eclipsed

Change is inevitable - no matter how much it surprises or how we resist. Around the world the Ring of Fire has been restive. 

Also referred to as the Circum-Pacific Belt, is a path along the Pacific Ocean characterized by active volcanoes and frequent earthquakes. 

Seventy-five percent of earth’s volcanoes - more than 450, are located along the Ring of Fire. Ninety percent of earth’s earthquakes occur along its path, including the planet’s most violent and dramatic seismic events. 

Bromo Tengger Semeru National Park on the island of Java, Indonesia

In Negros Island where I was born and grew up, Mount Kanla-on had been spewing volcanic ash and shaking the earth since September 2024. Folks have been displaced and evacuated from its vicinity. Farms have been abandoned and left follow under sulfur fumes. 

fly free, soar high

What if freedom wasn’t about external circumstances but about the liberation of your own heart and mind? ~ Sandra Ingerman 

Often, we tend to define freedom in the doing - what we can do, where we can go, what we can achieve. Yet true freedom is not in the outside world - it lives within each of us. 

salve for our soul

On February 25 the Philippines celebrated the 39th anniversary of the EDSA People Power Revolution. While it was a celebration of ousting then dictator Ferdinand Marcos - the bitter realization of not having done enough weighs the country down still. 

Current president and Ferdie's sole male heir, Bongbong Marcos tries in vain to sell us the fictitious retelling of his parents as savior and hero of the Filipino. While their family have bought their way back with the ill-gotten wealth they looted as leverage - no one is really buying their bullshit. 

As the month winds to its end, Donand Trump's second term as president of the United States of America has been a royal shit show. How on earth such a spoiled dodger and loser could have gained this seat of honor is a truly regrettable mystery. 

Caught between Marcos in the Philippines and Trump in the US, we are hard pressed to keep our love light tended and thriving. And yet we must - so we turn within to liberate ourselves from all these chaos and challenge. 

It is not in the doing where freedom exists but rather in our being. It is in who we are that our independence prevails. When we nurture and nourish this spirit, then we live on our terms and not by those imposed on us. 

May we always remember this and may it always be enough to sustain us.