Going Home to My Father's Hometown of Banaran

There was one fish story that brought me to the very ends of the world it seems, so far away that running water does not exist and a paved road is an alien concept.

My cousin King came to me on a warm day, the kind of day that my head is loose and every idea could grow and expand into some humongous concept. The kind of weather that the breeze is almost thick you could see them pass by, making you light inside and cheery. It was this cheeriness perhaps that took a bite into salesmanship, an amateur one that I realized later.

"I am busy with some business prospect," I mentioned to grasp some talking points. King always seeks tutoring with his school assignments.

"That must be a good prospect," he condescended.

"What do you know about silk?" I asked. Perhaps he must have known some who could give me some idea.

" Not much" he said. He seemed to know nothing. Bet that's why I was always ghost writing his report.

"It's something we could grow from silkworms" I answered my own questions. "We have to nurture worms and the most part of the work is growing hectares and hectares of mulberry trees to feed these worms."

"Oh" he exclaimed and I felt hopeful." I know such worm. I saw some huge ones in the beaches of Tawi-Tawi. They sell well."

He was talking about some other specie of worm.

"Why don't you try dried fish?" King suggested later on.

"What about them?", I asked.

"They cost half as less back at home."

I went for the calculator and grinned at the prospect. A week after, we were heading for the islands, about two boat-rides away, three hundred miles downward, and near the Malaysian border.

Banaran Island is place rich in lore, the ones you hear from the elders whenever they visit us. I had been there once but that was way back in my childhood. There was one ghost story about the place that I could not forget. When we were kids, my two brothers and me and my sister would always seek some retelling after retelling about such particular incident from the visitors from down south. As children, we craved for fear and scurry for more mysteries. The scarier it gets, the more attentive we became. It was like eating pepper; it hurts to eat more and yet wanted to eat more and more. At night, after we took our meal, we washed our bodies from sweat and put on fresher clothes and then we troop into the living room where the available storyteller would be waiting for us.

One night, they always started the story, when ships and boats was not supposed to sail anymore, when the air is so fragile and the wind was harsh, a ferry sunk on the way to Banaran from the main island of Bongao. All those aboard did not survive the tragedy. This accident had happened about two decades ago and it had caused so much distressed to those whose relations were part of the doomed voyage and due to the large number of victims, the sinking of the ferry cast a huge shadow over the entire province of Tawi-Tawi and would be remembered as a sorrowful time for the area for years to come.

Island life then might have been darker without electricity, and lonelier without the touch of modernity that every death lays every possibility of otherworldly apparitions and the wanderings of ghosts.

Then came the night when the wind whistled and overhanging clouds made the night more sinister. When the dogs howl started to howl incessantly, the elders in the island would call for their children the doors and windows were so locked that even air could not come in.

The yards have become empty and even cats would scurry for safety. Not even crickets were brave enough to serenade the eerily hushed night. It was a night that humongous clouds would cover almost the entire sky. Everything you see would be cast in shadow and the stars were all absent. They said that it had become so dark that when they look towards the sea, they could see nothing but darkness. No glow of the sea would reflect and the waves did not made a sound the way they usually make.

The island folks first heard the sound of drumbeats reverberating through the cold and wet atmosphere. "Tom…tom…tom…tom…" The beat did go until it got faster and faster. They could feel the air get thicker they said and the smell of decay became so overpowering according to one account that their stomach would ache, urging to regurgitate.

Some peek into the darkness to investigate the source of the drumbeats and as if in a sudden, the yards became illuminated, as if the sky parted instantly and the moon belched out its head. The moonlight gave those few brave souls the undeniable sight of a parade of people going in circles in the middle of the community plaza, walking in a line. Most of them have limbs unattached and their faces were white as chalk. The leader of the parade was in fact a headless drumbeater carrying his own separated head. The children cried when they heard some of their fathers and mothers wailing and shouting. They scurried into corners as if it would be of much help to them. They hide in thick fabrics and sweated horrendously. The men were ready with their bolos anticipating any physical attack by the limbless walkers.

No such attack occurred as they sighed every time they tell and retell the haunting. The drum beatings carried forth through the dawn and many were not able to sleep that night. They said the ghosts was somehow taunting them as the beatings would suddenly stop and then came back again gradually, slowly and then frantically. The sounds of the drums were suddenly loud and then suddenly calm.

When the morning came, the entire island populace was awestruck with fear that nobody spoke much. The children were kept inside their homes most of the time even when the sun is blazing in the sky. Many went to the nearby cemetery to make some offerings while the men embarked on a lengthy prayer session so arduous that it started just after sunrise and ended when midnight was already around the corner. The air was so full of the smell of burnt sulfur, as the prayers involved the burning of small yellowish stone-like bits of sulfur.

The shock in their faces was so apparent that in a matter of hours, most of their countenance shrunk and withered so gravely. They were bowed and their heads stooped all day long, a sign of surrender to the menace of the unknown. There was no knowing what was to come really. Most of them until that time had not really fully believed in ghost but since that night, their greatest fears came true.

At first, they said, the parade of dead people came every now and then, especially while the moon was full or at least fairly illuminating. Then they came less frequently, sometimes catching them by surprise. The parade would announce its haunting by the sound of drums, starting rhythmically slow until it gets faster and faster as children cried aloud and the dogs howled into the night wind. It was really very fortunate that the dead persons physically harmed nobody although the emotional injury was so palpable.

The parade of the dead, some told us had successfully lessen the island population by at least half. Many left their homes to seek some habitat in nearby islands and Banaran became the more silent. Many houses lay empty and were allowed to wither by themselves.

Most of my relatives, as we were told, decided to stay despite the haunting, for they said, they would never know another place aside from Banaran where our forefathers settled and died through the years.

It was a huge disappointment to find out that although dried fish processing was rampant in our island hometown, there was just too much buyers of the goods that I could not possibly penetrate the cartel in so short a time. Traders from as far up north in Pagadian City, about five hundred miles from Zamboanga, would come and negotiate with the local fishermen and cornered the market there. I was advised that seizing a sufficient amount of the goods would entail some patience and a lengthened stay in the islands. This was an untenable idea for me. The urban man in me would be so hard pressed to slide into the virtual desolation of rural life, to be "the man called Friday" and away from the honking noise and pollution of the city. While the serenity of the islands provided me a great breather, it was imaginable for me then to succumb into general silence of a rural environment. There would be just too much silence that it would border the deafening.

The wide and miles and miles of stretch virginal beaches consoled my frustrations and led my mind away from the profits that I nearly counted already and yet the ones that would not be obtaining, at least not with that trip. We took small boats and scoured the nearby islands. The breezy seascape had regained my trust in nature, quelling every suspicion that nature has finally and absolutely lost its battle against the industrial advancement of humanity.

There was this over-stretched patched of sand in the middle of two islands that really caught my amazement. It was not of course very unlikely that such natural accumulation of sand would concur in an area full of shores in the first place; but have you heard of a beach in the middle of the sea? One could not help but surmised that Atlantis might have been similarly situated as that particular beach, once rising to the surface before it got sunk into the pit of the ocean.

I walked almost the length of the half-mile patch of the whitest of sand and wondered why nothing grows except some marine plants attached like mildews to rocky corals. I picked some shells and stones and felt somewhat mesmerized that there were sea stones that were embroidered with the most perfect shape of a star. My cousin King told me that they sell well with Japanese tourist, the ones they make into beads. My eyes squinted to examine the stones more forcefully and I almost concluded that God must have some industrial factories up there that stones like those could be sculptured with some design that only machines could afford. The perfect symmetries were there and the lines were straight.

I stared upward and the sky was clear of any cloud and it was the kind of place where you could view the entire sky from one end, towards another, at any angle you gained sight. Funny that I felt reassured that in that place, I would not hear the sound of radios, nor the cacophonic slur of television, neither the honks of cars and motorcycles. There was no smell but the salty fragrance of the sea and I was assured that any fumes or dusty accumulations of factories would never ting the air. No matter how trivial was such realization but I could not help appreciating the newfound belief that despite of everything, there is still a place where the hands of urban life, with its many gadgets and equipments and convoluted industrial mazes, could not reach.

My paternal grandfather was my namesake or rather I was the namesake of my grandfather. I never saw him alive. He died when we were infants. There was one very old black and white picture that I once got hold of in my childhood years and I had felt strongly that it must have been my grandfather Yusop that was positioned in a kneeling position. I was not able to reaffirm and verify that notion with anyone but every time he comes into my mind, I saw him as that one man in that old picture.

After scouring the islands for supplies of dried fishes and finding none, I went to visit his tomb feeling perhaps like it was to console him since I did not meet him before. I had always thought how it was very ironic that the old man to whom I was named for was one that I did not meet even for once before.

But my father and aunts had good stories about him; how he became the richest man in the province; how he trailed the Malaysian borders to buy imported cigarettes and selling rice to Malaysian Chinese in the island of Labuan, merely an overnight boat ride from Banaran Island.

How I thought he was such a man of character that he gains these lore and tales from the ones who survive him. And then I felt the heaviness of the name; the name of the old Yusop they always mentioned.

There was the heavy name on the side of the tomb and there were others, the brothers and sisters perhaps. They all had the title of Salip, the one I suppose to have but do not use. That was to identify the bloodlines of the heirs and descendants of Prophet Mohammad (PBUH), the Last Messenger of Allah (SAW), who was born on Maulud, which was also the day that I was born.

There was violence in the history of old Yusop, or was it of the father of old Yusop. Banaran Island was the place of exile from nearby Sulu town where someone was killed, by vengeance or by mischief was an issue that was never retold. This was the issues of old rekindled by persons suddenly appearing in our lives and one that exemplified to me the delta of every human being, that always it seems people part ways only to meet at some point in the river of life, and the world is but a very small place to live in. 

(From my unfinished Autobiography "A Prophet's Life")

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 strange 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. This is evil taking some immense form.

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 many men do---evils that are done in their everyday lives. Men fight one another as easily even upon the most insignificant matters, 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 many of 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 television--sex, drugs and violence as a popular adage often declares.

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 the sidewalks, the politicians with their unexplained wealth, the vendor of pornographic materials, the pimps in the night streets, and the killers for hire lurking in our midst. Anywhere in the world, evil had seemed to have seeped towards the deep recesses of our minds and hearts that somehow we already accept many of them as mere ordinary occurrences.

This must not be the case. If in fact humanity has the greatest of 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 is 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 situated 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 newsmagazine issue. In one of those nights that I hanged about late in school, I decided to proceed home earlier than I planned that day when my stomach started to complain of starvation. I usually stayed longer to do more editing works but that particular night, 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, which would cost me more although it would take me home more conveniently. 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, until 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 as the minutes grew on while my stomach kept complaining. 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? No one --- No one 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 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 after all. 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 it. 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 complaining, as if the hunger just suddenly decided to dissipate by itself. It must have been the feeling of relief that one would feel whenever one would suddenly realize that someone was more unfortunate than him or her. 

Despite of it all, there was some kind of a commotion in my mind. A disturbance not anymore brought about by the weakness of my body, but instead by the concern I felt for the old man, more particularly 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 sitting in front of me would not have to pay for his fare anymore and I 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, and children’s caroling, and the streets littered with Christmas trees and other ornamentations, as parties are celebrated and other merriment happens almost everywhere. 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.

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 of theirs 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 doesn’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?” or “Is he an insane man or a man without limbs, 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 us?

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

From my e-book "The Night of Angels".

The Night Beckons Me

It is in the early hours of the night that they come amidst the marching clouds; when the wind was fragile and the moon was somewhere out of sight. Clouds of all sizes and magnitude swayed like sailboats and ships in an ever-moving sea. They remain vague to my naked eyes until I train it a little further until I gain more focus. Then the clouds would take shapes of all sizes, of men with great wings of the widest span---the images of angels appeared to me, as we know them in lore and stories of old, handsome in their white robes and wings white as pearls, signaling to me the messages that they desired to convey, in beautiful and graceful pantomime, vividly staging what to me was the greatest show ever witnessed by my mortal eyes. In some instances, winged horses appeared in the sky, just as handsome and nearly as graceful. And to emphasize their messages, the clouds would also take the form of other things, such as ships with giant sails, a traffic enforcer directing an intersection, a man clearing a canal, a beautiful woman adorned in a bridal gown, and a giant mushroom cloud. And the most enigmatic of all these vision was a very endearing bearded man, with hair lengthy and full, with a big grin on his face, sitting on a huge throne. If I was not mistaken, the bearded man on a huge throne was Jesus Christ Himself.

The cacophony of visions came through a span of many nights that until now, as I looked towards the sky, night or day, the clouds would take shape and there would appear “the greatest show on Earth”, to repeat and reiterate the messages, to make known that they have come to fulfill a promise that was given to us in a time that was so long ago. The angels have come indeed.

They have these wings with span nearly double their heights, and physical features that could easily be described as epitomizing the perfection of the human body. Indeed, the sight of them is so invigorating that I could feel a certain surge in my heart whenever they appear---such feeling of happiness and lightness.

There is also a feeling of being overwhelmed by the sight of an amazing grace, a view of an unparalleled beauty whenever the angels appear, a feeling of being subdued by a higher being that in my mind I vowed and declared full obedience to them and sought their utmost consideration. I asked for understanding of my being a lesser man, for the sins of my past and of the present, nearly confessing all my sins where my memory could reach them and seeking forgiveness as I avowed repentance.

The angels came through the clouds in order to impart to us a message so full of hope and promises, a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow---to lead us towards a place and time that had been murmured and whispered to us from the beginning until the end of times. They have come to invite us all to follow their footsteps towards a voyage that would take us to a land full of joy and happiness, towards an everlasting life, in a world in which all men are brothers and sisters to each other with no regard to race or creed - where conflict becomes a thing of the past. “And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.”

The Creator of All Thing---God---have prepared for us a new Earth, a paradise reborn somewhere in one of the constellation found in the universe, and there would be many worlds to dwell as well as mansions in the clouds. The worthy shall have wings of great span where the entire universe is a place for us to wander upon, an infinite territory for us to dwell, without the limitations of our present habitat.

One may ask why have the angels come? Why at this point in time?  Is the end of the world nearly approaching? Have they come to punish us? Or have they come to bring the graces of the Lord?

The message is but singular, of a voyage towards a life hereafter and everyone is invited. Those who are chosen shall be aboard the ship and theirs is the rewards of Heaven.

Underlying the invitation towards the Kingdom of God is a message for us to follow the way of the righteous and not that of the blind. It is a time for spiritual reawakening to the true meaning of our faith and the meaning of our existence here on Earth. It is a wake-up call for all of us, to work for changes and to heal this world from the many evils that holds it down like a monkey wrench. It is a time for us to prepare our souls for the coming voyage.

A spiritual renewal and reawakening of humanity must come soon and a world of understanding and harmony must be pursued in order that humankind shall be cleansed of the many evils that have pervaded within and around us. It is for us to thwart the many evils that had enveloped our everyday lives as well as the many great evils that give the peace of this world its present fragility.

Global terrorism and racial wars are stains to the very idea of a livable world, as God had intended it to be, as men nowadays kill in the name of false pride and false dignity, upon groundless assumptions and flawed conclusions.

Jews are greedy many say and soon conflict arises. Arabs are bloodthirsty and discrimination easily prevails. America is the great evil some say and upheaval takes place violently while the real evil permeates somewhere else. Europeans are imperious, they say and isolation results. Asians are too close-minded, and prejudice takes strength.

And ultimately, one Christian is against one Moslem and one Jew would be against one Christian.

These are causes of conflicts that are hounding us today and many times in the past and these causes, if we examined them closely, are grossly specious and unwarranted; when the truth of the matter is that many great conflicts that the world faces today merely arises from the basic evils each of us suffers. The envy and hate of one man injures another man. The envy and hate of many men injures the peace of the world. In order to repeal the great evils that harms us in a global scale, it is but time to heal ourselves with the many and “common” evils we face every day. To stave away the great prejudices in this world, we have to take away first our personal prejudices.

If we could not defeat the evils in each and every one of us, then how could we aim to defeat the great evils that hound the entire humanity? All great evils come from the small evils in each man. For the devil implants in us a seed of evil and this seed would grow into full fruition if we do not stifle them with great faith in God and in the righteousness of man. In order to change the world, it is essential to change the self first.

In our everyday lives, many evils occur around us that their incidence have already reached a certain level of acceptability, as if they are merely part of our everyday life---a routine, a culture, and a habit.

Men in government steal every day and we say there goes just another government man. Men gossip against another every day, and we just say there goes another gossiper. Men lie in order to gain advantage almost every time, and he is just another opportunist.

There are many in our midst---a neighbor or a co-worker---who covet another man’s wife or lust upon another man’s daughter or son, and yet they are not so much already as a surprise to us all. And every day many lives are taken due to the violence of some men; and while indeed killing is ever contemptible, we could not anymore escape their seeming ordinariness.

We must repel these “common evils” and rebel strongly to their occurrences. To lie and to gossip may be small faults and yet does a gossiper enter the Kingdom of God? Of course not, for a habitual gossiper would only disrupt the peace and harmony in Paradise. Therefore, gossiping then is just about similar to stealing and that to killing. If to gossip is never to enter the Kingdom of God, then what makes it less detestable than to steal or kill? (A lesser punishment perhaps for a lesser crime?) 

There might be the cognizance of lesser crimes as compared to graver crimes but why should we risk losing the Kingdom of God with lesser sins when both the gossiper and the murderer shall be cast away from the Promised Land and thrown into “the vengeance of an eternal fire”.

What we need today is a total cleansing of our spiritual selves, to go back to the roots of basic ethics as declared to us in countless ways and in too many instances, over and over again, whether in The Torah or in The Holy Bible or in the Noble Qur’an. For all these books, no matter the discrepancy in their roots, declares adherence to the same basic concept of ethics, a code of conduct that is uniform regardless of religion or creed for every religion is very similar in their propagation of good and the casting away of evil deeds, where stealing is intolerable as well as gossiping and where fornication is ever abominable. If every religion despises the thief and the fornicator what difference does it make then?

Let us go back to the dictates of the Holy Bible, of the Noble Qur’an, of the Torah, or of the teachings of Buddha and Confucius. All religion preaches the propagation of goodness and the avoidance of evil and in them our salvation is secured and the dictates of the Lord God, as declared in many times and in many forms, are far too clear in fact for us to ignore them. The desires of God on how to go about our conduct were simple that to feign ignorance is almost criminal. Even if you have not read any book on religion or hear the sermon of any preacher, you could always determine what is good and what is evil by invoking the discretion of your heart and mind, and ultimately the inquiries of your consciences. For example, the act of murder is absolutely disdainful to anyone and wherever it may happen for it takes away the right of another to live and causes intense sorrow and difficulties to the kinsmen of the dead one. You do not have to read the Bible or the Qur’an in order to know that murder is wrong. We feel a burden in our hearts whenever we commit wrong. It is like a microchip imbedded to us by God so that we may not be led astray and yet many among us have opted to disregard this mode of self-determining the propriety of our conduct, preferring to lavish their earthly instincts by disregarding the callings of our consciences, leading them ultimately to no other place but their own perdition.

Stealing is abhorred in every religion. Killing is always heinous. Adultery and fornication are pure abomination in whatever religion. Gossiping is vice always.

On the other hand, sharing is ever enriching. Helping the poor and the needy is a must to us all. Every religion teaches us to love our neighbors and to have the greatest faith in God---the Creator of All things---these are the usual works and traits of a man with great faith whatever religion he may profess.

All these dictates (in whatever book they are contained) are all very simple and easy to comprehend that we do not need extraordinary intelligence in order to know what is good and what is bad. It does not matter if the dictates came from Jesus Christ, from Abraham, from Moses, from Prophet Mohammad or from Buddha; for if we examine closely all their teachings, they are very similar to one another, that is, the propagation of the good and the avoidance of evil.

Every religion may be peculiar and unique on its own ways that certainly many differences arise. However, these differences are what we call marginal and does not often comes in the nature of substantial matters. These variances often come in social conducts and customs like the food we eat or the rituals of prayers yet the basic ethical dictates are generally similar. At the bottom of it all is that, it is not how we have faith in religion but how we have faith in God.

We need merely to realize the undeniable fact that God existed long before any religion arose, before the word “Roman Catholic” or “Islam” was conceived. And God has no religion. God loves the proper and obedient may he be a Chinese, a Russian, an American, a Jew or an Arab. The Christians pray while kneeling. The Moslems touches the ground with their foreheads. The Hindus does not eat cow’s meat. The Buddhist meditates for long hours. These are differences merely in the conduct and practice of religion. For Americans eat potatoes as staple while Asians have rice on their table every day. Europeans have wine upon every meal while many of us have water instead. These differences are not reason for us to kill each other and be separated by prejudices for in fact the differences among us were meant to make this world more livable, to have synergy and diversity in our existence, so that a true brotherhood of man could be attained, where there is the acceptance that your brother may not look like you but still he is your brother.

For how could we ever imagine a world of Catholics all in faith or of a world of Asians all in race? The world then would be an existence of monotony, without assortment and diversity, and that would be a boring and insufferable world.  When variety does not take place, no one would travel anymore in order to learn the unknown, for the conditions in other places and continents would just be the same as the place where one is coming from. And all the things that are found there are also found in the place where you are. Trade would not prosper if every civilization in the past produced silk, mine gold, molded porcelains and grow spices, olive oils, cotton and tea---all at the same time. There would have been no Spanish galleons and Chinese junks crossing oceans in the past. The Spaniard would not have met and known the existence of the Chinese man half a world away.

No one would have asked questions on the nature and peculiarity of other men if all of them looked the same, with the same facial features, the same body structure, the same culture and hence the same character. Why would I be interested in you if in fact you are just the same as me? I would not have the usual motive to know you and to get acquainted with you, in order to inquire more upon your conditions in life, about your family, and your occupation if you are just the same as me. I would not have converse with you with the same level of interest as when you have blond hair and stand so tall while in contrast I am short and have brown skin. I would not be able to understand you as much, for our monogamy in person would make me inquire about you lesser.

Let not the differences in race and creed divide us but instead let them allow us towards unity and enhanced understanding among people of different roots and credos. We are brothers and sisters all, born from the same Creator, the same Maker. We all must agree that all things come from the one Creator, the only one God. We are all the offspring of the Lord.

Indeed, the rewards of the obedient are bountiful and aplenty beyond expectations and the punishment for those who have been defiant to the dictates of the Creator shall be of suffering that is also beyond the boundaries of our human comprehension. The reward is an everlasting life of joy and happiness in the Kingdom of God while the punishment is never-ending suffering and castigation in hellfire.

(Chapter 2 of my book "The Night of Angels".

The Sieve

 “The angel pointed his hands towards his arms and proceeded to signal that he was carrying a load in his back. We must all be brothers and sisters in arms and we must learn how to carry each other.”

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.

From "The Voyage" - A Collection of Essay

The Voyage

Aside from the Angels I have seen, there was also one vision that I keep seeing repeatedly, communicating to me while I was reading my law books. There were images of two persons on the wall just in front of my study table. They took the form of little men with a smooth round head and bodice, like they have no hairs on their skin whatsoever. In the midst of the visions on the wall was a boat and the persons were standing on each end, which I took them to be the captain and the navigator. They relayed to me through signs and symbols that they were Angels too, taking other shape, in order to relay the messages on the wall more effectively---in order that their sign languages could be more emphasized.

Their hands would signal many pantomime in order to converse with me and their heads would nod or shake whenever I confirm their messages (whether I got it right or I got it wrong). Why they did not converse to me in spoken language is a question that I have no definite answers. My heart told me that if they came so vividly to me and spoke to me like usual persons do, I may be shocked beyond my wits and be overly consumed with the stream of supernatural things that came to me so rapidly without proper notice.

The captain was always pointing upwards, towards a destination, towards a place high up. Through signs and symbols, they made me write this poem, which is titled as “The Voyage”.   

THE VOYAGE 

Come my dear child,

follow the footsteps of my symbols,

towards a voyage curved in stone,

as I have murmured and whispered to your ears

from the beginning until the End of Times;

where humankind shall persist in eternal Peace and Love

among brothers and sisters all.  

Be the harbor of your patience,

like the child as you are  and grow into the strength and courage 

that I have seen in you,

 as you have to your own children. 

Mold them into the Light,

so that they may not be lost in the Darkness that you once knew. 

The Heavens are for you to dwell, and for those who believe shall be chosen;

that an enormous Love shall make you fly, with wings of the greatest span. 

Carry your brothers and sisters like you carry your own children

so that the evil forces shall be vanquished

by the armies I have sent to defeat and subdue them. 

And evil shall be vanquished indeed

by the Angels within us and around us.                         

The signs on the wall were a magical exposition. Like the visions of angels in the sky, it was hard to fathom at first that somehow there are sets of realities that are not as it were before, as they all happened beyond my wildest dreams. These were things that made sense only in movies and in children’s stories, and yet those were the things that invoked me to accept a newer reality.         

 “The Voyage” is a simple poem. It may be in metaphor but it does not confuse the reader as much. As we examined it, “The Voyage” speaks of things to come, of the promise that has been made known to us since time immemorial, the rewards of the faithful and of the obedient.              

Each and every one of us should prepare ourselves for the voyage towards eternity and beyond. There is a ship on dock, to receive those who have done good works and men of greatest faith and obedience to the dictates of the Creator. This is the voyage that could end all voyages and we shall not let pass this opportunity to be part of the ultimate adventure towards the life hereafter. It may not come our way as easily again.                      

Prepare your own gears and effects. The voyage may be long and arduous and yet the rewards are great. Be patient for the destination is almost at hand. Those who shall overcome their will against the temptation of the devil shall be aboard the ship, and when he is already aboard, the road ahead is less laborious; in fact it would be a skyway to Heaven, a trip that has no stop but only destination. Be patient so that you may have the purity of soul. A righteous man’s soul shall be your ticket to the Gate of Heaven. Do all things that are good and avoid every evil conduct. Is that too much to ask? What good does it do a man to receive the pleasures of a mortal world when he loses the Kingdom of God, an everlasting life?                    

Be prepared, for it is an enormous love that shall carry us towards eternity. Cultivate your heart so that you may be able to “carry your brothers and sisters like you carry your own children”, for an enormous love decides the purity of our soul. It is an enormous love to be a man for others, to look out not only for the self, but also for those who need help and assistance.                

An enormous love shall give us wings of the widest span and the Heavens are for us to dwell. In the house of the Creator, there would be temples in the clouds, and Paradise everywhere. The Universe is so wide that there would be limitless geography in which we could spread our wings. There would be everlasting joy, peace and harmony. A life of music and dances, of merriment and celebrations and there would be no daytime or nighttime, neither Muslim nor Christian, neither black nor white.                     

To those that have not been able to prepare themselves, they shall be cast away and shall not be aboard the ship that awaits us at port. They will have another destination, downward to the road of perdition where the vengeance of eternal fire awaits them.                

It is easy to prepare when patience is on our side. All we have to ask every now and then is: Would God desire to have me in His Temple? Would He allow me to live with Him and dwell with Him?  Am I worthy of His presence?

 “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself shall be with them, and be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying; neither there shall be any more pain: for the former things have passed away.”                       

Am I a thief? Am I a fornicator?

Am I a murderer? Am I a gossiper? Am I an adulterer?                                  

Am I a Liar? Am I a blasphemer?                      

The life of each and every one of us is a voyage by itself. The voyage in fact starts now as we speak and shall end at the place and time God had promised all His children. Let us treat every day as a step towards the voyage, as a time and opportunity to prepare our souls, to carry God’s desires and wishes; to follow all His dictates and instructions.                

What does it do a man to have faith and yet do not have works? Does faith alone could save him?                         

Be patient and be disciplined. Have faith but know the meaning of real faith. It is not how much or how deep you practice your faith but how you apply righteousness in your everyday life. Not to be pious in men’s eyes and yet evil in the conclave of your homes. For God knows everything. To have faith as it is too often said is also to have enormous love, to have hope, and to have charity. For what is faith if we do not have the basic concept of goodliness? What is faith if we continue to do abominable things? 

I may not be perfect and yet I am imperfect without committing any sin. As a man, I am often envious and frustrated by anger, and jealous and yet I would not let my envy and anger consume and stain me. I may have nothing what others have but my lack of things would never lead me to steal. I may have the instinct of lust and yet I recognized that I have been given a heart and mind to dissuade me from bestial acts.  (From my book "The Night of Angels")