One Song Meow: OUR Dragonboat Team

Thursday, August 11, 2011

OUR Dragonboat Team

You guys are first class!

Let me just say that - flat out -

you guys represent!

Our Dragonboat Team.

Gold. World-Class. Skill. But not here?

Now ask yourself why.

I really

feel ashamed.

---<--@

It's all about the "politics" -

I always hear the word "politics" being used like it were a salve meant to relieve the shame that most Filipinos feel about our own Country's refusal to recognize our victorious Dragonboat Team.

It's like there's something out there in our national politics that escapes the understanding of us, common folk; something completely out of our control, something beyond the people, something dirty...

I certainly feel this sense of national shame. But I can see clear through the "something". Politics is not a dirty word, you know. Politics is a means. It is a channel. It is a polarity. It is a tool.

The problem is when politics fall into the wrong hands. And a lot of that have been happening of late, and not just in this nation, mind you.

Politics is the preserve of the Responsible State. (You may review the relationships between the three elements of Country on Citizenship with Fidelity.)

It is therefore, a means (not an end) employed by the servants of the nation to carry out and complete the mandate entrusted to them by we, the people.

When the politics of our Republic (meant to prosper and ennoble the people and advance our Country in its ages in time) become hi-jacked by puny, fractious, selfish ambitions and the hard-won ideals of proven popular governance become soiled by the narrow interests of the few, OUR politics become "something".

We feel ashamed because we are a part of it...

Hey, we're not so helpless after all.

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.

Thursday, August 11, 2011

OUR Dragonboat Team

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