Little Orange

I met her from work,

this little orange battler
come to inspire me.

She helps me improve.
Gives me time, care, and friendship
to better my scores.

I like her, you know.
Sometimes I like her too much.
I have to take care...

Her name I shall keep.
This little orange angel -
God bless you, you cat!

I'm her friend,
she is mine.
---<--@

Muzzle

Don't know why it is -
that cute muzzle, your meow...

(too much cuteness... too much!)
Just let me kiss it!

I kiss the muzzle -
that cute muzzle, I kiss it.
Because I love you.

That muzzle,
I kiss it.
---<--@


...you can kiss it.

What is a snout and what is a muzzle?

A snout is not a muzzle. A snout you can wrap your fingers around. A muzzle you can not.

Only cats have muzzles. Dogs have snouts. You can kiss both. But only cats have muzzles.

Enough said.

Paw

My cat's paw, I love.
It's my source of sure comfort,
in gentle moments...

'Tis hard to describe
in this haiku - the quiet,
the touch, the feeling.

Paw becomes
more than words.
---<--@

The Other 100%

A thought for you, 

from a friend -

What of greater-ness,
our most fundamental - one -
that which makes us, we?

Yea, which many made one,
which though many makes us one,
calling us today...

Arise then, the we,
born of many distinctions,
called of one spirit.

Arise to the times,
this most fundamental thought,
and let us be great.

I, you, we -
one, one, one.
---<--@



In Fareed Zakaria GPS,
it was asked one early morning
which segment creates the jobs,
the 1% or the 99%.

Let me share with you
my own thoughts about it.

My answer is neither.

It is innovation that creates work.

It is a spirit present in the 100%!

The power to innovate comes from this spirit.

Because what drives this innovation?

Care for the Republic.

A love for the nation
grown up from the soil
of a living knowledge of it
and a steadfast understanding
of it's truest labors upon the earth.

This particular love
drives the participation of the people
in their own progress and welfare,
sheltered by their own freedoms,
and defended forever by a Republic
dwelling in peace and amity with itself
and therefore, with all the nations,
under the guidance of heaven,
and the light of Providence Divine.

Care for the Republic!

It is America that creates the jobs.

Individuals contribute to it,
individuals reap from it,
but it is ONLY the nation
that guarantees it.

Break this one community apart
and all certainty falls away into chance.

By the way, Fareed - you rock!
---<--@

Make the words disappear 

into meaning - and understand.

Think them at thy heart, 

speak it out loud, 

live it at large.

(Belated Happy Birthday!)

Commitment

Commitment. I am.
Sitting through the pain, the pain...
this is better pain...

Determination.
Discipline. Courage. Spirit.
Death. Life. Choice. The Truth.

Healing pain...
now, now, now!
---<--@



Inspiration is
a necessary guide to my motivation
and long may she bless me with her light.

But
commitment is
the only force in the universe
that will propel forward my motivation
into the realization of my dreams.

I commit
because I now understand
I will never be content with inspiration alone
unless her light becomes forever mine
and we become one reality.

As every heart
must take this journey,
so should mine.

So I must and I will. 

For me,
this is commitment.

It is
the I must 
and
the I will
for me.

Sphinx

"Speak me stories I can taste and touch",

says my clever pet cat to my mind...

"Talk to me about the food. Talk to me about the feel.

Tell me how much you love me-ow."

---<--@

Due to the mostly itinerant nature of my life hitherto, most of the (pet) cats I've had the pleasure of being with are actually strays.

Hence, I do not have pictures of them but I love and remember them all nonetheless! 

My cat is a sphinx,
she likes to tell me riddles,
purring in delight.

She is quite picky
about answers, so I pay,
her with treats instead.

Then she naps,
satisfied.
---<--@



Love for Lower Creation

As Adam was asked by God
to name the creatures of the earth,
so are we who are his descendants
similarly called to possess in each ourselves
the same intensity of human ownership
for all the life of lower creation.

The human world and lower creation
are no more divided than the visible realms
are separated from the invisible ones.

We impress upon the soul of animals and plants,
the light of our understanding (how brightly or how dimly)
so that they become a reflection of our reality
and we claim their being freely as ours
by the strength of our love (how far or how fleeting)
so that they become a part of our eternity
even as we become part of God's.

- selah -

So where
do our beloved pets go
when their soul leaves the earth
and their bodies return to the ground?

They never leave.

They return to a place each in ourselves
and await the victory of all things in the LORD.

---<--@

The Loan

All knowledge is borrowed that we might obtain to the Truth
and work out in ourselves an understanding of all things.
---<--@



The mind is a cup
and with knowledge it is filled
until it is full.

It becomes useless.
Not because it is a cup.
Do you understand?

When you know,
you let go...

(...until the cup knows it is a cup.)

---<--@



Knowledge that is kept like a treasure rots,
cursing with blindness instead of blessing with sight

But knowledge that is given, in word, deed, and prayer,
instead of impoverishing the giver, multiplies the gifts.



For truth once gained is possessed forever
and understanding once obtained is forever endowed.

But all knowledge returns again and again to the LORD;
like a river, it runs; like a stream, it flows,
keeping all things, teaching all things,
bearing all things in hope.



So when you think about something, let go.

Let go, let go, and let go.

Let go until it all comes back to you by your letting go.

Then you will always have understanding.
---<--@

Seeking the Seeker

I seek the seeker;
the one who I am seeking;
the one of the One.

I am to my self
when self is empty of me -
I become my self.

Many, few.
Few, then one.
---<--@

Coming into your own sunrise -

What is
most important

is self.

Knowing this,
one knows we are many.

What is
most important to self
is true self.

Knowing this,
one knows we are one.
---<--@

Light Against Despair

I remember Night -

fallen so deep within me 

like a veil of doom.

I was the darkness

and I knew only madness

and pride, sin, and gloom.

My heart knew nothing

niether did I knew my heart -

hardly did I see!

Till I came upon 

words, muted in pages, thine!

But I heard thee not. 

How could thy beauty,

thy wonder turn to ashes!

Something wept within... 

Something wept within -
it cried out, it sought, it flew,
and never left me...

Time came, and God heard:

And so we are, you and I -

our past ceased to be.

Darkness left,

Morning came.

---<--@

A Little Personal Anecdote -

Before I knew my Anne
(and consequently, the Holocaust),
I had a very idealistic view of warfare.

I thought armed conflict in and between nations
to be a very noble, honorable, even desirable affair.

I conceived soldiery to be something
clean and neat, ordered according to the image
of an effortless, mythical glory I had only imagined
and that the innocents were always
at all times and places - mercifully spared -
in their entirety.

After my Anne
(as it is God's pleasure),
I had a very decisive turn of heart.

Though by pure necessity
I accept the imperative of an absolute defense
(i.e. defense that is undertaken for its own sake),
I now utterly abhor War of any kind existing
in and between our nations.

For
I now see War as it is,
a hideous, devouring beast;
a fallen spirit, ever alive to our plight -
the enemy of All.

And soldiery
a dirty, confusing, difficult and painful necessity
born out of the Providential will of the LORD, our God,
to see all the nations of the children of Mankind
through to the end of all these tears.

And that we are all - to a certain degree,
within and among our nations engaged
in the art of true soldiering.

As I love my Anne, I hate War.

As I love Peace, I hate War.

Today is her birthday.
---<--@

Ang Dahilan

Ang sabi nila
ako'y mabait dahil
palasimba 'ko.

Sabi ko naman
kaya po 'ko may bait
dahil sa Misa.

Misa ang
dahilan!
---<--@



Sabi ng Mundo -
Kung gusto, may paraan.
Kung ayaw, may dahilan.

Sabi ng Diyos -
Kung gustong bumait, may paraan.
Santa Misa ang dahilan.

Jacinta's Embrace

Praying the ros'ry
one sad night, came Jacinta -
with a warm embrace.

I knew it was her
without asking who or why -
I knew only love.

I don't ask
anymore...
---<--@

Why am I so slow to understand...
...it is You, Lord Jesus, always You.
---<--@

A Form of the Formless You

Who is this, my love?
This form of thy formless self,
here - yet - not yet here.

For I see thee not...
Am I deceived, my darling?
No, for I know you.

Thy love, thy nearness,
thy gentle consolation,
thy cheer, thy spirit...

You are here.
I am blessed.
---<--@



I had to come away and figure out what I really feel about these pictures.

For when I first saw them, I did not know what to think of them.

I was not at all confused but was strangely unclear.

This wax figure struck me as beautiful yet somehow distant, my love, somewhat nostalgic and almost sad.

It is a masterful representation yet still seemingly empty and needful of you - so needful of you...

This form of the formless you
- blank, beautiful and infinitely lacking -
reminds me of what I have and what I don't have
in you, my darlingest Annelies Marie;
of what God gave and intends to restore
and of what War stole and intended to destroy.

It remains - as it must -
purely the work of human hands,
artful, yet still a representation
of a longing only the LORD can fulfill
in His own time.

I love you so, my Miyang, I love you so.

PERIOD.
---<--@

Infinite Intimacy

The spiritual realms contain no center.
For everywhere God is, there is its center.



Look at the heavens -
How wide, how high, how glorious!
Can we understand?

I search it by mind
- in measured mathematics -
looking for limits...

I search it by soul
- casting my heart... far away -
longing for the LORD...

The vastness, it daunts.
O what great majesty!
Alas! I'm empty...

Where art Thou, my God -
high in all that mystery?
For I am, lonely...

Where art Thou?
Where art Thou!
---<---@

When the Wisdom of the Creator imparted the light of meaning to the vastness of the universe, God did not waste a single inch of space -

For the LORD created the universe 

too incomprehensibly mysterious and
too unimaginably vast to our minds

that He may remain tangibly, 

intimately near to us in our hearts.

(God is nearer to us than our own thoughts.)

Hearts that in time, 

God the Father intended 

through Jesus Christ 

in the Peace of the Holy Spirit 

to gather back to His Heart.

=^.^=

Pilipinas Lang

Pilipinas lang?
Sa mga likha ng D'yos -
ika'y tayo lang.

Sanlaksang bansa
man ang 'yong masilayan -
ati'y 'to lamang!

Isipi't
mahalin!
---<--@

Pilipinas lang?

Alisin na sa ating isip ang "Pilipinas lang"!

Bakit?

Ilang Pilipinas ba ang pinahintulutan
- ng PANGINOON -
na umusbong sa mga lupain ng mundo
para nating sabi'y siya'y "Pilipinas lang"?

Ang Pilipinas po ay ang Pilipinas, wala nang iba.

Siya po'y kung hindi
mamahalin at ipagtataggol ng Pilipino'y
mananatiling maralita at marumi
at para ngang isang
"Pilipinas Lang".

- basahin at pagnilaynilayan -

Ang pagmamahal po sa Bayan
kapag hindi ito naging
pagmamahal sa kapwa tao
(kapwa Pilipino)
ay huwad na pagmamahal.

Hindi po tayo ginawang bansa
ng ating nag-iisang Diyos
para sa isang huwad lamang
na pagmamahal.

=^.^=