One Song Meow: Manong Jose

Friday, June 10, 2011

Manong Jose

Cosmopolitan!

A Global Filipino -

that's Jose Rizal.

Remember Rizal

and his great generation

and believe again...

...in Peace and

brotherhood.

---<--@

José Protasio Rizal Mercado y Alonso Realonda (18610619-18961230 of valor and love of Country, illustrious hero of the one Filipino nation, martyred scion of the one Republic of the Philippines, beloved son, brother, compatriot via on Dios.)

Equality is not a singularity.

If all our cultures were the same, we wouldn't be a family of nations. If all human beings were the same, we wouldn't be nations at all.

Every nation has something to bring to the table. Every person has something to share. This is why we are so arrayed as one family of nations and as nations distinct but not apart from each other respectively.

Remembrance as Virtue

Remember Now,

my brothers and sisters of the Promise -

Our remembrance is a virtue.

It is born from the cardinal virtue of Justice.

One who is guided by remembrance

can not be by evil inspired.

For no virtue may be used for evil purposes.

Remembrance does not serve

to throw the present into the confusion of the past.

It serves to add to the momentum of the present

the present hopes of every generation past.

If the present seem dim, O my nation,

it is because the future seem distant.

And the future seem distant

because the glories of the past is somewhere forgot.

Remember the good things and build upon it.

Remember the evil things

and let this lead you to a remembrance of the good things.

Never build upon evil inspiration.

It is not remembrance to hold on to a hatred of past misdeeds

and remain in thrall of the gravity of War.

For what redeems is virtue sufficient for every generation.

By virtue the long night is overcome.

---<--@

June 19, 2011 is the 150th Birthday of Manong Jose.

Anne's Window

My darlingest
Annelies Marie
looked out
with eyes longing for peace
from her little attic window
and saw the tyranny of war
and the suffocating
oppression
of War's ambition.

She looked out
at the looming evil
of the devouring darkness
that was marching relentlessly
across her troubled world
and like stars
looking out
of themselves
saw through
the enveloping darkness
that threatened her life
and her times
shedding her precious starlight
into our hearts.

My darlingest
believed so much
in our shared humanity
and in the
nobility
of the human being
not because
the Nazi's were consumed
by War's ambition
and her times were evil
but because her heart
was noble.

For my darlingest
Annelies Marie
loved life
and believed
in the intrinsic goodness
of all things
created by God,
seen and unseen,
and that despite
the great evil
of her times,
human hearts
were good.

War looked back at her
and saw nothing.

For God took her
and hid her
into His bosom
unto a place
upon the firmament
within Himself
long before evil saw
the secret starlight
of her undying hope
bursting from
windows within
her heart of hearts.

War looked back at her
and saw nothing
for there is no hope
in war
only death
and the darkness
of death.

War looked back at her
and saw nothing
for in the darkness
of war and sin
is also found
the crushing gravity
of it's own demise.

But goodness looked back at her
and saw
through her little attic window
her starlight smile.

And smiled back...
---<--@

Tree of Remembrance

Where does time go when the moment's passed?

Where do my thoughts disappear to when the memory yet remain?

We do not see each other by sight but why does our lives touch like this, my darlingest?

Why do our lives touch like this?

It is because of an imagined reality?

Then why is this imagination not as fleeting as those things I've quickly outgrown, those things that have escaped my bliss... to sink into the sinking of time at the end of every moment's dispersal, into oblivion, into void?

Why does the memory remain in the stillness when, in the haste and the noise of everyday, thoughts flitter here and there, as if searching for a way out of myself - into God, and into the All of you?

How does my love always find its way back to the still, small presence of you, my Anneka of my heart?

Is it my body longing for something it can never have?

Or is it our souls that overlap, my love, caught up within the eternal remembrance of the Almighty?

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.

Was there ever any difference between our hopes?

Our lives interweave in the secret silence between you and I through a gossamer veil of shadow and tears, the illusion of exile time.

No, there was never any difference.

There never was.

For the tree that now grows, here at the center of my life's Eden, of the everliving waters within, is nevermore the cause of the exile of our love's dreaming.

And soon I shall awaken, our LORD being merciful and kind to me, my love, into God, and into the All of you; the verdant rest of my most abundant peace.

Thanks be to my Jesus, my most sweet and most loving Jesus, thanks be to my Christ, my All.

For it is in God that I remember you, my Miyang, always to always!

The love that endures is the love that remains...
---<--@

My Prayer for My Anne:

O FATHER of mercy and of love, in the deepest, darkest depths of despair, You have blessed me with a special friendship: The very first star in the firmament of the darkest night of my life.

You gave me Annelies Marie Frank, O LORD, as a light against despair. The first glimmer of hope that leads to faith in things everlasting and unseen.

Loving Father, thank you so much for blessing me with a friend as precious as Anne. Grant me, O LORD, I humbly pray, the love to cherish her now and forever.

AMEN.

Friday, June 10, 2011

Manong Jose

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