Thursday, July 31, 2008

On Free Will

FREEDOM is a path and we walk this path slowly and awkwardly as a child but as we give away our selves with each our step, we will in time mature in this path until we are able to fly away Home upon eagle wings of God. Truly, truly, it is in giving that we become free.
---<--@

ARE ALL THINGS PRESUPPOSED? Is all of creation a predetermined flow into it's last end? Do we really have the freedom to choose or are our choices already made for us the moment we came into existence.

This all depends on our understanding of eternity. Human beings ARE free to choose, free will being a gift we have received from our Creator. God knows all our choices even before we make them precisely because our LORD is eternal. There is no time in eternity, only Being and in this Being is eternal and omniscient. This omniscience is the infinite Mind of our LORD perfectly cognizant of each and every universal whole of causality, all the possible combination of the realities that make up one universe and all the possible combination of the universes that is ever to the remotest degree probable is clearly and perfectly contained by the Mind of God.

Our reality is a reflection of Divine thought, for God exerts no effort whatsoever to shape from the nothingness, an existence emerging into time, our LORD is Being, God only has to will it and for our LORD to will it, He will from eternity perceive it from all possible things into one specific act of the Divine will that is never without Wisdom, never without truth, never without purpose or meaning, never without fail, even though many times we may not comprehend them, they are there.

God does not interfere with our free will, God guarantees it and sustains the choices we make as well as their necessary consequences whether or not it accords with the sanctity of His Being, for our own benefit. God foresaw all things from eternity yet is patient and kind enough with us to allow us the course and the freedom of our lives wherein we are always free to choose and also concomitantly responsible for our choices. God places our own good many, many times even over and above the infinite dignity of His Divinity as Himself, for our own benefit, for God loves us all and have always loved us and in Christianity this love is made manifest in the greatest possible manner in the Incarnation of our Lord, Jesus Christ.

How can some people blame God for choices they themselves make? How can they unashamedly accuse God of manipulation and rote tyranny of their lives? Where questions of evil enter into our lives and our world, it is not outward where we must look for answers, it is inward into the heart, into our own heart where we must look, for neither can we look into other people's hearts nor can we ever succeed in finding meaningful answers to these questions by wrongfully or conveniently or cowardly blaming it all on the Divine. Indeed, our LORD seem a nice and easy target for those who refuse to allow their hearts to see because of their unyielding material grip on the darkness that fill their own hearts or their own darkness caused by their relentless denial of either the one Light or the darkness of both the one Light as well as the darkness.

If happiness is our destiny, then authentic human freedom is the one path that will lead us there, it is the power to make the right choice that with the virtue of penance is the consistent endurance also of the pain of each and every one of our right choices that through God's grace will eventually lead us there. In Christianity, this is the hard and narrow way, in the language of my own conviction, this is the one ascendant mountain path of which the summit is Jesus Christ, my All and my one true liberation, the one ascendant path of Christian perfection, a path that is neither of nature nor of our own making, because Christ is both our path and our destiny that ascends into the limitless unity of our LORD.

If we were never free in the first principle truth, all of this would be without meaning, all of life turn to dust, our souls to ashes, and our memory into oblivion without a care or a whisper of our passing away.

Are we not, even in spite of ourselves, a little greater than this, why do we hope sometimes beyond all hope, our souls reaching out into things that we know in our hearts we can not possibly reach, why do we bother with truth and the substance of meaning, if it were all a void, why would any being who possess a rational awareness even bother with all of this unthinking, why would we, why would the angels, why would the devils, why would God?

To negate the potency of the divine gift of free will negates the need for reality itself. To negate human freedom eliminates the need for time. God exists and will forever exist but we will not.

Glory to God in the highest
Adoration to Jesus Christ
Peace to men of good will.

Cat Jokes: The Lighter Side of Life

HUMOR is the original essence of play, an innocence that we never outgrow.

LAUGHTER is like a break in the storm; a pause in the silence of our unconscious skies. It is a refreshing lightness rising from the heaviness within; echoes of our promised return into the realm of an everlasting happiness.
---<--@

1. What is a cat's way of keeping law & order? Claw enforcement. =^.^=

2. What does a cat do when it gets mad? It has a hissy fit. =^.^=

3. What do you call the cat that was caught by the police? The purrpatrator. =^.^=

4. Where does a cat go when it loses its tail? The retail store. =^.^=

5. What do cats use to make coffee? A purrcolator. =^.^=

6. If there are ten cats on a boat and one jumps off, how many cats are left on the boat? None! They were copy cats. =^.^=

7. Is it bad luck if a black cat follows you? That depends on whether you're a man or a mouse. =^.^=

8. What has more lives than a cat? A frog because it croaks every night. =^.^=

9. How do cats end a fight? They hiss and make up. =^.^=

10. Why did the judge dismiss the entire jury made up of cats? Because each of them was guilty of purrjury. =^.^=

11. What do you use to comb a cat? A catacomb. =^.^=

12. What kind of cat will keep your grass short? A lawn meower. =^.^=

13. What is a cat's favourite colour? Purrrrrrrple! =^.^=

14. How does the cat get its own way? With friendly purrsuasion. =^.^=

15. What is a cat's favourite subject in school? Hisstory. =^.^=

16. Finally, a cat fluent in four world languages would "mi how" in Chinese, "meow" in English, "miao" in Japanese and "miyaw" in Filipino. =^.^=

Oh, I just love them cats, lol! I hope you enjoyed these jokes as much as I did, my good friend. =^.^=

You know, I once had to answer a question, "what makes you laugh"? It is the unconscious realization that you and your friends instantly have when something really unpredictably and harmlessly silly has just happened to someone who does not expect it.

In retrospect, I guess that's just one of the many facets of humor.

Humor is an art of life;
a certain sense we receive from Beauty. Like all of sacred life it is perennial. It is patient as well as constant. It is an innocence that we never outgrow; the eternal smile from which arise all hearts of good cheer. It's hymn is a quiet reminder of what is common in our humanity; a remembrance of innocent times and victorious personalities that is necessary for communal celebrations of feasts. As an aid to our common hope humor is meant to help wear down animosities, grind against divisions, melt away discord and renew the perseverance of the human spirit.

Incidentally, humor is an essential Australian Army trait (fair dinks). All of this reminds me of a mate of mine, a bloke from Down Under who was never without humor, little did I know he was suffering from an illness which took his life some years after I left the country. This good friend of mine always had a joke and a laugh. Never without a smile, he was in his late 60's when I met him and now he is young once more, this time forever. His name is William Eric "Bill" Adams-White.

Meowr, uh I mean, Cheers!
=^.^=

Glory to God in the highest
Adoration to Jesus Christ
Peace to men of good will.

For the one People of Lebanon

A HUMBLE GIFT for your particular endeavor of Country.
---<--@

Your Stated Aims:

1. To restore confidence in political institutions and the Lebanese political system.

2. To promote moderation.

Some Suggestive Interim Goals of State:

As a Universal Rule: Always be mindful of the time which dictates the natural tempo of the transient state with a mind to pave the way for a seamless transition into the next government.

1. Secure the Will of the State - Proclaim your interim intention.

The Interim Intention of State

MINDFUL of the common good of the nation and eager to restore the balance that conserve and prosper the sacred life of our national communities, we hereby observe with each one of you today, our unanimous and principled commitment to these necessary measures intended to secure for our people, the honorable benefits of all our common sacrifices as one nation and -

PROFESS a Politics of Gratitude; (build Confidence)

ESTABLISH a National Attitude of Peace and Reconciliation; (build Moderation)

ESTABLISH a Constitution of Common Accommodation; (build Confidence)

ESTABLISH a Government of Common Values; (build Moderation)

ESTABLISH the Watches of our Community Police; (build Confidence)

ESTABLISH a Military of our People; (build Confidence)

RE-CONSTITUTE a Culture of Common Humanity. (build Moderation)

MINDFUL of the great significance of this undertaking, we fully commit our lives and our honor to this labor of life and the common good in the Name of God, of common humanity, of the sacred life entrusted to our nation, and of the sacred trust that binds us together as one people.

To Transition: Entrust this to the Executive Branch

2. Secure the Order of the State - Create a Defining Vision for the one Republic whole and be likewise guided by the substance of the Republic Trust.

To Transition: Entrust this to the Legislative Branch

3. Secure the Peace of the State -

Emphasize the nature and the mission of the endeavor of Country and the reality of the Greater Good and then address the lesser lines of common departure as they exist within the national communities and accommodate all legitimate hopes of the communities into the national constitution and make these hopes part of the intrinsic strength of one the Republic whole.

Attend to the grievances of the People, seek to find their individual sense of hope, empathize with and emphasize their hope, console and de-emhpasize any and all traces of negativity and despair, conclusively determine the sum of all the People's hopes and establish the common which will form the basis of the Republic Trust which is the Sacred Trust shared by the Nation and the State.

We all know the natural color of water is clear, likewise is the noble military unanimous in heart and in mind. The motion of water is fluid, likewise are the motions of the noble military determined by the gravity of their sense of mission. The substance of water is cohesive, likewise are the bond between soldiers a measure of their fidelity to the state and to each other. The intention of water is determined, likewise does the noble military commit to battle, it is without hesitation, perceiving victory even before the first shots are fired.

Unify and strengthen the one military whole. O Lebanon, these are your most obedient of sons and daughters, value each and every one of them, never betray their trust, honor their sacred remembrances, provide legitimacy to their existence and impart by your common compassion a distinct sense of mission into their collective awareness, and with paternal concern and vigilance, observe closely their conduct: recognize and reward: honor with honor, love with love, virtue with virtue. And leave the rest to the competence of the one military whole.

To Transition: Entrust this to the Judiciary Branch

4. Consolidate the Gains of the People

Let the common People be their own safeguard to the nation:

Provide a common measure of the Republic Vision - Vision is an ultimate destiny, the measure of Vision is in magnitudes of common reality, a certain brightness perceived by the People in relation to the National Destiny shared by all the People, past as well as present and with every generation of the People unto the Last Day.

Provide an equal order of law and reason and establish reason as the measure of law. Therefore, every law that is unreasonable (serves not) and is no law at all a priori.

Depending on the prevailing disposition of the nation as a whole, you may choose to work to establish the paradigm of the original peace that rely on first principle truths common to our common humanity, enabling truly human values, and are as the sheltering wings of Country that provide for the defense and the prosperity the common people, uphold and recognize the sacred reality of all honorable religions and utilize anything and everything in the meaningful service of human life in particular and the sacred life of our planet as a whole in general, giving praise and glory to our one God in heaven by conserving and preserving as one, our Creator's living creation here on earth.

Please bear into mind when determining the equitable nature of the one Republic whole the vested interest of the Lebanese Christians and all Christians in Middle East Asia who are each familiar to my own heart as well as other faith groups within your sphere of influence.

To Transition: Entrust this to the Constitutional Offices of State

LASTLY;

"OF THE GOVERNMENT of the state, it must be said, that there is no state more superior, regardless of it's governing framework, than one that brings peace to the people."

The measure of the success of the State is tasted like as if the State were a Tree in a Garden of many trees, it is not tasted in the leaves nor the roots nor the trunk nor the branches which are all the means of State but in the fruits of the State which is the Peace that prosper the People.

Why is the human life of the common people so important? Because all the noblest of ideologies and the finest of politics in the world will never turn back the passage of time nor bring back those whose lives have already passed from our reality, for their promise have already been taken away from us, but if we remain universally loyal to their sacred remembrances, we will find that their hopes still remain - living in us, upholding us, adding to our resolve, and lending eternal virtue to our common will of Country.

Remember also here and now that the common wishes of those who have left us here down on this world below were never death but were always life, be guided by their final wisdom. Thus do we honor their sacred memory. Lest we forget. Lest we forget.

With every Transition in perpetua: Entrust this to the one Republic whole.

Prosper the Peace. Prosper the People.

---<--@
Glory to God in the highest
Adoration to Jesus Christ
Peace to men of good will.

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

The Guardian State

OF THE GOVERNMENT of the state, it must be said, that there is no state more superior, regardless of it's governing framework, than one that brings peace to the people.
---<--@

THIS NECESSARY FORM
of state more widely known as a dictatorship or a military dictatorship is a transient form of government that is almost always military in nature.

Guardian States with their martial nature constitute a necessary form of deterrent against tyranny for these States usually rise from the ashes of tyrants.

Of the many misconceptions about this form of State, most of them are quite justified for the Guardian State is effective only where the State itself never fails to recognize the transient nature of the guardianship of the military over the nation.

There is only one particular cause that would invite the emergence of a Guardian State and that cause is brute tyranny which is an oppression of the people so severe and so brutal in it's violence and insensitivity that it has successfully penetrated deeply enough into the military to
arouse in it's heart a deeper sense of fidelity and a fiercer kind of honor that transcend it's common loyalties to the state.

For no evil in this world will ever fail to touch those whose hearts are human, even those whose hearts are completely committed by duty and honor to the military of the state. And the greatest forms of evil are social by their nature, afflicting whole human communities and entire nations, not just one individual, but entire segments of our common humanity as well as entire lineages of our human generations.

Faced with social evil which is very much unlike lesser evils that work to afflict individuals, both of which, it must be said are as a potent poison that is completely lethal to the human soul, for unlike those evils that plague individuals only, there can be no hidden or incomplete forms of social evil, all forms of social evil are potent enough in their deception and violent enough in their force to be able to manipulate and openly control the reality that prevail from among the people lest they would have remained a lesser evil, and when I say lesser evil, I do not mean to under appreciate nor de-emphasize the common malice of every one of these adversaries of our human soul, I only mean to differentiate them one from the other for the singular intent and purpose of this very specific discussion.

Gathering again from our first principle understanding about the pre-existent good, where this good is the common good of an entire human community faced with a formidable form of social evil, no man or no woman in his or her right sense of heart and mind will ever fail to think of ways on how to defeat this common menace to community, family, friends as well as self. And one who is faced with such a malice can never be wrong because there are no hidden or incomplete forms of social evil, it is always a common experience that one shares with the greater community.

We recall once again that every tyranny, without exception, must be permitted by the people for it to continue into maturity. For the price of true liberty is eternal vigilance, indeed. But where the people become either complacent or despairing, their vigilance waning by either need or lack of need (which is also a lack) they become vulnerable to the forces driven by an immortal hatred of our one family of nations.

Where the pre-existent peace of our community is in such a way threatened by a social evil, the greatest of which are mature forms of tyrannies in all it's diverse kinds, all the able from among that particular community are duty bound by Divine will, common humanity and sacred trust one to another with God and the angelic host of God to effectively confront and successfully overthrow the heavy yoke of this uncommon slavery to this most foreign of threats to our original peace.

This is the sufficiency of the defense which like every other sufficiency, always rests in the greater sufficiency of Divine Providence. Thus, those who rest in the sufficiency of the defense are at all times vigilant in their hearts not to fall into the wiles of war or the darkness of despair for they must walk with attention the middle ground, where either lack or excess will work not only to imperil common human lives but also precious human souls. For not even conflict and the rigors of battle will work to undo the original principles that recognize, serve and uphold the sanctity of life as a whole.

Those who lack in their sufficiency will surely fall against their foes while those who exceed in their sufficiency will surely become the enemy they claim to fight. But for those who are true to the original cause under which they have set out to serve, they will most surely gain the victory.

But because this victory may not be possibly achieved by dullness and chaos as in a mob of men, it must be achieved by exact order and sharp discipline as in a unit of men, and all of these units together form one ordered whole, this is the military of the people, the common protector of the nation. Their allegiance lies primarily in the common good of the state as a whole but where the state has forsaken this common good and has broken it's trust with the nation, this is where in principle the will of the state has also likewise broken it's trust with it's military.

But the military with it's robust sense of honor and duty will never act on this unless the state has become so fully committed in it's disregard for the electorate that it has become a descendant spiral into the evil of a mature tyranny, then and only then will the reality of this threat penetrate deeply enough into the rank and file of the profession of arms where the possibility of a Guardian State begin to grow in reality.

For the military will that is easily swayed and provoked by the greatest of human weaknesses is not a constant force of order but a variable agent of instability, it must in it's collective awareness be able to recognize evil where it lurks and at the same time recognize our humanity where it lacks.

Therefore, a military that prematurely acts on a perceived threat does not merit the trust of the people but a military that allows itself to become complicit where a real threat exists, we may not refer to as a military at all, for they are nothing more than organized criminals who do not deserve the honor of their uniform.

From the preceding paragraphs, do we now see in our minds what it means to tread the middle ground, where lack or excess imperil lives as well as souls and where lives and souls are imperiled, so does the mission of the military, for when the lives that sustain it and the souls that believe in it have all perished, every one of them devoured by the beast of war, so have their cause and their right to exist also perish with the nation they have so clearly failed to serve and defend.

For the sufficiency of the defense also means a strict purity of arms. This purity of arms sustains the greater unseen economy of sacred life and redounds with immaterial benefits that help keep the military sharp and decisive, being an effective instrument of the sacred life entrusted to the state, both in the calm of peace as well as in the din of battle.

The measure of the strength of this martial virtue may be concretely counted in lives saved from BOTH sides of the ONE side of the peace.

The noble military perceives the victory first, then determines how to attain it, who to attain it from, when it must do battle, where it must do battle, how it must do battle and when it must refrain from battle, all the while being mindful of limiting human suffering and the human costs of conflict. The noble military always attains the victory for where it triumphs it is like the spring where all of life begins to bloom, where it awaits, it is like the winter where all of life awaits with it, where it decides to do battle, it is like the summer where all of life spreads wide afield, and where it mourns, it is like the autumn where all of life begin to await again the spring.

For the noble military, victory may only be delayed but it can never be taken away, for whoever rests in the sufficiency of the defense is indestructible for they rest first and foremost in the greater sufficiency of Almighty God Who with His angelic hosts know every way and every means to defeat the enemies of common human life that threaten the sacred life of creation as a whole.

Thus, it is the universal fate of all tyrants, being correctly perceived, to fall by the sword of the military of the people, and live always under threat of the the sword of God, our LORD of hosts.

There is a common vein that runs through all that is evil and this is a complete disregard for the value of each and every individual human soul and this evil is shared in common by all tyrants with the worst kinds actively pursuing the destruction of entire segments of our common humanity. This is not an evil born of human weakness but an actual commitment of the human will absolutely not to serve which is a commitment they knowingly or unknowingly share with Satan himself. Thus, it is a commitment towards absolute defeat and worse which in the Book of Isaiah has already been decreed by Almighty God Himself from eternity.

This is the one cause of the Guardian State, it is the one reason that make it meaningful and therefore comprehensible to the human soul and amiable to the universal spirit of our common humanity.

However, the true test of the Guardian State does not consist of it's attaining to the victory against a foe who for all intents and purposes have in eternity already been defeated, the true test of the Guardian State lie in the work of it's transition, in the constant realization of it's transient nature and it's resiliency to the corruption which is the great peril of all human authority, a peril magnified one hundredfold by the martial nature of the Guardian State.

The martial nature of the Guardian State where once it was advantageous against a great evil become after it's victory it's own greatest peril, it is here where the virtue of the military will truly be tested for all the military of every nation-state are expected to be combat capable but how many of them are equally expected as a whole to display virtue and forbearance in battle? The answer is unknown for only where peace is the prevailing paradigm can one truly appreciate how virtue beginning with purity of arms work with the greater economy of sacred life to actually defeat war itself. But because the prevailing paradigm of our world IS war itself, the immaterial aspects that is at the root and the cause of every conflict are consistently overlooked and instead, the focus of all our nations are conveniently directed on the material which is the root cause of our reliance on division and the endless battle that this false sufficiency cause at the common expense of all human life in specific and all of the sacred life of our planet as a whole in general.

Now, we all know that the military is like water, it derives initiative from motion and from this motion it derives it's being decisive in time and in dimensional space, and from this decisiveness it derives it's momentum and from this momentum it derives it's effective ability to cut through and to defeat the enemy will and all of this being as one step. For doctrine imparts human potential, method imparts rhythm, cohesion imparts mass and weight, effective weaponry imparts combat potential, effective command imparts exactness, effective military discipline imparts precision, effective military will imparts the unified kinetic explosion of all of these elements, and effective military unit-work (that balance command with control) imparts the decisive shape that channel all of this combat power against the enemy will.

As one can see, the military require motion, it always require motion for it is time that imparts motion to the visible and invisible universe and it is time also that the military require to unify and to consolidate it's active potential in time and dimensional space by utilizing the rhythm (or the shih in the Art of War) of the motions of time (which are the seasons of heaven in the Art of War).

In a Guardian State, the lack of an enemy, creates a space for the military to rest and this is in principle where one can draw the fine line where a legitimate Guardian State becomes a legitimate military absolutism. Where the commander is to fall complacent and the military is allowed to rest, the Guardian State have effectively ceased to exist.

For a military that rests is restless. No active force commander of senior to general rank will ever allow his military to rest save for the one who allows himself or herself to become complacent and to consequently lose his or her eternal vigilance over the people.

A complacent military officer will soon become nothing more than a corrupt individual accidentally clad in the uniform of common respect belonging to the universal ranks of every honorable military soul and tradition.

But for the general officer worth his or her own salt who allows himself of herself to be in this way undone, it is only a matter of time when the plague of corruption begin to effectively diminish and degrade his formidable sense of honor and undermine his great mastery of self and of his or her command over others. He or she, will in time also inevitably submit to the easy corruption born out of the plunder that is left in the wake of the tyrant's passing. This is the calamity of the Guardian State.

Indeed, a Guardian State for it to succeed must be extremely mindful of both itself and of it's time, it must be itself very careful to be able to consolidate it's gains and not betray it's eternal remembrances in order to assume the part of the evil that the military have sacrificed so much to remove.

For to assume the shape of the same evil one has fought so hard and so valiantly to overthrow and defeat is one of the greatest dishonors here on earth below as well as in heaven above; a failure greater than the shame of a hundred thousand defeats in the field of battle.

For it flies in the face of our victorious and sacred dead to whom all living military owe an eternal debt. Unto this eternal debt and upon the remembrance of this debt do every honorable military universally march as though they were one, for sacrifice and uncommon valor is the common and unspoken pledge of their eternal regard for one another as loyal souls forever faithful to his or her nation and as well as forever joined with the united camaraderie of all sacred life.

To sum up, there are many things that can be said about Guardian States and most of them I believe were said without first forming a clear understanding of the government of humanity as it relates to the nations itself, to each nation as a whole and to the most immediate systems of ordered wholes that form the tangible structure of the divine governance of God's own Providence.

It is sufficient for the intent and purpose of this meditation that the stigma that makes it even harder for a legitimate Guardian State to be able to transition successfully into a permanent form of civilian state is dealt with and this evil retrenched deep into the oblivion of the past that now lie behind us.

Glory to God in the highest
Adoration to Jesus Christ
Peace to men of good will.

On Homophobia

Homophobia: an unreasoning fear of or antipathy toward homosexuals and homosexuality.
---<--@

"
IT IS IN THE HEART where you must look at your brother and your sister, you must view him and her with a new heart of peace, knowing in your being that the old ways has passed away forever.

You must perceive with a faith that is willing to see what is truly worth seeing in others, look at the comings and goings of their lives, their love and human concern for those who are near and dear to them, their own common needs and human weaknesses with yourself, the unsung hymns of their hopes, the unborn dream of their particular endeavors of Country, the rhythm of their everyday life, the quiet passing of their generation, and their slow awakening to the eternal dream of happiness emerging from the meaningless din at the wake of exile time into that lucid eternal harmony of the one music in you and the one music in me."

TYRANNY TAKES many mature forms but are born of one beginning; the people has to allow it. For without our permission, no tyranny will ever reach it's most absurd heights.

This is the same with homophobia, it is one form of tyranny. For it is the common work of tyrants to deny us our ability to benefit from our human freedom.

How can we consider ourselves free if there is an area of our life that is ruled by fear and ignorance? Difference is only fearsome if we allow ourselves to be ruled by it.

Granted, most religious traditions, Christianity included, very strongly condemn the homosexual act as being an abomination in the sight of God.

Let us without judgment respectfully agree with each other that there is indeed an intrinsic kind of evil in the homosexual act that is abhorrent in the sight of God, angels and men. For all evil is either a departure from or a corruption of a pre-existing good original to our common creation.

There are two kinds of evil, one physical and the other moral. Physical evil consists of the experience of pain, suffering and death of our corporeal body. It also includes the various forces of nature that at times conspire to produce widespread confusion and catastrophes that afflict our common human lives. This kind of evil, physical evil, is wholly sustained and determined by the Providence of God as instruments of justice and discipline that work with His incomparable beneficence to preserve and fulfill higher forms of good that serve our humanity within the greater context of the sacred life of our common creation.

Let us bear in mind that Divine good is always manifest on our world as a virtuous act, sometimes subtle and mysterious with it's deep serendipity, sometimes very blunt and objectively direct, and this includes all acts of justice and the juridical disciplines that support it that if not bound by virtue as heaven is bound on earth, will serve naught but base earthly causes that are both blind and vicious being without requisite wisdom necessary for the pastoral care of the greatest good of every precious soul of mankind.

Physical evil is the necessary fire that feeds the furnace of affliction and humiliation that refine like gold, the righteous of our nations. But we won't get deeper into that today because we will fly off in a tangent away from the crux of the matter at hand.

What we are more relevantly concerned here is moral evil. Moral evil is the destruction of common reality that turns our experience of temporal physicality into ashes from the inside out, meaning this evil takes it's singular entrance from the heart of our humanity to wreak havoc out into our wider world beyond.

Now, going back to our prior agreement perceived by both the reason and faith of common men, homosexual persons included, and the perfect illumination of the minds of the angels, the combined splendor of which is singularly derived from the infinite glory of the unsurpassed wisdom of our one eternal God that singularly understand the homosexual act is evil, and let us further agree that this evil is a moral evil.

Let us also be clear here now today that it is this particular evil that our noble religions strongly condemn with good reason, is an act of sin and it is not in anyway an absolute condemnation of the person itself.

For where it concerns evil one must never employ absolutism for this will only allow that same evil to flourish, even secretly, take deep root, and grow into maturity to propagate itself at our common expense.

Furthermore, is there such as thing in monotheism as an absolute evil?

Can we perceive the reality of an absolute evil by the illumination of our faith from the sacred revelations entrusted to any one of our particular honorable Abrahamic religions that in spite of our many departures from each other converge as one to safeguard the common doctrine of a monotheistic faith? Does this doctrine allow for the existence of an absolute evil in the moral sense, or can we even directly experience this through the reality of our common creation? No.

For evil is and will always be absolutely particular as well as foreign in contrast with the good which will always be absolutely absolute as well as native to our common creation. Therefore, if we were to gain the highest form of understanding of a certain good, we will always realize that this good is absolute which means that it is applicable at all times and at all places on our earth here below as well as in heaven above.

It is why moral relativism is flawed, because it seeks to deny the human will, the anchors of the absolute good, that hold fast our lives against the buffeting cyclonic forces of change of which is the singular physical certainty of this unfathomably uncertain world.

Now, we have arrived at an understanding of two things, that moral evil is never absolute and that the moral evil intrinsic in the homosexual act is applicable only in particular to that specific act.

No single action can completely define the reality of a human being for our lives are the sum of all our life's decisions. And as a rule, we own our actions and our actions don't own us for the normal locus of every human will is on the inside, in the soul, it is never ordinarily centered on things outside and therefore distinct and apart from the particular experience of a person that informs it.

Let us imagine a will whose locus of control lies outside of the self, it is a will of the whim like so much dry chaff carried by the random winds of temporality, fickle and ephemeral like the material world unto which it has chosen to absolutely belong. Because it is fickle, it wears many faces and possess many hearts none of which is it's own, because it is ephemeral, it lives only for itself and bears no good will regard for either the good or the lives of others yesterday, today or tomorrow. Most importantly, this will defines itself by defining others and seeks to make identical copies of itself in the lives of other men. It finds it's greatest fulfillment in it's vanity, it judges as if divine, treats it's common peers in common creation as if it were not human, and is willful, opposing everything and anything that detracts or differs from it's view of how things should be whether they be reasonable or not, for reason has nothing to do with it, only vanity does.

How dreadful it is to be that way, to be helplessly lost and apart your own self, let us be thankful to God now that in spite of our many, many failings that offend Him, we carry on each day with a will and a heart of our own.

Let us use this now to be able to distinguish the act from the person who is enduring an inclination towards homosexuality. For it is within the soul of every person without exception to fulfill a potential to become one with the absolute Good and to become one mind and heart with the God of our one mind and one heart, one Love. Therefore, there is an absolute good that is at work within those persons cognizant enough of the truth to perceive what it is and I say this to contrast the particularity of the specific evil contained in the homosexual act which is when compared to the whole being of a person who has until now gallantly contained his or her unnatural inclination is like the universe and a random grain of sand.

For those who have already committed to acts of a homosexual nature, I also affirm to you that these acts can never own them for all acts are owned by the person who performs them, not even God Himself will intrude to save the nobility of man at the cost of diminishing the freedom of man to choose which God Himself has gifted our one race of humanity and has guaranteed since time immemorial and God's will is unchangeable. Because it is unjust to think while we yet exist in mortality that actions own a person, for it is the person who owns their acts, one may never fully condemn anyone without hope who is a servant of God.

We here on earth below are not meant to be the judges of each other, we are meant to be each other's hope, for we are meant to be each other's keeper and in the Communion of Saints, this common hope that is commonly safeguarded by all who are generous enough in their common humanity to live lives of virtue, peace and common good will with God, true self and neighbor form one sacred trust that stretches from here unto eternity.

To sum, one who desire in his or her heart or hearts to fulfill the righteousness of God who walks in the one Way of virtue, good will and peace for God, the angels of God, true self and common humanity, may never entertain absolutism where moral evil is concerned for this kind of thinking is offensive to the unity of our Lord GOD who is the one absolute Good who made all good things pre-existent before evil had it's ugly turn.

For where can one who believe in one God find in the whole of our God's creation a situation in reality where evil was before the good is? This is a sheer impossibility for it contradicts the very nature of our Lord GOD Who is Being Itself, there is no reality of this kind in the whole of creation, seen and unseen.

As a rule therefore, evil may only be particular and therefore, not only must we always be vigilant in our prayerful watch, we must also be discerning in our needful times, because this is what it takes for us to be human and where we are each more completely human, our God becomes more completely divine, for our humanity is the glory of God manifest here on our earth below. We are the many reflections of the many facets of that most precious jewel set in the golden splendor of the immortal crown of sacred life who in spite of our littleness and despite our woundedness, commonly possess the innate potential to shine brighter than all the lifetimes of all the suns of this universe combined, as the visible glory of God in His visible creation.

And as the act can now be safely distinguished from the person, we may now also perceive the common hope of those who are afflicted with the uncommon inclination towards the homosexual that drive their common need, a need that we must by sacred duty meet with common alms. To complete our understanding of this need, we should now depart from first principles and continue our vital exploration by forming a practical awareness of the individual lives of those persons who endure homosexual tendencies.

However, before we continue, it must also be noted that our laws are a response to common needs, a response particular to every human society. These laws are meant to shape our reason and so our reason also should be their measure. Where there is unreason in the law, you can be sure that it will never serve the purpose for which law is founded which is to bind the will of heaven on earth, for it becomes nothing less than a tyranny of words, a lie and a burden to the human communities it has enslaved.

Now, the greatest law of all is the law of Christian charity for in this law is found the nascent principles that govern reality and the reality of our relationships human as well as divine. Truth is Being and Being is Love. Everything that is real draw it's being from Truth which is Being, Love imparts an eternal motion to Being and so we were created and our lives guided by meaning, of truth gentle and beneficent, our souls touched in the silence of our hearts by the very unseen substance of our own kindness and common humanity. Truth is Being and Being is Love, this is the law of Christian charity; it over rules all deception, division, discord and detraction that may plague both reason and faith and joins together as one the common hope of our common humanity.

We shall be thus guided by this law of the Gospel truth and no other, it serve to guide us where we are uncertain and fulfill us in the truth where we are certain as we now attempt to form a practical awareness of the individual lives of homosexual persons.

The life of every homosexual person is initially defined by his or her struggle against the uncommon inclination to homosexuality. Indeed, the homosexual person above all people is keenly aware of the peculiar nature of his or her condition and require none of us to remind them of the same.

The struggle of the homosexual person is only superficially a crisis of gender identity, deep in the heart of the person this is a much larger crisis of truth, that self-identifying truth that is possessed by all souls known to God by our proper names. For a homosexual person feels deprived of this truth and if we are a superficial people and perceive only the surface struggle for gender identity, we will completely miss this central fact that homosexuality is essentially a most profound crisis of self outwardly manifest in the gender struggle of the homosexual person.

Now, if we are a worldly people, we will soon follow the convention that labels all homosexual persons with so-called politically correct terms that denote a mindlessness and submission to the way of the world, we would begin to call them the "third sex" without thinking to understand why. And this will only serve to confuse them even more and distance them from the warmth of our common humanity which they so desperately need all in the cowardly name of modern convenience.

But we no longer follow the way of the world nor do we still walk the way of war and so we must liberate our minds and our hearts from the mindless stereotypes and the hurtful labels that only serve to mutually exclude us from each other and prevent our being able to understand one another.

For we are a people of the peace and so we no longer rely on opposition to define the reality of our common experience, for the old ways of the past have passed away forever into the night behind us, we now belong to God and to each other, entrusting unto God and unto each other our common hope as a duty and a sacred trust. For we are tasked by Divine decree to be the vanguards of our common human hope and build upon the original reality of our Eden's peace a culture that would prefer to serve sacred life over war and defend with valor the purity our nation's hope from the scandalous contempt of the will of war for all our human life and for all of sacred life as a whole.

Thus, in the One Solidarity, we will view homosexuality not as a gender identity. We will view it specifically as a severe crises of belonging manifest in the struggle to fulfill a common human need of the highest order, that of a meaningful existence; it is a requirement of the human soul to be sincerely understood and completely accepted despite one's self that all of us sinners should all too well understand.

We will refrain from being confused about the truth of it all and refer to them as they truly are, as human beings with human souls, without falling into the trap of also being confused about their gender which might make us look tolerant for reasons that exclude naught but the self for in reality this is another mindless surrender to the vanity of the world and it is, like all vanity, empty of promise, for beside a sigh and a nervous snicker, it will neither work to appease them of their sorrow nor help them along the way to their ultimate liberation from this particular kind of oppression; this specific form of human suffering.

To be able to do this, we must rise above every hateful prejudice and mindless stereotype of this world that attempt to deceive us with mutually exclusive labels that break us up into weaker and weaker parts and pieces until we are but tiny islands of truths that disappear here and there in a vast ocean of lies, until naught is left of our common humanity but weakness and dilution as manifest in those indistinguishable oases of peace in spaces far and few in between separated by a limitless desolation brought about by war's abomination for sacred life.

This world with it's oppressive paradigm of war does not turn from it's way to help the widow and the stranger, the orphan and the defenseless, the poor and the dispossessed, the homeless and the displaced, the unborn and the elderly, the infirm and the disabled, the weak and the oppressed, the ignorant and the powerless, the grieving and the despairing, the starving and the thirsty, the naked and the inexperienced, the victim and the prisoner, the misguided and the confused, the desperate and the illiterate, the dying and the dead, indeed, this wretched world with it's long list of those poor and unfortunate souls that it afflicts with such misery and severity will not hesitate to turn against homosexual persons as well. This same form of persecution inflicted upon our weak is also likewise inflicted upon every one of those greater souls called from among our common peers in common creation to stand on our behalf and rally to our common defense that the vanity of this world deem as uncommonly brave, virtuous or spirited.

Now that we have properly placed the homosexual person in the context of the suffocating atmosphere of their particular reality in the preceding paragraphs, we will proceed to move nearer to the person and the personal struggle that define each and every homosexual person who have had to endure the inescapable nature of their own peculiar inclination.

Bearing in mind that the life of every homosexual person is defined by his or her struggle to fill a common need of the highest order, that of meaningful existence, let us now be informed beforehand that there are three central truths that decisively define the shape and the severity of a homosexual person's struggle and we shall looking to arrive at each of these in their own particular turn during the remainder of our course.

Now, as the homosexual person secretly struggles to cope with his or her homosexual tendencies, they will be led to ask questions that challenge their own innate sense of identity, they will be forced to pit their own common humanity against the mindless stereotypes of the world and the cruel ignorance of many and this shall lead most of them to fall into hopelessness and despair.

Feeling utterly trapped between internal circumstances they feel they are powerless to prevent and external circumstances that seek to deprive them of their God-given dignity as human beings, these human beings, the same with any human being, quite soon become angry and repressed enough to completely abandon their own in-born sense of common propriety and openly rebel against the society that they feel has forsaken them. They will turn into their anger instead of their hope because no one was willing enough to empower and enable their hope, and therefore their choices as well, by willingly and courageously sharing in it. Their own anger will, in turn, prevent them from recognizing the liberating truth of our Lord Jesus Christ which may only be experienced in the calm of a heart that is reconciled to the truth of itself with Christ. It will isolate them.

This truth, which is the truth of their belonging, is the first of the three central truths at the heart of the homosexual person that define their personal struggle and Christian charity must act to make sure that this truth does not serve to lead them into the isolating darkness of despair but lead them out of the darkness by our recognizing their hope as our own hope and in this way, lead them out and back into the warmth of our common humanity, if not back into the light of our common Christian baptism and the peace of the communions of blessed Christendom.

We must hold nothing against those who suffer and endure against the grain of both the world and of the worlds of faith, an inclination as unyielding to both reason and faith as homosexuality, human reason will initially reject it, divine faith will absolutely forbid it, where does that leave the unhappy person thus afflicted by it?

However, it is equally not tolerable that homosexuality aspires to the same truth that is originally reserved for the gender complementarity of opposites that make male and female a unit and bears within the whole of itself by their wedlock vows, it's own earthly purpose and divine destiny blessed and permitted by Almighty God Himself.

We must all be honest enough with ourselves to understand that there must be some form of anger and resentment within the homosexual community that is born of their salient realization that sees conclusively through the illusion of homosexual relations, most especially those that are unchaste and impure, that this will never satisfy their human hearts the way the original truth commissioned at our common creation between man and woman by Almighty God Himself to dwell within the origins of every human family serve to completely satisfy and fulfill by their sacred union the lives of those who are jointly called into the labors, the sorrows and joys of family life.

For the sacred purpose of the human sexual act is to transmit life, life which is fully human at the instant of it's conception, life which consummates the love of God that exist to create the union between a man and a woman, a union whose sacred purpose is blessed, protected and prospered by the sacramental grace of their sacred wedlock vows mutually exchanged unto each other in the presence of God and the community of the faithful.

None of this may be achieved by a homosexual union and there is no sugar coating it for this is the plain truth of the matter which may not be ignored and which if ignored will only imperil our own common hope.

For if we recklessly abandon the sacred purpose and divine institution upon which the order, quality and continuation of our generations are completely built upon, to the detriment of our human families, the deterioration of the domestic Church, and our eternal Christian regret;
not only will the future become progressively more intolerant of of our common humanity, it will also become more and more completely alien and inhuman as it acquires greater and greater degrees of contempt to our human vulnerabilities one with each other at the expense of all living things.

Indeed, the identity struggle that every homosexual man or woman must suffer through must eventually come to the same conclusive realization that there is no real substitute to the union of man and woman.

This truth, which is the truth of their destiny, is the second of the three central truths at the heart of the homosexual person that define their personal struggle and Christian charity must act to make sure that that this truth does not serve to further imprison them within the walls of themselves for homosexuality, if properly understood and courageously confronted by the human soul enabled by God's grace, becomes is it's own particular calling complete with it's own particular eternal destiny.

The soul of the homosexual person is more akin to the angels than they realize. They are a unique personality just as valuable and just as capable of giving and receiving love along with the rest of our common humanity. The difference is that the truth that live within the soul of the homosexual person, that they feel they lack, must be correctly perceived for what it is, it is a promise, an unborn hope, a promise that one shall ultimately find their most absolute and most beautiful expression not in this exile world of battle and probation but in the world to come, in the unimaginable reality of the new heaven and the new earth that is promised to us by our Lord Jesus Christ. For their hearts are reserved for a much better time and place than this world and this time if they likewise persevere in chastity with courage and faith in God through our Lord, Jesus Christ. It is a great challenge indeed to be courageous in the faith for the promise ahead of them is just as tremendous. For there is nothing of true value that will ever come into the possession of man from means that are wide and easy, all things that are precious and of eternal worth here on earth below as well as in heaven above require that we give more and more of ourselves that we may possess these things by the embrace of our love and not by the grip of our hands, for all good things are a gift and from among all these good things the greatest and the most ultimate Gift of all is God Himself for God Himself is the portion of those who from eternity He has established in His friendship and His Love.

Indeed, a practicing homosexual person must awaken to the truth and be able to distinguish it from the illusions of the isolating darkness that he or she has retreated into and to make an absolute choice, here and now, to respond to the universal call of Jesus Christ Who is the Light of the life of men. For it is no less than Christ Himself Who promises to lead them out of the darkness into the abundance of life true and everlasting in happiness in the society of His Church as well as all the righteous of the nations who, as our Blessed Lord Himself said, work not against us but for us. They indeed, must take this final walk out of the darkness of the self that imprison them and turn back into the light of the truth that shall ultimately set them free. This may sound easy but in reality this final walking away is extremely difficult especially when the roots of vice has grown quite deep into a person's very soul.

For if we always put the need for sexual fulfillment first, as the world, the flesh and the Devil would have us do nowadays, before we even begin to love another, that person ceases to be a person and becomes a mere object in our eyes. One who have been thus violated by the sins of the flesh gains an more throurough appreciation of the immense value of the virtue of chastity that safeguards the spiritual integrity of every man and woman that is easily overlooked and then annihilated altogether in the crashing din of every temptation as the capital vice of lust takes greater and greater prominence above the firmament within the heart of the person, eclipsing God Who is the sun of our human soul. The vice of lust, having found a foothold in the soul, is then free to work its scandal and soon spreads like a cancerous malignancy among the sons and daughters of our common humanity.

In this way does pornography and the pornographic nature of our times thrive and it constantly reinforces this same mindset, a poisonous and inhuman mindset that reduces the dignity of the human person into the play thing of the sins that victimize with such scandal and severity the nobility of man.

But if we are true to our keeping of each other's trust and are likewise concerned with the greatest good that our hearts can embrace, if we are in this way truthful, we will see through the anger and the hatred, we will see through the pornographic conditioning of this world, we will see through war and darkness of war, we will in our hearts be enabled to perceive the human soul as it truly is, one, unique, unrepeatable and irreplaceable reality, beautiful for being beheld by Beauty Itself and we will become cognizant of the sad reality that is everyday written in wake of so much brokenness and tears.

For our souls are often times like the man in our Blessed Lord's parable who was set upon by bandits along the road and was nursed back into health by the good Samaritan for like the Samaritan of his time, we are all outcasts, misfits, freaks, rejects and sinners to the very last hair on our head, wounded and needful of much consolation and healing, and wanting for a just society. Let us then be Samaritans to each other, let us be that hope of an authentic human freedom, let us be our own response to our common needs that require our common alms, let us be the beginnings of something meaningfully real and worthwhile in this midnight world full of so much vanity and empty promises.

Our life in general, homosexual or not, is a lonely path that shall only find fulfillment not through sexuality or promiscuity but through the sanctity of the one love of God in charity, a love that run deeper than human sexuality and its challenges to our wounded humanity.

Now, it may be true that our Holy Scripture contains strong words of condemnation to those who through no fault of their own are inclined towards homosexuality, however, to use Scripture as a cowardly attempt to manipulate the legitimacy of the truth to bash and to persecute a certain segment of our common humanity is a crime far more despicable than those whom they accuse without hope, those whose persons are helpless and conflicted in their hearts due to the oppressive norms of this world and the inability of such Christians to understand beyond conventional understanding the truth that lives within themselves.

Once again, it is the sin of homosexuality which is the forbidden act of the sexual intercourse between two men or two women that is explicitly wrong as well as the intrusions that are being made to the integrity of the sacred sanctuary of our marriage institutions that some mindless government authorities allow in the name of either false freedom or modern convenience which is nothing more than sheer license that promote choice without accountability and morality without responsibility.

These authorities pledged to serve the interests of the people ultimately serve not the interests of those homosexual persons that they seek to serve without thinking for they only drive them deeper into their denial of the truth while in the process, they knowingly or unknowingly dilute, divide, corrupt and destroy the one singular institution upon which is entirely built the very foundations of human communities, an institution of our common humanity that shape and define the quality of our civil societies, the human family, a whole truth original to our creation of which there can be neither variation nor substitute. It is the nature of moral evil to imperil both those who allow it entry into our world through their hearts as well as those who are victimized by it, such is the case in the long term for the whole of our humanity if we here today lose our all of our senses to what appears convenient or expedient in the name of the false.

This truth, which is the truth of their freedom, is the third of the three central truths at the heart of the homosexual person that define their personal struggle and Christian charity must act to make sure that this truth does not serve to discourage them from striking out and breaking through the darkness and the illusions of this world.

Let this writer once again reiterate here that one is not being antagonistic of anything or of any person save the evil that lurk in the darkness of our world that propagate with it's lies the interior suffering of our common humanity. For it is the mystery of this specific form of evil that one seeks to reveal and to disprove, that it may then become plain to our common human understanding and therefore, powerless in our common sight. One also realizes that there are much feelings and sensitivities that is deeply involved and entrenched in this matter and seek to assure all of you that one is aware of them and take them all into deep consideration.

But to deny the truth is a crime greater than what the naked cruelty of others may inflict upon them for in this denial is contained a betrayal of the self, a surrender to the void of illusions and everything that leads to an absoluteness of choice that will forever deny them their one and only chance to truly be happy, their one and only chance to truly be liberated from the sorrowful confines of the prison that one is quite aware they each endure within themselves.

We will view homosexuality for what it really is, the manifestation of a unique soul - a unique soul the same with all our souls, irreplaceable and unrepeatable potentialities imprinted with the image and likeness of God - and a particular Christian calling, a very specific calling towards the chaste life of the single lay vocation.

Our task here is to be able to share our burdens together with the burdens that our homosexual brothers and sisters carry for they are not exempt from our Christian obligation to love the other as our Savior loves us. We are to welcome the sinner but never the sin. Towards this end, the One Solidarity shall support units of Courage or it's equivalent form at the Squadron level to encourage, support and bring out of the darkness, our suffering homosexual brothers and sisters who desire to live in the peace of Jesus Christ in full communion with God and Holy Mother Church and to give them an opportunity to help those who are still suffering the same affliction.

For homosexuality is one of the surest signs of a manifest divine calling towards the chaste, single life; a life expressed in forms of consecrated service meant to alleviate the suffering of others.

Of the single lay vocation in general, it may be affirmed that those who enter into this committed life of servant singleness and endure through the rigors of preserving chastity and fostering virtue in their hearts and in their lives soon awaken by the grace of Almighty God to new and promising horizons of living hitherto unknown to their experience.

Of the particular single lay vocation of those who endure with the uncommon truth of their homosexual inclinations, it is given to them the the specific labor of lifting heavy walls of denial, of bridging deep chasms of isolation, of standing against the world's indifference and contempt, that they may soon alleviate the suffering of those who are similarly afflicted but have not yet begun to fight the necessary fight.

To conclude, if the homosexual person applies himself or herself to what is true, there begins their path and their destiny. It shall be severely difficult yet commensurate in it's reward, a path that will reintroduce them to their true selves, a path that will return them into the community of our common hope, a path that will lead on and enable them, empower their choice, a path that fulfills their own common humanity, a path that leads away from the vanity of this world so empty of promise, a path that lead away from the void of illusions of those who have lost themselves within themselves within their own denial of the truth and a path that will allow them to choose a divine destiny best fit for what beauty God has intended in them to keep hidden from this world, in those vast universes from within created by God in the image and likeness of Himself, and felt within their precious human soul as an awakening that is like a love longing for Itself.
---<--@

Prosper the Peace. Prosper the People.

Sancta Sanctis!

Glory to God in the highest
Adoration to Jesus Christ
Peace to men of good will.

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

#06 A System of Common Needs

"We are all defined by our lack and this lack define our common needs such as hunger, thirst, clothing, shelter, personal security, basic literacy, just society, authentic human freedom, and meaningful existence.

If we allow each ourselves to be defined by our lack, then we shall begin to understand that to accept our common humanity, we must first accept the common needs that make us completely human as well as completely responsible to each other.

From these common needs begin our common hope and to this common hope, we must respond with common alms."

Sequence #6 of the Pax Pilipinas Series

PEACE AS A WHOLE and Pax Pilipinas as a doctrine may never be transmitted from positions of authority but is a work that must begin right down at the very roots of our nation; a service to be embraced at the very soil of our sovereignty.

For the Providence of God has bestowed us with an abundance of means to attain to this doctrine manifest in the many distressing personages of the poor, our Lord's poor, who are truly our masters in all things save for sin.

For if any of us is to uplift ourselves and prosper from the labor of Country that leads our nation to the rich harvest of peace, it is requisite by Justice and Charity that the poor of our nation be uplifted first for their hopes are as our hopes bound to one sacred trust and we may not leave their hopes behind and hope to continue forward. The continuity of our common hope must be safeguarded lest the lineage of our sacred trust be broken and our people scattered to the four winds. War will not permit the downtrodden to be lifted from the dust of the earth but our peace obliges us each to serve the very least of our brethren.

In view of this, we are now in need of clear guidance as to who is poor and who is not, hence, we shall exactly define our Lord's poor as any one in common need of common alms.

We shall further define the concept of common need as hunger, thirst, clothing, shelter, personal security (security of person and property), basic literacy, just society, authentic human freedom, and meaningful existence. Our common alms (these common alms are to be given apart and distinct from the precept that obliges us to physically and materially support our particular Church and our local clergy whose service unites us to our one Universal or "Catholic" Church, our Holy Mother Church - the Roman Catholic Church - Added 20080809) is meant to meet these common needs as individual or collective acts of mercy that save from despair the hope of the poorest of the poor with Christian charity that covers a multitude of sins.

Indeed, our Lord's poor do not ask for much for there is no greed in them, the furnace of affliction have refined in them what many fail to see. What they ask is exactly what will open the soul of the giver that the heart of the man may see in the giving of the self what true things there are worth seeing in the beautiful for being by Beauty beheld.

These common needs hold true from individuals to whole nations and if we are uncommonly generous in our obligation to meet these common needs with common alms, the quicker shall we restore the balance in our society that will enable us to progress in the way of establishing our one peace.

We will learn once again to value and respect those perennial trades of ancient descent, respect them enough never to defraud them of their humble means to make an honest living; farmers, fishermen, tradesmen, craftsmen, free-born servants, teachers, basic civil servants, the rank and file of our noble profession of arms, our nation's finest who serve and protect the public peace in the field of community law enforcement, our nation's bravest who serve and preserve the public safety in the field of fire and rescue services, public and private security personnel who safeguard our systems, institutes, and habitations of life, our small to medium mercantile classes, low wage earners, the self-employed, the self-made and those from among us who eke out an honest living by means good and necessary to carry themselves and their families into the hope of the next day. We will safeguard their hopes, along with the hopes of the least of the least of our citizenry, making sure that our laws as well as our national attitude serve to uplift them and to provide for them the means to reach the middle classes of our national community. In the event that doors need to be closed for the sake of the common good, their lives and their rights must neither be forgotten nor forsaken but must be accommodated for by our one whole nation-state.

For we may, as a social democracy, only prosper according to our least common denominator. If we allow our middle class to dwindle and do nothing to address the widening gap between those who have and those who have not manifest in the lower and upper classes of our national community, then we allow ourselves to become vulnerable and ripe for militant dissension from various interest groups all of them belonging to those aforementioned segment of our citizenry who represent the very soil of our sovereignty. Militant dissent is a symptom of the state that if not acted upon by the good will of our people and the government that represents us in our Republic citizen-state will eventually mature into armed revolutions and widespread internal instability.

Because from these common citizenry are founded the deepest roots of our nation without which no living tree of Country may grow strong and mature enough to claim back into living memory those undying hopes of our past, shelter the peace of our present time, and prosper in ourselves today the eternal fruits of God and Country that shall bear our present good will deep into the future of our nation.

From the very lowest of our roots, the benefits of our peace shall be as water naturally and most certainly be drawn upwards to quench the thirst of those greater and greater wholes of sacred life that enable the social democracy of our Filipino nation to exist. In our giving and ministering to the common needs of others, we define the new nature of our citizenry as a common community of peers that as one nation share in the one sacred trust born of the one lineage of our common hope that keep alive the fire of the Republic that was merited for us by so much tears, toil and sacred heroes' blood by those whose undying hopes we now indeed hold in our own heart of hearts. For truly, it is their immortal virtue and not ours that have sustained us this far in the darkness of the desolation of war.

It might be asked why out of sheer curiosity have I written all of this in English when clearly this particular subject concerns my fellow Filipinos, it is because we, as a nation, belong also to the hopes of the nations in our immediate region, in the ASEAN, in formal treaty with other nations, to our Mother Asia herself in relation to the other continental wholes of the one family of the nations of mankind, and indeed, to our one planetary whole itself.

Once one gets into the thinking of wholes and system of wholes, one will quickly realize that to all of these wholes upon greater wholes of our one planetary whole apply equally and consistently our simple rule of common alms with common needs.

The secret of our freedom is found in the giving, for it is only in the giving that we become free.

---<--@ For the Filipino poor, who are our Lord's own, a blessed people, may the will of God be more perfectly reflected on earth by your most gracious presence in our midst...

Prosper the Peace. Prosper the People.

Sancta Sanctis!

Father Wilhelm Finnemann, Servant of God, pray for us.

Glory to God in the highest
Adoration to Jesus Christ
Peace to men of good will.

Next: Sequence #07: In Defense of Minorities

For further reference -
Please refer to entry: Common Needs: On Meaningful Existence
Please refer to entry: Common Needs: On the First Eight

A Message to Continental Africa

"Where peace is lacking, none shall prosper. For War as a Whole profits only evil and evil profits only death."

SALUTATIONS OF ETERNAL PEACE and Common Goodwill to the Sovereign States of Continental Africa.

Of our native Mother Asia and your Continent as a whole, one may observantly able to keenly affirm that our common nations share in the same wounding and are therefore, also bound unto the same common hope.

There is a certain strength of spirit carried forward by your generations that is manifest in the way you have endured the many evils of the past. That particular evil that stole from among your own midst, many of your common brothers and sisters and sold them into cruel slavery and that evil whose malice wrongfully afflicted your nations with the mark of Cain that only served to empower those interests that perpetrate a culture of inferiority and second class humanity that have inevitably been deeply ingrained in your collective spirit.

My dear friends, that same evil that have stolen your past and accused your nations is now poised to deny you of your present hope.

Look not to the past for your hope nor rely on your anger of past things to rule your present. The past no longer has any power to harm any of you save if you likewise allow yourselves to become vulnerable once more to the vestigial traces of those times long abandoned by the necessary grace of our present time.

O kindred soul, I tell you, you have never been inferior to any of your common peers in common creation nor have your own humanity ever differed one single degree from the humanity expressed in common by mankind as the founding reality upon which is built the universal expression of common human rights that uphold human dignity and preserve the good order of our nations.

Almighty God has gifted us with a human soul to contain and animate with sacred life, our corporeal body. My dear friend, it is both our body and our soul that makes us complete as a human being, for each of us is an integrated unit composed of both body and soul.

Thus, differences in physical appearances never really matter to those who know where and how to seek after those things that truly matter to our common hope as well as our common humanity.

O kindred soul, the continuing strength of spirit that allowed you to endure is a strength that belong not to your past nor is it a need that is required of your future. This spirit is present in your own soul for it is by means spiritual and not by any means corporeal that have allowed
your present generation to emerge in time and form the nations of whose counterpart states are presently entrusted to the care and protection of those of you who are called to serve the common hope and the common good of your particular nation engaged in the great endeavor of Country.

If there is anything that is truly worth any value to the people, then value what is common to our humanity and learn to recognize your brother or your sister by perceiving the human heart and forsake the old ways of this world that draw from our differences the vain and empty illusions that leave our nations mired in poverty and our suffering humanity weak and wounded by the darkness of those things that enslave not only the body but also the soul of a man.

My dearest friend, there can be no real profit to the life of any man unless that man recognize the good and in recognizing the good, keep it not, but willingly, freely and joyfully share it with others.

The good being all things that prosper the soul of man and all things that prosper the peace of the nations of mankind.

Those whose hearts bear common good will unto others know that there is nothing that we take from this life that was not first taken away from us by the love that we owe Almighty God Whose Love has given us all things that we may learn not to be worldly in all things but to be in all things giving as our Almighty God is giving.

All nations must establish themselves upon values that are true, abiding and eternal. The labor that the present is tasked to perform is the labor of Country. It is the work of establishing the peace of the state and to build today the future shelters of the nation as a lasting kindness for those future generations who like the unborn children of human mothers are the unsung hopes of Country.

For they who are not present to our times must also be afforded the right to expect from our present time, an adequate means toward common needs for life and human happiness.

Lastly, I affirm to my brothers and sisters in Africa that where peace is lacking, none of humanity shall prosper. For war as a whole sows naught but evil and evil as a whole reaps naught but death. There is no hope in war and in the attitude that sustains the will of war.

The same with our Mother Asia, your Continent is in need of peace as a whole.

Glory to God in creation
Adoration to Jesus Christ
Peace to men of good will.

On the Dispute Between Thailand and Cambodia

"No soldier, of any side at any age, ever fought and died with honor intact to knowingly spread the flames of war. Every noble military heart and mind of all times and places have always been fighting for our last fading away."
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NOTHING PAINS the memory of our nations more than those conflicts visited unexpectedly upon the intimate peace that surround the common reality of the closeness of our native community.

One must act with great caution when one is at the edge of a precipice and so the same holds true for the state who stands upon the brink of an abyss the depth of which is both unknown and uncertain.

There is a fragility in the economy of things that prosper and benefit the life of the people and this same fragility is exemplified by every individual human life.

If human life is fragile, then it must also hold true that this same fragility is inherent in all the systems and the institutions that serve our common humanity.

Truth by it's very nature is never contradictory. However, if we are to examine the contradictory truth, we are left with either lack of regard for human life or reckless disregard to the established good. Both of these mindsets are contrary to life and foreign to the native economy of Country.

Outside of what is particularly familiar to segments of common humanity, as in the case of refugees, there is uncertainty which is common but there is also the trauma of the uncommon certainty of those unfamiliar causes that have effectively overthrown the everyday rhythm of ordinary life. In severe cases, where circumstances surpass the very limits of despair, the experience of reality become disjointed from their humanity and they live as though they live not at all.

Conflict is the primary catalyst that brings all of this about. Where one is to enter a state of conflict, one must consider the costs and indeed when one really sits down to consider those costs, one who is truly committed to his or her own people must realize that these costs are
always infinitely more than what any individual state or groupings of states or even the riches of all of the existing states within our one planet are willing and able to absorb without resorting to some form of deception which is the mother tongue of war.

This tongue is not a native tongue of our common humanity, neither is this a native tongue of the angels and for both these reasons, it is impossible that this is an original tongue of our common creation. Even at the wake of Babel, the Biblical division of our languages was done along the lines of meaning which is the substance of the truth, it did not produce a language so alien and so incomprehensible to the soul of mankind as the language of war.

All of these are an untold truth that our common humanity must endure, as a labor of tears, with every conflict that was ever fought in the history of mankind.

And so long have many of our nations labored in tears that it prompts one to ask when shall we begin to labor in hope?

Therefore, it is with much concern that we witness in common with the other nations of our local region the ongoing dispute between Thailand and Cambodia for it's potential to lay to waste what progress we have struggled with great difficulty to obtain for our peoples within the framework of the ASEAN community.

Is the damage worth the gain where those damages are counted in proper names and not numbers and what gain, save self-preservation, can justify the loss one shall everyday incur in those whose lives are missing.

One who is given to recklessly spend the potent credit of the sacred life entrusted to all our nations must also be ready to make a precise account of those lives or seek of ways to remain earthbound forever.

It is with a sense of fraternal correction that one is impelled to convey this message along with a certain sense of respect for the common dignity of both our sovereign states as well as our individual human lives.

Not with any sense of contempt are these words conveyed for these are choice words meant for the choice hearts of those who belong to our local neighborhood of nations bound within the specific framework of the ASEAN community as well as the greater community of those nations within the specific geography of our region as a whole, a whole existing within the greater continental synergy of the whole of our Mother Asia and from our Mother Asia toward the other continental wholes that make up our one whole planet.

Glory to God in the highest
Adoration to Jesus Christ
Peace to men of good will.

A Message to our one Filipino Nation

The SONA is an expression of the President's hope for the nation, it is meaningless if we refuse to share in the same fundamental hope. One does not have to agree with all of the message but one must be careful not to fall into entrenched positions of militant absolutism and political brinkmanship both of which only serve to enfeeble our social democracy.

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O MY HONORED NATION, for so long have we dreamt of our freedom; of the independence to steer the destiny of our social democracy; of complete self-determination and for so long have we desired to prosper from this one hope.

For so long have we fought, for so long have we labored under the yoke of the unconcerned world in and around us; from foreign colonial powers to the yoke of the tyrannies our own peers have imposed upon ourselves.

We have shed profuse streams of our own sacred blood, waded through a wide river of our own martyred tears and through it all, O my beloved nation, we have, each and every one of us from generation to generation, endured with this one hope prevailing in our hearts; unyielding through our long and anxious passage into maturity as a people, ever like the unfading light of the golden sun and the stars of our own flag, our Old Defiant, forever standing steadfast against the darkness, ever faithful to our glorious anthem's promise, this, O honored Filipino compatriots, is the collective resolve of our one Filipino nation.

This is our resolve, O my honored nation, as perennial as the sun in our days and the stars in our night sky. Let us always be mindful of this resolve for it is the unyielding, unfading, immortal flame at the heart of the universal Filipino spirit and descriptive of the strength of our common experience as a one people.

Let there be no doubt, O my honored nation, that we are all thoroughly imbued with this same eternal resolve. The spirit of our people can never be absent from those who belong to this one Filipino nation for all of us are bound from eternity by Almighty God to share in the one destiny.

Being mindful of this resolve, O my people, under the eternal vigilance of Almighty God, let us stand together and believe with all our heart in ourselves as one people, all our strength in our particular endeavor of Country and all our faith in our common hope as one nation.

Let us forsake the bitterness that binds us to the past for the past is the past and whatever questions born from past afflictions that linger unanswered in our hearts will never find their answers by our clinging on to the emptiness of the past. For the past is a moment spent, meaningless and void, it is without answers, without promise, a stillness of things undone; a ringing, disquieting silence whose emptiness shall only make us bitter and bitter the longer we immerse our souls in this nothingness.

Let us free ourselves from the bondage of the past things that divide us, start believing again in the things that unify us as one common whole and begin to experience again together the promise of every present moment.

Indeed, it is a hard life, O my Filipino compatriots, for we are a poor nation but if we learn again to openly share the warmth of our common hopes with one another as one nation instead of allowing ourselves to be divided by the cold of our bitterness, these common hopes of ours will soon prevail.

Do we not know by now from the common experience of our past generations together that it is by the strength of our common spirit as one Filipino nation that we may prevail over every difficulty?

For the eternal destiny of our one people may only be gained by our being one nation, this is our common hope, O my beloved Filipino nation, and our hearts must only believe enough to be able to embrace it for our common hope to become true once again.

"Have thou now forgotten
that promise long ago?
return now to the wonder
and never let go."

"The night's almost over,
daybreak twilight draws near.
Aright my dear people,
the dawn will soon break.
Our Republic awaits us,
O nation most dear.
Our land of the morning
is soon to appear."

- The Maiden of the Sea

Saint Lorenzo Ruiz de Manila, pray for us.

Glory to God in the highest
Adoration to Jesus Christ
Peace to men of good will.