Ogden Kronengekel: A Wanted Murderer

OGDEN KRONENGEKEL---such is the name of the main protagonists inside my dream, other than myself of course. Have you had yourself a vivid dream? In my childhood days, I had numerous dreams of these sorts, the kind that are so crystalline in clarity that some of them I could still recall until now. I usually dream about angels in the past, flying with them into tree-lined outfields, and falling off from cliffs if I lose some footings while in the act of flying. Every time I fall from the air in those dreams, as I lose control of my body movements, I also fall from my beds that the falling sensation felt so real and everyone in the house could hear me scream.

My dream about Ms. Kronengekel (yes, she was a woman sporting jet-black hair falling down towards her knees) about three nights ago wasn’t purely about angels although some parts of it were about them cherubim. Unlike my other dreams, this one involves a narrator who whispers to me some facts that I need to know as the story progresses within that dream.

The visions in my sleep started as the narrator introduces me to the beginning scenarios (the narrator’s face does not appear throughout the dream and whispers only to my right ear as if he was afloat above ground just behind me and moves accordingly as I moved forward or backward or to any direction. He also has no name but in my mind he wears a huge black hood, just like the one wore by Death.). He introduced to me the people in the story. There was H. a friend who I knew in real life and the narrator also informed me that H.’s father was Mr. P. Mr. P. is a bailer of those arrested for crimes.
And then there was Ms. Ogden Kronengekel, a beautiful lad who always wears white t-shirts and fading jeans. When I was in Silliman University for about a year nearly two decades ago, I could recall that most students there wear this kind of generic outfit---white shirt on the top and faded or tattered jeans down below. It was known to be hip to dress so casually, a coy on pretending like a poor man when one looks so rich. I didn’t dress the same when I was in Dumaguete City because that kind of outfit needed a bunch of Levi’s 501’s which I only have one at that time. So I just was hip in few instances. The white shirt and jeans needed another garment and that was the bandana. In those years (somewhere between 1989 and 1991), to wear a bandana is to bring tribute to rock music, especially glam-rock music and since Axl Rose of the band Guns and Roses wear them always, a hip rocker ain’t hip at all without the head accessory. In those years, riffing guitars and bamboozling drumbeats emanates from every nook and corner of Dumaguete City and as freshmen students, we became so involved in the glam rock movement that spurned notable bands like Bon Jovi and Poison. In those pre-grunge days, new wave bands still had major clamp on the radio listeners and it was the times when the great Irish band U2 reached its artistic peak with a couple of great albums titled “The Joshua Tree” and “Rattle and Hum”. Making the “Joshua Tree” album for them was such an achievement already and yet within a year, they were able to released “Rattle and Hum”—how good can they get?”So the dream was centered on a murder that I have got to know for reason that I was acting as an investigating officer in it and my work companion was H. All along H. wore a casual striped t-shirt, walking short and sporty beach sandals that I wasn’t really certain if he was toddling along with me in the investigation as a police officer himself, like I was, or just an ordinary companion. We went on scurrying up the whole facts of the case and proceeded on unraveling the mysterious death of a certain C., a fairly known rice trader in the city. If he was fairly known in the town despite his being merely a businessman (you know, as differentiated from high profile professionals like doctors and lawyers), it only means that he wasn’t just an ordinary businessman but a very successful one.

The main scene that really stuck vividly in my mind was the one in a downtown store that the victim Mr. C. owned. Me and H. went there to question some people about the murder. In actual times, the store really existed somewhere in San Jose Road within the city limits and it really sells rice, lots of them. When we got there, we saw Ms. Ogden Kronengekel walk by us and entered a small doorway just beside the rice store of Mr. C. and proceeded to the second level of the building. Throughout the story, I never really seen her face yet I knew she had a foreign-looking countenance. She was pretty, so pretty that she was familiar almost to every one we knew.
H. remarked to me: “ That’s Ms. Ogden Kronengekel. Ain’t she pretty?” I said,
“ Yeah, I am familiar with her. You know, from school.” I then asked: “What she’s doing here?” To this question, H. just smiled and shrugged off his shoulders meaning that he does not have an idea. The way he smiled was a little insidious as if he knew something interesting that I do not know.

Then the scenes went into a cornucopia of various images. Just like any dream, the scenes in my mind change without lead ups or preludes and images and happenstances there intertwine like a spider web or a twirling spiral, at times without rhyme and reason, and they interlope upon each other like layers upon layers of sand.
The next memorable scene was the narrator telling me all the bits of information about the mysterious persona of Mr. Ogden Kronengekel. I bet I must have all the information I needed in order to solve the crime inside that dream—and Mr. Narrator helped a lot on this. Mr. Narrator said that Ms. Kronengekel grew up in Norway until the age of 5, and came to Zamboanga in the year 1986, the year when millions of Filipinos marched into the main highways of Metro Manila to overthrow The Strongman former President Mr. Marcos. Her father was of course Norwegian who married a Zamboangueña nurse then working in one of the big hospitals in Oslo, the most popular city in Norway. On the first time that Mr. Kronengekel went to visit the city, when he and Mrs. Kronengekel was still planning to tie their marital knot, he immediately fell in love with the local weather and particularly the beaches in the islands farther up north, and one just nearby town which is known as Sta. Cruz Islands. He decided then that he would not spend the rest of his life freezing among frozen lakes and icy boulevards in the Baltic Region and planned a scheme on how to make Zamboanga as the Kronengekel’s domicile. After five years of saving every penny they gained in Norway, they packed all their worthwhile things and settled here in 1986. It was rough times in the Philippines at that particular time yet Mr. Kronengekel did not allow any political disturbances to stifle his long-awaited journey to a land which according to him where the sun always smiled.
For quite sometime since they came here, the Kronengekel’s enjoyed a buoyant life full of travels around the country. You could really see for yourself how a man craves for seawater and sunshine in the way Mr. Kronengekel would stay in the water for hours and hours without getting ashore, snorkeling even in places when corrals where not all abound. In most of the beaches of Zamboanga, there are exactly no corrals or sea life to snorkel about except if one gets too deep into ten feet high seawater which would be a little risky with the sea currents so strong around here. There was even a story of some amateur boaters who went toddling in the night water in one of the resorts here while being a little drunk from alcohol. They paddled too far into the sea and apparently lost control of their boat due to the swirling currents that twirls and swirls like giant spirals in the span of both the Sulu Sea and the Celebes Sea. They found themselves in Indonesia a day after.Mr. Kronengekel applied as an English Instructor in a nearby college and was hired initially as a part-timer. Yes, he had professional trainings in the languages, especially in English from a fairly known American University and worked before as a professor in the English Department of a known university in Norway. He became an instant celebrity in the local college and became instantly popular with the students. A blond-haired lean man nearly six foot tall walking along the walkways of a school in Zamboanga was not exactly an everyday occurrence but with Mr. Kronengekel around, it was a daily sight for the students who could not help snickering and making some hush-hush and whispers, every time he passes by.

One day, Mr. Kronengekel caused a minor rumpus inside the campus when he just walked away one afternoon from a class he was tutoring and shouted along the hallways, “I can’t take it anymore!!!” Apparently, he was having a nervous breakdown and never entered the campus again, not even once. The talk about him in school did not die down as easily and went own like a legend being told and retold.The day that he found a certain man was the day that started his slide into the downward spiral of a doggoned life. This certain man was a student he befriended in school for reason mainly because this certain man had easy access to a drug seller in one of the mean streets of this town. Everyday, he would take in some puff of marijuana like it was his staple food---morning, noon and night. He was introduced to this illicit item in one of their travels to the islands farther up north in Visayas by a German tourist who took him for a couple of drink one cold night in the beach. He knew it was improper to take the item but he was too pretentious to let the German guy know that he is such a snob. In person, he is naturally a shy and introspective person but he was always inclined to hide this shyness when among a crowd, which he considered as his major weakness, and tend to overdo his show of coy extroversion by a mile.

So he smoked that illicit item just to do away with the German but it instead became the moment of his future desperation. At first, the stuff made him extraordinarily full of jest, snickered with the German to no end and laugh so hard even at the most humorless joke. His appetite for food became gregarious but what finally made him got hooked was the fact that the grass gave him a feeling of lightness that he never had before.
As his new habit progresses, Mr. Kronengekel had developed a general indolence that made him lose more focus in his daily tasks especially in his vocation as a teacher and soon started to miss on his own classes. He had been called twice to the Dean’s office until that one fateful day when he just stepped out of the classroom and never to return.

Mr. Kronengekel regressed so steeply into a man of unkempt behavior and soon Mrs. Kronengekel left home and went abroad again to earn when the finances of the family dwindled. Ogden Kronengekel became a “motherless” child at the age 9 and lived with aunts and cousins except when Mrs. Kronengekel was here for very brief annual or bi-annual visits. Mr. Kronengekel just wandered around the city drinking with by-standers from every mean streets there is in the city and huffed the prohibited item almost always until one day his body was found lifeless and stiffed as a rock near a city creek; probably by self-infliction as no contusion or bruises were marked on the corpse, and every possession in his body was intact, including a very expensive wristwatch. He just perhaps jumped into the shallow river and drowned himself by having so much alcohol to drink.
At the age of 12, Ogden Kronengekel goes home to a parentless shelter except for aunts and cousins she could bully around and whom she does not solicit for advises. The lack of sufficient moral guidance and the tragedy in her lives had affected Ogden so much that she became a wanderer herself, nearly like her father, taking drugs and alcohol in the night streets often than we breathe, never finishing college and running around with a lot of different men, even in illicit affairs. She became a creature of the night, as we know the term, hanging among many groupies in the city and creating troubles in the night streets as well as the streets of their own lives and of other lives.I asked my friend H. about the person of Ms. Ogden Kronengekel for I could not forget his strange smirk the last time we saw her within the vicinity of the murder scene of Mr. C. At this moment of questioning, we were in the office of Mr. P., H.’s father and the owner of the bail company.
My friend H. told me: “ There is no more need to ask questions. The murderer of Mr. C. has been arrested and he is out on bail, care of our bailing company.”
He handed me the folder of the murder suspect and saw for myself the front-view, left-view, and right-view pictures of some youth with browning hair and dark oily skin, with eyes protruding from perhaps lack of sleep or extreme tiredness. It seems all petty criminals looked like the guy on the folder in my hands, except the case in hand was not petty at all.

I asked in my mind why H. remarked immediately that the murderer was already apprehended when I only asked him about Ms. Ogden Kronengekel’s person. I smelled something fishy and wanted to create a line of thought from this unusual answer of H.. I wondered of course, since I was the investigating officer in the case, how come I didn’t know the arrest of some suspect on the case I am handling myself. In the Philippines maybe, this sort of things happens and since we were inside a dream, everything could happen indeed without explanation. The narrator made the story short and since Mr. Narrator seems to know everything, he saved me a lot of police work.
It turned out that Mr. P., the owner of the bail company, with connections in the police and in the Hall of Justice nearby, created a scenario where the murder has already been solved by the arrest of a pretending murder suspect, the skinny guy on the folder. Mr. P. was able to convince some fish vendor from Rio Hondo to pose as the murderer on the agreement that he would be bailed out after a couple of days of detention and then he could disappear to wherever he wants to go. The guy needed the money so much and the offer was hard to refuse.We asked perhaps why Mr. P. was interested in undermining the truth behind the murder Mr. C.. It turned out that the real murderer was none other than Ms. Ogden Kronengekel, the half-Norwegian wanderer and spoiled brat and Mr. P. was Ogden’s new paramour. Ogden Kronengekel was still then involved with Mr. C. and Mr. P. wanted her to get rid of him. Ogden got rid of Mr. C. in the cruelest of manner, the details of which could not even be spoken here for decency measures. You say, Ogden Kronengekel developed psychotic tendencies as she progressed through a life full of desperate measures.

It was H. unusual answers that gave me the lead to the final resolution of the case and at the end of the dream, the murder of Mr. C, the well-known rice trader in the city, was finally a case resolved.Now, I have said earlier that this dream of mine, which happened about two or three nights ago, was in some part about angels. Where are the angels? This is where the angels come in.

When Mr. Narrator elucidated to me on the true persona of Ogden Kronengekel, I forgot to mention to you that she was also a singer with a local rock band and that explains her rock-and-roll attitude. While telling me this particular fact, Mr. Narrator gave me a view of one of her performances (the narrator seem to have the power to go back and forth in time and view some happenstances in a three dimensional screen where the viewers are in it although unseen by the people inside the screen, like in Hollywood movies where there are repetitions of past events, like for example Bill and Ted’s adventures of years ago.)

So Ogden sang a song that was unlike any other song. In fact, despite the catchiness of the song, it was not a song that exists in real time. It was a song I have heard only in that dream. As she sang the song, heavenly choruses were backing her up. As the song progresses, I was taken through a time warp to a place where there was a low hill with trees lined up together like they were planted with great planning in mind and the air was so breezy and the sun was so radiant. It gave me a feeling of great joy like it was Paradise. And the place just faded after the song.

Ogden Kronengekel’s voice reminded me so much of Tori Amos. In fact, her voice was a beautiful combination of Tori Amos’s and of Fiona Apple’s. In real time, I doubt it if there is a woman living with this kind of vocal prowess. But the choral backing in the song of Ogden Kronengekel lifted me above air and gave me a gladness of powerful elation. Cherubim (with trumpets in each hand) sang the choral rendition behind Ogden Kronengekel’s main vocalization. What beautiful angels they were and what beautiful voices. At the end of this post, we can now ask what did the dream meant to me and what message it tried to invoke? I do not know. Some dreams of mine, even as vivid as they were, just do not mean anything except that they were about angels and the angels remind me always of places and times that gives me fond memories and great joy. In my childhood, my dreams of angels were just about flying and nothing much else. No message. No declarations. Their declarations came not by dreams but through other manners instead, which of course if you are a constant reader of my works, you should already know by now.

Some characters in the dream above narrated may resemble some people I know in actual time but the resemblance was unintentional and does not portray their true persons’ character. Dreams are just dreams.

Taberlok, The Moon Man

There was a time when my grandfather was telling me the story about “the man in the moon”. In moonlit nights, long after my grandfather died, I sat and merge with the cold wind and studied the geography of the moon’s surface. He called the man Taberlok, a scary name I surmised then. He rode the sky in a magic broom and had a pointed trumpet-like hat. He comes down once in a while my grandfather said, looking out for kids who did bad things and taking them away into some other world, never to return again. I shriveled at the proposition that I gained some distrust against my grandfather. How wicked Tamberlok was I thought for children only wanted to play and laugh all day long.

But Tamerlok was not a one-dimensional freak after all as my grandfather continued. On the other hand, according to the old man, a good kid was given a wild and happy ride across the stars and beyond. And it would be a very enjoying ride my grandfather always reassured me.

As I grew older, I reckoned this tale to be purely made up but somehow I kept staring at the moon when the moments were perfectly at hand. I had hoped very much that my grandfather was the real “man in the moon” in order that he may come and took me a ride across the meteors and along side those speeding comets. If he was the moon man I thought, I would gain the wild and happy ride, because I had been generally good with him, at least as I had believe then.

When he was alive, he would always take me with him whenever he had to go downtown or visit some relations. It was a happy walk always that before we went home, we passed by the store to buy some toys or new garments.

At times I stared at the moon so fervently that at one time or another, I saw a face with a huge grin pasted on it. The moon was sometimes a person, living and breathing. They say when it was at its fullest, ghosts and winged serpents would appear and roam the sky and the earth, but to me, it was another chance to summon the man in the moon.

I called upon the spirit of my grandfather also whenever I pray, after calling out to God. It was extremely difficult for me to memorize those Muslim prayers that after trying my best, I gave up and decided that I should settle with the prayer of the beads which only three words were muttered in Arabic. I conformed then to the idea that every prayer, as long as it was genuine, was good enough. There was this Tasbi that my grandfather had which I kept until now as a remembrance and I used it in my nightly calls to Allah. Since he died, my night calls gained sufficient frequency. I called on Allah and confessed all the things in my heart. The things I did in the day and all the things I did not. I felt so sinful then that not at one instance merely that tears would flow down easily from my eyes. “I am despicable”, I admitted always. I call upon God and sometimes I could interchange Him with my grandfather unknowingly that my tone for my meanderings were indistinctive, irregardless if I was confessing before God or summoning my grandfather.

Of Vice and Virtue

Of vices and virtues of men, who am I to enquire upon and much less to elucidate upon? Such aspect of humanity is they say the territory of wise men and sages. Am I a prophet? Am I a messenger?  Not me to answer these queries yet it is The Lord that has called upon me to be the bearer of His messages.

 

Man is but an imperfect creation of God. This imperfection seems to have been implanted to us as part and parcel of our nature for as we have discussed earlier, no man is perfect.  But to this I say, the imperfection of man is never enough ground to accept that man is a grievous sinner. We err at times but to sin must not be one of our intention or purpose. To err is human but to sin is evil.

 

We are sinners by nature not because we intend to sin but we have merely erred. For every whole or being, there must always be a margin for error. For every creation, there is always a chance for imperfection.

 

It is error that precedes every sin that redeems the man, which is to act without evil intent, where there is in fact no instance of sin but that of a mistake. It is not a sin to have done something wrongly without intending to cause harm or without knowing its consequences. There would be error and sin is unlikely in such instance. It is the intent that counts and not the outward actions of men. There are those for example who prays each day and yet in their homes, they are fornicators. On the other hand, there are those who are less pious in the eyes of men but in their secret lives, they are great philanthropists. “For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what make a man unclean; but eating with unwashed hands does not make him unclean. It is not to defile a man to eat with an unwashed hand, but what defiles a man is the evil that comes from their hearts.”[1] 

 

When sin precedes error (to commit error upon the premise of intent to sin), pure evil permeates. To take something without knowing fully well that it does not belong to us is an error. But to take something fully knowing that it is not ours is sin at its purest form and an error no more and never an excuse for being merely human.

 

It is not merely an error anymore for a man to cause harm and injury upon others with malice in its mind for is never justified except in defense of person, country or of faith.

 

The occurrences of evil are never justified by our admittance that man is imperfect by nature for this would encourage the conduct in men where many are prone to sin because they believe that to be human is to sin always. They would go on saying “ I am only human” and this declaration becomes the end-all and be-all justification for their sinful ways. The Lord does not see in grace men who circumvent the divine law. Despite His greatest of mercy, He had punished men before who gravely defied His edicts and judgments most notably the men and women who were caught in the sulfuric fire that descended upon the Cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.

 

Our imperfection merely allows us to err but never to sin. Therefore, it is foolishness to justify our misdeeds by invoking to the Lord that we are sinners because we are only human. That would be undermining the very complex and reliable human processes of determining what is right and what is wrong—the workings of the mind and heart. We underestimate the intelligence of human beings by saying man has no logic and common sense as well as a conscience by admitting that we are sinners by habit, that being left alone upon our own devices, we could not be relied to do good and avoid evil.

 

On vanity this I say: Vanity is one of the test of us being humans. Vanity is already present in each and every one of us the moment we came out of our mother’s womb and is but part of our human nature. We comb our hair and that is vanity. We iron our clothes and that is vanity. It is vanity that leads us to become better persons, to be more presentable to others so that others may relate to us with ease and not to maintain a close door to every man’s face.

 

                                                                                                                                                                                Vanity is virtue therefore.

 

But vanity had oftentimes become a vice to many of us nowadays. It is vanity that leads us to steal so that we could have a better bungalow than our neighbors. So that we could wear designer clothes just as others do for without the Italian leather shoes, we feel nothing in front of our friends. This is destructive vanity, a kind of vanity that takes control of our will and not us taking control over it. As a virtue, vanity propels us to go forward and work harder and strive further, to be more progressive in mentality so that we could be like others who had fully earned things without committing any mischief, and achieving upon pure ability.

 

If we could use our vanity properly, it could be the wind beneath our wings, allowing us to scale higher grounds and thereon makes us better persons, driving us towards exhausting the possibilities of our potentials, to strive for nothing less than the best we could be.

 

But when vanity becomes a vice (especially when envy complicates matters), men are often led to commit malice to attain things they do not deserve. For example, if I see a colleague who had become so successful as a salesman. For certain I would admire him and relish at the things he have. In my mind, maybe I could also be a salesman and earn as much as he do. But if I lost my spiritual balance, I would certainly feel so much envy at his very enviable position. And that envy upon the vanity of others and upon my own destructive vanity would lead me to do things otherwise unacceptable to me that at worst I would already steal so that I could attain his level of fortune. I would more or less put him down in other men’s eyes so that he is not that as enviable anymore.

 

Vanity as a vice brings forth evil in the scale of small and great. It had oftentimes led many of us to gossip against our neighbors and in extreme cases it had led some to kill or injure others. Vanity had led countless personages in history to instigate war among nations great and small, to prove who is the better nation or the nobler race. It had led to the rise of many empires and the destruction of the same and along the way as the blood of thousands of men, women and children poured upon the tarmac of battlefields upon the mere cause of vanity.

 

                                                                                                                                                                                And so is it the same with envy. Envy is also a virtue but at most times it is a vice.

 

Envy is a nature of man that could not be set aside. It is already in us at the time of birth. If we use envy as a virtue, it is a wind to our will to go forward and strive in life so that we would have things others have. As a vice, it would lead one to destroy the person of another so that he or she may not have that too enviable position anymore.

 

Envy is a feeling of want and lack of possession, material or otherwise. It is the nature of man to feel so lacking and wanting the moment he witnesses the greater fortunes of others---in abundance of wealth and comfort. The sight of a friend driving a brand new car would elicit the immediate feeling of envy. But it would foretell the kind of man you are on how such envy affects your person. In some, it would be good envy for they would feel the need to scurry for more and to work harder for if a friend could attain such possession, I could also. In others, it would lead to gossiping and the doing of misdeeds to attain such fortune in the most convenient manner. Like vanity, envy could lead us to do evil things in order to catch up with the rich neighbors, to have that state-of-the-art cell phone or to have that fancy car. Like vanity, envy had led also to many great wars even from the time of emperors and kings, to the woe of their subjects and people trampled to the ground, bludgeoned and sacrificed for the reason of envy.

 

And so is the feeling of anger. Anger is but a nature of man that is as clear as the sun rising from the horizon. Anger is a nature that is also undeniable in each and every one of us. In fact, it is more undeniable as a nature of man than vanity and envy.

 

To be angry is not to sin per se and not altogether to cause harm or malice against others. In its barest form, the feeling of anger is a defense mechanism of our personages, to enable us to thwart and purge things and condition that are injurious or unacceptable to us. To have anger is to warn others that my own self is a universe of its own, a universe which I protect and shield from the menace of others. My body is my temple and nobody shall encumber or pierce it against my legitimate will and desires. My body is a kingdom by its own, a whole cosmos which I could at least have control of. When my enemies stage a siege against this kingdom, I have no choice but to defend it and lead it away from harm’s way. In so long as my path is in the way of righteousness, my anger is my shield and when everything fails, it also becomes my sword.

 

In connection with the feeling of anger, the feeling of hate is at the same time both beneficial and deleterious to us. To hate is not to sin at all for to hate is to be human. But many times we hate for baseless causes or reasons, and that is the kind of hate that leads us to sin. Our hate and anger is never justified if we hate others just because of their faces or the color of their skin.

 

To be human is to feel the feeling of hate for we are indeed but a creature of emotion, an emotion that is in perpetual motion. We were not created as robots moving upon a set of mechanism.

 

To know the feeling of love fully is to know the feeling of hate fully. To see light is to come from a point of darkness. To rise above the level is always to start from a lower ground.

 

Like anger, hate provides us a mechanism in which to thwart all things unacceptable to us. It is a wall that no one should pierce by his or her own mischief. For certain, when evil approaches us, we exhibit hate in order to warn others from not pursuing such evil act, as we turn them away and repel them immediately. When our concept of good and evil is healthy and proper, our hate becomes the most formidable shield against the menace of evil that we could easily maintain the level of goodliness that is acceptable to the Creator above. That another man is capable of hate is a fact we should always assume as we carry on with our relations with others, so that we must always ponder upon our every actions and deeds, not to be hasty in words and shall by no means abuse the persons of others. It is the existence and capacity for hate that no man should treat others without pondering upon each action and deed. A man has hate that is why another man should always take enough caution in relation with him. This may be summed up with the Confucian edict that declares, “Do not do unto others what you do not want others to do unto you”.

 

Upon the feeling of hate still, while this a part of human nature, existing even at the time of birth, such sentiment is often times manifested today through prejudice against another man’s race or creed, to discriminate merely by reason of race, to explode the fragility of the differences in man. I am white and you are black. I am a Catholic while you are a Muslim. I am English and you are Irish.

 

The conflict of the white man against the black man in the days of old, is not as we thought diminished by the many changes in our modern society. Of course, there is no more slavery and no more White South Africa, but still the same issues rage amongst that many conflicts still hounds our world today. The civil war between the North and South states in the Americas may be just a part history now but the same element of prejudice exist amidst the recent ethnic wars in the Balkan Regions, in the seeming annihilation of the Kurds in Iraq, the ferocious Middle East conflict between Arabs and the Jews, the segregation of Chinese descents in parts of Southeast Asia, in the war that tears Southern Philippines for decades now, the Islamic movement in Indonesia, and the Irish revolt against the Queen of England.

 

Through burning crosses and ethnic cleansing, hate continue to permeate in our world today, to pursue volatility in the differences of men instead of allowing these differences to unite men. Even in our everyday surroundings, hate and prejudices abound upon causes entirely self-indulgent. There are the rich who would not touch any poor man’s hands. There are the bourgeoisie looking down on the masses. There are the greedy capitalists abusing the fruits of another man’s labor. There are the huge landowners who give pittance to the hands that cultivate their land. There are the college frat men who sneer at others just because they are nerds. There are the Muslims who hate Christians and Christians who hate Muslims just because of difference of religion or culture. It is groundless hate that results into conflicts, conflicts that are both small and great.

 

The sentiment of hate is a defense mechanism that we should employ against the abuse and mischief of others but never to perjure others. Hate is often dangerous and volatile that if you multiply the hate of a single individual into the number of the people in a population, it becomes disturbing to the point of harming the world order. The Holocaust happened because the hate and prejudiced of a few men were multiplied into many that such massive loss of lives resulted. When we use the feeling of hate improperly, it is disastrous and destructive.

 

Then there is pride. Pride is also a nature of man that is already obtaining at the time of birth. And what is to be human if being human is not to have pride. Man is proud by nature and it is not wrong to feel pride. Pride is also a wind beneath our wings, propelling us to become better persons. I have pride so I have to look out upon my own devices and not depend upon other’s beneficence. I would strive upon myself to do things that are expected of me and along the way I would realize that I could do things that I thought not possible before. It is the feeling of pride that harnesses our potentials so that we may feel proud in the eyes of others. To be proud is to feel good. There is no denying a man’s prerogative to feel proud for to be human is also to feel proud. A man needs to feel proud in one way or another in order that he or she may live meaningfully. I also have what you have. I am at the same level with you. I am with you. I am one with you. And therefore embrace me as I embrace you.

 

Pride frees us up from the grasp of mediocrity and shoves us to find our true worth by leading us to exhaust every potentiality of our capabilities, and thereon allow us to live a full life without regrets. Pride makes us enjoy the true meaning of life, to be a force by our own selves and a force to others, in order to affect the lives of many.

 

The author who is proud of his writing continues to entertain many through the stories he tell. The painter so proud of his works continues to delight the sight of others. The singer so proud of her swooning voice endears herself to others by her soulful meanderings of love and devotion.

 

                                                                                                                                                                                But the pride of an individual is at many times false.

 

False pride would certainly lead us to a life of misdeeds, leading us to commit transgressions that are otherwise unacceptable to us. In order to be proud in the eyes of others, many would steal in order to gain approbation.

 

It is also false pride to feel more worthy than others on the basis merely of race and creed. I may be a doctor but without the fishermen in the sea, there would be no fish on my table. It is not wealth that makes us prouder than others, but the works we do for others and the society as a whole. What good does it do to be proud in the eyes of man and yet lose the graces of the Creator above?

 

Pride as a human nature propels us to become better persons, a wind beneath our wings. But false Pride kills and destroys not only others but also our own persons, leading us to steal and kill and to manipulate others so we could be proud in the eyes of other men, a kind of manufactured and artificial pride and not a pride well-deserved. Therefore, we must learn to use our pride in the most balanced manner.

 

Upon the sentiment of greed, it is also both a virtue and a vice.

 

Greed is a vice or a misdeed, as we know it today. We despise Mr. Scrooge for his selfishness and for being such a killjoy. We hate the conceptual fat and greedy businessman, full of fatty wealth and profits. We abhor the child friend who does not let us play with his toys.

 

And yet, if we examine ourselves, the feeling of greed is somewhat instinctive to all of us. We do not usually part with our things as easily. We ponder at length before we give them away. Even the most venerable philanthropist would feel this way because greed is a nature of man that we could not dispel.

 

Upon the other hand however, the feeling of greed allows us to survive, coming from a point where human has great instincts for survival and self-preservation. It is a virtue to be selfish sometimes. It is a mechanism instituted in our nature as a method of survival. The cave men protected their territories from the infiltrations of strangers in order that they may have the grounds from which to hunt and harvest their food without limitation and therefore protecting themselves from the pangs of hunger and the consequential risk of extinction of their tribe. They would protect these hunting grounds to the hilt, with blood if need be. These were also apparent in the natives of lands like the historical America and the old Philippines where blood stained the grounds in defense of territory, in protection of lands to which they live and allowed to live with unbounded and unguarded mobility. To feel greedy is not at all a vice or sin if it is towards self-preservation. You must not take the food out of our table in order for us to live. You must not take away my work through mischief and self-aggrandizement for you would take away my daily bread.

 

Nowadays however, greed propels the motives of men who merely look out for their own interest. There are the wealthy capitalists and huge landowners who take advantage upon the fruits of labor of their workers. You may have a thousand acres of land but without the workers to help you create wealth from such land, it is useless to you. You may have discovered the formula for soothing liquor, yet without the hands of the men and women that works in your factory (in order to produce your discovery in mass number) there would be no great wealth or benefit for you. You could implore the help of all your family relations, of all your friends and neighbors and yet you would not get so rich even if you have a thousand acres of land. You may just have to sell it to get compensation but tilling it is of no benefit to you without the help of hundreds of farmworkers.

 

The need to fill our greed have become insatiable that many today have so much wealth and yet they become the more greedy and continue to pile up wealth which they could not bring to the grave, a wealth so vast that even their great-grandchildren would not be able to expend it. As the biblical verses remind us all, what good does it have for a man to have faith and yet do not have works?

 

What is faith to a man when there are many sleeping in the coldest part of the streets with barely a garment above their shivering bodies, where some are living in ultimate squalor of the slums and dying in piles of garbage? Can faith alone save him and gain the graces of the Creator? What good does it do a man to have pleasures here on Earth if he shall lose the graces of the Lord? For certain, God would not allow greedy and selfish people into the Kingdom of God. For God is like a father who has many children, some children became wealthy and there are some who languish in poverty. As a father, you feel sorrowed to watch some of your children suffering that you call upon your more fortunate children to give a helping hand to the less fortunate ones, for the suffering of my children is also the suffering of the father.

 

All in all, it is the acceptance of the fact of the very imperfection of man that should impel us towards “perfection”, to be closer to the ideal self, the righteous self. It is not to be perfect that God wanted us to become, but it is merely to be righteous for in life there are many temptations and traps of morality, and yet the righteous man is fortified by his strong faith in the Creator. His will is good and temptations of life’s excesses are of no match to him or her.

 

It is undeniable that to be human is to feel anger, hate, greed, and pride. We are also vain by nature. But to be human is not to feel improper anger or hate or to be so greedy that you take advantage upon the labor of others or to be so proud that you encroach upon the persons and possessions of others to assert your false pride---building empires of your own so that you may alone take the richness of lands not of your own roots.

 

Today, men monopolize businesses so that they may have all the wealth and opportunities merely for their own. Men put down others so that they alone could be employed or be promoted. Landowners fail to share properly the fruits of the land so that they alone become benefited. What does it do to you to have faith and yet others lay naked in the streets? Does faith alone enough to save you and gain the rewards of the Creator? “…and though I have all faith, so that I can remove mountains, and have not loved, I am nothing.”[2]

 

You could feel proud with humble clothes on your skin. You could be vain if you are merely a farmer or a fisherman that you do not have to steal or kill to further your need for vanity and pride. Vincent Van Gogh died so poor that he died with a messy look on his person and yet no painter could claim more vanity than him. Leo Tolstoy defied his wealthy heritage and decided a life of humility and yet only a few writers are more influential than him.

 

Life in this material world is but a temporary sojourn or foray for all of us that ultimately, we should realize that the existence of man does not cease with the decay of the flesh. Moments after death takes the breath away from our mortal bodies, our soul would merely slide into another world, to face judgment as to what world you have prepared yourself to be with—either in the blissfulness of the Kingdom of God or in the suffering of an Eternal Fire.

 

Life is too short many say and none could be truer than this. What does it do to you to gain so many pleasures in this temporary world, even to the extent of committing misdeeds, when after your foray in this world, you gain everlasting sorrow and suffering anyway? Why fret upon the suffering brought about by poverty and a life of want and need when after all, after this sojourn on earth, you would gain everlasting life of peace and harmony in the Kingdom of God that the Creator had prepared for us. “But many who are first shall be last, and the last first.”[3]

 

To be human is to be imperfect but to be imperfect is not a reason for us to sin, but merely to err.

 

 

---

[1]Matthew 15: Verses 19-20.

[2] I Corinthians 13 : Verse 2.

[3] Matthew 19 : Verse 30.

THE RIGHTEOUS MAN

“And then I saw three angels nearby, sitting on a roof of a building just across the street from where I sat. Their wings were high-arching as they sat there and their bodies so muscular and so well built--they looked perfect. Once also, a lady in the whitest of gowns suddenly appeared before me, with a charm and mystic so enchanting that I shivered. She had medium-sized wings. Before my amazement consumed me altogether, she suddenly disappeared.”

The Righteous Man

The righteous man is not a blind man being led by the blind, unlike the men full of wickedness led by their evil ways.

He is one whose eyes are wide-opened to the Light, the Enormous Grace of the Lord. He is one who takes faith in the Eternal Life, even without witnessing any miracles--one who has the proper mind to follow the dictates and commandments of God Almighty.

The righteous man believes in the Mightiness of God as above all other forces in the universe, a strength far stronger than the Darkness that holds down this mortal world like a monkey wrench---a world fraught with violence and of lust.

The righteous man is never boastful even if he has all the things in the world, of mountains and mountains of things. He is meek even in the greatest of success. He does not hold on to riches like a leech even if he has so much already and even if at times he faces uncertainties. He parts easily with whomsoever is miserable, even to those who are merely wanting in things. He clothes those who sleep naked in the streets, wearily bothered by the weather for having no roof on their heads.

He feels for the wounded for he is wounded himself when he sees the suffering of innocent infants crying in the night. And he may not have so much for himself but he thought not merely for himself but also for others, and takes what is merely due him.

The righteous man is blind to the color of the skin or to any man’s chosen creed for he is certain that a man is blameless for being born a Christian or a Moslem. For he knows that his God is the God of all men--the God of All Things.

He is one not to murder; neither to lie or takes God’s name in vain. He is never an adulterer or seeks and covets the flesh of any other men’s wives and daughters; his will is steadfast like a high rocky mountain.

The righteous man does not merely seek pleasures or look out for his own self merely. He is a brother’s keeper, a ready hand to lift the miserable in our midst. He seeks in paramount the righteous path, the greater glory of God.

For he knows that it gains him nothing to seek pleasures stained by the blood of innocents or by extreme mischief that only evil men could do. He has patience for he knows his rewards are far greater only if he seek not merely temporary pleasures but the ultimate pleasure of all, and that is, the reward of an Eternal Life, a life in the Hereafter where there is no more pain nor sorrow; a life of bliss amongst radiant gardens and crystal rivers.

For he knows that he loses everything if he lose his own salvation. What does it matter him to have the world and its worldly pleasures if in the end, he shall be sought by the flames of an unending fire in Hell, a fire that burns without end, a fire vengeful to the wickedness of men. Vengeful enough that men would realize that God the Father have given us the beauty of life-of water and wind-and yet many still disobey Him.

Many murder as well as to endanger the life of innocent children-of men and women-in crime and in torts-just in order for them to gain worldly possessions; of relief and luxury that excessive wealth could offer them. They are purely evil that repentance for them is even far worse than an elephant threading the needle’s eye. Even in their earthly existence, they shall have no peace for they shall be continually running away like scared dogs whose mouths are frothing. They could not runaway from their own shadows, only if they knew this. They could never hide anything from God and His angels. Every eye shall examine them and every mirror shall reflect the evil things that they have done. They shall carry their loads up to the fires of Hell that awaits them and this weight is carried even by their offspring, even by their children’s children, for the shame of their misdeed is like the world falling down on them. They shall gain their indignities for God sees everything and indeed they shall be the Companions of the Unending Fire.

They have done that is difficult to undone. They have taken what is impossible to return. They shall never bring life to the deaths that lie in their hands. They have completely closed their own doors towards salvation.

The righteous man shall never fear evil for evil shall fear him. He may suffer the weather and the pangs of hunger yet the lack of things does not imbibe him to seek the hand of Satan for he knows, that what is more important is to be at peace with God, to welcome everyday the daylight full of confidence that the graces of the Lord is with him and that he shall certainly gain his rewards in the Hereafter, of a life without end where there is eternal bliss and not a thing to worry the heart, along mystical gardens and crystal waters, among enchanting temples and white castles with red turrets, where there are trees whose fruit never ceases in any season and so tasty that one could not get enough of them . Nothing could be sweeter than a man stained not by evil things or mischief for he is ready to face the day at all times and he has the most peace in his heart and mind. He may suffer and yet, he has no heaviness in his heart, he has nothing to answer for before any men, and most of all, before God.

The righteous man shall gain wings of the widest span to become the soldier of God, to roam the skies as an angel not only in Paradise but also in the entire universe, even towards this earth that he have left behind.

Salvation is certain for the righteous man, my brothers and sisters, we must all strive to be one.

In heaven, in the company of the Lord, there is no more class or distinction for everyone is a righteous man, may he be a Jew or a Hindu, a Caucasian or African, a rich man or a poor man. Everyone is brothers and sisters to all.

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 everyday. 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 everyday and we say there goes just another government man. Men gossip against another everyday, 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 everyday 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 Qu’ran. 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 Qu’ran, 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 Qu’ran 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 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 everyday. 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.