Honor thy parents,
and listen to their counsel,
obeying the truth.
Love your family,
they are thy friends that God chose,
apart from thy kith.
Life begins
and ends here.
---<--@
Family is Family is Family
Our
close family ties is a peculiar strength of our Filipino national identity.
In our society, the
extended family plays an indispensable role in the raising of the generations.
The fact that we have grown presently accustomed to calling total strangers
"ate" or
"kuya" (a recent social adaptation) is a manifestation of this familial bent in the Filipino soul.
Truly, we are a nation passionate for identity, belonging, and most of all,
family.
It is a strength we also share with our kindred nations, arrayed within our regional belongings (Asia South East), as well as with those others, equally beloved to all, that comprise our one, great continental belonging (Asia).
Now, notice that our characteristic close family ties is a strength and not a weakness.
BUT it is an intended strength because it is one that we must ever always choose to align harmoniously with the other wholes of human community -
from the individual
- being the person for whom -
the familial whole exists to shelter
and whose unique and unrepeatable spirit
the presence of the family serves to
fortify, guard and fulfill -
to the nations
that exist (for each other) as greater shelters
serving to bring various families
and diverse tribes together
in the spirit and peace
of one, single human community,
binding all into one freedom
- one lineage of victory -
making possible the building
of the inhabited earth.
- selah -
Indeed,
the family is the window
from which one learns about
the value of human relationships
- both vertical and horizontal -
and the singular doorway
that eventually permits all to enter
into the larger, nobler wholes
of human community.
---<--@
