is God for His Name's sake.
He is, alone among the Heavens and upon the Earth,
and in all souls and in all hearts, God without compare!

Above all things, beyond all things,
with all things, and in all things,
the LORD waits. God waits on those
who wait on Him. And confess that He is One!

God is to be feared.
For a mighty God is the LORD!
He is God and kind to all His creatures,
merciful to all poor souls in need, and able to save all
who come to know Him and fear Him and say,
"Amen to God, Amen."

God is Spirit Unseen 
and He goes where He goes;
here, there, and everywhere God is.

He comes without knowledge,
and speaks without words,
yet all hearts know the LORD is
and make Peace with His Name
singing, "Alleluia to God, 
Alleluia to God,
Amen."

For God is forever
and none has seen the Truth
of the God Who is
Who is not of the LORD forever
and prevaileth without death
for God is - all are not.

What creature can say this or that 
of the LORD?

What mouth speaketh
of God of the knowledge of God
knoweth not the LORD whose heart
repenteth not in tears and ashes.

It is terrible to Man 
to be caught up in the LORD.
For God is - where Man is not.

In the realization of God,
Man awakens to fear
for Man fears God
because God is -
and Man is not
and comes
to a knowledge of fear
in the reality of his separation
from God and from other Men.

And in the fear
of not being asleep to God,
Man finds in the reality of God,
in His faithfulness and loving kindness,
the fear of not being awake in Him.

And in humility
he overcomes his fear
by subjecting it to the LORD,
the God Whom he wisely fears,
with trembling adoration.

The image of the LORD is 
the Sound of His Name!

All that is - hears the call of their God
and arises from the face of the deep.

All that is - rejoices in the Name of the LORD
for all that is, was, and shall ever be.

None has seen, none has heard, yet all is
and all that is - rejoices - for God is
and God in all - is.

God is the likeness of life;
all that live know of life through God
and all of the living who seek God
came to know of the life in Him.

For He is in all living souls
the Being of our being and the Life in our life,
in the breath that imparts, in the breathing that becomes, God is -
ever like life - longing for the perfection of happiness forever.

The Wisdom of God is in all His works.
And it is wondrous to behold!

The glory of God rests
upon all things like the morning dew
and it refreshes the poor of heart.

For Wisdom makes poor as God makes rich
that the humble rejoice and the haughty flee in shame.

God is God in perfect contemplation of Himself;
Truth realizing Love - and Freedom proclaiming itself to the captives,
Love realizing Truth - and Justice and Mercy blessing all the Earth
with loving kindness, compassion, mercy, gentleness, and peace.
Beauty beholding Beauty. God beholding God.
---<--@