Flying Through Cliffs

The cherubim ahead of me looked back and screamed towards my direction, urging me to speed up as the winged creature was fast catching up with us. I had burst into the branches of woods in the night forest and I had to cover my face with my arms in order to clear my view, otherwise the branches of the trees would harm my eyes and the feint illumination offered by the moon would not allow me to navigate properly through the dark woodlands, and especially if a winged creature that was blacker than the night was coming at us with full speed.

The night creature was an old woman with wired and mangled gray hair and eyes that was redder than blood. I kept looking into those fiery eyes every time I look behind me, checking out if the creature was already nearing or still farther away, and fear had never been so evident in me. The night creature had wings that were velvety, like they were made of black satin or a kind of a soft garment that are often used for curtains. I thought that perhaps those creatures knew how to sew and made their wings by themselves. I never knew exactly.

When I was a child, I had so many dreams where I was flying with cherubim or child angels. They never spoke to me in spoken words but somehow I could here them speak to me through their eyes, as if they had the power of mental telepathy. They just stared at me all throughout and I were just amazed at how beautiful and handsome they looked. The reason perhaps why I did not initiate conversation with them was mainly because of their foreign appearance. They had rounded faces and wavy blond hairs just like American babies that I saw in television back then. I reckoned that maybe they spoke in a different tongue. They were too young but their gazes seem to pronounce to me a much older and mature mind.

There was that cliff that I kept falling from every time I reach its vicinity, as I arrive at it with bursting speed right out the thick greeneries, and suddenly finding out that below me was a very steep cavity and although I was sort of flying through the air, the sudden change in height always threw me into deep confusion that my fluttering through the air became distraught and discordant. So my glide was often disturbed and my wings wouldn’t work so well that I start falling and I couldn’t stave my fall that I begin to scream so loud while my fall would accelerate. And there I was falling from a steep cliff and I remember that feeling of falling so well even towards this day, that whenever I ride the Ferris’ Wheel in older days, that familiar feeling come speeding back to me like a mirage. In those dreams of falling from cliffs, always I would wake up before I touched the ground but whenever I woke up, I find myself falling from my bed instead that my scream would be heard throughout the household. My grandfather would be awakened by my scream and he would make me drink cool tap water each time.

So in one of those flying dreams, we were again being chased furiously by the winged serpents of the night, and again I was there huffing and puffing through the woods trying to evade those night creatures, and I was scared like hell as usual. But the other cherubim were surer about themselves that they never fell and flew like they were masters of flight and in fact, they were just being playful and seemed to be toying around with the winged creatures, as if knowing that those hideous creatures won’t be catching up with us in any way. But I was so unsure about myself, and I feared the flying serpents like no other that my eyes were so wide-eyed with fright.

In order to lose our pursuers, we would thread into the thick forest and caverns at the side of the mountains and that night, we did the same routine until we finally lose them. There was great relief among our group as we proceeded to glide into the wide-open air and beneath us were great spread of grasslands with some assemblages of trees here and there, like oasis in a broad desert land. We decided to descend into a particular cluster of trees and there we settled on the branches. It was dark but the moon was so illuminating that there was some sort of daytime in the night. I could exactly remember how the branches of the trees would move and bounce as we drifted from one place to another, trying our darnest not to cause any noise as the cherubim which I always conversed with signaled to us to keep silent by putting his forefinger across his tight lips. I immediately wondered why we had to remain still and silent although I reckoned then that it was perhaps for us not to be detected again by our night pursuers. But I was to learn later on that the order to remain silent at that particular juncture in our night venture was mainly because of a group of men and women that was forming a circle around a campfire just nearby, about 20 meters away from us. The trees we hanged on were fairly tall that we could see all of the activities below with the widest of view and there I saw those people chanting some unknown prayers with their hands clasp and turgid. I saw the woman that had been one of our pursuers among the circle below and at that time, she had no wings on her back and was upright just like any human being. She was a shape-shifter I had reckoned then, a human being that could transform itself into a winged serpent when the night comes. I felt some fright again upon seeing the face of the woman who was always pursuing me, like I was her favorite prey. I felt leaving immediately but I could not just disregard the earlier instruction to stay silent. So I stayed and observed the proceedings below and the fire in the middle of the circle was blazing so thoroughly that it was reflected on our faces, while we clung to the branches with bated breath. I thought for a moment there that a male member of the circle had noticed us that he turned his gaze slowly towards our direction. I saw the eyes of the male person and they were so black all over like it has no white in them but all pupils and he looked like a dead person to me with his face pale as talcum powder.

All of a sudden, we heard the ruffling of the leaves just behind our position and we turned abruptly to see what had caused the noise. To our utter dismay and fright, it turned out that some of the winged serpents had found us again and we had to scurry in a jiffy and up we were trying to evade our usual pursuers again. Of course, we had been able to dodge them again by trying to confuse them into trees and caverns---the usual method we apply. Those winged creatures seem to have a weakness when flying into trees and dark crevices of the mountains, as if their guide system is all too flawed and far less superior than ours that it takes them so long to get out of those nooks and caverns.

And I will end this note about flying and falling from cliffs upon a certain dream where me and the other cherubim were slowly approaching the earth from a higher region of the sky, like from the clouds. As the ground became nearer, we softly and gradually descended towards a particular tree. It was nighttime and below us was a carnival that was set up so sparingly in the middle of a barriotic neighborhood. There was only one contraption in the middle of the carnival, or “carnaval” in Filipino common language, and that was a very high Ferris’ Wheel and nothing much else except for tables were men and women trooped into for some joint activity, like gambling perhaps on a dice game. There were a lot of people mingling about, as what would be expected of such event and they were walking about around the main ride while some other played card games and gambling on the wayside. It was sort of a busy scene and I saw a man in short pants carrying a child and some dogs loitering around. Just across the site of the “carnaval” was a busy and well-lighted sari-sari store where a group of men where around a wooden table, seemingly on a drinking binge. Some children where gazing and dawdling around the Ferris’ Wheel, gawking at the giant steel structure as if it was their first time to have witnessed such contraption. Around the “carnaval” where wooden houses of various sizes and style, the kind of shelters one see in a typical Filipino slum, where a few houses tower in height while others were smaller in comparison but more in number.

As I stared meaningfully towards the somewhat animated scene below, I had wondered to myself what place that was and why we came to it with evident purpose. One angel said to me: “ This is the place where you are going to.”

I didn’t responded to the declaration of the angel as if accepting it like a non-negotiable fact of life. But in my mind, I had wanted to ask why I was destined for that place and wondered to myself if there were any other places where I could choose. Like I knew that it wasn’t my call at all, I just shut up.

THE ALLIGATOR RIVER

I didn’t know what the dream meant exactly and what it tried to convey to me. My dream last night was as surreal as the paintings of Picasso, full of abstract images, those surprising angles and unexpected curves. Wait, I may be speaking to soon. I think there’s a clear story in that dream of mine and I can remember too well how the story in that dream went. I may be able to relate to you that story, if only you’d be patient enough with my narration, which at times struggles for the right words to use.

At the beginning of that dream, I was walking through a dark alley, along an unpaved road and muddied ground where banana trees and huge plants lined the passageway. I knew immediately that I was in some faraway barrio when I could not see any electric post that usually decorates every urban street. At the start of the dream, the afternoon was becoming darker and darker but it wasn’t so dark yet like nighttime but a shade of darkness whenever twilight is fast nearing its end. I went on walking as my surrounding became darker and darker and all I could hear was deep silence and the crooning of crickets in the foreground; the gentle slap of the wind against the bushes along the road reminded me that the weather was a little hazy then. I was completely alone and the dimness had stirred some fear in me that I started to take hurried steps, as my feet felt the stony hard ground below. After some brisk walking, I finally reached a wooden house with bamboo fences and for some reason; I knocked on the sliding wooden door. The house was of fair size and a little bit aged, the sort of dwelling place many wealthier farmers have in the barrios.

A middle-aged man wearing no shirt on him came to meet me and opened the door. He threw a squinting look at me as if he knew that I was arriving at exactly the time that he went to open the door and that he had indeed expected me to come. “She is not here,” the man said while he held a plow in one of his soiled hands. Apparently in the dream, I was looking for a certain woman.

“It couldn’t be,” I told the man. “She should be here”.
“You are wasting your time,” the man retorted although his tone was not at all dire but a little welcoming, as if to console me for not meeting the person I was looking for. “Better yet, you just have to buy this,” the man continued as he handed me a small plastic package that contains some matter that I have no knowledge of. I examined the object that the man tried to sell to me and I said I am not interested in them and I do not have any use for it. The man said “Come on. Buy it and I’ll tell you where she is,” the man insisted as I could see his face frown from the initial setback of his sales pitch. That seems to be a good deal I had reckoned then because I had the feeling that I would even give away my house just to see that woman. Before I could ask how much the plastic object was, I saw the woman appeared through the main door of the wooden house and I was jolted suddenly. Perhaps she had noticed me so she hurried towards the back of the house by passing through a narrow passageway. All I saw was her back and her long black hair bobbing up and down as I tried to run after her. When I reached the back of the house, she wasn’t there anymore. The house was actually standing beside a flowing river with water that was brown as mud.

“She just took the boat with the boy,” the man with the plow informed me and I was a little infuriated at him for not telling me the truth of her being in the house all along.

“Who was the boy that went with him?” I asked.
“He is one among many of her companions,” the man said. “She needs more companion nowadays. At times she had three and at some other time she had seven. Nobody knows exactly but there is no moment that she is alone.”

“How can I reach her?” I asked the man again almost shouting at him.

“You have to ride the boat of course,” the man said in a hushed tone, like he was a murderer running away from his captors.

“How much for a boat,” I pleaded to him and I could feel that time was running out on me and that she might go farther and farther away that I wouldn’t be able to reach her.

“You do not have to pay,” said the man with a crazy grin now pasted on her oily dark skin. He had narrow eyes like he was a Chinese man but his skin is dark as the soil we see on the ground. He continued, “I’ll give you the boat if you agree to swim in that river”. And he pointed towards the area of the river where the water was deeper and the flow of water was continuously moving in a circling motion. As I watch the water more closely, I noticed that alligators started to appear one by one until they dotted the river to the hilt.

Since I was so desperate to find that woman, I agreed to dive into the river and the man brought out a wooden raft from where I would be jumping off. I took a very long pole and started to paddle the raft into the middle of the river. When I reached the point where the water was at its deepest, I closed my eyes and jumped into the river while some people appeared out of nowhere in order to watch me swim in that alligator-infested waters. To my amazement, none of the alligators harmed me as they proceeded to swim away from me and I could even notice some that were biting and wrestling at each other instead of going after me. I felt the coolness of the waters and as I rose from it, I felt so refreshed and invigorated like a newborn child. The middle-aged man offered me a white towel and I hurriedly dried myself. The man said, “The alligators have accepted you as a kindred soul and so therefore, you will gain now the boat that will bring you to her.” I was a little ecstatic but as I tried to board the boat, my wife suddenly appeared in that dream and called upon me. She said to me: “Do not go after that woman! There might be danger. Don’t go now! The waters have dangers!” My wife repeatedly shouted at me and I called back at her and told her in a loud voice as the boat was slowly heading towards the deeper area of the waters, that: “It is in the dream! I have to go after her! The dream said I must find her! I’ll come back soon!”
The wooden boat that the man gave me to ride upon was so large that there were wide spaces between the navigator and me. It was a motorized banca and as we threaded through the snaking contours of the river, I could hear almost nothing except the sound of the motor and the heavy silence of the forest that lies at both side of the flowing river. As we floated along, I could feel the warm breeze hitting my face as I briefly reexamined the journey I had taken just in order to find her. Was it worth it? Is she worth fighting and struggling for? What form of malady that had ensconced upon me that she had taken a clamping hold on my person; a hold so tight that I could not flee from it. Down below, I could feel the river breathing and heaving like a giant monster, carrying me through it while my mind was heavy with worry and anxiety.

The motor of the banca hummed steadily and the humming sound had calmed my early worries and I was almost lulled to sleep. Farther down the river, I soon notice from afar a cornucopia of wooden houses and the navigator said that it was the place where we were heading for. We reached the place and many had come to meet us as if once more, they knew that was I coming at exactly the right time. There was a commotion when finally I asked in a loud voice “Where is she?!!!”. Nobody answered my query but everyone was pointing at each other. I started to plead to them one by one until someone presented to me a woman whom at first I thought was the woman that I was looking for. I examined her features slowly, from head to foot, touching her hair and viewing in close range the color of the irises of her eyes. I said to them, “This is not her. This woman is an impostor! I want to see her!” Someone insisted that the woman they presented to me was really the woman I have come looking for. I stomped my feet and there was even more commotions and everyone seemed to be afraid of me and scurried towards different direction.

Finally, a group of men appeared through a wide entrance and one of them was holding a woman by the arms. My heart stopped a bit and a sudden gush of excitement came into me. I tried to meet the group of men headway but they started to turn away. “I wanted to see her,” I said to them as they tried to get away from me. I insisted in following them and they stopped suddenly, including the woman that they were clutching by the arms. As she turned around, I finally saw her face, a face that I could not forget even for a second and never had forgotten even for a single moment in the past. I had known her so well, even the contours of her face, all the angles right to the minutest of details, the very cleavage of her chin and the very shade of her teeth; even though the last time I saw her was three years ago. Tears flowed from my eyes, tears that came perhaps from so much joy upon seeing her for the first time after a very long while. But later I am to be tearful for the cause of sadness and desperation.

I said to the woman: “You have to go with me. Come with me now.”

The woman shook her head and started crying also and told me that she could not come with me. “You have to come back later,” the woman kept on telling me. “Go away now” she continued. “I could not go with you right now”.

I said “You have to come with me now for there may be no next time for us”. I pleaded to her again and again until the dream was starting to fade away. I was so aware that the dream was fading away as I was being slowly siphoned off into some form of darkness. The dream went away while I was shouting at her, pleading again and again for her to come with me. “Come with me!” were my last words to her as I saw her gradually fading away from me and then I saw her face for the very last time in that dream; ever beautiful and gentle, like a calm sea under a bleeding moon, the way that I had always remembered her.

I woke up suddenly and then soon I realized that I just had a vivid dream once more. I felt some immediate sadness upon waking up for the dream had some kind of an unfinished and gloomy ending. I wanted the dream to continue and so I tried my best to gain sleep but sleep would not come anymore. I went down and prepared myself some black tea and sipped the hot condiment beside the window and I saw the stars in the night and wondered if they are so far away that no man could ever reach them, and wondered out loud if ever I’d be seeing her again.

The Mushroom Clouds

“I saw mushroom clouds in the sky, so huge and menacing, like a breathing monster that is silently heaving of havoc and mayhem.”


“God blesses those people who make peace.
They will be called his children!”

-- Matthew, chapter: 5, verse: 9

“ Those who believe (in the Quran),
And those who believe in the Jewish (scriptures),
And the Christians and the Sabians-
Any who believe in Allah
And the Last Day,
And work righteousness,
Shall have their reward
With their Lord; on them
Shall be no fear, nor shall they grieve.”

--The Quran: Surah 2: Al Baqarah: Verse 62.

I saw the symbol of mushroom clouds forming in the sky, mirroring exactly the umbrella-like formation of the resultant smoke coming from a nuclear explosion. I saw them first when I was in Manila, among the visions of angels and flying horses and many other images. Months after, while I was already in my hometown of Zamboanga, the images appeared to me again, about a couple more times. For certain, the message it invoked was insistent that it is among those that are repeatedly relayed to me. We must heed the warning signs so that mankind may be warned of impending catastrophe if the will of the Lord is not attained.

I remember Hiroshima as I gazed towards those humongous umbrellas, just as I recalled them in old black-and-white pictures as the dark clouds rose to the sky and took the daylight out of the horizon.


It is not a time for us to be unmindful to the signs of the times and we must take heed always. Dissensions and isolations creep amongst nations nowadays that we must consider taking further steps for international comity and understanding before mankind would implode by itself -- by its own mischief and excesses -- and thereon thwart and dispel the risk of earthly destruction.

In the international political arena, world leaders are continually faced by the ever-reverberating menace of conflicts and arguments; among these issues is the impending proliferation of nuclear technology and nuclear warfare for that matter. This is beside the admitted threats of weapons of mass destruction that had brought America to its latest war and caused the downfall of Saddam Hussein, a self-styled autocrat who is believed by many to be a major threat to world peace.

Let us not be foolish to think that proliferation of nuclear technology would forever be stifled as we have so far. To regulate it is the hardest thing to do, as the world becomes continually borderless that people and materials could come and go in all geographic partitions without being detected.

Years ago, computer technology was merely the domain of the few developed nations. Now, more than half of the world manufactures and assembles computers. It is not difficult to surmise that nuclear technology could have the same fate as computer technology. Especially now that somewhere beneath international attention, some nations are wickedly salivating to have a grasp of such technology.

The potentialities of this warfare are so attractive. Nuclear power is the best defense against the mischief of neighboring countries with malicious schemes. It is the greatest “balancer of power”, the most effective bluff against enemies. And yet, nuclear warfare is the greatest threat to human existence at present.

Today, nuclear proliferation is regulated with relative effectiveness while admitting that some underground trading is happening. This is mostly due to the efforts made by international bodies, mainly by the United Nations.

Let us not be fooled however by the seemingly stable peace the present world is experiencing. While we indeed desire that peace should be everlasting, we must not let down our guards. We must be continually vigilant against those who seek conflict. This vigilance shall be the crucial sacrifice that we shall make which would include protracted and determined effort to bring more understanding and cooperation among nations and among men of different race and creed; between the East and the West, among Muslims, Jews, Christians, Buddhists and Hindus, between the whites and the colored, between the wealthy and the poor, and among the fortunate and the oppressed.

Let us remember clearly that the peace we have been experiencing at present is merely for a relative short period of time, when we just had the most destructive war fifty years ago in World War II, not to mention the also-destructive World War I in the earlier part of the last century.

If we study and examine human civilization, through thousand of years of human existence, mankind had repeatedly been disturbed by countless wars, huge and small, among many empires and kingdoms. There are the wars that gave rose to the empires-the Persian, the Byzantine, and the Romans among many others-as well as those that brought their downfalls, and wars among neighboring nations. There was the Hundred Years War between France and the Great Britain, there was the war that caused the colonization of nearly half of the world territories, the Crusades by the Europeans against the Arabs, the conquest of Arabs of nations in the name of faith, the North and South War in America, the Vietnam and Korean War, the war between Iraq and Iran, the Baltic Wars, the Gulf war, the war of India against Pakistan---these among many. In the end, we must realize that every war seems to be impending, that every tension may possibly explode and that every conflict may possibly escalate.

Admittedly, international comity and understanding at present help us stave away uncertainties and probable ignitions of war. The establishment of the United Nations is the greatest innovation that man had achieved in recent history for it had allowed nations from all four corners of the world to seek a forum for understanding, for redress and grievances and arbitration of conflicts. Yet, we must not stop at this for we need to promote more understanding and cooperation among peoples and nations especially among people of different religion for it is religious wars that is most menacing. A religious war connotes unimaginable mayhem and havoc. Many men readily kill and die in the name of religion.

International understanding and cooperation among all people is mankind’s greatest weapon and guard against the risk of impending wars. Let us remember always that if we do not seek “oneness of men” as early as now, decades from now, wars may be more virulent and destructive that mankind may implode upon itself and find its own apocalypse.

It is the hope of this author that men should understand that men are equal in the eyes of God. The differences in faith and religion are just circumstantial. For in Arabia people grow dates while in America they grow apples. We could not expect to be the same and yet we could be one.

And further, if every religion seeks righteousness, then let us all be righteous for those who repent and seek the righteous path shall gain eternal life but the wicked who seek the evils of the world---of violence and fornication---shall wallow in eternal punishment in Hell.

In The Middle Of Nowhere

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.

FROM MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY "A Prophet's Life"

Two Dreams

These dreams tell some stories like they are short stories wanting so much to convey some messages. I bet the messages are uplifting, enlightening and joyful all at once.

I had a couple of dreams about two months ago that I thought I should put into writing and recreate the images in my mind, as I have always been doing in the near past. You see, I have this fondness for jotting down the things that happened in my mind while I am asleep because some of these dreams tell some stories like they were a play on their own---as vivid as they were and as intense and exhilarating that I seem to gasp for breath every time I awoke from those dreams.

In the first dream, I saw my long departed friend Aziz in my sleep (he died about three years ago after a long bout with kidney failure) as we walked along the sidewalks of Rizal Avenue, an area just near the city hall and merely a spitting distance from Plaza Pershing, the central park of sorts of Zamboanga City. We were walking down the avenue and another friend, Tony, was with us. In a sudden sort of manner, Tony whispered to me whilst he stooped his head near my ears. “Aziz seems to be leaving. Is he really going away?”, Tony asked me in a very hushed tone. I immediately looked towards Aziz’s direction as he was walking a little bit ahead than us and I saw that he had a bulky belt bag circling his torso like he was carrying a lot of things, enough for days and days away from home. He looked like he really was going away towards some far distant location. I then approached Aziz in order to satiate Tony’s question. “Are you really leaving? I asked Aziz. “Tony said that you looked like you are leaving to some faraway land”, I added. Aziz slowly turned his heads towards me and said, “Yes, I am indeed going to a very faraway place but do not worry the two of you for I have a carried a lot of things with me that it would suffice my long stay there”. He said this while he was pointing to the bulky black bags that was surrounding almost half of his body.

And then the dream got transposed into another scene. The next images that came to me in that sleep was Aziz walking towards a field that was the color of gold, like a wheat fields that we see on American movies set upon urban areas in the United States and there were hills and valleys I see in the distance and the sun rays there were so beautiful that the whole place lighted up my emotions and I felt a little exaltation even as I merely recall it in my waking moments later on. (Days after this dream Tony passed by our place and I recounted to him about the things I have seen this particular dream. I said to Tony that the wheat fields reminded me of the Sting song “Fields of Gold” because the whole of it looked so brilliant like gold. Tony asked me to describe it further and I mentioned to him that if he had seen the movie “Gladiator” the place looked exactly like the fields seen there, where Russell Crowe rode a horse along fields the color of which were golden. Tony said that in Roman mythology, such field is called the Elysian Field---a place where the spirits of those who died go. “Oh, that must be where Aziz went. Towards the Elysian Field”, I half-jokingly muttered to Tony. I later on researched about Elysian Fields and found out that the term is actually derived from Greek mythology, as the place where the spirits of the virtuous and heroic goes---a kind of place that is mostly interrelated with Paradise.

And then there was this dream that occurred about two nights after the dream I have first recounted above. In this other dream, I saw a number of my departed relatives and some old people I know in the past. I saw my grandfather Unih there and my grandmother Dayhana and a number of old and departed aunts. There was that aunt who used to make sugar jams that she sold in the market every morning. They were all playing some kind of card games in houses that seemed to be floating above the air and which were connected to one another by suspended wooden bridges. The people I saw there were so silent, not speaking even a single word although their eyes---as they all looked at me---had seemed to speak to me in a muted language. My grandma particularly had that Mona Lisa smile that conversed with me in a thousand words, as if she meaningfully spoke to me through her heart.

I was so amazed at those floating houses that I wanted to inspect and confirm if nothing really supported those structures from below. I could even feel the whole place moving sideways a little as if the houses respond to strong waves of winds that pass by below. My grandpa showed me the whole area and we went into another house, traipsing thru suspended bridges and in that other house I saw the old Chinese man to whom grandpa use to buy sweepstake tickets down at the market area. I used to go with him when I was just a child. The old Chinese man was smiling at me as if telling me that he knows me and for certain, I should remember him from many years ago. I smiled back at him also.

And then I saw another familiar old man, the one who was our neighbor in Sta. Catalina when I was about nine or ten years old. I could not really remember his name except that we called him by the name “Manong”. As children, we used to go to his place, just at the back of the apartment we were living in and we played with his monkey he kept tied near his kitchen’s doorway by throwing some bits of banana at it. He wasn’t smiling so much like the old Chinese man but I know by the way he looked at me; he was such in a fine condition. Then grandpa showed me more of the place; still without muttering a single word. He led me around as if saying that this is the place where they live now and they are happy there. And then as I went along further, I suddenly realized that the place seemed to be familiar to me that I muttered (now loudly) to my grandpa that “I have been here before but the place looked a little different now”. My grandpa just nodded as if saying that I don’t have to tell him that (about me already having been in that place before) and he just smiled. The last moments of this second dream was me looking into the horizon and I saw the smooth contour of an afternoon sea and although the sunlight then wasn’t very bright (for it looked like night was approaching), the sky was so beautiful to my sight and soothing to my heart that it made me completely happy inside. It was a very soothing place, if ever there is a place like that.

These dreams tell some stories like they are short stories wanting so much to convey some messages. I bet the messages are uplifting, enlightening and joyful all at once.

THE GREAT VISITOR

“At a glance, the image invoked no particular message, but a mere embrace, a warm welcome. I saw Him, an enigmatic figure.”

I trained my eyes so carefully as I looked for further messages from the angels when all of a sudden, as if my body was lifted above ground for a second or two, as I sat there stuck to my own chair, a bearded man appeared sitting on a huge throne, smiling at me so warmly like a beautiful sunrise as if saying to me ‘See, I have come’.”

My eyes were a little wet and teary-eyed when I saw this most enigmatic of all images. I have seen this man, Jesus Christ sitting on a huge throne, a warm smile on His face, like a warm embrace that almost I felt some trembling on my skin. A cold wind passes me by so suddenly.

It was the most enduring of all images that I have seen from the sky, a bearded man on a very huge throne, lasting for a full minute or so. It was a face so familiar for I have seen that face countless times in the past, in pictures hanging from walls and corridors, on doors and entrances, on the bulletin boards, in churches and offices, and even in public markets; it is the picture of a man so adorned by many. I could never be mistaken, I could never go wrong.

Speaking through my mind and heart, He evoked the personage of enormous Love and Caress-He is indeed the Redeemer of Humankind.

It was an image of great welcome, a stark introduction to His person because right from that moment, I have scoured and read more about Him. The image was a revelation that finally now I am certain that He existed in the past, as we know Him in those bible stories, in books and in televisions, and He will continue to exist. It had led me to search the wisdom of the Gospels, as well as of other writings. He is the Beginning and he is the End. The Alpha and the Omega. For He has been raised towards the Heavens in order to return in the End of days--to be the Judge of All Men, the Witness of God.

And He shall be the visitor that we shall all expect. We shall clean our houses then, to sweep the floor of grime and dust the windows from dirt, to put on the red carpets and prepare the best wares in our dining tables. We shall put on our best garments and make the flowers bloom in the gardens of our front yards. Make the gardens bloom my brothers and sisters for we all shall welcome a great visitor.

We shall be ready with our water of life for if He shall come, we shall prepare Him coffee and tea, and confectioneries of all kind. We shall prepare Him a drink made from the water that we have invested with our good intentions and righteousness. Let our water of life be overflowing, so we may not be lacking if the time comes. Shall we be the bride who uses up the oil in her lamp and not providing light when the time comes?

It came to me finally, that Jesus Christ---the Son of Mary, the Messiah---was the one orchestrating the great stage show that I have been witnessing in the sky, as the angels flew here and there, to invoke messages in beautiful pantomime and exhibiting groups of symbols that completes a thought-so that I may find the answers and write them and relay them to you-to you all who may be righteous and good. It is then for me to serve a purpose, a purpose that is worth trying, to say the least. I would be the servant of God, if He wishes, as each and every one of us could be His servant too. We should find this in our hearts, for nothing is more admirable than this purpose, nothing far greater of a sacrifice.

This is no time to doubt nor a time to while away precious time; it is a time for us to rekindle the flame that burns in our hearts ever since we were born, the faith and belief in the Goodness of God, the rewards of the righteous, the Eternal Life that awaits us. It is a time for us to seek the path of the Light again, and none of the road that has blinded us into evil ways and wickedness. It is a time for our spirits to rise again against the might of the Evil One, as we struggle against the influence of the Darkness, as we live in this present world haunted by men and women slaved to flesh and prone to violence; those that are easy to deceit for in their hearts is unfaith and disbelief.

Now I know the man better. He is Christ, the Anointed One, and the Son of Man. He was the one who said, “ Do not look upon another person with one eye and lust upon that person. For you have committed adultery already”. For He was the one who said, “those who come in peace shall be called the children of God.”

Let us overcome our will against the temptation of the flesh and of wealth for those who shall remain in faith shall reap the rewards of Eternal Life. Let us all be Children of God. Follow my footsteps my brothers and sisters.


For He had come now, not perhaps as the resurrection as He had promised once but perhaps to merely make a stopover, a brief reminder to us before the day of reckoning shall come. In order to ease us our minds, to reassure us that despite our toil against the many temptations that hounds these present days, there is a pot of gold waiting for us at the end of the rainbow. So that we know that after we labor in our faithfulness, we shall be rested in an oasis of love and that we shall be put into good sleep by the lullaby of hope and redemption.

We are the fortunate ones--- this generation is gifted with a vision, a clear sign from the Lord God. We must not remain blind lest we missed out on our chances. There is no other time like this again for all of us. There was a promise made in the days of old and indeed, it is to be fulfilled.

For whom among us shall say that this generation has not been lost into the labyrinth of temptations, for every side we see, we see the might of evil. Shall we not confess our sins? It has been centuries and eons ago that Our Lord Almighty has given us His words, so long ago that not one among us to deny that the flames of faith have somehow mellowed down in our hearts, like a well-kept secret, like a treasure forever lost. It is time then for us to rekindle the Light in our hearts.

And now He has come through my visions to reawaken us from our deep sleep and face a brand new sunrise. We are the lucky ones indeed and we shall never let go of this moment for we may never pass this way again. We must all be one in the righteous path for the promise of Eternal Life is for all mankind. For whomsoever walk in the righteous path shall walk in the Way of the Light. A man may spend all his life in a cave and yet if he is righteous, he had walked in the Way of the Light. And a man may live in the temples all his life and yet if he is wicked in his heart, he had turned away from the Light.

There is a time to live and a time to rest, and a time for everything in between, and yet, this is the time for us to awaken our spirits and wash our soul clean. We must be born again and like a child, we must see the goodness in every man, to expect the brightness of life, and to evade every evil thing.

Let us cleanse our spirits and wash our souls. Let us repent and produce fruits from our repentance. For those who repent may find relief in the arms of the Lord. Let us open our hearts to those who suffer, bring life to those who are sick, to feed those who hunger and bring water to those who thirst. For we have been thirsty ourselves and now He gives us a fountain of life---our water of life.

Let us bathe and drink in this Fountain of Life.