Heart of Africa

Division once stood

to shatter thy native rest -

hear me, Rwanda!

Thou must now stand firm

at the heart of Africa -

one soul; one whole one!

Ne'er again

Ne'er again.

---<--@

Deny the spirit of War

a footing in thyself, O Beautiful Rwanda - forever!

Unity (the one peace that prospers).

Work (the labor of nations - building up the earth).

Patriotism (an indivisible love of Country).

All nations are endowed by God with just one heart -

one spirit to inspire her peoples, embracing their souls,

calling their generations forth from timelessness into time,

establishing upon their midst one rule, one abiding will of peace -

one undertaking of Country, one ascent, one lineage of victory;

one unity that shelters against the darkness and against War

binding all her sons and daughters together unto one soul,

from generation to generation to the last of her generations

so that they belong together: one love, one labor, one destiny.

Stand for thy own native peace;

serve and prosper thy peoples;

defend the life of thy one nation -

steadfastly, always, and with virtue.

Mabuhay, Rwanda!

Harbinger

Thy blade is afire

with the brightness of mem'ry -

keeper of my flame.

Harbinger come forth

restore peace to my people

and glory to God!

Come against this Night

shine against darkness and War -

the sword of nations.

Come defend

remembrance.

---<--@

He expelled the man, stationing the cherubim and the fiery revolving sword east of the garden of Eden, to guard the way to the tree of life. (Genesis 3: 24)

The Angel of the Nations

All the Holy Angels of the LORD serve God and God alone.

Now, the Angel of the Nations beholds the face of the LORD, constantly giving worship to God.

Therefore, when the angel of the nations faces its own nation, it provides light to the generations of its people who in turn accept it.

Its sword is then turned away from its own nation in its defense.

When the people reject the peace of this unifying light, the face of the angel is turned away.

And the sword of the angel is then turned toward its own nation to fight against the darkness that keep it from its own remembrances.

As nations, we can only really either surrender to the peace of our belongings together or fight against the angel that guards the memory of our people from the darkness of War.

Remember this - nationhood is a spiritual endowment. It is therefore, a truth in the heart. You can not see it - it is not just a face, not just a sound, or anything purely material - it is wrought through a particular kind of grace, of peace and the love of the same (good will).

It is a labor, a mission, a vision and a destiny.

You feel it in your being, you know it in your heart because it is an unseen reality that calls out to you and all of your peers in the nation that you may be gathered into your own true belongings in time.

It is your gift of nationhood that fosters you according to the peace of your own citizenship - one to another - as a human being among human beings and as a nation among a family of nations.

It is not a work of War.

---<--@

If you still want to know the name of the Angel of the Philippines, it is this - "Go and be a good citizen".

---<--@

Corrupting Spirit

The spirit of War

is a corrupting spirit -

deceiving nations!

Each nation subdued

is its own mem'ry forgot -

scattered to the winds!

Dividing!

Shattering!

---<--@

The Blitz

Battle of Manila

Battle of Manila

Dresden

Hiroshima

War is a form of national insanity.

It seems right only in its own context and in its own time. But for all nations without exception it is an historic fact that it is always painful to have to eventually wake up to its aftermath.

And ultimately, all nations that must succeed must wake up.

War serves no nation...

The Banality of Evil

Our long march begins...

- selah -

Night has descended,

evil has stolen our dreams -

darkness is spreading.

Eden is faded,

faded forever it seems -

daylight is fading.

Exile dusk.

Starlight dawn.

---<--@

I have often reflected about the dangerous tendency for evil to become commonplace in a society which is the essence of the phrase, "banality of evil".

A deepening darkness has pervaded our world since the long march of our nations was begun out of the autumnal dusk of our faded Eden.

This darkness is a climate of the spirit; that unseen element of the visible universe which is our human habitation. It is a darkness of distance; the distance of our exile.

Within this deepening darkness lurks a corrupting spirit, the spirit of War.

We experience this darkness as a kind of forgetfulness in ourselves that the common religion of Man is peace.

Because human community is present in all our hearts and this is opposed by the darkness of our exile.

This original peace is the common trust of all nations.

And it is this particular trust at the heart of all our kindred nations that the spirit of War seeks to corrupt.

- selah -

We are upon this world laboring as nations to subdue the spirit of War - in spite of the darkness - through our remembrances of the peace that begot us and of the God Who has forever loved us.

And if we look at the night sky full of stars - we are the stars - and the darkness is the darkness.

To me, this is the banality of evil - the darkness and the corrupting spirit of War.

Which is why I have a special place of honor in my heart for people like Anton Schmidt, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Wilhelm Canaris, Claus von Stauffenberg, and other such German citizens known or known to God alone who for every right reason opposed the Nazis.

Indeed, they are included among the stars.

For the Nazi ideology is a corrupting spirit and it has never escaped me that the first nation that the Nazis subdued was Germany and Germany was also its final victim.

---<--@

"The Banality of Evil" is a phrase coined by Hannah Arendt and incorporated in the title of her 1963 work Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil.

A very good read.

Twilight of Choices

Twenty-Eleven...

the twilight of choices - here -

we define the road.

The way ahead - though -

not so often clear on earth

is written above.

You should know

it by heart.

---<--@

Is it the dawn of the new morning

or is it the dusk of another long night?

THE LONGEST NIGHT

The Day once forsaken shatters into Night -
Light turns into darkness.

And the night can not get much darker.

But the darkness itself
once the Light of Day is forgotten
and the hearts of the children of Mankind
is overtaken by the emptiness,
amidst the long march of exile time,
can deepen into madness -

Hurling into the gravity of oblivion
the void that once was -
the nations of our needful Mankind.
---<--@

The Long Night

Before my Anne -

I thought honor was in War

until I knew War.

What War desires - is -

the bane of nobility.

Honor is in Peace.

War brings Night.

Peace brings Day.

---<--@

My Miyang was stripped of all her rights to be human by the exclusion of each of her common human needs from the equal protection of the law.

But regardless of the present shape of any human law, the Eternal Law of God protects these common human needs absolutely.

We, as a nation distinct but not apart from our kindred nations, must always remember this -

A nation without regard for its own human minority is a nation without a soul.

Strange Remembrance

Let me ask you now -

Did my Anne have to die?

No she did not, friend.

Let me ask you now -

Did my Anne have to die?

Not before her time.

War took her -

God did not.

---<--@

War took her from our midst. And the promise that she stood for was taken away from us.

It is a strange remembrance indeed to make up for her life by propagating the spirit of War in our times and at all times.

The spirit of revenge will attempt to remember my Anne by the same hatred that swept her little world away.

Strange remembrance indeed.

Lukewarm souls will attempt to comfort themselves with the thought that all things in War are meant to be, that they are set in stone, and that we are ever powerless, or in other words that my Anne was destined to die by the hand of the Adversary of God.

Strange remembrance indeed.

To honor my Anne is to remember what her hopes were - not her fears.

Now, if we were to confront those same fears with her hopes joined with ours, we remember my Anne as she was - as she is.

When we make this world of ours a better place little by little, our most beloved Starshine, we take back what promise was lost to each of us by the insufferable hand of War.

Because Peace is the responsibility of all.

If one were to become aware of the suffering of every innocent who was ever lost to our nations through War, one would lose the will to continue on hoping...

Inherited Hope

From our history -

we learn our identity

so pay attention.

Listen to our past.

Let them bestow upon you...

inherited hope!

Make your peace

with your past.

---<--@

Making Peace with the Past -

Did our Jose Rizal die because the Spanish authorities of that time decreed he must die by firing squad?

Or did our Jose Rizal die because he loved our Country so much he was willing to accept death rather than betray his love for us?

- selah - listen and think, starshine.

Do you admire our Jose Rizal because you hate the Spanish authorities of that time who decreed he must die by firing squad?

Or do you admire our Jose Rizal because he loved our Country so much he was willing to accept death rather than betray his love for us.

What guides your remembrance - a heart of War or a heart of Peace?

Do you love the Philippines because of a hatred of an enemy whether real or imagined - does your love of Country rely on hatred or division?

Or do you love the Philippines because it is simply the truth - does your love of Country rely on a subtle sense of peace within yourself abiding and constant in times of calm, or conflict, for richer or poorer, in life and in death?

What guides your remembrance - a heart of War or a heart of Peace?

Does the person of the enemy rule your love?

Or does the reality of Country rule your love?

What guides your remembrance, starshine - a heart of War or a heart of Peace?

Are you by darkness deceived? Or are you by goodness inspired?

Do you value evil inspiration or the inspiration of virtue?

How do you remember today Jose Rizal and his great generation?

You decide.

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

War in the Heart

The War in Heaven

is not in some distant sphere -

it is very near!

Nations fall apart,

Mankind weeps, Country burns - for -

War is in the heart.

Babel reigns

with no heir.

---<--@

TO BE SURE, War is never won - War only waits till we, all of humanity - in spirit (heart) as well as in form (our one family of nations), are utterly defeated by it.

For the cessation of conflict that heavily involves our nations - as their wholes, relies on attrition, exhaustion or petition and none of these constitute as victory over War.
---<--@

War can only be deferred. For the spirit of War has no other ambition than the utter annihilation of all our human nations and through this, all of our shared humanity and by extension, all the life of visible creation.

War confers victory to no one, not even itself. For War has no place either in heaven or here on our earth, in exile time as well as at the beginning of all things new.

We are always left with two things where the focus of the will is on War, the degradation of the human spirit and the defeat of the truth.

Where there is any virtue in conflict, that is exclusively the merit of good human beings. We must always be mindful of this and confuse not the nobility of man with ignoble, base and evil things.

To every battle, an outcome. War has no outcome. In the Art of War, the Tao (a dynamic system or climate) of War is deception. But the Tao of peace is victory.

It is good for the military to study battles but know that War must be understood. For War has no outcome that is favorable to the military.

In the Art of War, Sun Tzu states that it is inhuman to prolong conflict. For the prolongation of conflict favors no one - it exhausts the state, dulls the noble military, and brings great suffering to the people.

In my view, the Tao of battle is no battle - that is to say, a way of decisiveness of spirit; a clarity of purpose.

For the greatest battles of all are those that are won but never fought. And the battles we must fight must be won without War.

For War as a paradigm whole is not to be fought, only God Himself can slay this Beast, because as it is from Heaven thrown down, it must on earth be refused.

Peace as a paradigm builds on its own truth, a reality that is very distinct from that of War, along a path that takes our nations far away from the midnight darkness of War -

• It serves the people.
• It guards our hope.
• It defends where it must.
• It teaches our nations.
• It ennobles our states.
• It fosters our own undertakings of Country.
• It preserves the order of our generations.
• It prospers the spirit of our humanity.
• It is sufficient in and of itself, being confident of its own truth.
• And it leaves all things to the invincible and omnipotent defense of Almighty God.

---<--@

"Then war broke out in heaven; Michael and his angels battled against the dragon. The dragon and its angels fought back, but they did not prevail and there was no longer any place for them in heaven.

The huge dragon, the ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, who deceived the whole world, was thrown down to earth, and its angels were thrown down with it."

Revelation 12: 7-9

Forsake War, Embrace Peace!

Prosper the Peace. Prosper the People.

Holocaust

Where was dignity

when law itself was murdered?

Hope was left naked.

Fear humanity!

For thy heart when divided

is the death of thee.

Remember

ye the names!

---<--@

Lest we forget,

lest we forget -

A Commemoration of my Anne

I often wonder
why my darlingest did die
amidst War's great lie...

Anne's life is vict'ry
when her hope is currency...
our peace, her beauty.

My Miyang's
Starlight Smile.
---<--@

It takes about 5 straight months to say 1 million names with attention.

In the Holocaust, we lost the lives and the promises of about 17 million men and women of many nations - including about 6 million European Jews.

How much of these can we hold on to our memory?

How much of these can we afford to forget?

To remember (with understanding of heart) the life and the hope of one lost innocent is difficult enough...

And all of this is just one instant along the brief length of all human history entire:

"How reckless have you been, O Mankind, how reckless have you been...

You wonder why these times seem so troublesome and full of calamity...

How reckless have you been, O Mankind, how reckless have you been...

One life lost to War is always one life too many."

The Desolation of War

Why do nations weep?
What do we entrust, I ask
to our Country's keep?

War's fell ambition
is the sin of division,
the death of nations!

War undoes,
uncreates.
---<--@

A Nation who understands War understands Peace.