A Hostage No More

I ran as to be free,
I hid so as not to be seen,
I kept quiet so as not to be heard
I made myself stupefied so as not to apprehend.

But...no matter what I did
My pursuer never stopped following me
... it was always behind me
Like a malady that couldn't be healed.

My soul was shivering within me,
Day and night I was trembling with agitation
...scaredto be castigated
...scared to be punished.

I kept on fighting to be free
I submerged myself in vintage
I lost myself in a wilderness
But, just the same, I found myself
A wanderer of my own conscience.

Time came,
When I could no longer endure the strain
When I can no longer withstand the hurting thorns.

Yes, I gave up scourging in darkness
paid my charge
To find myself a hostage no more.

Christmas

Christmas - a word evocative of so much in the hearts of all Christians! Christmas - easily the best loved and therefore the most proclaimed of all perennial events.

Wherever one goes, in cities, towns, schools, and homes, one finds representations of the Yuletide mood, a spirit which seems to flourish in the twelfth month of every year and which seems to break through into all of us as though it suddenly came to exist in the very air we breath. In the busy downtown sections and in the private recesses of our homes, we hear disc jockeys reviving old popular songs appropriate for the season. These are the Christmas carols, classic but engrossing strains which have stood the transitory of years and without which the celebration of Christmas will probably seem imperfect.

At night time, the iridescent glitter of vari-colored lights lends a jubilant air to our metropolis. Big and small stores alike, at times even little stalls, display appealing paradigm Christmas threads. In department stores, the sale of greeting cards and gifts becomes a quick and lucrative business. Once more we greet Santa Claus, the modernized version of St. Nicholas, as the jolly, ruddy-faced oldster with the thick, white beard and with the red cotton-lined suit and cap. The living room of every home is often than not, graced by a captivating Christmas tree decorated with gleaming tinsels, bulbs of red, blue and gold, and cute, bright little what-nots.

These are spectacles and traditions amalgamated with Christmas; however, to some people the word has a gustatory supplication. To the rich there are visions of the dinner table crowded with "jamon", "lechon", roasted turkey or "puchero". To the poor, no matter how hard they have to economize for months in their daily meals, there is always a dinner celebration suitable for making a blissful though simple Christmas. There are always native delicacies usually and ordinarily associated with Christmas. The Tagalogs have their puto bumbong and bibingka, the Visayans, their empanada and pancit molo, in Pampanga, reputably known to be the home of good cooks, we have open "calame" and if it is the "pasalubong" type, only a Pampangueno heart can respond to that challenge to the teeth and tongue and palate. The resistant but tasteful and utterly savory delicacy is a pleasure to served more fully for the young who have strong teeth and jaws and to those who can bite crunch and grind it, and the Ilocanos their tupig.

But this are only eventual. A true Filipino and Catholic Christmas is one which becomes a fountain of gaiety, delightedness, and satisfaction not only because of the external traditions that have come to be associated with it such as the carollings the gay parties, and the exchange of gifts, but also because it calls for the best in us and reawakens our slumbering Faith. In response to the invitation of the church bells we brave the cold December air to attend the Misa de Gallo for nine consecutive days.

The true Filipino spirit of Christmas is not felt in the erroneous feature of Christmas trees and lanterns of different styles and arrangement and gay colors, to the ensuing disregard of the Christ Child in his lonely manger. For us Catholics the veritable spirit is more befittingly revealed in a belen,for the Christ Child Who came to earth for love of man is the pure emblem of love. Christmas to be fully Christmas must be uttered by Love. Christmas is the time to forgive and forget past injuries, to reconcile families than to receive , to be at peace at oneself and with the world - for peace on earth can come only to mean of goodwill.

Love and Fantasy

by ThinkerArian

I can ascend to the sky,
like the well-known Superman;
I dunk into the ocean;
like the perspicacious Aquaman.

I can run so quick,
like Robin and Batman;
I can mount a spire,
like Mr. Spiderman.

I can hearken all sounds
like Bionic woman;
I can behold all things,
like six million dollar man.

...but why can't I be loved,
like my neighbor in settlement?
...but why can't I love,
like an ordinary human?

Man is love and love is man.
A mortal heart is for the one who loves;
I can uniquely love and also be loved,
If I hold a heart like that of a man.

Stranger

by ThinkerArian

Why I learn to love you,
whom I never see and don't know.
Why I fall to someone like you
and felt I truly love you.

Love is a great mystery
hard to resist and fight
just for an exchanging messages
I was trap and touched.

Stranger, you possess a magnetic charm
a strong-willed that I am
carried away by your saccharine approach
gives a bit change and colors my world.

Your being God fearing attracts me most
your rich ideas full of His words draw me more close
lifting our spirits to Him are your words
to feel His presence at the midst of our repose.

Stranger, why I can't resist you?
Why I can't ignore you?
Why I can't freed myself from thinking of you?
Though I wish to get out of your life and totally forget you.

You open my heart to this kind of love,
and let me feel more that my life showered with love.
But why this time I feel the emptiness
and letting me feel a chaos life.

I don't know here to put myself and where to stand
for you're not giving me an assurance of love
ignoring my queries makes me feel sad
tormented heart is what I have.

Oh, stranger, I feel a bloody heart
you're really a valiant warrior and struck my heart
hitting my life with that killing shot
and pampering me with your venomous delight.

'Til when I'll be in this cage of pain
'til when I'll wait for your answers to give me light
'til when I'll understand your demanding routine
'til when I"ll wait to see you real.

You're a stigma that marks my being
strong force I can't understand keeps me pulling
reminding me of you and communicate often
and never give up loving you.

we build strong relationship with powerful faith
God-centered we are what we believe
He is at our midst you always uttered
protecting us and make believe.

I feel Hid presence in my agonizing moment
comforting me in my loneliness
"don't give up" and "cheer up" from a voice I heard
favored blessing I heard and granted.

Stranger, God truly loves you
because you're always with Him and in him
He doesn't want us to stop serving
and do something great for Him.

Our relationship is really blessed
but it's within us to fight trials and adversities,
we both promised to love each other 'til out last breath
and made a vow to the Lord with sweet promises.

Things happened through exchanging messages
uniqueness of relationship we have you said
made us free; it's realness and faithfulness
with the Lord we owe our life and respect.

You and me with the Lord
what a great and wonderful moment we shared
despite the distance, miles apart we couldn't easily reach
still go on and fight over battles of life we encounter and felt.

'Til when we'll be like this?
will you fight for me and stand to your promises?
How I wish you'll not give up and fulfill it
to make dream come true and fell its true happiness.

Will there be a chance for us to meet?
Will there be time for us to live together?
Will you be forever a stranger to me?
Ah! whatever will be...

Romantic Fallacies

What springs normally to the mind of young readers when the word "romantic" is mentioned? Certainly the prevailing opinion is that this word conveys aesthetic feelings compelling balanced reformer aspiring to overthrow the institutions the words of love and song enunciated with upturned eyes and a febrile forehead, romantic adventures, valorous knights in spotless white, passionate proposals to ladies pining with love, all culminating in a march to the enchanting tune of Lohengrin, etc., etc.

However, one must accept that this is a one-sided and almost entirely contorted image of romanticism. The romantic authors of the early nineteenth century in England too sincerely and regarded themselves reformers and innovators -- they thought of themselves as very wise, but unluckily, some of them lacked almost wholly the essence of wisdom.

Take Wordsworth for instance. He regarded the world's eminent interpreter of nature, sometimes called the high priest of nature. The beginning of this nature love may be search out back at Hawshead, the unroofed school of nature, where he has said to have "learned more eagerly from flowers and hills and stars than from his books." His aesthetic poems, the shorter ones especially, with lines that procrastinate ever in our memories bear his notable attributes - his sensitiveness as shown in the Prelude; the genuineness of his expression as he gives us the bird, the wind, the flower and the rivulet just as they are; his sight and insight into the lavishness of loveliness in the common world and the full acknowledgment of life in nature. He has given us lines which strike us intensely and impressively. Out of a heart full of compelling love he wrote:

"The sounding cataract
Haunted me like a passion; the tall rock,
The mountain and the deep and gloomy wood,
Their colors and their forms, were then to me
An appetite; a feeling and a love..."

With a certain flourishing wisdom he heard "the still sad music of humanity"; he learned:

....The nature never did betray
The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege,
Through all the years of this our life, to lead,
From joy to joy:..."

With powerful almost disturbed emotionalism he gave us the lines:

"Great God! I'd rather be a Pagan suckled in a creed
So might I, standing in this pleasant lea
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn."

There you have a romanticist, a composite of good and bad, a mortal who tried to scale the "gateway of the stars" but could not enter the "golden bar" of heaven because his feet were decidedly of clay.

Wordsworth's philosophy of nature seems, at first sight, very appealing, but examine his lines further and you shake your head in censure and outright dispute. As Catholics we cannot fail to see how his true and genuine paganism crops out constantly and mars the radiance of many of his more purposeful poems. The reader, upon serious deliberation of his works will find doctrines which are for us indefensible. In the keenly sensitive ode "Intimations of Immortality" the doctrine of pre-existence is alluringly shown:

"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting,
The soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath and elsewhere its setting
And cometh from afar;
Not in entire nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home.

Sounds enticing, does it not? But then he follows this with ideas.

"Earths fills her lap with pleasures of her own;--
To make her foster child, her innate man,
Forget the glories he has known
In that imperial palace whence he came."

Later still in the same poem he says:

"Hence in a season of calm weather
Through the land far we be,
Our souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither,
Can in a moment travel thither,
And can see the children sport upon the shore."

How peculiar this is! He is impressing us that there is an authentic occurence before our temporal life. He says nature can make us forget God and is a supplant for the magnificence of God. Romantic fallacies! Yes and very serious ones for us Catholics; and these ideas do seriously mar the works of Wordsworth.

Very far from Wordsworth is Shelley, the visionary, the radical, the revolutionary, and anarchist. We see in him the incapability to see men and society as they are. He is the unhinged reformer searching to topple the institutions he obscurely identified only in the later years of his life.

His poems are filled with a strange sadness- - -

" Out of the day and night
A joy has taken flight;
Fresh spring and summer and winter hoar
Move my faint heart with grief, but with delight
No more - - oh! never more!"

Shelley's revolutionary works like "Prometheus Unbound," "Revolt of Islam," "Hellas," etc., depict a decided revolutionary radicalism. The reforms they encourage are both stupefying and imaginable. One can only speculate at the widespread beauty that abounds in his passages. He should, I suppose, not be remembered for his vain, foolish rebellion. He shows himself a true poet - a wanderer aspiring perfect beauty though forever sad. The spirit of nature which appeals to us in the sweet-scented flower, the blowing wind, the amber sunset, the magic moonrise - we find reflections of these in his poetry. The emotion that rises and harmonizes into the object beheld, because of the transcendent power of love:

Make me thy lyre even as the forest is
What if my leaves are falling like its own!
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies
Will take from both a deep, autumnal tune
Sweet though in sadness! Be thou spirit fierce
My spirit! Be thou me impetuous one!

He indented himself against all authority. Down with the laws, these only serve to limit the actions of men and cause impediment and happiness; down with religion, priests from ancient times have led men astray; down with the conventions of society; down with the authority of parents over their children! Let us do away with marriage - the marriage contract, all forms of contract are at the root of all social evils. One cannot take this part of Shelley seriously. He appears like a disrespectful, grumpy, narrow-minded, unpleasant, child moved by such vehemence of indignation as he cannot restrain.

The tragedy of Shelley is the tragedy of the Romanticists - thinking themselves so wise but so inappropriate; trying to voice a philosophy fashioned by the commands of fancy not the lucid light of the intellect.

But he was a lyric poet of aesthetic and comely nuances.

Bombastic Byron forever parading his grief and his loss, weaving out of his disenchantment a texture of poetry and beauty - the romantic pilgrim forever sad, yielding in Comus-like rejoicing in an attempt to forget all. Alternating between satiety and contrition. Such a proud sardonic disillusioned man. What bitterness and grief he reveals in the lines:

"My days are in the yellow leaf,
The flowers and the fruits of love are gone;
The worm, the canker and the grief
Are mine alone.

A strange indescribable nature. Byron was. Capable of reliable remarkableness (notice his death) but rarely utilizing the regal privilege..

So there you have the romanticists. More bad than good? Surely not. Although their works have some very intricate faults. This might be because they inspired themselves to discern too much and speculate too little; that they, although philosophers, were all too often improper; that out of frustration with human commonality, they wanted to rip up and shatter that society. If one's house leaks, one must repair it, wisely and economically. Surely there is no need to shatter a house just because it leaks here and there.

The final tragedy of the three English Romantic poets we have taken up in this disquisition is that their best work lies in their minor works. Their major works are marred by unreal thoughts, prodigious, extreme narcissism, and hypocrisy. But their lyric power is above reproof. What loveliness in the common place revealed by Wordsworth; what melting liquid word consistencies in Shelley; what vibrant, oscillating emotions in Byron; what a prowess of consonant values and vowel sounds in all of them.