Immaculate Conception 2014

Let us implore our Lady, the Immaculate Conception, 
to help see our Country safely through Typhoon Ruby. 

May the Blessed Virgin Mary watch over our communities 
and keep our families safe...

Tomorrow is the Feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary

---<--@

20141212 Friday 306H: Salamat po mahal naming Ina sa ibinigay ninyong awa, ang Bagyong Hagupit sa ami'y hindi naging sobrang lupit...

Thinking Forward 30 Years

So in a future world 30 years from now... 

When our technology has developed widely enough and deeply enough that the sum of all these innovations combined have become applications fully capable and mature enough to replace us in those fields of human endeavor traditionally reserved for the human professional...

What then?

If the maturity of our remembrances do not keep abreast with these advances, not to mention keep ahead of the evolution of the spirit of War, our own technology might eventually forget who we are and soon after become hostile to our common humanity.

Instead of being in our common service, our machines may become our masters and through them, War will gain another way of entering into our times.

The human realm is a temporal realm - time is for us what the timeless is for the angels. Time is the sea we human beings were created to swim in and prosper through - as a family of Nations.

Our exile was also a time not a place. Place is relative to time... 

Choice is important... The choice for peace. The choice to love. The choice to remember. The choice to accept. The choice to change and to be... The choice to say, "yes". 

Awakened freedoms awaken dreams and bring them forth in time.

These choices take us places... places arising from things we think about and do everyday.

Small indeed when compared to the immensity of the universe we inhabit...

A universe that itself was birthed from a single choice... a choice our Creator made for us... still makes with us and through us and for us - for the glory of His Name and for our good.

Here things rise and fall, but in the midst of all it's comings and goings, we know of things that stay and are for always - and these are not things.

Machines can never be made to understand or comprehend these deeper things of the Spirit. How can they? Our technologies are purely temporal constructs. But we human beings are not machines - a part of us shall always transcend, now and forever, of the physicality of all things temporal.

For we are the stewards of this realm of God's creation. This is how He made us. If we forget, it is our loss.

But how can we? All things seen and unseen proclaim His Peace.

Religion proposes this to our hearts - we react as if it were an expectation already in us, so that if we are generous to the call of faith, we are then made to discover the wonder of faith seeking understanding...

And we make a choice.

But even if one is not religious or have chosen to have no religion, it stands to naked human reason... If we do not take care of what we have on this planet, what little we do have left will soon leave us with the ebbing of the tides of time.

We are how we treat each other, and that is all.

- selah -

Here in the Philippines, our path in the short term as regards these takes us through to 2046... Half-way through, we have to prove our peace and pass the test, that we may carry on safely, assured of better times ahead.
---<--@

Bansa at Bukluran at Sambayanang Kanlungan

This is my most current attempt at expressing in the Filipino language, the key elements that by my accounting give rise to the particular character and sovereign being of our Republic undertaking of Country i.e Nation, State, Society = Country.
---<--@

Ating Pagka-Bansa
(Our Nationhood - Sovereign Foundation)

Pangngalan: Bansa na sa ati'y Sarili

Gawaing marunong: Pakikipag-kapwa tao (o ang Pagiging-makatao) at Pakikipag-diwang totoo (o ang Pagiging-makatotoo)

Lamang dunong: Kapayapaan at Katotohanan
---<--@

Ating Pagkaka-Buklod
(Our Statehood - Sovereign Expression)

Pangngalan: Buklurang Panglipunan

Gawaing marunong: Pakiki-bahagi (Pakikipag-ugnayan) at Pakiki-isa (Pakiki-atin)

Lamang dunong: Katarungan at Katiwasayan
---<--@

Ating Pagkikipag-Ayunan
(Our Society - Sovereign Motion)

Pangngalan: Sambayanang Ugnayan

Gawaing marunong: Pakiki-bayan at Pakiki-bayani

Lamang dunong: Kapatiran at Katapangan
---<--@

Bansa at Bukluran at Sambayanan ito ay ang -

Ating Pagka-Republika
(Our Country - the Filipino Spirit)

Pangngalan: Republikang Katigan o ang Republika ng Pilipinas

Gawaing marunong: Pakiki-baka o Pakiki-Pilipino

Lamang dunong: Kalayaan at Kasarinlan
---<--@

Pinoy Magiting

Sino ba ang mahal? 

Ano ba ang minamahal?

Galit ba o Pagmamahal, Pilipino?

Katapangan sa Pilipino'y
bunga nitong puso na sa ati'y likas
may bisa at bigkas, may ganda at lakas
kung mag-alab ay wagas...

Puso na sa ati'y
kung magmahal ay mabagsik,
na sa mata ng lupa't langit ay tunay,

at sa isip ng mga makakata'y napakakulay, 

na kung magpatunay ay masipag at mahusay 

pero kung magbigay ay mapag-angkin...

Dahil ang kagitingang taglay
ng ating pusong mapagmatunay,
marami man niyang anyo
ay mula lamang
dito sa iisa nating puso.

Pagmamahal Pilipino
na sa ati'y laging sumusubaybay
ang sa puso din sa ati'y pumipintig;
pagmamahal na sa para sa Minamahal
pa lamang palaging pinahihiwatig...

Dahil kung sa galit at kabuktutan
tayong mga Pinoy ay likas na sa puso'y dala,
wala na ring lungkot na dapat
sa puso nating mga Pinoy bumibisita.

Kung galit ang sa puso nati'y mas likas
at kung galit na rin pusong Pinoy
dito sa lupa pinaglihi't ipinanganak,
marahil ito'y isang bulag.

Dahil puso na sa galit lamang nakalagak
kailan man ito'y sa atin ay mag-alab
ay puno ng dilim na mapagwasak
at hindi ng mapaganking liwanag
na sa pagmamahal natin ay puno.

Sa minamahal ito'y bulag,
sa pagmamahal ito'y duwag,
sa sarili ito'y huwad.

Pero kung sa puso tayo'y sa pagmamahal
nang Minamahal nating Diyos ay itinagi
sa tapang ang giting ng Pinoy
kailan ma'y di pahuhuli.

Tapang na sa ati'y
may dalang bait at dunong,
tandaan natin na sana
kung mula saan isinusulong
dahil ito'y mula sa puso natin
na kung magmahal...

Ang paalala na lang sa Pilipino ay ganito -
parang alab na kung araw ay matindi uminit
at kung gabi nama'y liwanag na matahimik.

- selah -

Tapang nati'y pinapayagan
ng puso na rin nating
pagmamahal ang dahilan.

Hindi ito nadadala ng bilis
at hindi ito parang walang tulis,
malayo't maluwag magbigay tanaw
at walang kasing tindi ang tamis...

Dahil hindi kailanman sa galit
ang puso ng Pilipinas naging tapat,
ni kahit minsa'y hindi iyan naging
sapat sa puso nating lahat.
---<--@

The Illusion of Race

Race is an illusion, an artifice of a species of nationalism that is not ours. What is proposes is the division of the Nation according to tribal distinctions. What this means is the subjugation of the soul of its peoples by the temporal powers of this world.

Race is a social construct purposed to be divisive of unity and disruptive of harmony among Men. This is so because the concept of race is meant to fill an ideological necessity (that upon our needful earth gave rise to a domination of evil we have together fought and prevailed against in the last age).

It is a thought prejudicial to our Liberty!

For the Nation that is ours is a soul that dwells in and among our peoples, and through it stirs the spirit that gathers our generations together and sends our generations forth into forever.

No human being or temporal power hath placed and purposed this Nationhood in our souls.

The belonging that calls to each of us within our souls is issued among us by neither man nor angel.

Nor may our citizenship, one with the other, be received by any earthly or temporal dominion save our own love and remembrance of all the good and blessed things that made us accountable to the God in heaven for the peace and good will that we are made freely and humanly responsible for together here upon this earth as a sovereign undertaking of Country.

We are made equal in dignity and promise - before God and the assembly of the Nations - not by virtue of external appearances or the whim of fashions temporal but by the truth of what is permanent in our spirit and what is for always to us in the truth.

Race hath no place among us. We are all the colors of life.
---<--@

November Thoughts

Today morning, an interesting thing happened to me. A good citizen of our Republic asked me out of the blue if the Zodiac sign, Scorpio, is good luck. To which after a moment's thought I replied, "It is".

One has to be gentle with the truth... And truth for me is this: Though I do not personally subscribe to horoscopes, I respected that he might.

So I affirmed it for him and told him it is also my Zodiac sign. November is also my birth month, you see. In a small way, I sought to bless his day. That he may carry on his labors happily for the rest of the day.

I know though my Christian faith what decides destiny is freedom, truth, and spirit in the soul not in the temporal stars. So if I should not respect and love my fellow human beings, I'd be a liar to myself and to my God. (Moreover, as temporal heaven has fallen, those stars above us won't care. So I must.)

Life can be harsh. It is a hard battle for everybody, daily living. Indubitably.

Struggle makes all men ordinary. It makes successes extraordinary. And makes community necessary.

Across our needful world, human beings scramble about struggling to make do, looking for better and better forms of wealth, health and happiness.

It is not easy... But whatever lies ahead for anybody is better faced than not at all, easily. Because none of us can navigate through what lies ahead with our backs to the future.

This is the essence of these November thoughts. That 'tis the season to be forward facing, bravely dealing, humbly accepting in the following to follow through.

November folks know winter lies immediately ahead. Wiser ones see through what lies beyond the winter.
But the best of us November people understand (or are doggedly trying to learn to understand) that facing up to life's difficulties in a posture of faith, trust and perseverance always eventually lead to the enjoyment of better climes and brighter times. That after November... June.

Happy birthday to all of us, November folks. =^.^=
---<--@

To Christmas, and beyond!

Love of Family, Love of Community

Self-interest is an exact definition of national interest. 

The national interest as self-interest is intrinsically selfish but the center of its will lies illumined in the life of the national community. A community must be self-interested else it shall not last long. 



All human beings are naturally self-interested creatures the same with all creatures in God's creation. 

We must be or else, we have a problem. There is no backing out of being. No physical coming back to the womb. Else, life and living itself can not progress and evolve. 

Self-interest here is not an evil, lack of it is.  

Now, there are forms of self-interest greater than the person of the self. 

An example of this is the institution of the family. Man and Woman as a unified whole is invested in a form of self-interest that is distinct from Man and Woman as their individual persons.

Religion regards this union as sacred and it is. 

Religion blesses those who bless life even at its conception and regards with holy esteem those who receive with the welcome of peace the life of those who are born to this world.

Nations regard this union as necessary. 

Ours is the trust that protects and prospers the life of the family and the communities that bless, provide for, and accept tribe and family with a greater welcome of peace. 

- selah -

Family is our basic introduction to life in the national community. 

It forms the ground of our civics. 

As individual citizens we must know without our fathers and mothers who as Family gave to us the choice we could not make at birth, we would simply not be. 

No babe is born with a freedom that is complete. In fact, we were the least free among God's creatures at the very moment of our birth. As babes, not one of us could even make the choice to live.

It is family who gave us the choice to live. 

And these choices often come at the expense of other choices that our fathers and mothers willingly subordinated to that form of self-interest greater and maturer than what their persons usually demanded of them as individuals alone. 

Regardless of how everything proceeded from that moment therefore, to honor thy father and mother is pre-requisite to the knowledge of life in the national community. 

The common instruction to the value of the choices we make in community - we learn simply from the action of family and as not all families are the same, we honor father and mother still for that one choice they had to make for us as babes. 

For none of us could ever truly make that choice. Nor boast about it without sin.

So in civics it is the same; that those of us who are without choices is served in society by those of us who are able to make those choices - to live - so that none of us should ever be so poor so as to live without liberty or be so fated by the random nature of this world to endure without hope or live without peace. 

- selah -

I think the saying that those who have least in life should have more in law is one better illumined by the first principle of sufficiency through reliance. And this principle better understood simply by honoring our fathers and our mothers in the light of the right remembrance.

Through life in the family, love and memory is from generation to generation brought forth into the nation so that in our civics, we may make good choices in each other's behalf - that all of us in the land may live long and the nation prosper in peace.
 ---<--@

Judge not

When you can hold back the water from these falls and stop it all from falling... 

You can be judge above all men and women. (not just among)

Judge not

Don't say jelly before the jelly sets...

Let's allow something wonderful to happen first. (better yet, let's help it along)

Liberality of the Filipino Spirit

Filipinos, they say misery deserves company. But not from ours.

We in the nation deserve happiness.

In all its wondrous shades of diversity, happiness and the paths that from it lead all to human progress and achievement to us is possessed of one ageless color - gold.

This splendid color for our nation is the color of imperishable treasure.

Therefore -

Let us trust ourselves to be happy for the good fortune of our fellows.

Liberality of the Filipino spirit is thus:

Generosity exercised not so much by the hand than by the heart.

And forget crab mentality.

Just do it.

---<--@

Fossilized remains of Filipino crab mentality.

Resuming the Peace Process with the CPP-NPA-NDF

Peace with the CPP-NPA-NDF (CNN) is a government initiative. 

Therefore, it may only be effectively resumed primarily through the auspices of the GPH. 

A formal invite to return to the table must be extended and accompanied by a means basic that presents a path toward an honorable truce. 

In this initial truce, the RPH calls on the GPH and the CNN to honorably observe a cessation of hostilities as a requisite condition to a mutually pre-approved terms of a durable truce.

(Raising the white flag of truce in a conflict that divides only our nation is not a sign of weakness nor is it a mark of dishonor. It is a sign of humility and a mark of realization and truth. No one side shall be raising it alone, we shall as one Republic together raise it, so that after it - our Flag may soon follow.)

Terms of a durable truce will include powers-under-truce intended to further without prejudice the mutual goal of establishing and re-establishing effective mechanisms for peace and stability on the ground.

(Within the context of this framework truce we shall equitably re-apply the spirit and letter of JASIG and CARHRIHL that they may, while preserving their intrinsic value and integrity as separate documents, gain perspective accessible to the minds and hearts of our common citizenry.)

And these conditional powers be therefrom further defined and achieved in and by degrees of proven trust. 

Proven trust gathered under truce shall in time merit the endowment of mutual grants - granted by both sides permanently to the center of the table - and protected by policy - as beneficial to the facilitation of the process whole.

This is how I foresee the talks renewed.

The unifying vision of the RPH in this particular aspect of the one whole peace process must be especially clear. In this, the MILF process stands to teach us some vital lessons learned. 

Social justice and the political process must be salient points in the minds of conveners from the CNN side.

Memory and remembrance must therefore be at the forefront on the GPH side. That the GPH may express knowledge of ourselves as RPH enough to dispel the overthrowing vision that has guided and misguided for so long a time this armed insurrection we are attempting to quell - by reconciling all to the unifying vision of our one Republic whole. 

That the Filipino spirit may have a home to rest within - peace for our nation, prosperity for our people.
---<--@

Time to develop a planetary sense of good will

If species survival seems our most common reason to finally venture out to conquer the depths of space, I must say it isn't the finest. After all, who are we surviving against on this one planet?

We need time to develop a planetary sense of good will. I think we have the time, a lot of it.

However, can we choose to make the time - together this time?

In the Universal Record of the Recorder of Universes, it takes an average of 500,000 years worth of recorded history for any species of living souls to successfully evolve their civilization and ascend all it's attendant worlds from unnamed to Named.

That's a lot of time to think about... a lot of empty space to fill... space substantially better utilized more through time spent in good thought and the fruits of good thoughts which are good acts.

If the present spread of time-space is to be filled with 500,000 years worth of good thinking by any form of extant sapient planetary civilization - on the average, it would amount to brilliant energy equivalent to the lifetime collective stellar output of a single, medium sized, medium age, yellow star.

(Yes, that star. Our home star without which we may not have a home world at all. From our home star we learn that light output is our ultimate measure not darkness.)

If the universe we were to truly inhabit were a container, that particular amount of brilliance would be so incredibly minute and fleeting especially in the midst of all that is to us, dark (matter and energy). 

The fact that it really and truly does matter immediately implies that the Creator of All does not look at any of us from afar. But is very near.

And there exist a lot of darkness out there that remains to be filled and transformed - right here.

The evils of our history may seem like darkness overwhelming, true. 

We live in a universe of big violence and small truths...

Therefore, let us also be aware that in spite of our past, there might likewise exist in our universe a lot of room out there in space for more kindness right here on earth.

Choices we as a particular species of living soul has yet to make, times we have yet to fill, ages we have yet to enter, and infinities we have yet to cross - together this time, if we are peaceful and wise.

Half-a-million years less twelve thousand approximately.

(A concept excerpted from a fictional book I'm writing... truly spooky action from a distance)
---<--@

Love this view from Interstellar. It provides the beholder with a truly awesome sense of scale.

Love this view of my kitty cat co-pilot (lol.)

                                                 Love this song just because...

Peace is not a place

Our exile is not a place.

Our exile is a time.

Therefore,
peace upon the earth to us
is not a place.

Peace to us is a time.

Peace to us is a truth.

Peace to us is a season under heaven
and the knowledge of this season on earth

Let us seek peace therefore, not as a place.

Let peace be for us a willing choice... 

And let this be the time.

Filipinos,
if in each our hearts there is no peace,
there shall be no peace to be found for us
upon this earth under heaven.

Unless there is no peace in our hearts,
we shall find no peace here in our nation
nor among the nations to whom we are kin.

And shall persist to wander this world
without a home... restless of heart, 
restless of hope.

Home is where the heart is!

Whenever peace is in the heart -
everywhere love shall lead us,
we shall always find a home
and shall never be left
wanting of rest...

Most especially here 
in this Country of ours.

So let peace
be our inspiration
to renew our spirit
and build!

Let this time be the time
we make ourselves belong...

One lineage of hope,
7,107 islands strong.

Let this time be our time.

Let peace be everywhere we are.

Because 
if not here, where?
If not now, when?
---<--@

Time and For Always

There are some things reflected in their moments...

when the soul is struck by a sudden impression of a great majesty...

or the spirit is instantly moved by an act of great nobility...

When you see a glimpse of what is beautiful in the common everyday...

When the heart sees glimpses of what is true in time... what is for always...


Moments that unconsciously invite unto thy external observation
the sweet expectation that there may exist an unseen realm
apart and beyond what is visible and temporal...

Seeker, how may the soul of Man have an expectation of what in time is for always?

If the human soul itself exists upon temporal realms alone
and therefore perishable and corporeal with the physical body,
why does it delight in things spiritual, in moments that are for always?

Indeed the souls of animals and plants do not indulge in spiritual matters absolutely.

If the soul of Man is no different, why do we persist to contradict ourselves
and seek those things beyond the immediate
and risk the ruin of our species?

Why do we possess souls that need to seek and to be sought
in the spiritual and not just the corporeal?

Seeker, 'tis because...

we are human.
---<--@