A Good Conversation

I wonder if some of you have already read this book I am holding right now while of course most of us have already came to know about it’s publication through the buzz it had created in the Internet. Consider this, “Conversations With God” had been in the New York Times bestseller list for 137 weeks or about two-and-a-half years straight. Now that’s an amazing feat for a religion-centered work. And accordingly, it had been considered as a “publishing phenomenon” (see this Wikipedia article).

I myself have already learned about CwG (Conversations With God) some years back from great acclaims it had garnered from several local blogs that I have been reading during that time. The praises it had gotten then were so astounding that now, as I leaf through it’s pages, I am not anymore surprised.

I was not initially sold out by its popularity I must admit and thought that despite it’s astronomical volume of sales, it might just be yet another religious book with a unique irresistable trait, but just another individual’s thought about God and religion. For all the while, who is really interested in religion nowadays? Perhaps, none except those that are extremely pious in spirit.

But now—-by some good fate—-I have this wonderful book in hand. Thanks mostly to my bestfriend Major Victor Loon for sending me a copy all the way from Manila and all my greatest gratitude goes to him. He reads this blog once in a while and I hope the message goes to him. He is a real police major mind you and not merely a major wanna-be like “Major Tom” and at the very young age of 35, he heads now the formidable Eastern Police District in Metro Manila. Success is in his hands and to be sure, more would come in the future.

CwG is certainly one amazing book with some phenomenal things going on within it. According to its author Neale Donald Walsch, all the conversation that had been written in this book—-and on succeeding eight other installments of it—-had started when one day he had decided to write a letter to God and let out many of his resentments in life. And suddenly, a voice coming from his left shoulder spoke to him, and after that, a book had seen its birth.

Mr. Walsch had averred that in writing the “conversations”, he had felt feel his hands moving on its own as he was writing the first pages of this book; as if it had a life by itself. If he is to be believed, then God must have really spoken to him. Of course, I wouldn’t take this claim hook, line and sinker but in this often-strange world that we live in—-that might just be possible.

I often wonder if I myself could speak with God like Mr. Walsch did and then God talking straight back at me like a “burning bush” of the Old Testament. To be sure, I would have lots of questions to field. I wonder if the Lord can have time to spare for a wandering soul such as I am, always questioning, always inquiring.

Once when we were so much younger, Major Loon had presented this question to me asking, “Do you want to meet Satan?” I answered that he was just being ridiculous. I wouldn’t want to meet the demon I said because to be sure, I would just be drown by enormous fear, imagining how fearsome his façade would be—-horns on his head, fangs on his teeth, fiery red eyes, with a huge dark cape heavy on his back.

Then Major Loon asked me once more if in fact I believed in the person of Satan. I said that I could not be so sure—-since no one could be so sure about a guy that we only could see in our mind—-but I told him that mostly, I felt that if God exists, then Satan must be possibly an existent being; that the existence of the demon would in fact become a venerable proof that God exists. That if there is light, then there must be darkness, for how does one know the fact of light when there is no darkness that could be compared it from? How do we know righteousness if there is no such thing as wrongfulness; or good deeds from sin; right conduct from misbehavior; dry from wet; red from blue; sky from earth.

I had a thought then that in order to see Light in the mightiest of splendor, one must at least have a certain awareness of Darkness.

All in all, I have enjoyed “Conversations With God” even though I might not say I believe entirely that the author had really spoken with God. It is a well-written work and so filled with original and mind-opening insights. I bet that if Mr. Walsch was a fiction writer, he would for certain be an exciting storyteller.

Be warned that the idea of speaking with God might be mostly a blasphemous claim. But take it with enough grain of salt and read beyond the facts and see its wisdom in general terms. You would enjoy it I am sure.

An Old Man In A Jeepney

We must heal the world by reawakening from the seemingly discordant society in which we live in today; a society where violence reign and evil pervades. Where men are putting others down more often than the sun rises and sets in, where stealing becomes the norm rather than the exception, and where the temptation of the flesh becomes a religion deified and glorified by many who become slaves to the dictates of lust.

Nowadays, it is never a surprise anymore to find men preaching morality and uprightness in the eyes of many and yet when they vanish from public view, they are the very evil that they preach against, that in their more private worlds, they would steal without restraint or fornicate incessantly.

At a glance, nothing seems to be wrong with our world today. It is still revolving and despite the violence in some parts of the world, people go about their task as expected. But when we examine it closer, the world we live in today is so stained with the evil that men do—evils that they do in their everyday deeds. Men fight one another as easily even upon very insignificant reasons, to have prejudice and contempt mostly for reason of differences in race and creed. Many steal routinely merely by reason of vanity and pride. We see so much of our brothers suffering in helpless condition and many would not even lift a finger to provide assistance. The Good Samaritan in us had vanished. Our popular culture nowadays promotes violence and irresponsible sex and rebellion in the youth, as we see it all too often in movies and literatures and television—sex, drugs and violence as a popular phrase states.

In our daily dealings—as we read through the papers and listen to the news broadcast—we encounter the government official who does not move without the bribe money, the policeman who stops the jeepney drivers in order to extort money, the bank accountant who ran away with embezzled money, the street thug who pickpockets in sidewalks, the politicians with their unexplained wealth, the vendor of pornographic materials, the pimps in night street. Anywhere in the world, evil had seemed to have seep in into the deep recesses of our minds and hearts that somehow we accept many of them as mere ordinary occurrences.

This must not be the case. If in fact humanity has the greatest faith in the Creator, following so adeptly His teachings and judgments, the occurrence of evil in our world would not have been as prevalent. At least not in the scale or extent that they are happening now. This is the contradiction of our humanity, the incongruity of the world we live in. Churches and Mosques abound. New religion or sect sprouts here, there and everywhere that for every mile you travel there is always a chapel or a mosque somewhere. Yet, evil still pervades nowadays. Every move we make, we see a cross or a crescent and yet we often forget the edicts of God. This is an era of the strongest faith and yet at the same time it is an era of false faith. Christianity had never been as widespread. Islam gains more and more converts to its fold. And yet, the world is full of men living lives for themselves merely; of men who commit acts so wrongly in order to further their own interest.

In relation to the contradiction of faith today, let me tell you a story.

When I was in college many years ago, I had been active in the school publication that I often go home a little bit late in the evening to complete works in the intricate production of a magazine issue. In one of those nights that I stayed late in school, I decided to proceed home earlier than planned when my stomach started to grumble from starvation. I usually stayed further but that particular night, but I ran out of pocket money to buy me some snacks. So I had to rush home. With merely coins in my pocket, I took a passenger jeepney instead of the tricycle. As usual, I had to wait for the jeepney to be full of passengers before it moves to depart from the station and I could feel my starvation getting more and more urgent as each minute pass, and the wait became an eternity. I could almost hear my stomach grumbling. The trembling movement of the jeepney (as it prepared its engine to depart) gave my tired body and empty stomach a sort of therapeutic message that somehow my discomfort was lessened. Still, the hunger was ever present and as the minutes grew on, my stomach kept complaining that in fact the grumbling of my stomach had become audible already that I had become unusually mindful of the man sitting beside me.

My tiredness drew my head into a stoop and while I was drooping, I saw a pair of slippers worn by a man sitting just in front of me. The pair of slippers caught my attention and interest for it was unlike any other pair of slippers. Each slipper was of different color and of different sizes. My thought started to process the sight of the unpaired slippers. Maybe I was already hallucinating due to my hunger and tiredness as I momentarily mistrusted my sense of sight. No one wears unpaired slippers in a public place. It was not good to look at and embarrassing to say the least. It was somehow funny I thought.

Who would ever wear unpaired slippers in a public place? Nobody. Nobody except a beggar or a mentally incapacitated person would wear such incongruence in his or her body. So I investigated further to seek explanation as to the incidence of an unpaired slippers. I looked upward slowly to gain cognizance of the man who wore the unpaired slippers. It was a man indeed, an old man at that. He was too old that in fact I did not mind so much the tattered clothes he wore on his body. But there was one contradiction in my mind. Would a beggar ride a jeepney? If there was one, I had not expected that to happen. I have seen beggars before and I know their general actuations. They usually walk with walking canes in one hand and a rusting can on the other. They usually have with them a decrepit pouch bags full of clunking coins of different denomination. They would walk the streets as if they have no destination for it was never easy to imagine a sort of destination for men so wanting in possessions. Do they have their own homes? Do they have family relations?

A beggar riding a jeepney or any public transport is a beggar that I have not met before. Could he be a beggar, after all? Maybe and maybe not; or maybe he was an insane man. But where would he go? An insane man would have lack destination also; in fact, the more that they should have lacked destination. They would have also lacked the motive to ride a jeepney.

As I looked gradually upward, my sight witnessed the face of an old man with sadness on its eyes or more particularly the face of a man with hunger written in capital letters. My mind was a little bit disturbed and began wandering into thoughts that needed in-depth analysis and deeper judgment. There was in fact a sort of awakening for me when I realized that one could actually tell how hungry a man is by just looking at his eyes. Maybe the traces of wrinkles beneath the eyes could signal the restlessness brought forth by an empty stomach. Or perhaps the clouds in the pupils would tell the tale of a consuming starvation. Or maybe a tint of held-back tears in the eye could also tell you that or a drooping face. I was not so certain now how suddenly a man’s deep hunger exploded in my mind and took a grasp of my time and interest. What was my business after all about somebody else’s hunger?

The old man in unpaired slippers and tattered clothes was very hungry indeed. If I was tired and hungry at that time, I was in fact luckier. At least I have two good pairs of shoes on. At least somehow, a meal is waiting for me on the table the minute I arrive home.

But for that old man in a jeepney, I could not tell for certain if a meal would be able to heal his hunger for that night. Consequently, I felt so much pity for the old man that my stomach refrained from grumbling. It must have been the feeling of relief that one would feel whenever one suddenly realizes that someone was more unfortunate, at least.

Despite of it all, there was some kind of disturbance in my mind. A disturbance not anymore brought about by the weakness of my body, but the concern I felt for the old man—the sight of a hungry man in unpaired slippers. How often do we see some old man with unpaired slippers and a drooping hungry face? Are they facts of life we accept or do we repel them and recognize them as an abnormality of society? What happened to the words and messages of the priests, of the preachers, and of the imams? How could we ever accept the reality of our shielded life if some of us seem to have no destination and no assured food on the table? But then, am I my brother’s keeper? Would I take this man with me and share my meal or would I go against my instinct and turn away?

For one reason or another, I just turned away from the old man. I felt a certain embarrassment in walking side by side with an old man in tattered clothes and the more if I have to clutch him home to share my meal. It is the sort of discomfort we feel every time we pass a beggar in the street. We would like to fish for a coin or two and pass it to the beggar’s hand but somehow we are self-conscious of such act that we just go forward without giving the alms, as if giving alms is a wrong thing to do.

I was a lesser man then and perhaps even now. I had some money to spare so I just paid a fare for two and pointed out to the jeepney driver that the old man would not have to pay his fare anymore and proceeded home to the meal waiting for me. I could share some coins for the old man I thought, for after all it was Christmas season. In fact, as I remember it quite well, it was Christmas Eve when I witnessed the starvation of the old man in unpaired slippers, a time where many would have fine and abundant food on their table and the air would be full of the sound of bells ringing, lights flicking, carols abound, Christmas trees decorated, parties celebrated and other merriment happening. My instinct would have led me to bring the old man home to share a meal, but the lesser man in me prevailed.

Somehow, in times like that, to feel sympathy for another man’s plight of desperation is already enough to exorcise ourselves of the contradiction of man’s faith today, when it seems that there is nothing more to give but sympathy and consolation. “What good does it do a man to have faith and yet has no works?”

The old man in a jeepney had opened something in me that was hidden somewhere inside the recesses of my person. Of how I complain so much about the many frustrations in my life when I just saw a hungry man whose destination is of no certainty? Would he have any family relations to go? If so, why would they allow this relative to befool his person by wearing tattered clothes and unpaired slippers in public?

This is the world we live in today; a world full of contradiction. Where many preach sharing and goodness and the overwhelming mercy of God, to celebrate so grandly their faith and yet their faith is of no meaning to others but merely to themselves. No one is his brother’s keeper anymore. Why would I waste my wealth on that old man? Am I Abel? Or am I Cain? Am I my brother’s keeper? And usually we even castigate them. Why don’t he work just as I do? But at the same time fail to ask questions like: “Have the society been fair to him as it was to me?” “ Is he an insane man or a man without limbs, or a man abused?”

Have we always looked away from the other side of the coin?

Are we all our brothers’ keeper?

Does faith alone can save me?

Let us ask the Creator these questions one by one and look for the answer in our hearts.

The River

This is a poem I’ve written five or six years ago. It’s about the unity of man, as a sublime idea. Whether or not it is achievable—-in a world full of discord and disharmony—-is a question that waits so ardently for an answer. And I hope it to be answered in the most positive way.

The River of Mesopotamia

In the ancient valleys of Tigris,

in the days of still molt and rock;

a river sung the serenade

of the beginnings of life,

as it moved in crystalline fluidity,

to brim with sparkles and light,

and come across upon a rock reckoned in time,

it is a moment set forth as a matter of design.

And the river became two,

the great parting of waters

in the dawning of the Earth,

to thread two different roads

and two different eras,

one found in the East,

another in the West,

to spread further and further,

until the sound they hear were

merely of their own

and nothing more.

Rushing in vigor and strength

each alone in the wilderness,

among the great wars of the world,

through the ashes of kingdoms burnt,

the mischief of kings and emperors,

through scorched earth of conquests,

of kingdoms and empires

both the fortunate and the inopportune;

as they run feverishly,

one oblivious to the other,

welcoming merely the beatings

of their own hearts

and of no other,

and every other beating of the heart they hear

was of the enemy and the enemy merely.

Amidst the rage of their marathon,

seemingly unending and without destination,

and with a ferocity so great that

even rocks of great prominence

would crumble into dust—-

by the sheer strength of their pursuits,

or by the wave of their hands.

As another time was set forth,

where for once they looked heavenward

the journeys they threaded

finally found a single star,

to speak the truth in their own hearts

that in their own glorious runs,

no matter how magnificent and forceful,

still the Heavens are their own navigators,

upon the comets and constellations,

so that the rivers would find a path to travel,

a road set forth from the beginning of time

while they go nearer and nearer,

they begin to hear the same beat

that is not merely of their own separate hearts,

but of two hearts moving as one

running faster and faster,

like stallions in the hills of a desert

where in the beginning of time

there is only one river

that became two,

and then becoming one again.

Snakes In The Mountain

Let us be reminded for all times that a man without his prayers is like an ant lost and wandering in the middle of the Saharan Desert. He is alone and grasping for direction, he has no compass in his hands and the road ahead does not tell any clue about his destination. He has no map in his keeping and the path that he threads is dark and winding that no signposts would assist him in his journey towards Eternal Life.

Our religion and our practice of faith are part of our spiritual life that without the benefit of its ethical codes and guidelines, we would meet the hardest of times in coping with the disputes of the modern life where in every corner we turn, the temptation to sin and to do wrongful ways are ever threatening. Our faith is the sieve that shall purify us out of our impurities.

When daylight comes into view, we must remain before Him in thoughtful prayers for a new day is about to come and we need the beacon of his never-fading light, His ever-permeating wisdom and guidance. When dusk appears, as we ready ourselves in bidding farewell to another passing of day, our prayers shall be in gratitude for the wondrous gift of life.

While we know in our hearts that faith alone could not save our souls, it is of no wisdom to dispel completely our practice of faith and to disregard the power of our prayers. We must conform to the habits that give meaning to our pleadings before the Lord. We petition Him in many ways and our faith shall provide us the avenue for our supplications. Faith and works shall go hand in hand like hammer and nail for without the other, one alone would be fruitless at most.

We must seek the calmness of the churches and the temples at least once in a month so that we do not forget faith. We must establish regular prayers in the conclaves of our homes for to forget the practice of faith would redound to forgetting the Lord God and the things He desires us to be. We must not harbor apostasy for the flames of the unending fire shall await those who procrastinate.

Our act of faith is also our language of obedience. As we attend the ceremonies of our churches, we are declaring in effect that we are in full obedience to the Lord. How else could we show Him our greatest of faith if we just sit in the corner of our room, without prayers and without seeking the harbor of the churches and the temples?

Our path towards the Kingdom is often fraught with the many traps of sins and errors that whomsoever says he or she is without need of the churches is one who trek the perilous road, without a map in his or her hands, without a lamp that shall light the ways.

Without our prayers, the heart becomes inundated with discontent and sorrow that Satan knows always when to take the proper opportunity. When we are at our weakest, it is the very moment that the demons come to disturb our minds, and take advantage of our human frailties, to examine and study carefully our desires and wants, and then to reward these desires if we commit folly and mischief, upon their commands and biddings. When we are the weakest, our hearts desires the most things, even the things that we should not desire.

The demons come into us like water into a vessel. The moment they notice a man whose spiritual conviction is weak, they tempt him like a child reaching out for a candy. They would notice a desirous soul miles and miles away, like snakes in the mountain who seek their prey in hills miles and miles apart. There is the imbalance in a man that makes him an easy prey to the demons, and makes him fall on the wayside, and that would be the end of his spiritual balance. When a soul moves farther and farther away from the churches and from the harking of the priests and the preachers, the soul languishes in neglect of faith and becomes the slave of wanton desires and would be the most fragrant prey to the snakes in the mountains.

When the demons come, we often do not notice them for they come in the name of deceit and their masks are not easily uncovered. We only realize their grievous influence when it is already too late, when remorse finally fills our hearts. If they come often because of our lack of faith, there would come a time that the hearts does not feel remorse anymore that the soul and the demon becomes already one and the same, and salvation of the soul becomes the farthest.

We must shield ourselves from the snakes in the mountain for even if we are miles apart, we could become prey to these demons if we are the least in faith. We fortify our stronghold through our habitual practice of faith. The more we become closer to the men of God we become shielded the more. We must hear the preaching of the knowledgeable ones, and we must strive to fill our hearts with the verses of the words of God and be strict in our obedience. We must read the words frequently for they are like balms to our wounded soul. We must gain our shield against the menace of the Darkness and we must fortify our faith. In daily prayers, we are brought into the most righteous path and we shall not be like a lamb lost in the wilderness.

Religion, and the practice thereof, is like a sieve upon sandy water. It sieves away the materials that make our hearts impure. We go on sieving the water again and again in order that that the sands may not stain the water we drink. Is it not that the more we sieve the water, the more it becomes pure?

In our journey towards Eternal Life, we must be vigorous in sieving our souls, to chase away the many impurities that haunt the spirit. No one escapes sin and therefore no one shall boast that he or she will need to sieve no more. Our acts of faith are our compass, the maps in our hands. If we are without the signs that lead our voyage, we are easily led astray into the darkness of sins and soon our path would lead to the lake that burns with an unending fire.

We have faith that is why we do works. We should have no faith alone or works alone. We must have both faith and works. We must do both for the two must come like hammer and nail.

(This is part of a work-in-progress work in the past.)

Freedom

(An edited version of an article I wrote some years ago, a discussion on ‘freedom’.) 

A slab is a piece of slab. You run your hands through it and you would know very well that it is a piece of slab. You would feel the contour, the roughness or the smoothness of the surfaces.

And then you smell it and to be certain it would have the same wooden aroma of any piece of slab you have ever hold.

But freedom to us is freedom without the sense of sight or the sense of touch. Freedom is never always freedom when it is not susceptible to a very particular sense or meaning, but always floating in the air. You would never smell it nor touch it. You would not be able to see it also.

It is invisible to the eye and what is invisible is always a mystery. It is aside from the forces of our senses, even outside the power of our wills.

Freedom has gained its own masters and its own set of philosophers-to be defined and classified in so many words and terms—and yet it remains that men kill and die for their own kind of freedom as against another man’s freedom for the freedom of one may not be the freedom of another. For at times the freedom of one man means the detainment of another.

There is that kind of freedom that is harbored by men of ardent philosophies-adventurous and complicated-to reason out that man should be left alone to determine his or her own fate, to be responsible for its own action, to be independent of thought and will, to the extent that they defy not only the norms of man but even the dictates of our God Almighty. Free will had become their sole reason for being and being for them is merely to lavish themselves with the dictates of their instincts-to the most mundane and to the basest. And further on, they trample upon every reason in order to free themselves of natural inhibitions and lavish themselves in improper pleasures of the mind and of the flesh, for they say they should be left alone; for they say man is born free. They are blind to the nature of things.

They are the ones who would travel the ends of the world just in order to unearth every loophole in any man’s law and that of the laws of God. They would scream and shout invectives if they are caught upon for they deify freedom like a religion and their religion is merely their own will and that of no one else. They are like beast in the wilderness that, once caught in their own traps, would gnash with the most ferocity at their captors, frothing in the mouth, unyielding and defiant.

They do not overcome their own will, they let it flow unhindered and spoil their own souls. They open the floodgates of excesses that they do not only become merely excessive but they take pleasure in wicked things. They introduce themselves into conducts nearly bestial and diabolic. They wallow in the flood of lust and violence; truly they are wickedness reborn.

Indeed, man was born free, to be able to have volitions and independence of thought and action. Freedom is the greatest gift of God to man. He is born free so that he would savor with delight the beauty of life here on Earth and yet freedom was not given for man in order that man should defy Him. Freedom is for man to live an eventful sojourn in this temporary world.

Even as a child grows into adulthood, he realizes that he has the power of self-determination, to steer his mind and body towards the ends that he desires. And yet, he also realizes that despite the independence of his will, there are many things that he could not do. He realizes that he is susceptible to many limitations—-both seen and unseen. He is hindered by the forces of nature just as when he could not stay dry when a storm pours down on him while he is walking on an open field. He is also hindered by other men, that he could not for example take anything in sight lest his possession be at risk of being taken.

Despite of freedom, he could not be underwater for long less his breathe is sucked out of his breast.

Despite of freedom, he could not lift himself above ground like birds do.

Despite of freedom, he could not spit on another man’s face lest he be at risk of danger.

He could not do violence less he be violated himself. He could not take lest his possession be taken also. He preserves his things. He could not as easily speak against anyone less he be spoken also in the darkest of manner. He could not kill for he would be at risk of death himself.

Man therefore has freedom but he is not free to do all things. There is no freedom absolute.

And yet many deify freedom like a religion. They cry freedom like they were in battle and their lives were on the line. In the name of freedom, they lavish their flesh in strange lust and in violence. It is false freedom that they speak of.

Let us see the man who simply walks the streets and then he meets another man walking towards his direction. For this man, it is freedom for him to just pass by and ignore completely the man he meets. It is freedom for him not to address him nor offer comfort to that other man even if that man would be dying of starvation. There would be no law or ordinance that he would violate. It is also freedom for that walking man to greet the other man, feigning a pleasant façade, to welcome him and give him comfort even if he is at the least of discomfort. There are just a lot of things that the walking man could do in such a situation, a lot of space for freedom.

And yet despite freedom, that walking man could not just spit into the face of the other man for he would invite havoc and mayhem possibly. He could not kick or trample him unless he be trampled himself and kicked towards the ground. It is not freedom for him to shout invectives and insults and accusations lest he be insulted himself.

Men may do many things but there are things they could not do.

Freedom is beauty to mankind and yet its unhindered use is dangerous. It is like upon salt that a pinch shall add taste to the viand but a horde of it shall suffocate the eater.

Would you be the one who is impatient and to wallow in the muck of wickedness and in temporary pleasures, only to lose everlasting peace and blissfulness in the Afterlife?

What would you gain if you gain all the treasures in the world and yet to lose your salvation when death comes calling?

Would you be the rabbit who sought pleasure first and let pass his destination for long?

Or would you be the turtle that labors with every step and be the one to reach destination first?

Do not be impatient and overcome your will against the temptation of wealth and of the flesh for the rewards of the righteous is enormous-an Eternal Life in Heaven-while the punishment for those who defy shall be the torment of the Unending Fire.

The beauty of freedom is for us to savor the beauty of life; to breathe the breezy air; to welcome the warmest of sunrises and sunsets; to bask in the most effervescent of daylight; to be enthralled by the flowers in the garden; to be endeared by the singing of robins in the summertime.

They say to love is freedom. That freedom is love and that love is freedom.

But a man loves the whole and not merely the superficial. To love is to give and not to ask. It is to love the wholeness of being and not merely the superficiality of things.

To love is to seek the person as a whole and not merely a part of him or her.

To love is never merely to seek the flesh for it is never to love when lust is the primary purpose of adoration—it is an abuse of person. For it is to love to seek the gain of the other and not merely the benefit of the self.

Many seek love in the name of freedom that they result into excesses of the flesh.

They say it is freedom for man to seek the flesh for man is free and so he is free to be blissful. They seek wickedness if they only know this, for man is created apart and above those beasts in the wilderness.

These are men and women who see another person as merely objects; as merely tools and weapons in order to pursue their selfish and improper intentions.

Let us seek the proper freedom so that we may be guided towards the Light, towards the goodness of things and not to wallow in wickedness.

Those who are excessive shall never sleep tight in the night for their own shadows shall bother them and they always realize these things too late.

Be free and yet be patient.

The Democracy of Good Deeds and the Communism of Bad Deeds

Goodliness is the absence of ugliness. It is the idea of the basic goodness of man, in order to attain a harmonious co-existence among men in this material world—- where violence and other forms of evil are ever permeating.

It is often said that to err is human. Indeed the man is said to be imperfect that it is almost impossible to see in your mind’s eye the perfect goodliness of man. It is in fact upon these premise that I seek to push the idea of a mode of action I shall call now “The Democracy of Good Deeds and the Communism of Bad Deeds”.

It is upon the point of imperfection of man that we should find motivation to improve ourselves for indeed to be human is to be imperfect. Let us not tolerate however the idea that “I am human therefore I sin”, but rather “I am human and therefore I err”.

Is it human to err so gravely?

It is not that we should demand upon ourselves to evade every mistake (it would be unrealistic), but it is for us to deviate from doing deeds that are gravely wrong. There are deeds committed by men that are so grievously abominable that there is no room for reasoning out that they are merely mistakes or errors of judgments. It is purely evil where men take great pleasures from the indiscriminate lavishing of the flesh, without regards to responsibility and consequences.

Just as so to the very greedy businessman who takes all the wealth for himself disregarding the labour of his workers, to undervalue the fruits of another man’s labour, for a man may have hundreds of acres of land but without workers to help him produce wealth from such land, it is virtually useless to him—he might as well sell it.

Just the same with the government official who routinely steals money from the finances of the government; for the act of altering accounting records is not a mere error of judgment anymore.

The idea that I am promoting here is the concept that men should always be conscious and cognizant about every major action or words that he make in his everyday life; to be fully aware of its effects to himself or herself as well as to others; for every action has a two-pronged effect, that is, the effect on the self and the effect on others.

If I speak these words, how does it benefit me and how does it affect others? That is the basic question that should be inculcated in each and every one of us, as if to allow such mechanism of thought to be already a second skin to us, a habit that could not be easily broken—to have that perpetual questioning mind and heart, the very spirit of the inner workings of our consciences.
One may argue that this concept of constant awareness to every word or action may curtail the spontaneity of human interactions. We must not however be very particular about this disadvantage, for indeed there are many words or actions that we could do without the questioning heart and mind.

The act of drinking coffee or tea, whether to sing or dance, or whether to read or write—these are actions that do not demand proper guidance of the questioning mind and heart so that men could still flow with spontaneity in their daily conduct.

But whether or not to appropriate this money knowing full well that it is not yours is an action that requires proper contemplation especially when it is already of sizable amount.
Just like the act of whether to seduce this woman or not?

The same as to the question of whether or not to gossip against another person or not, just the same as to the question of whether or not to help a man with an empty stomach lying on the side streets. These are deeds that demand the guidance of our questioning minds and hearts.
The concept of the democracy of good deeds is easier to illustrate and understand if every one of us treats the self as a body of government. For indeed every government is democratic or communistic, proletarian or authoritarian. Either, or.

“So what is my form of government?” you might ask. What is best suited for me and most beneficial to me? What form of government could enhance my spiritual self?

A purely democratic government, where there is an unhindered flow of freedom, is not ideal for as I mentioned earlier, everything in excess is scoffing by nature. Absolute freedom results to wantonness and excesses.

A purely communistic government is at the same time not ideal for it would strangle us and prevent us from experiencing a meaningful life. A suitable government for the self therefore would be a well-balanced government, not purely democratic but also not purely communistic.
It should be a government that is situated somewhere in the middle of two extremes.

This form of government, if we relate it to the government of the self is what I call “The Democracy of Good Deeds and the Communism of Bad Deeds”.

It is a concept of self-government that in its truest form is the propagation of all good deeds and if possible the curtailing of all bad deeds. If this concept would be attained, we would attain a certain level of goodliness that exacts the very idea of how the Creator had intended man to be—righteous and enlightened—entirely fortified in his resolve to struggle against the piercing menace of evil, and then of temptation.

In the democracy of good deeds and the communism of bad deeds, it is ideal that man should propagate good deeds democratically, that is without hindrances in so long as it is possible while on the other hand, bad deeds are curtailed by a government with an iron hand, a communistic attitude towards mischief and waywardness.

If we say that man is of no perfection as we all should admit, then we must recognize always the possibility of sin that in this context, man should be about ninety-five percent good in his everyday conduct and five percent bad, this five percent are for those mistakes that are committed unknowingly, a sort of a margin of error, for indeed no man is perfect.
Is this concept attainable? That is the million-dollar question. It is a question that every man should ask himself every day and every hour of his life.

For certain, if one would hold this concept of the democracy of good deeds and the communism of bad deeds as proper and acceptable guidance, one would more or less feel a sentiment of enlightenment and of awakening of the self.

Our Sin Is Like Upon A Deceitful Serpent

In the scorched ground of the desert, one must walk not only having in mind the harshness of the blistering sun or the ever threatening sand storms that always brings havoc in the cold night. To journey upon the desert, one needs an extraordinary care for something that is often unseen yet the most fatal. It is not the danger of the scorpions or the treacherous snakes that I am speaking of but the lethal trap of a quicksand.

The man walking through the desert must watch out carefully for any hint of soft sand along the way. There is just no other way to foresee danger brought about by the quicksand except by the keenest of foresight. When one is caught in it, the fastest to any hard ground must be sought otherwise the sand would soon eat up towards the level of the knees. When the sand goes up to the length of the knees, others must throw a sturdy rope to the sinking man so that the sand may not reach the level of the waistline. If the waistline is already sunk into the perilous sand, a mule must be had in order to pull the man out of his quagmire. If the neck is already threatened even the might of a camel might not be able to save the sinking man.

Our sinful ways is oftentimes like upon a quicksand that the more we get sunk into it the harder we are able to pull ourselves from certain perdition. Like the man sinking slowly into the sand pit, the sinner must free himself at the earliest possible time for any wasted moment could mean the end of life.

This is the nature of our sins, they often start as trivial matters and ends up us grievous infractions. They are propagators of habit that the more we wallow into the irresponsible pleasures they afford us, the harder we could stay away from them. There are even those among us who thrives on sin that without sinning they become restless and impatient. It is most wise and ultimately the most prudent to anticipate every sin even when they are still farthest from us, that long before we meet could them along the way, we must change our courses immediately and evade them. It is of wisdom to be farthest from sinful ways even from the beginning.

When something wicked comes along the way, we turn the other way lest wickedness may abuse our weaknesses and we become wicked ourselves. If our eyes are threatened by indecency, we must cover our eyes for a little while until lewdness has already passed us by. We see no evil if we turn farthest from it. In the days of old, Jesus had once said that if one would look upon another person with one left eye and lusted upon that person, he or she has already committed adultery that it is better for one to pluck out the guilty eye rather than all the members of the body be thrown into the fire.

If men along the way shall speak something harsh, it is better to cover the ears for a little while until wicked tongue have already pass us by. We hear no evil if we refuse to hear or heed the words spoken by evil men.

If along the way, we at times feel the desire to speak evil things against a fellow man, it is better for us to close our mouth for a little while until the indiscretions of our emotions have already passed away and then we evade the inanity of gossips.

There are times that we become the child who drools upon a candy after gulping down a bagful, and our elders would reprimand us for our excesses. Thereafter, we would speak like our words become engraved into stones and promise not to take another candy. And yet, the stone cracks easily when no one is already watching and we break our promise as we go right back again into the forbidden ways.

At times, the sinful ways is like the huge ball of rock that Sisyphus had earnestly push towards the top of the hill over and over again only to fall back flat towards the ground every time he nears the peak of the hill.

For at times our sins starts like a ball of snow falling innocently from a steep Himalayan mountain until the kindly looking ball of snow gains more and more mass and weight and grows into a deadly avalanche.

There are grievous things that we do that started merely as daily errors. As we repeat them they grow into an avalanche. We often hear about the man of many small sins who one day finally committed the most heinous of all transgressions.

The thief would surely feel the heaviest of remorse the very first time he commits such grievous sin of taking away another man’s possession. The second time he commits the same wrongful act, the remorse may still be there but it becomes less and less in weight. When he repeats the act over and over again, remorsefulness would finally become a stranger to him that his conscience had already become stunted. Until the day that he takes the largest of all sum and feels no remorse whatsoever. He is the thief that is caught in the quicksand of his soul.

And so is with the grave murderer. The first time he commits the act of taking away another man’s life, he would turn in his bed until dawn comes and sleep would not visit him for a great number of nights. And yet, the second time he commits the same transgression the heart would feel a little less of remorse. And when the act becomes repeated over and over again, the remorse would fade away and become absent and his heart slowly becomes not that of a man but that closer to a wild beast.

And so is with fornicators and those who are adulterous in their passions, lavishing themselves in the irresponsible pleasures of the flesh. The man would wallow in lust for the first time and he would be like a child wounded in the heart and his eyes would be a little bit teary eyed for remorse would remind him heavily of his misdeed. But when the call of lust comes harking again, the man forgets his previous remorse and goes right back into the irresponsible pleasures of lust. When he becomes lustful at all times and always fail to heed the call of his conscience, remorse would become absent completely that committing these lustful sins becomes merely commonplace for him. He is already trapped in the quicksand of his bestial instincts.

For sin is a like a deceitful serpent that approaches us from the back, under the cover of darkness, while the wind is very silent in the stillness of the night and we are deeply lulled into sleep. When we become caught in the promise of a sudden but temporary onset of pleasure, the kind that our sins could provide, we become like upon a moth caught in the spider web or a journeyman who is caught in the certain peril of a quicksand. If we do not become heedful and vigilant, the sand may go towards our neck and we may not be able to get ourselves back into harder grounds and our souls would meet its certain perdition and lose the promise of Eternal Life. We must repent while the sins are lighter still, for the heavier the sin the harder would be the road towards a fruitful repentance .

Read more on “The Voyage“

The Universal Jesus

In these days of Lent, I share the occasion with our Christian brothers and sisters, as I likewise bring myself before the solemnity of faith, in the manner that I see fit. In this connection, let me present to you an article that I have read some years ago in an issue of Newsweek Magazine. It was titled “The Other Jesus” and was written by Kenneth L. Woodward in the March 27, 2000 issue of the said magazine. I have been a voracious reader of many periodicals in the past—-both local and international—-and of all the articles that I have read, this one turned out to be the most memorable for me and the one that I have especially kept not only because it was about faith and religion (which magazines like Newsweek and Time rarely venture into), but mainly because it was a very informative and insightful piece of writing. There is something about this article that I could not point to, which is the reason why I always go back to it every now and then, every time I go rummaging through old issues of magazines and newspapers. I don’t know why I always do these things. Delving into old papers and documents had become an annual ritual for me that without doing it even for once, my year is not complete. I like the feeling of going through old things that I have piled in boxes and huge envelopes because they almost always remind me of past things that endear to me, that I could go all day excavating through old books and photographs and the dust coming from them gives such a unique and amorous scent. This year, at this particular point in time, when the kids are mostly home for the school break and summer provides a lot of empty hours for empty pleasures, I went backtracking again, through piles of old magazines and found this one magazine that contained the article that became my favorite of all time.

Due to copyright restrictions, I won’t be able to present here the verbatim content of the article “The Other Jesus” but I am giving you the synopsis, as best as I could. The online archives section of the Newsweek Magazine have this article stacked but it isn’t free. If you have online subscription to it, you’ll have free access to past issues.

In Catholicism, Jesus Christ is revered as the Son of God, the most recognized member of the trinity and He is the Redeemer of Mankind. In Pope John Paul’s own words, “Christ is absolutely original and absolutely unique…” The Gospel Christ is the most well-known personage of the Messiah and many of us had learn to know Him as the man who was born of a virgin, who healed the sick and made the blind see; One who brought back to life a man who had already gone dead; who once walked on water and calmed the storms in the sea; and who gave His life to humanity in order that the sins of the world may be taken away.
But Jesus Christ is by Himself a universal icon that is also accepted and embraced by many other religions of the world.

For instance, Jesus Christ is one of the most revered prophets in Islam and His name is mentioned in the Quran in the most respectful of manner. Moslems fully believe that Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary through a miraculous birth under a palm tree and that he had already spoken words when he was still an infant to the effect that He was indeed sent by God. What was a little unusual is that when there came a time that many doubted the birth of Jesus by a virgin, many Moslem scholars came to the front in order to defend and affirm this miraculous birth. If in the Gospels Jesus Christ was crucified and died on the cross, to resurrect three days later, the Quran on the one hand declared that He did not die at all and was in fact saved by Allah before He was crucified and was ascended directly to heaven. Moslems of all sects believe that Jesus Christ is the one prophet that will come back when the end of the world becomes near and will defeat the anti-Christ. To them, among all prophets and messengers, only He and Mary were untouched by Satan.

In Bhuddism, many Zen practitioners see both Jesus and Buddha as brethrens in their quest to spread the teaching of “universal love”. Parallels in their lives are reiterated as they were similarly born in a miraculous manner to chaste women, and both left home for the wilderness and were tempted by a Satan figure. Like Jesus, Buddha also work wonders and preached compassion, selflessness and altruism and had challenged the religious establishments pertaining to his time. A Russian anthropologist had once postulated that Jesus had one time in His life paid a visit to a Buddhist seminary in Bhuttan and His short sojourn there was even recorded in one of the documents written by monks there. These “findings” has gone largely unconfirmed of course, but this was clearly an attempt to inculcate the person of Jesus Christ into the context of Buddhism.

In Hinduism, Jesus takes the form of a legendary shaman that once journeyed to India and learned the ways of attaining god-consciousness. Many Hindus are drawn to the figure of Jesus as an image of compassion and non-violence—virtues that are taught in Hinduism. For them, Christ-consciousness, Krishna-consciousness, and God-consciousness are one and the same thing. If Jesus Christ had propagated the singular teaching of “Love thy neighbors”, Hindu philosophy adheres to the notion that says, “You and I are the same things.”

Jesus Christ as a revered icon is a more complicated affair in Judaism because for one, Christ had challenged its very norms and principles when He was here on Earth. For generations, the teachers of Judaism had tried to isolate Jesus Christ as a trivial revolutionary that spoke of heresy and religious rebelliousness and had caution every Jew to distance from Him. But in time, many reformists in Judaism had started to accept Jesus as an “admirable teacher” and one who personifies the sufferings and redemption of the Jewish people, through many struggles like the Holocaust and statelessness. And besides, Jesus Christ was a Jew Himself and that fact is undeniable by itself and therefore, Judaism remain to have a claim on His greatness.

This is the “Universal Jesus”; a figure that transcends not only geographical partitions but also penetrates the restrictions brought about by the differences of faiths in this world. He may not be seen in the same exact breath by every religion in this world, but a closer examination shows that He had become so revered by many that not only Christianity has a claim on Him, but also Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and even Judaism. All great religions of the world embrace Him as a religious icon, one way or another, in their own respective ways.

The Pond

One particular night, the weather was so warm that even when the electric fan hummed at its fullest, I had perspired so monstrously that I could almost hear my sweat dripping from my skin. Drip…drip…drip…I turned on my stereo and listened to an aria of Andrea Bocelli and the coolness of his voice made me feel a little better. Conte le partira, Paesi che non ho mai…Vel dutto ver sutto conti….Conte le partira…

And then I fell into a sleep that wasn’t like sleep at all for it felt so much like I have just glided from one dimension of existence to another. Unbelievable as it may seem and yet those who believe in parallel existence may just sympathize with me on this. Perhaps you’d start to think that I have become so much of an inexhaustible dreamer that I started to live more of my life in dreams than in the real world. I won’t blame you for that for sometimes I feel that way already.

In that dream, I found myself suddenly bursting into a barren landscape where the ground was red all over and the air was smoky as yellow smog floated like grimes on the atmosphere. I gazed around and I could see a nearby hill gradually rose from the ground and I could see wide plains and gray mountains from afar. The sky was red, like a bleeding wall to my sight. I could see no bushes or any form of greeneries around and if you’d seen some photographs of Mars, then you might have the best of idea of how the place appeared to be. The air was so still that I could hear no sound whatsoever that every step I made I could clearly hear. I felt my feet a little harassed by the crackling ground below me, those plates of mud solidified by too much dryness. I decided to walk further until I reach a point where the smog cleared and in a sudden I saw a small pond just in front of me, with a leafless tree standing along its shoreline. The tree reminded me of the guava tree that I used to climb when I was a child. I could remember that guava tree only too well because I had fallen from it twice before and it was there that I saw a strange creature of the night, a huge manlike being with the head of a horse, with some burning object flickering from its mouth, perhaps a giant cigar, just like what our elders had always said about kapres.

I stared into the pond and saw that the water was a familiar blend of yellow and green, like dew, and it was so calm that its surface didn’t moved at all. That was how I reckoned that it was a very deep pond by just looking at it. Shallower waters are always fragile to the eyes.

The water in the pond looked so inviting and it seemed to have spoken to me like it had a life of its own. I went to my knees and smelled the water. The scent that it evoked gave me a mild exhilaration of emotions that it became all the more tempting for me to dive into the water. I touched the water again and a small amount of it in my hands was enough to quench the waterlessness of my body. Still, I was hesitant to go into the water as its depth intimidated me so much and I wasn’t a good swimmer. Suddenly I heard some rustling noise behind me and I immediately turned to look at the direction of the sound. As the smog cleared, a women in a white gown appeared and she initially smiled at me. It was a little unusual that I never felt any kind of fear the very moment that I saw that floating woman even though as I write this particular passage, I have goosebumps all over me. I stared at her and wondered what’s the purpose of her calling me into this dream. I wanted to ask her why she wanted to meet me but spoke nothing instead. In that dream, I did not remember uttering any words; in fact not a single word was spoken by anyone in that dream. I really had initially felt that it was the woman who had called me to that dream and that she had some important message for me.

I wanted to express so many things to the woman hovering just in front of me but I struggled to mumble even a single word. After a while, the woman stared at me so intently and it was a little strange for me to realize that she could actually speak to me by just merely looking at me. And slowly I had also realized that I could get all my thoughts across to her even without uttering any word. She told me through mind talk that there was something that I should know and some person had called me into the dream and not her. Then she moved slowly towards me but as I thought that she was coming closer to me, she actually went farther and farther from me until she disappeared from my view. It was a completely spellbinding distortion of distance and space.

Then my gaze was turned towards the nearby hill that I had mentioned earlier and there appeared another person that was also in white gown, just like the woman had worn. I thought at first that the woman and the person floating above the hill was one and the same person but as I examined more carefully, the person on the top of the hill was actually an old man with a white flowing hair that was too long; too long in fact that I had mistaken him for a woman in a glance. He had the face of a very old man and to tell you quite honestly, the old man looked like Leonardo da Vinci, the one most of us had seen in many self-portraits of the legendary Italian artist.

The old man caught my eye and without saying a word, he ordered me to dive into the water. I hesitated at first but the old man was too insistent that he kept on pointing towards the pond. Again, it was sort of a distortion of space and distance that despite of the distance of the hill from where I stood, I could see the old man quite so clearly like he was just nearby.

As if the old man had suddenly gained control of my body and mind—-even from a distance—-I slowly took steps towards the tree and climb it, this despite my clear wavering. My climb was swift like I was a trained scaler of trees. As a child, many of my playmates teasingly dubbed me as “Monkey!” for I had always loved climbing trees when afternoon came. On a period of the day when most kids in the neighborhood took their catnaps, I go play by my lonesome instead and climb trees. My favorite tree to climb then was the Datiles beside a small fishpond that bore so many ripe fruit that I picked and gobbled in my mouth. I have grown to like the sweet nectar coming from the Datiles fruit. The guava tree on the one hand does not bore any fruit that we kids rarely climbed it. There was also a Chico tree about five thousand feet farther from the Datiles and it is where most of us kids love to climb the most and where we play catch-me-if-you-can games atop that huge tree, would you believe. It was so dangerous to play games while hanging on branches because a simple mistake or a broken branch would surely send the unfortunate kid plummeting down to the hard ground. It was so risky but as kids, we did not realize that.

Let’s go back to the dream. And so I was finally atop the leafless tree looking downward to the small but deep pond below me. I had gained enough balance on top of it that I virtually stood upright like I was standing on a diving platform. The height of the tree was a little mesmerizing to me, about the same height of a two-story house and this had made me more hesitant of jumping into the water. The particular inhibition I felt when I was atop the leafless tree always gets back to me as a familiar memory every time I was in the same circumstances in the real world, even when I was still a child. This dream of the pond happened only about four years ago but some scenes in that dream came to me as a form of déjà vu even when I was still so young and fond of bathing in many rivers and oceans that are found in Zamboanga. Perhaps just like any locality in the Philippines, Zamboanga has just too many places where one could enjoy the water, from the beaches in Cawa-Cawa (its so polluted now that bathing there is prohibited) to the gushing riverways in Pasonanca, far deep into the forest. It’s sort of a strange distortion of time and space when the scenes in a more recent dream came as déjà vu in my childhood days.

It took me some moments in deciding whether to finally jump into the water or not; until that final moment I held my breath so steadily and immediately dived into the water. I felt those moments while I was on the air, as if in a slow motion, as my body plunged right into the water. I felt those feeling of free falling again, like falling from cliffs and beds in my other childhood dreams. Finally, I hit the water and heard the water splashing just as I was entering it. I found myself inside the pond looking upward to the surface. Above me I could see a ray of light while down below was complete darkness. The water was so cool to my body that I felt a sudden elation and regretted for a while why It took me a while to decide to jump into the water. I felt a general happy feeling, an indescribable feeling that made me forget all those previous fears and hesitations I had earlier. The water was solid and thick like it wasn’t any ordinary water at all and I could feel them strongly on my skin. I did not sway my arms or shuffle my feet in order to stifle my fall into the pond for mostly, I had enjoyed being inside the water that as I fell deeper, while I just let my body gradually settle into its depth, the more feeling of elation I had felt. My body went deeper and deeper into the pond and I did not fight my fall even though there was some moment that I realized that the pond may be a bottomless pit that even while I was getting deeper and deeper into it, I could see nor feel any ground below it. Worry started to descend upon me when I could not still see the bottom of the pond. I started to panic but before panic had taken hold of me, I felt some hands grabbing my shoulders and suddenly I saw two persons pulling at me and steering me towards the surface of the water. The three of us swiftly returned to the surface of the water and once I came out from it, I paddled my legs so furiously to stay afloat and see for myself who were the two persons that pulled me out of the water. The two led me to the shore and I climb towards a drier area and stared back into the pond. I examined the two men who remained afloat in the pond as I realized how strong they were for they had pulled me out of the water in such a swift manner; they must have been learned swimmers. They remained afloat the water and yet I could not see them move their hands or feet. It was a cunning way to swim I thought then and I concluded that they were not just ordinary swimmers, but extraordinary ones. I gazed at the faces of the two men in the pond and then I started to realize that they both looked alike and that they may as well be twins and that they both looked like me although they had longer and much muscular body. I mistrusted them for a while for they seem to be mocking me by pretending to look like me and my distrust had become more emphasized when the two men maintained stern faces all throughout, like they were soldiers, like it was illegal for them to smile or show a gentler countenance. I turned my gaze towards the hill and wanted to ask the old man what was going on and I saw him still hovering and his white dress flowing steadily from a passing wind that I did not feel or see, as my immediate surroundings remained so very still and not a single sound could be heard.

The old man stared at me so meaningfully and then I could see how he had the gentlest of faces, one that evoked great love and adoration that I immediately felt assured that he won’t lead me to any harm or injury. He had seemed to be so fatherly and I could feel his great warmth even from a distance. He signaled with his hands to me once more and urged me to dive into the water. This time, my earlier hesitation and uncertainties had already vanished and I climbed the tree with great confidence. I dived once more into the water. I heard the water made the splashing sound again, a noise that was refreshing to my ears and once again, I felt the elation that remained indescribable; a certain feeling of sudden joy, like a narcotic perhaps if one could actually know how this element works.

I floated again inside the water and all around me was the thick yellowish-green hue of the pond and I could see no walls nor bottom but the water was clearly refreshing and my soul was lifted again. I still did not fight the gravitational pull of the bottom of the pond, which actually appeared to be without end, as if it goes on and on until forever. I had wondered what the bottom of the pond looked like and what it had to offer me. Maybe there was a lost kingdom down there or a secret hideaway that could give me more joy and elation. The feeling of elation was so addictive that I wanted to go deeper and deeper but the two men who looked like me appeared again in the scene and pulled me out of the water. This time, they did not have to grab me as I rose with them towards the surface of the water and I had risen on my own accord—-they just had to notify me this time that I was already getting too deep into the water. I remade and remade my dive into the pond and clearly I had grown ponder of it all the more that with every splashing of the water—-as I break into them by a nose dive—-the feeling of elation gets more and more emphasized. The last time I went into the depth of the pond, the two men did not have to grab me anymore for I have already decided on my own to rise to the surface of the water when I had reckoned on my own that I was already so deep into the pond. I was left alone the moment I finally gained enough discipline and patience not to go too deep into the water.

The last scene of this particular dream was me standing on the edge of the pond and watching the old man swaying his arms to and fro, from east to west, from north to south, like he was dancing some sort of an exotic dance that was completely unique and never heard of. It was a ceremonial dance it had seemed. As he swayed his arms from side to side, the wind move more dynamically and the yellowish tint of the atmosphere vanished gradually but swiftly and became clear like the atmosphere that we have now. And clouds in the horizon suddenly appeared and moved like there was a swirling storm until they settled over the hills and mountains. The old man was apparently controlling the weather and he was making the environment more and more pleasant to the sight. The brown hills became green and grasses and bushes started to grow from the ground until all around me was thick with lush greeneries and there was a forest just nearby. Then the sky became blue from its former hazy shade of red and I could see winged creatures gliding through it and everything became brighter and sunnier.

That is why I have said once before that when I saw an angel dance in the Manila sky in the year 2002, while I was there preparing for the bar examinations, the dance of the angel was so familiar to me like I have seen them once before. Now I can now point only too well that it was in the dream of the pond that I had seen the dance first. Nights after I saw that dancing angel in the sky, I was alone in the boarding house where I stayed in Manila (the boarding house was named BH Boarding House, a former office building that was turned into a students’ lodge, and it is just right beside a catholic center named after St. Lorenzo along Legarda St. in Sampaloc, Manila) as the other occupants went for a weekend getaway. It was nearly midnight and I was still awake reading law books. I felt the urge to drink some coffee so I went to the kitchen to prepare hot water. As I entered my room, I felt that someone was following me and I turned immediately to examine my back and for a split second, I saw the image of the old man hanging just above the air, right at my back and he looked so much like the old man in one of my dreams, which is this dream of the pond, and no matter how I saw that apparition, the old man looked like Leonardo da Vinci with a very long white hair, sharp noses and a very old face. I should have scurried away out of fear of the apparition but it was strange that I had felt no fear whatsoever in that particular moment. It was a span of days in my life that angels started to appear in my view, whenever I stared at the night sky and shadows on the wall and a bearded man on a huge throne that perhaps, the sight of the old man hovering just above me was not that surprising to me anymore, that I just disregarded it and proceeded to read my law books that night.

In the morning right after I had dreamt of the pond, I immediately went to search for a pen and paper so that I could write down the details of this vivid dream. At that time, I hadn’t still an inkling that I would be seeing angels in the future but I had felt so strongly then that the dream was too real for comfort like it was a story by itself, complete with plot and characters. I had in fact written down the details of that dream that morning and even typed it in several coupon bonds in order that I may be able to keep and preserved it. The way I wrote down the tale of the dream was in the form of a short story.

What did the dream meant to me? Perhaps you might ask this question. For me, it was a dream that foretold to me so eerily of the things that I have to encounter in the future and how every dream of mine has a certain singular thread in them that every one of it evokes important messages to me and to humanity as a whole.

Ogden Kronengekel: A Wanted Murderer

Note: Another retelling of a dream.

OGDEN KRONENGEKEL—-such is the name of the main protagonists inside my dream, other than myself of course. Have you had yourself a vivid dream? In my childhood days, I had numerous dreams of these sorts, the kind that are so crystalline in clarity that some of them I could still recall until now. I usually dream about angels in the past, flying with them into tree-lined outfields, and falling off from cliffs if I lose some footings while in the act of flying. Every time I fall from the air in those dreams, as I lose control of my body movements, I also fall from my beds that the falling sensation felt so real and everyone in the house could hear me scream.

My dream about Ms. Kronengekel (yes, she was a woman sporting jet-black hair falling down towards her knees) about three nights ago wasn’t purely about angels although some parts of it were about them cherubim. Unlike my other dreams, this one involves a narrator who whispers to me some facts that I need to know as the story progresses within that dream.

The visions in my sleep started as the narrator introduces me to the beginning scenarios (the narrator’s face does not appear throughout the dream and whispers only to my right ear as if he was afloat above ground just behind me and moves accordingly as I moved forward or backward or to any direction. He also has no name but in my mind he wears a huge black hood, just like the one wore by Death.). He introduced to me the people in the story. There was H. a friend who I knew in real life and the narrator also informed me that H.’s father was Mr. P. Mr. P. is a bailer of those arrested for crimes.

And then there was Ms. Ogden Kronengekel, a beautiful lad who always wears white t-shirts and fading jeans. When I was in Silliman University for about a year nearly two decades ago, I could recall that most students there wear this kind of generic outfit—-white shirt on the top and faded or tattered jeans down below. It was known to be hip to dress so casually, a coy on pretending like a poor man when one looks so rich. I didn’t dress the same when I was in Dumaguete City because that kind of outfit needed a bunch of Levi’s 501’s which I only have one at that time. So I just was hip in few instances. The white shirt and jeans needed another garment and that was the bandana. In those years (somewhere between 1989 and 1991), to wear a bandana is to bring tribute to rock music, especially glam-rock music and since Axl Rose of the band Guns and Roses wear them always, a hip rocker ain’t hip at all without the head accessory. In those years, riffing guitars and bamboozling drumbeats emanates from every nook and corner of Dumaguete City and as freshmen students, we became so involved in the glam rock movement that spurned notable bands like Bon Jovi and Poison. In those pre-grunge days, new wave bands still had major clamp on the radio listeners and it was the times when the great Irish band U2 reached its artistic peak with a couple of great albums titled “The Joshua Tree” and “Rattle and Hum”. Making the “Joshua Tree” album for them was such an achievement already and yet within a year, they were able to released “Rattle and Hum”—how good can they get?”So the dream was centered on a murder that I have got to know for reason that I was acting as an investigating officer in it and my work companion was H. All along H. wore a casual striped t-shirt, walking short and sporty beach sandals that I wasn’t really certain if he was toddling along with me in the investigation as a police officer himself, like I was, or just an ordinary companion. We went on scurrying up the whole facts of the case and proceeded on unraveling the mysterious death of a certain C., a fairly known rice trader in the city. If he was fairly known in the town despite his being merely a businessman (you know, as differentiated from high profile professionals like doctors and lawyers), it only means that he wasn’t just an ordinary businessman but a very successful one.

The main scene that really stuck vividly in my mind was the one in a downtown store that the victim Mr. C. owned. Me and H. went there to question some people about the murder.

In actual times, the store really existed somewhere in San Jose Road within the city limits and it really sells rice, lots of them. When we got there, we saw Ms. Ogden Kronengekel walk by us and entered a small doorway just beside the rice store of Mr. C. and proceeded to the second level of the building. Throughout the story, I never really seen her face yet I knew she had a foreign-looking countenance. She was pretty, so pretty that she was familiar almost to every one we knew.

H. remarked to me: “ That’s Ms. Ogden Kronengekel. Ain’t she pretty?” I said,
“ Yeah, I am familiar with her. You know, from school.” I then asked: “What she’s doing here?” To this question, H. just smiled and shrugged off his shoulders meaning that he does not have an idea. The way he smiled was a little insidious as if he knew something interesting that I do not know.

Then the scenes went into a cornucopia of various images. Just like any dream, the scenes in my mind change without lead ups or preludes and images and happenstances there intertwine like a spider web or a twirling spiral, at times without rhyme and reason, and they interlope upon each other like layers upon layers of sand.

The next memorable scene was the narrator telling me all the bits of information about the mysterious persona of Mr. Ogden Kronengekel. I bet I must have all the information I needed in order to solve the crime inside that dream—and Mr. Narrator helped a lot on this. Mr. Narrator said that Ms. Kronengekel grew up in Norway until the age of 5, and came to Zamboanga in the year 1986, the year when millions of Filipinos marched into the main highways of Metro Manila to overthrow The Strongman former President Mr. Marcos. Her father was of course Norwegian who married a Zamboangueña nurse then working in one of the big hospitals in Oslo, the most popular city in Norway. On the first time that Mr. Kronengekel went to visit the city, when he and Mrs. Kronengekel was still planning to tie their marital knot, he immediately fell in love with the local weather and particularly the beaches in the islands farther up north, and one just nearby town which is known as Sta. Cruz Islands. He decided then that he would not spend the rest of his life freezing among frozen lakes and icy boulevards in the Baltic Region and planned a scheme on how to make Zamboanga as the Kronengekel’s domicile. After five years of saving every penny they gained in Norway, they packed all their worthwhile things and settled here in 1986. It was rough times in the Philippines at that particular time yet Mr. Kronengekel did not allow any political disturbances to stifle his long-awaited journey to a land which according to him where the sun always smiled.

For quite sometime since they came here, the Kronengekel’s enjoyed a buoyant life full of travels around the country. You could really see for yourself how a man craves for seawater and sunshine in the way Mr. Kronengekel would stay in the water for hours and hours without getting ashore, snorkeling even in places when corrals where not all abound. In most of the beaches of Zamboanga, there are exactly no corrals or sea life to snorkel about except if one gets too deep into ten feet high seawater which would be a little risky with the sea currents so strong around here. There was even a story of some amateur boaters who went toddling in the night water in one of the resorts here while being a little drunk from alcohol. They paddled too far into the sea and apparently lost control of their boat due to the swirling currents that twirls and swirls like giant spirals in the span of both the Sulu Sea and the Celebes Sea. They found themselves in Indonesia a day after.Mr. Kronengekel applied as an English Instructor in a nearby college and was hired initially as a part-timer. Yes, he had professional trainings in the languages, especially in English from a fairly known American University and worked before as a professor in the English Department of a known university in Norway. He became an instant celebrity in the local college and became instantly popular with the students. A blond-haired lean man nearly six foot tall walking along the walkways of a school in Zamboanga was not exactly an everyday occurrence but with Mr. Kronengekel around, it was a daily sight for the students who could not help snickering and making some hush-hush and whispers, every time he passes by.

One day, Mr. Kronengekel caused a minor rumpus inside the campus when he just walked away one afternoon from a class he was tutoring and shouted along the hallways, “I can’t take it anymore” Apparently, he was having a nervous breakdown and never entered the campus again, not even once. The talk about him in school did not die down as easily and went own like a legend being told and retold.The day that he found a certain man was the day that started his slide into the downward spiral of a doggoned life. This certain man was a student he befriended in school for reason mainly because this certain man had easy access to a drug seller in one of the mean streets of this town. Everyday, he would take in some puff of marijuana like it was his staple food—-morning, noon and night. He was introduced to this illicit item in one of their travels to the islands farther up north in Visayas by a German tourist who took him for a couple of drink one cold night in the beach. He knew it was improper to take the item but he was too pretentious to let the German guy know that he is such a snob. In person, he is naturally a shy and introspective person but he was always inclined to hide this shyness when among a crowd, which he considered as his major weakness, and tend to overdo his show of coy extroversion by a mile.

So he smoked that illicit item just to do away with the German but it instead became the moment of his future desperation. At first, the stuff made him extraordinarily full of jest, snickered with the German to no end and laugh so hard even at the most humorless joke. His appetite for food became gregarious but what finally made him got hooked was the fact that the grass gave him a feeling of lightness that he never had before.
As his new habit progresses, Mr. Kronengekel had developed a general indolence that made him lose more focus in his daily tasks especially in his vocation as a teacher and soon started to miss on his own classes. He had been called twice to the Dean’s office until that one fateful day when he just stepped out of the classroom and never to return.

Mr. Kronengekel regressed so steeply into a man of unkempt behavior and soon Mrs. Kronengekel left home and went abroad again to earn when the finances of the family dwindled. Ogden Kronengekel became a “motherless” child at the age 9 and lived with aunts and cousins except when Mrs. Kronengekel was here for very brief annual or bi-annual visits. Mr. Kronengekel just wandered around the city drinking with by-standers from every mean streets there is in the city and huffed the prohibited item almost always until one day his body was found lifeless and stiffed as a rock near a city creek; probably by self-infliction as no contusion or bruises were marked on the corpse, and every possession in his body was intact, including a very expensive wristwatch. He just perhaps jumped into the shallow river and drowned himself by having so much alcohol to drink.

At the age of 12, Ogden Kronengekel goes home to a parentless shelter except for aunts and cousins she could bully around and whom she does not solicit for advises. The lack of sufficient moral guidance and the tragedy in her lives had affected Ogden so much that she became a wanderer herself, nearly like her father, taking drugs and alcohol in the night streets often than we breathe, never finishing college and running around with a lot of different men, even in illicit affairs. She became a creature of the night, as we know the term, hanging among many groupies in the city and creating troubles in the night streets as well as the streets of their own lives and of other lives.I asked my friend H. about the person of Ms. Ogden Kronengekel for I could not forget his strange smirk the last time we saw her within the vicinity of the murder scene of Mr. C. At this moment of questioning, we were in the office of Mr. P., H.’s father and the owner of the bail company.

My friend H. told me: “ There is no more need to ask questions. The murderer of Mr. C. has been arrested and he is out on bail, care of our bailing company.”

He handed me the folder of the murder suspect and saw for myself the front-view, left-view, and right-view pictures of some youth with browning hair and dark oily skin, with eyes protruding from perhaps lack of sleep or extreme tiredness. It seems all petty criminals looked like the guy on the folder in my hands, except the case in hand was not petty at all.

I asked in my mind why H. remarked immediately that the murderer was already apprehended when I only asked him about Ms. Ogden Kronengekel’s person. I smelled something fishy and wanted to create a line of thought from this unusual answer of H.. I wondered of course, since I was the investigating officer in the case, how come I didn’t know the arrest of some suspect on the case I am handling myself. In the Philippines maybe, this sort of things happens and since we were inside a dream, everything could happen indeed without explanation. The narrator made the story short and since Mr. Narrator seems to know everything, he saved me a lot of police work.

It turned out that Mr. P., the owner of the bail company, with connections in the police and in the Hall of Justice nearby, created a scenario where the murder has already been solved by the arrest of a pretending murder suspect, the skinny guy on the folder. Mr. P. was able to convince some fish vendor from Rio Hondo to pose as the murderer on the agreement that he would be bailed out after a couple of days of detention and then he could disappear to wherever he wants to go. The guy needed the money so much and the offer was hard to refuse.We asked perhaps why Mr. P. was interested in undermining the truth behind the murder Mr. C.. It turned out that the real murderer was none other than Ms. Ogden Kronengekel, the half-Norwegian wanderer and spoiled brat and Mr. P. was Ogden’s new paramour. Ogden Kronengekel was still then involved with Mr. C. and Mr. P. wanted her to get rid of him. Ogden got rid of Mr. C. in the cruelest of manner, the details of which could not even be spoken here for decency measures. You say, Ogden Kronengekel developed psychotic tendencies as she progressed through a life full of desperate measures.

It was H. unusual answers that gave me the lead to the final resolution of the case and at the end of the dream, the murder of Mr. C, the well-known rice trader in the city, was finally a case resolved.Now, I have said earlier that this dream of mine, which happened about two or three nights ago, was in some part about angels. Where are the angels? This is where the angels come in.

When Mr. Narrator elucidated to me on the true persona of Ogden Kronengekel, I forgot to mention to you that she was also a singer with a local rock band and that explains her rock-and-roll attitude. While telling me this particular fact, Mr. Narrator gave me a view of one of her performances (the narrator seem to have the power to go back and forth in time and view some happenstances in a three dimensional screen where the viewers are in it although unseen by the people inside the screen, like in Hollywood movies where there are repetitions of past events, like for example Bill and Ted’s adventures of years ago.)

So Ogden sang a song that was unlike any other song. In fact, despite the catchiness of the song, it was not a song that exists in real time. It was a song I have heard only in that dream. As she sang the song, heavenly choruses were backing her up. As the song progresses, I was taken through a time warp to a place where there was a low hill with trees lined up together like they were planted with great planning in mind and the air was so breezy and the sun was so radiant. It gave me a feeling of great joy like it was Paradise. And the place just faded after the song.

Ogden Kronengekel’s voice reminded me so much of Tori Amos. In fact, her voice was a beautiful combination of Tori Amos’s and of Fiona Apple’s. In real time, I doubt it if there is a woman living with this kind of vocal prowess. But the choral backing in the song of Ogden Kronengekel lifted me above air and gave me a gladness of powerful elation. Cherubim (with trumpets in each hand) sang the choral rendition behind Ogden Kronengekel’s main vocalization. What beautiful angels they were and what beautiful voices. At the end of this post, we can now ask what did the dream meant to me and what message it tried to invoke? I do not know. Some dreams of mine, even as vivid as they were, just do not mean anything except that they were about angels and the angels remind me always of places and times that gives me fond memories and great joy. In my childhood, my dreams of angels were just about flying and nothing much else. No message. No declarations. Their declarations came not by dreams but through other manners instead, which of course if you are a constant reader of my works, you should already know by now.

Some characters in the dream above narrated may resemble some people I know in actual time but the resemblance was unintentional and does not portray their true persons’ character. Dreams are just dreams.