On Loyalty

Starshine,
the things of Loyalty
are the relationships
that shall remain
forever with thee;
so defend your friendships
with courage and tenacity.

For we are not Loyal
if we do not remain
true to each other,
moment to moment,
from always to always
appreciating those things
that we share in our humanity
and respecting the things
that make us unique as persons,
seen as well as unseen,
in ourselves and in our nations
in the vision of our timeless belonging
with one another in God and Country
as each our own true self -
as each our own true names
written in heaven.

From the descendant gravity
of the spirit of war and division;
against things born of the darkness
defeated and empty of promise
stand fast in thy friendships!

Guard thy peace with each other
and in thy togetherness hope.

Never be Loyal
to inanimate and empty things;
those fickle and ephemeral
things of vanity!

But only to each other
and in the ascendant motions
of Sacred Life.

For the realization of all our hope
rests in the glory of our LORD
in all creation.

And all these created things
are made by our one common Creator
to be Loyal to all of these.
---<--@

Hapag ng Pag-asa (Table of Hope) by Joey Velasco (19670318 - 20100721) - Via con Dios.

What you do for your friends will be remembered by your friends. What you don't do for your friends will be remembered by your enemies.

On Friendship

The Angels of the LORD,
my precious Starshine,
each of which is distinct
in Beauty and Light,
being individually endowed
with splendor of truths
unique to each their gifts
possessed by each their person
from the very beginning
of their swift flight
across the timeless void
and into eternity
into the wholeness
which is God
for lack of human words
to define the strength of a relationship
that transcend the all of time
from across that veil of shadow and tears
beyond the sum total of human experience
call each other "friends".

Each of our family
who are related to us
by corporal bonds of blood
are the friends that our LORD
has chosen for us.

Each of our friends
who become part of us
by spiritual bonds of truth
are the family that we learn to choose
in the course of each our lives
to complete what our LORD
has begun for us
in our families.

Both bonds bind us together
in the strength of human relationships
that nurture life and sustain hope
through action of community
and the service of life.

You must love,
my precious Starshine,
to transform these bonds
into that one friendship alone.

And make these bonds
into the bonds of angels
who are each in God
spirits united in their freedom
created by the strength of friendships
bound in timeless truth.

So with each other,
my precious Starshine,
you must build on the good,
and give to the need of thy beloved
recognizing in thy shared humanity
the giving of the LORD
Who is the singular Source
of all our relationships.

Be thankful for friendship wings
human, angelic and Divine,
that take us all across
from moment to moment
into an understanding of its peace
lifting us into the unity
of those wholes upon wholes
from hope to hope
and strength to strength
past, into present
and into every present
across the void
into eternity.

Starshine,

there is always a reason to smile.

---<--@

To love first your friends is to know them -

May all our friendships be without frontiers!

20101018

Fending Off Loneliness

Loneliness is quite different from being alone.

I know that it is. And I understand it from a deeper level. Because with God alone, I truly am never alone: My belief in a Higher Power says so and my faith in my God accepts it as truth in my life.

For the LORD, my God, is not a solitary God but as a King rules all things, seen and unseen, without division.

Nevertheless, fending off feelings of loneliness remain difficult for me. The difference nowadays is I don't go into depression and despair of my life. I have a goal of life-long recovery and I know now to keep that goal ahead of my road.

I imagine the years active addiction took away from my promise and thought it was not enough to put me down. God held me back from destroying myself. I still have some good in me.

I never used to have any confidence whatsoever that I could recover from active addiction. But these days I do. God gave me a will of recovery.

I have tasted the maddening darkness behind me and I didn't like it; have felt the hurt of drug addiction; have known the helplessness of it all. I know I have to face life on its own terms but looking forward not back.

It's hard being single during these times. But then again, I am single not alone. It's the truth. I can not look back at what the past took from me. I must remain in the now and live the promise of my recovery a day at a time.

Loneliness is a feeling and like all feelings, it rises and falls. This too shall pass.

When feelings of loneliness sets in, I shall hold on to what is true in my life. I shall take comfort in the strength of my relationships with my family, friends, and above all, in my God Who is the singular source of all my relationships.

I know and I trust He will prosper them all into full fruition each at their own time according to His will of good for me.

The LORD makes all things whole.

The LORD makes all things one.

For God is a God of relationships.

Beauty and Industry

Starshine, dearest Starshine,
the labor of our heart - must -
always preceed the work of our hands.

So if you shall desire happiness
you must first know in your heart
what it is that you seek
even before you shall desire it.

For desire in and of itself offers
neither sight to thy heart
nor light to thy understanding
which you must require,

Beloved of God,
to know thy own truth by heart.

And seeking it not by sight
but through the eye of thy love
that in thy seeking believes

with conviction of faith
you will come to know thy happiness

by the grace of God
even before desire bears thee away
to where thy feet must follow.

For you work hard, dear Starshine,
you deserve to profit from thy labors.
But yet many are the times
that you fail to find thy love
which reduce thy labors into tears
and deprive thy heart of life's purpose.
Yet while there is yet longing in our life
precious Starshine, believe -
there is nothing in this world
that can ever undo
in thy heart of hearts
what Love for thee has already done.

So return again to thy longing
but know also to trust this time
in the Love that longs for thee back
and work hard, dear Starshine,
knowing to be happy with every hope
striving to always be free
to find thy peace and to prosper,
far into yonder horizons,

our beautiful forever.
---<--@

Hang on to the things in your life that doesn't change. Hang on to them till it hurts. For if life is all about change then the secret to living well must be this - stand still.

Will of the Wanderer

With every life, there is a longing
and within each heart, it is felt,
because there is within each soul,
an absence, mysterious and sublime -
like a truth, cloaked in questions,
like a desire within a desire.

In an unfamiliar, uncaring earth,
amidst the wilderness of this world,
it draws us near to familiar things.

Under unknowing, unfeeling skies,
among empty shells of broken dreams,
it knowingly leads us along safe paths.

With every dawning, it recalls us;
for our labors, it rewards us;
when we are at rest, it reminds us;
during mealtimes, it welcomes us;
when we are at play, it guards us;
with every prayer, it blesses us;
with every good, it leads us;
when we repent, it teaches us;
when we forgive, it forgives us;
when we grieve, it consoles us;
when we rejoice, it hears us;
when we sleep, it renews us;
when we fail, it tempers us;
when we forget, it remembers us;
when we succeed, it preserves us;
when we seek, it find us;
at every trial, it fortifies us;
from all evil, it delivers us;
at all times, it keeps us;
throughout our days, it sustains us;
and in eternity, it recognizes us -
for by our names, it knows us.

It is that which stirs from within,
that which calls us to remembrance
that which in stillness is stillness sought
that which loves our needful mankind
that which completes, makes whole
that which deeply yearns -
for the absent heart of humanity.

Bereft of answers, lacking in truth
forlorn of strength, exiles to destiny -
where there is a seeking for solace:
It remind us of our life's purpose;
an awakening that patiently waits
in the abode of the true self -
like the quiet to calm the storm.

It is the peace at every journey's end,
the Heart at the heart of all creation,
calling the wandering will back home.
---<--@

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

Heartsong

I AM the unsung song
that lives within a dream;
the seed within a soul.

Every infinite universe
embraced from within
the heart of God.

I am the road
not the destiny,
I am the journey
not the destination,
I am the dreaming
not the dream,
I am the becoming,
not the being,
I am the singing,
not the song,
I am the climb
not the peak,
I am what soars!

I begin with a praise -
I breathe the air,
and cry out loud:
Alleluia to the LORD!

I end with a praise -
I lift my head,
and bow my heart:
Alleluia to the LORD!

I am heartsong.
---<--@

Man is a creature of possibilities.

Therefore, know your limits. But do not allow yourself to be defined by them -

Believe in your recovery and your recovery will believe in you.

A Friend Like You

I wish, my Jesus, to be

the friend that You see in me

to be constant, O Lord, to be true,

to be a friend, my God,

a Friend like You.

---<--@

Only You, O LORD, completes me.

Prayer

MATERIAL THINKING is static and physical but spiritual things are dynamic, fluid, and always in motion.

The smallest of good, when done with love in the heart, is a truth worthy of praise. What material thinking shall often dispel as insignificant, may be the very thing that gives it thought.

For the Spirit of the LORD is nearer to us than our thoughts, and more present to us than the absence that we feel in the depth of our hearts.

Spiritual things are manifest in the heart that is at work in God for purposes that fulfill the truth in our being human and therefore, whether in great leaps or small, faltering steps, advance the cause of creation and the divine purposes for which our Mankind is upon this inhabited earth intended.

Prayer breaks us free from the rut of material thinking; that stinking thinking.
---<--@

AS A RULE, my precious Starshine,

prayer is always more

than the sum of all that we can see

with our unseeing eyes.

A soul in prayer is a heart present to its thought;

a walk across the vast, empty deserts within;

a reaching out to places beyond self;

a looking above from within.

It is silence contemplating Silence -

alone with the Alone.

It is a growing, persevering,

often times frustrating work

born of great necessity,

out of thy love of God.

Prayer is an ascent to the timeless,

anchored upon ageless truth,

of all the things we love

and of the Love that all created things hope for,

most especially by the truth of thy heart of love,

and of thy faith yearning to God in prayer.

The way to God is a crooked line,

for we are all but human.

But the way of prayer

makes this way certain.

For the soul that perseveres in prayer

shall indeed profit

from the LORD Who rewards all things,

great and small, known and known to God alone,

when done out of love and fear

of the one common Creator

of all common creation, seen and unseen.

It is not only important that we pray,

and persevere in this way, my precious friend,

in private, above all in community with each other,

it is simply necessary for human happiness

and the well-being of the still small truth that lives,

like a mustard seed,

inside of every self

for all things true and everlasting

depend on a heart of prayer.

Prayer is spiritual.

Therefore,

there are seasons within the soul that range

from sweet to dry or empty

but never must thy heart stay still,

you must gather when it needs gathering

and to know also when to look beyond these seasons;

you must be vigilant,

pressing on till you reach the heart of God

to lay your hopes in the LORD.

So prayer may be long

or it may be short

but it must always be timeless,

its substance is the motion

that lives like a love longing for Itself.

And when the Silence shall to your bowed heart speak,

It shall do so swift as light,

being Spoken without words

and instantly manifest to your soul as winged truth -

then you shall seek to forget all other things

but God and God alone.

And in God you shall range far,

self cognizant of self,

intimate with the Intimate,

to dwell in holy remembrance of all things.

For far may your wandering heart be

but to love and in Love

you shall forever remain

when you shall in prayer persevere.

So do so, dearest Starshine,

and say AMEN:

Know for thy own self

why the heart that believes

believes only because it prays.
---<--@

Step 11

Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of God's will for us and the power to carry that out.

20101005

Why?

I once asked God in prayer why can't He just make things all better for me.

I asked God why must I have to put up with all these seemingly persistent, never-ending frustrations and difficulties of my recovery.

Why can't He make things better for me?

For recovery takes hard work. It's not just about quitting drugs - that's really just the surface appearance of things...

To the newbie recovering addict or to the uninitiated, it might seem like a very simple thing to ask an addict to make the choice to quit or to just continue on using.

But recovery is deeper than it looks.

Recovery is initially all about making that big, life-defining choice to quit using. Because the first choice is the wrong choice and everything else is the choice of the addiction. This initial choice is almost always forced upon an addict when he or she "bottoms out".

But the real work of recovery begins after that initial choice to quit using. Because what constitutes the real work of recovery is about making those little everyday decisions that allow me to uproot bad behavior and strengthen good ones; choices that seem invisible to the rest of the world.

Recovery both implicitly as well as explicitly requires that necessary exercise of virtue and the art of its grace. Because the essence of recovery is really all about re-learning to live my life aright once again - slowly but surely - without the use of drugs or the inclination to seek the false "high" of drugs.

And this takes hard work indeed - vigilant, anonymous work.

So I asked God one day and He replied to me - "my dearest child, if I take away your choices, then you would cease to be you, and it is you that I love and nothing else but."

Recovery is all about freedom. If God takes away that freedom, what's the point?

And it's not like I have no help in my recovery -

I have the help of my brothers and sisters-in-recovery within the fellowship of NA and in the DDB-EU TRC institution. I have family, and friends.

Above all, I have God, my dearest LORD, Who loves me more than I can ever love myself.

I just have to remain vigilant in my heart of hearts. I just have to know what and who I must love above all. And trust that that's no longer drugs.

As long as I am certain of this, I know by the grace of God, I shall continue on recovering.

Recovery is an ascent to freedom.

=^.^=

Unconquered

DREAM, my precious Starshine,
and be thankful for the dreaming
more than the dream itself -

For as tomorrow remains unwritten
yet every hope is made secure
so trust you must in thy dreaming
more than in thy dream itself
for as the eagle soars with wings
knowing not how it must fly
so must your own freedom become
more than what can be held by hands:

Thy freedom, dear Starshine,
like thy dream and thy dreaming
is a thing held not by grip
but a thing beheld by thy releasing
for to hold freedom tightly
like it is to deny it's flight
is to lose it entirely.

For thy freedom walks
upon the unconquered grounds
and wills to take it's flight
untrammeled and untamed.

So seek of thy freedom,
my precious Starshine,
but in thy seeking know -
here and Now,
that freedom lives in the giving
like every dream is in the dreaming
for it is always in the giving
that we become free.
---<--@

Freedom that is free is free indeed.