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.

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.

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.

It’s Easter Sunday once more and like everyone else perhaps, I could not help but feel mostly celebratory as a week of solemnity and lenghty silence all around had naturally made me yearn for this day—the day where most activities are not anymore held unholy—and of course in large part, in remembrance of the day that the Lord Jesus Christ had risen from the dead, after three days in darkness, within a catacomb curved unto an ancient stone hill.

I got my first easter greeting from a Friendster bulletin board and that was from my fraternal brod Lester Masuhud, meeting everyone Happy Easter and I thought I might return the favor, greeting every friends online, as well as my blog friends all around but a very slow Internet feed at home had made such plan entirely futile and not viable at all so it would just be fitting for me to greet everyone of you “Happy Easter Sunday” on this blog post. I hope you will all receive it.

Oh, despite the slow connection I was able to send a Friendster message to another brod—Russel Iglesias—who is now in Florida with his lovely wife and daughter. I also asked him if it is ever factual that alligators are so prevalent in the Florda coast and told him to be careful if that would be true. He answered that it was not only alligators that was pernicious there, but also beautiful American women. He is just as naughty stateside as he was here.

It was a bit uncanny that it was Lester that had initially reminded me of the easter greetings since he is a Moslem in the first place, and should have little notion to be aware and cognizant of the Lent season. But I guess, nowadays the boundaries of faith is less stern and more open that men of different faith may be more accepting of others’ creed and religious belief, respecting every sacred tradition and norm.

I don’t know if this is the general drift in our modern society and no one could really be sure of that, especially in the present global condition where enormous violence still persist in the name of religion in many parts of the world. Yet I still wish that it was the ideal way, where men and women from all nations and tribe are respecting each other’s creed and religious inclinations; and then be patient with that idea, and not be contemptuous entirely. For all we know, the entire humanity is of the same vein and root, and that is from the Creator Himself, who may be just the same God that we all pray to, albeit in very dissimilar ways and methods—and perhaps through dissimilar names and personalities.

This is my belief and I hope I won’t be castigated for that. Happy Easter everyone!

This must be what a burning issue means. Even while Pope Benedict XVI had apologized more than once in the past couple of days, the anger brought about by a speech he delivered in a German university continues to rage and reports from every international papers headlines how his apology had failed to tame down anger.

I have immediately scoured the net for the exact words that the pope had spoken, those that had this hugely inflammatory effect, and after reading it, it is clear to me that all this confusion is just a result of great misunderstanding, or that classic case of taking one’s words out of context. It appeared that the controversial lines, which many Muslims around the world believed to have been something against Islam, were actually found in a quoted conversation between two emperors—the Byzantine emperor Manuel II and an unnamed Persian ruler. In other words, it was clearly not the very own words of the Pope that had caused great outrage in the Muslim world but merely the content of an ancient texts that he had read before and had been reminded of, and then presented it in that now infamous speech he gave in Regenzburg, Germany—utilizing them in his intention to elucidate more clearly the subject of “holy war” (jihad in Islam and The Crusade in Christianity) through the ages, and even up to now.

I thought Pope Benedict’s speech was fair and balanced in tackling the issue of religion vis-à-vis the manner of one’s conversion and dedication to it, whether it’d be a belief of faith through an informed voluntary decision, or merely thru the force of circumstance. He had even expounded Greek mythologies to explain this, and had used passages from both the Bible and the Qu’ran to firmly enlighten the issue.

The Pope had already made a categorical and unqualified apology concerning some texts in a university speech—I hope that was enough to appease the minds of many Muslims across the globe. In these times of great confusion—of nuclear armaments, of extremisms in faith—peace amongst all men is one thing that we should pursue right now.

It was like as if there was a total eclipse of the sun yesterday, or Halley’s Comet was passing by. There was so much buzz about yesterday’s date—the 6th of June, 2006—as it had conformed to that mythical (and dreaded) number “666”. Suddenly, talk about the world coming to an abrupt end (that is, the coming of the Apocalypse) were permeating like heavy coffee aroma floating across a narrow room. What’s with the number? What’s to believe in its legend? According to New Testament texts, “666” is the number of the Beast, the Anti-Christ who is bound to be earthbound and wreck havoc so well that there’d be rapture and end of days. In the New Testament, Revelation 13:16-18 states:

Also it causes all, both small and great, both rich and poor, both free and slave, to be marked on the right hand or the forehead, so that no one can buy or sell who does not have the mark, that is, the name of the beast or the number of his name. This calls for wisdom: let anyone with the understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a person. Its number is six hundred and sixty-six.

Within the ambiguities of the above biblical passage, many had came forward to interpret it and generally, it is supposed that “666” is the number of Satan or the Anti-Christ. Some early biblical relics have exhibited such number to be “616” (in Greek form) and could be inferred to the infamous Roman Emperor Nero by using a numerological method called Gematria. Emperor Nero was historically known as a pervent persecutor of early Christians and Jews, feeding them to the lions for the public’s seeing pleasure. In any sense, “666” is generally attached to extreme cruelty and devilishness.

This sudden numerical debate brings me to Dan Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code’ where it was mentioned there that the pyramid structure built in front of the famous Louvre museum in Paris is made-up of exactly 666 glass panes, as requested by Francois Mitterand, the former French President. Some written materials have allegedly confirm this, like the brochures that was published in the early 80’s as a primer to the pyramid project. This fact is now being strongly rebuked by the Louvre’s administrators.

So whose afraid of “666”?

Yesterday had already passed by and nothing so grave had actually happened to the world, except for the usual (but still dreadful) explosions in Iraq and the volcanoe eruption in Indonesia. It might not be in the date that’s to be reckoned. Actually, it is generally believed that if the Anti-Christ is to come, he can actually be identified by the number “666” tattoed naturally somewhere in his body, most probably in the forehead and that way, nobody could miss his coming.

But I have tried myself to read and analyze the biblical text (Revelation 13:16-18) mentioning the much-talked about number but I couldn’t seem to infer nothing about it or “calculate” from it; whether or not it refers to a date or to a particular name. Maybe it had referred to “Hitler” since it’s a six-letter name or “Marcos” for that matter. But none of the two had been bad enough to qualify as the Beast, for nothing nearly apocalyptic had happened during their respective “reigns of terror”. Although they can be “apocalyptic” in many sense.

Maybe, “666” refers to the name “George”, as in George Bush. Who knows? Certainly, Almajinehad is too long a name for “666” to fit in.

Maybe, the world will be on the look-out for a guy whose first name, middle name, and last name all has six letters each. And I bet, he had to be famous to be qualified as the missing guy known as “The Beast”.

And according to this site, any among us can be the “beast”. Even Arnold Schwarzenneger.

See Related Articles:

“6-6-6: Is our number really up?”

“Number Of The Beast (Wikipedia) “