Love Bus Book 5: Chapter 1 — The Mansion of Ricardo Jr.

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We stood in front of the old mansion of Lolo Ricardo Jr. for a long time before either of us spoke. The gates were rusted. The windows looked tired. But something about the place felt like it had been waiting. Kuya Josh… parang may tumatawag. Bernadeth whispered. I felt it too. Not a real voice, but a quiet pull. We asked Papa Franz if we could go inside. He hesitated, then finally nodded and told us to stay together. The air inside was thick with dust and old wood. We walked slowly through the rooms until we reached the library. Tall shelves lined the walls, filled with books that had not been touched for years.
Bernadeth stopped in front of a low wooden cabinet. She opened one of the drawers carefully. Inside, wrapped in faded cloth, were two old books. Kuya… tingnan mo. she said, holding them up.

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Accept Present, Release Past Memories

Practical Thoughts

I was standing by the river one morning in Thailand, watching the water move. It never stays the same. The surface that touched my eyes a second ago is already gone, carried downstream. Leaves that fell last week are elsewhere now. The light itself keeps shifting. Nature does not argue with time. It simply moves. And in that quiet movement I felt a powerful thought rise: the past reality we keep inside our memory is no longer the reality that is here. Only the present is. Everything else has already changed.

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Forgive 70×7: Second Chances Nature Witnesses

Practical Thoughts

I keep returning to that quiet conversation between Jesus and Peter. Peter, practical as always, wanted a clear number. “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?” It sounded generous already. Seven is the number of completeness in their world. Jesus answered with a number that still unsettles me: “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy times seven.” Not a new limit. An invitation to stop counting. I have carried that answer into ordinary mornings, into arguments that leave a sharp taste, into the slow work of giving people, and myself, another chance. What surprises me most is how nature keeps preaching the same sermon without ever opening a Bible.

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The Violent You Is Me

Poetry

Some wounds do not bleed on the skin. They settle in the way a man raises his voice, the way his hands curl into fists before he even knows why. This poem was written from that quiet, heavy place, the place where a son looks at the father who once struck him “for his own good” and finally sees the same fire living inside his own chest. “The Violent You Is Me” is not an accusation. It is a confession. It is the moment the cycle becomes visible, and the only way forward is to ask for mercy, from the father, from the self, and from the child who still lives inside both of them.

In 2026 we talk more openly about intergenerational trauma, about the difference between discipline and damage, about the courage it takes to break a pattern instead of repeating it. This poem sits inside that conversation. It does not excuse the violence. It simply refuses to let the story end in hatred alone.

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Oxygen Ready Before Man: Creation’s Smart Design

Blog

Have you ever paused and asked why the air we breathe every single day was already waiting for us? The answer is written quietly in the first chapter of Genesis. God did not create man and then scramble to invent plants. He prepared the green world first. On the third day He filled the earth with vegetation. Only on the sixth day did He form man from the dust and breathe into his nostrils the breath of life. That simple order is not accidental. It is the reason oxygen has been present for every human generation since the beginning.

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