20090512

Dear darlingest Annelies Marie,

Today is Otto's 120th birthday, my loveliest love. Or at least, it would have been had he not already passed away in 1980.

"Passed away" - now, that's a two-word phrase the substance of which is worth looking into, my darlingest dear. Do you notice, my love, sometimes when one thinks about a word long enough, it becomes strange to one's understanding? Well, what that indicates to me is that we sometimes (or oftentimes) use our words without actually being conscious of them as individual parts to a synergistic whole.

You see, there is an aspect to human conversation that can not be understood in their parts but only in the synergy of the whole because the substance of the truth which we try to convey through our languages (verbal and non-verbal) is a continuum which can not be grasped in the totality of their sense as mere fragmentary words, disparate and disjointed in their times and places, but as a complete outpouring of the heart.

This is most especially true with regards to spiritual matters, my darlingest dear, that most people who are not made by our LORD to be receptive to the reality of those things unseen, who remain oblivious to the presence of the supernatural order of things find from utterly strange to somewhat unfamiliar.

I know this, my love, because I myself find it very difficult to convey those things that are intimate to my own heart of hearts to other people. Even those things that are as relevant to these times as God and Country, life, humanity, friendship and peace - words that seem mundane in their ordinary context but do possess behind the sheer mediocrity of their usage, a deeper sense that is grounded on very profound truths.

This is precisely because, I am convinced, the substance of what I am really trying to say, when I attempt to say those things, is not really in the words but in the connections that are made in the human heart.

Because "cor ad cor loquitur", my darlingest dear, "heart speaketh unto heart" is the real conversation that occurs, and I believe is the one conversation that remain when all human words have been spoken and all the tongues of our nations spent.

This is also confirmed by the Gospel admonition to exercise caution as regards to these deeper things which is why most of these conversations that we have, my loveliest love, are seldom the everyday conversations that I have with people outside of Planet Annelies and our other blogs.

And even if I should try, I am oftentimes met only with a very strange sense of disconnect - something from a benign sense of tolerance, to indifference and who knows, even hostility for the Gospel says so - and so even my closest friends and my closest family do not share with me all that I am able to share with you, my loveliest love.

And so therefore, in a sense, my darlingest Annelies Marie, I know how it is to not know, in my own time, the friend that I long for so much in you. And I don't care if "Kitty" was meant to be a girl, my darlingest Miyang, that she brought us together is enough for me.

And so, "passed away" seems like an innocent term but, my darlingest, it is a very worldly world, I assure you. For it conveys a quite ego-centric view of things. It is as if the visible universe is all there is to life and the living of life.

"Passed away" seems to me is a term that seeks to convey linear distance that only adds to our own sense of forgetfulness in the darkness of exile time; a sense of forgetfulness that seeks to frame the disappearance of a human person in corporal death from the standpoint of the world which is oftentimes if not always the right standpoint to take, mind you - for the world is fickle as well as ephemeral but the soul of Man is not any of these.

"Pass over" or "come across" are better terms but understandably terms not in keeping with the fashion of the times. Well, for as long as one knows to add to one's own sense of awareness the first principle truths behind the words, I would say, each our own sense of eternal remembrance becomes better served.

Anything to me that covey linear distance to our sense of time is erroneous as well as false because at the very least, it seeks to foster a growing sense of non-responsibility to those individual lineages of personal hope left behind by our own sacred dead (especially our war dear, civilian as well as military) to the keeping of the order of the present generations and at its worst, it seeks to erode the sacred remembrances of entire nations.

You beloved father, my darlingest, our Pim, have "come across" into God and into all of you and have "passed over" from time into the shores of eternity.

Because in the last analysis, no human being ever really "passes away". It is the night and the darkness, my love, that shall "pass away" and as such it is forgetfulness itself that shall inherit the void and oblivion.

Now, what we, what each of us, shall stand to inherit in eternity by God is the business of our conversations with the LORD and with each other today.

Having said all of these, it is very important to pray for people, my love. Because no one can connect us together in peace and friendships the way our LORD does, in time, in the timeless void and into eternity.

Therefore, I shall say a special prayer for our Pim tonight at novena mass, my loveliest love.

You know, my darlingest dear, you make me realize that I can not love you (and love you without compare) without learning to love the things and the persons you yourself love and, my darlingest Miyang Marie, you are quite irresistible, you know that, right?

I am so richly blessed indeed to have you and to know you as a friend among all my other friends, seen and unseen.
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Now, if we are to look at the problems of our world as disparate evils and confuse these evil things with what is of good worth in ourselves and in our shared humanity, we shall in the darkness think to see what the darkness sees in ourselves - as something less than nothing.

But life is not cheap, my love, above all human life. It is the most precious thing in the eyes of the holy angels and in the eyes of our LORD, in the many beings and becomings of all living things, the very reflection of Beauty Itself.

And so if we shall ponder on these things, and in prayer behold by the faith in our hearts what the silence intends to speak in ourselves, we shall soon discover that evil things and the evil in them contends against the truth and that they do so not because they have any claim to it but because they indeed have nothing to do whatsoever with the good.

Which is why acts of sheer injustice always appear to every human soul, in various degrees of decisive clarity, as something wrong.

Indeed, there are wrong things that never appear to our sense of humanity as anything right because in the deepest sense of our existence as beings, evil things can never be associated with the good precisely because we as human beings implicitly know that our shared humanity is and can be something good.

Our own interior perspective as human beings, when it is left free and untrammeled, absolutely places us in the context of the reality with which our hearts were made to see things through and so therefore, we also know implicitly as truth that we are, as Mankind, intended for better and much greater purposes and that in the unchanging and immovable will of our LORD, amidst the majestic sweep of all creation, we - in our littleness - are meant by our one common Creator for better, brighter, nobler and kinder things - lasting things, even everlasting things.

This is so because hope is native to our trust.

We hope not because the times are evil but because there is something good worth hoping for in ourselves as human beings.

We hope not because we are divided by the longings of our heart but because we are united by it and of the promise of the good things worth sharing with each ourselves as human nations.

We hope because it is very human to do so, my love. And where people are left in despair (of self and of others) it must be known that this virtue can never abide where evil is confused with the good.

And I put these things down, my darlingest Annelies Marie, because it is upon these things that our own sense of judgment takes its stand, that it might in time serve other hearts similarly inclined to the defense of sacred life and the preservation of the peace.

But the requisite choice that must arise from the lukewarm gray of shadow has to be made beforehand to truly know these things, my love - at a time, times and half a time.
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Now, the further away one gets from first principle truths, the more vigorous one has had to contend with our ancient Adversary, the Devil, against the darkness of things evil and false which is why I try to avoid specificity in our discourses, my love.

Not because I am not zealous for the good and for the common good but because I must be careful to stay within the fold of my Lord Christ and to move with our advances (as a Church along with all people of good will) that I may not leave the particular promise of our friendship unrealized and the intended purpose of our hopes unfulfilled by making myself a casualty of either my own ignorance or lack of prudence.

However, it can not be avoided that in the pursuit of our intended purposes, that particular realities must be mentioned in the course of our hope and the following are some of these:

In Afghanistan, it has been maintained, a strategy of containment, military as well as political, must be looked into and the particular area defense of major cities; redundant and robustly deep in terms of scope, reactive in terms of combined arms response to any and all enemy advances against the lines of the defense, planned for in depth and in detail.

Special forces as well as remote and airborne surveillance assets should provide for presence in those spaces between established areas to provide RISTA support to the main forces dug in and hunkered down behind population centers busy with the rebuilding of the systems, habitations and institutions of life that shall serve to further define the Afghan nation away from everything that the Afghan nation is not and should never be - according to their own vision of themselves as a people.

The rights of civilians in a battlefield environment, as part of the strategic initiative, must be communicated, clearly and decisively, and the reality of this commitment recognized and enforced by the military as well as the civil government.

A diplomatic channel must be made available to the Taliban with prior common understanding of the necessity, the practicality and the sheer humanity of establishing a process wherein the framework of a workable peace may become available to all parties concerned.
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In the Middle East, my darlingest, the election of the new Israeli PM is not a step back but a step forward in the peace process.

I understand his own sense of caution is ruled by his love for his nation and not because of anything else but this and so therefore, any motion forward in terms of the peace process in this new context would truly be something that is gained not because attaining the peace is something easy but because it is difficult and therefore better reflects the reality of our hope as something worth having and striving for, my love.

You know, this war can not last forever but a peace that is rushed into will be just as transient. And in this way, Yoni's brother's own sense of caution will serve the good of all sides to the one peace knowing that he, too, like his brother must be willing in his heart to give everything for his people, for his nation. (I do apologize if it seems forward for me to say such things but these things are things that must be said.)

Therefore, any peace in this context (it has been previously maintained) must be real for the good and the common good of all parties concerned.

The region itself as an area whole must be looked into to obtain a strategic view of the peace for both modern Israel (of our elder Israel) and for our unborn Palestine - both of whom have their belongings to each other in our one family of nations. Modern Israel can not preserve her native hope apart from a two-state solution and the hope of the world will not be served if the peace in the Middle East is not genuine.

Much things rely on this, my love, that Jerusalem remain undivided and that peace become a reality in this troubled region as this will do much to help extinguish the flames of conflict that rage in other parts of our inhabited earth; a one whole world suffering from the existential threat of war.
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I am spent, my love. I should like to park it for now, my darlingest dear. We shall continue hopefully with some lighter material tomorrow.

I love you.

Always to always,

Pusing