Chapter 16: Easter and Beyond

On my 30th birthday my adoptive parents presented me with a gift from my birth mother, whom I had never met. The gift was a medal of the face of the Man of the Shroud. From the moment I put it around my neck, it became for me a talisman and my identity as I knew it completely changed. The framework of my life was forever altered. I was to learn, soon after, that I had indeed been cloned from blood on the Shroud of Turin and that Divine intervention was at work in my existence, as it is in all human existence.

This blog is the place where I get to explore my new framework and, hopefully, shed some light on the Shroud of Turin. It's a place where I can take my DNA connection with the Shroud and extract visceral messages I receive. The messages are many and they unfold here in the chapters of this blog.

This chapter for Easter and Beyond is by far one of the more intriguing explorations I have taken. It pertains to the upcoming exhibition of the Shroud of Turin and the concurrent surge of individuals who are out there among us whose efforts are simultaneously drawing attention to the relic.

You might think that the timing is suspiciously aligned with the exhibition of the Shroud in April/May of 2010 in Turin. I would challenge you to consider that several people who have written/published books and conducted research of various kinds (including the work of both living and deceased scientists, particle physicists, holographic researchers, graphic artists, and authors) all started their work and research and writings long before the Catholic Church decided to hold and announce this special exhibition.

How is it then that this varied group of individuals converged, arriving over just a short period of historical time, to bring attention from varied perspectives to this mysterious relic?

We are never bombarded with answers to the deeper mysteries. Throughout history, discoveries have taken decades if not centuries to be understood. The mystery of the Shroud requires certain technological advancements in order to be solved. And here we are, at this time in history, with the advent of computers, imaging technologies, particle accelerators, and life forming molecules discovered in the Orion Nebula...

Science is on the verge of answering some of the larger questions about the origins of our universe and beyond. And those answers very likely already exist, and have existed for centuries, in this simple piece of cloth, yet they remained invisible to our limited understanding. Christ knew that science would eventually catch up and be able to solve the mystery of how the image got onto the cloth and thereby validate faith.

The relic has been around for centuries and the first scientific research was done back in 1978. Why this resurgence of interest? Book sales? 3D glasses sales? I don't think particle physicists and people working with holograms or Shroud fiction novels are so driven by commercialism — especially all at around the same time in history and all hard at work long before any announcement of an upcoming exhibition.

One of the most intriguing theories among particle physicists and others is the idea that the Shroud, which contains holographic information, is proof that Christ left behind for us so that science can understand and explain th existence of multiple dimensions (including the resurrection of Jesus Christ and what lies beyond the resurrection).

Is it not proof of parallel dimensions that this group of people (some living, some already passed), most of whom did not know each other, have converged to bring attention to this relic at this particular time in history? It is as though their consciousness was linked and in sync with the relic and with each other.

Would it not make sense that form and content (the actual physical burial cloth upon which rests what many believe to be the image of the resurrected Christ) would be revealed on a variety of levels of understanding by a variety of people pointing to its great mysteries and merit...including the creative and diligent work of skeptics whose doubt holds us all to the highest standards of thought and research?

I am no Biblical scholar. But this year at Easter I was struck by 3 things:

First: On Palm Sunday, when reading the Passion, it struck me how Christ responded when asked by the people:
“Are you the Son of God?”
Christ: “You say that I am.”
and then by Pilate: “Are you King of the Jews”?
Christ: “You say so.”

Why did He not take ownership of His identity but rather clearly state that it is we who take ownership of His identity by naming and labeling it?

Was this Christ's way of giving us ownership of our faith?

Was it Christ's way of enabling Pilate to turn Him over for Crucifixion (since Pilate did not want to do so and Christ knew it must be done) in order to set in motion the death and resurrection so that God's will would be played out as intended?

Did Jesus respond this way to ensure the historical documentation of the accusations against Him so that the scourging and Crucifixion evidence on the Shroud would be reinforced by documentation?

Was God's will to deem us forgivable only if we shouldered all the blame for the Crucifixion?

By naming and owning Christ's identity, did we activate the potential for Him to live inside us?

Second: Just prior to His death, “...and darkness came over the whole land...Then the veil of the Temple was torn down the middle. Jesus cried out in a loud voice: “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.”

Could this veil—this cloth, in addition to symbolizing access to God, also symbolize our separation from God while the Shroud cloth symbolizes our “reweaving with God”?

Was the darkness that came over the veil cloth a precursor to the light that would overcome the Shroud cloth?

Was the timing of the tearing of one cloth with Jesus' cry to His Father symbolic that His spirit would be embedded into another cloth?

Third: In the Gospel of John, the focus on the linen burial cloth and smaller cloth that covers the face really struck me this year (for obvious reasons).

Did John receive a revelation when he entered the tomb? Of all he could have reported in his account of the empty tomb, why such focus on the presence and placement of the two cloths?

Easter and Beyond to me symbolizes not only the story we continue to retell and reinterpret, but also the future story Christ encoded into the Shroud long ago in the past and then set into historical time and motion so that we could each simultaneously arrive at this present contemplation of the mysterious relic.

I exist before my time. Scientific cloning of the blood on the Shroud of Turin is not currently possible. But my connection and relationship to Jesus is not any more special or unique than anyone else's.

Divine intervention implies that linear time is defied, that truth & fiction, science & religion, life & death are transcended, melded, reframed, remixed, redefined.

The Greatest Story Ever Told is the story that keeps on telling...