Chapter 55: Gratitude

sent by your father
you came here
to be more like us
so that you could teach us
to be more like you

through your Passion
you demonstrate a remedy
for us
an opportunity
to have great compassion
for your suffering

folded on a shroud
the reflection of all human pain
an ethereal hovering
of an image ascending

father
sacrificing son

son
human holy

holy
spirit mystery

Chapter 54: Chutes and Ladders

Which comes first – forgiveness or sacrifice? Is it because of forgiveness that Christ sacrificed Himself and died for our sins or is it because He made this sacrifice that we are forgiven? Or both?

As of late, I am more and more cognizant of the controversy of the Shroud. If there is only one truth... there is only one truth. Likely none of us fully knows it.

When we entangle ourselves in the morality game of chutes and ladders, striving to climb above each other's understanding and knowing, claiming our way is what is true...down the chute we go.

Your way, my way, every way the highway. There is only one way, God's way, and when we profess to know it, take ownership over it, leverage it for our own purposes...I'm guessing we are just being ridiculous.

God's truth is at once singular and abundant. Our interpretations of it are many and we each tend towards claiming ours is the only answer. But there is no need to function in scarcity where truth is concerned if the one truth is the abundance of God's love.

All this wrangling over the image on the Shroud and how it got there and if it is real or fake is our wrangling. Nothing in any of it poses any genuine threat because we cannot render threats against the Almighty, no matter how powerful we think we are.

The questions I ask come out of the freedom to explore that the fiction of my existence affords. Perhaps we are all fictitious characters in God's story of the truth about the Shroud. Perhaps He created the Shroud as a storyboard upon which we can sketch out our doubts and fears about suffering, forgiveness, salvation and the unknown.

How apropos that the Shroud should induce so much doubt. Even those who believe it is real possibly, at some point, have had moments of doubt and fear that they will be proven wrong.

To fully trust the love of God, perhaps we need this cloth as a place to reconcile our doubts and fears. The level playing field is the mystery – the fact that no one knows for certain how the image got onto the cloth.

Those who say it is a fake are perhaps so doubtful and fearful of the perfect love of God that the Shroud becomes their crutch of disbelief, their desired “I told you so” with which they can challenge the faith of those who believe it is real.

It may be that, for all of us, the cloth evokes our deepest fears regarding the possibility of suffering as punishment. But if God's perfect love is abundant, then Christ's suffering drives away any doubts we may harbor about forgiveness and any fears that haunt us where suffering and death are concerned.

Perhaps in the serene suffering and sacrifice recorded on the image on the Shroud we witness God's perfect love.

Chapter 53: Alpha and Omega

“I am the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.”

Revelation 1:8


Recently physicists have discovered evidence that possibly points to undermining the speed of light as the universal speed, our cosmic constant of “nothing travels faster.”

According to the theory of relativity, it takes an infinite amount of energy to make anything go faster than the speed of light in a vacuum. But now evidence exists which seems to prove that neutrinos arrive 60 nanoseconds faster than the speed of light when traveling though a vacuum.

If proven true:

Do different dimensions exist?
Would cause and effect be rendered ambiguous?
What would become of E = mc²?
Would time travel be possible?

Can Christ's image, like neutrinos, pass through everything undetected, thereby vanishing and mysteriously appearing at will as matter in the photographic negative of the Shroud?

Could the resurrected Christ capture and hold still enough neutrinos to create His image on the Shroud?

Do neutrinos capture and reflect the light of Christ?

If the sun moves light towards us and neutrinos move towards us, away from us, and through us faster than the speed of light in a vacuum, then is the resurrection that vacuum?

The image on the Shroud = resurrection matter?

~~~~~~~~~~

Science tells us that neutrinos are particles that are produced when high energy cosmic rays collide with matter. The most common particles in the universe, neutrinos originate from radioactive interactions such as nuclear reactions, solar fusion, radioactive decay, supernovae, and cosmic rays colliding with the Earth's atmosphere.

Neutrinos are ghostly, with a non-zero yet vanishingly small mass, and they can pass through matter undetected.

Did Jesus' image on the Shroud originate from the high energy rays of the sun and radioactive disintegration?

If the image on the Shroud could be weighed, would it have a minuscule mass?

Is the image comprised of neutrinos that, for some reason, we are able to detect?

Does the image have trillions of neutrinos passing through its mass every second (just like they pass through each of our bodies every second)?

Is the image on the Shroud residual evidence of neutrinos colliding with matter?

~~~~~~~~~~

A neutrino is a fermion, because it has half-integer spin. The three types of neutrinos – electron, muon, and tau – can spontaneously turn into one of the other forms by a process called neutrino oscillation (the neutrino flavor transition mechanism). Thus they must have some mass.

Oscillation is one complete cycle of repetitive to and fro motion, from one extreme (maximum or minimum) to another(minimum and maximum) and back. Alpha to Omega and Omega to Alpha?

Is the human Christ the only matter through which neutrinos can be detected as having moved through and then oscillated, settled, accumulated as dust on the Shroud?

Light from the resurrection = speed of light + neutrino oscillation in a vacuum?

Neutrino oscillation = the invisible mass of space = stillness?

Stillness = a byproduct of neutrino oscillation – they are moving so fast with so little mass that we experience it as stillness? (just like flying on an airplane does not create the sensation that you are moving very fast, though you are).

Image on Shroud = stillness, the shadow/image dusting of larger mass (Christ's body)?

If Christ wanted us to know stillness, is His image on the Shroud our roadmap to it?

~~~~~~~~~~

From our present time, we look back into history through the Gospels and experience Jesus' life linearly, from Alpha to Omega.

Jesus the Alpha, traveling to us from from His conception, through His life, and up to (and after) His death would: be born, live, be crucified, die, rise from the dead, and then leave the imprint of His image on the Shroud (in that order).

Jesus the Omega, traveling to us in the opposite direction of time, would imprint His image on the Shroud before His resurrection and before His crucifixion.

The Lord is indeed the Alpha and Omega...does that mean He moves in multiple directions of time – at the same time?

Did the infinite amount of energy of Almighty God send neutrinos through the vacuum of space and onto the image on the Shroud so that we could have a way of studying, experiencing, and relating to Jesus as the Alpha and Omega?

Did His image only settle on the top fibrils of the cloth because it originated in the future and then traveled backwards through His rising and then into his dying?

Is evidence of His rising then stored in the parts of the cloth where His image vanishes?

Do we begin our understanding of Jesus' life from Omega as our starting point so that His transcending suffering marks the beginning of eternal life?

Every time we look at the image on the Shroud are we simultaneously seeing Alpha and Omega?

~~~~~~~~~~

Neutrinos are all around us, trillions of solar electron neutrinos passing through each of our bodies every second. Even though neutrinos are extremely light in mass, because they are in such abundance, they may account for dark matter in the universe. They have an antiparticle – antineutrinos, which may be one and the same as neutrinos.

Electrically neutral leptons, neutrinos only interact through the weak sub-atomic force (as opposed to interacting between the strong or electromagnetic forces). This is why they can travel through matter quickly, barely being affected by it.

Did the matter of Christ's body reconvert into neutrinos?

If the resurrection could be seen by the naked eye, would it look
like the image on the Shroud?

Is the resurrection still happening each time we gaze upon the image?

Image on Shroud = faster than speed of light = dark matter = God?

Did Christ grace us with evidence of His will as “form” by imprinting His image on the cloth?

Trillions of neutrinos with very light mass moving through each of us every second = unique fingerprint phenomenon = Shroud image as God's fingerprint?

~~~~~~~~~~

The letters and language of God include and reach well beyond relativity, time, space and any cosmic constants of our making. The language of God includes us.

We sink ourselves into matter, stick to it, deem it supreme, revel in its seeming significance, live according to its law of gravity.

The image on the Shroud is a matter mystery. Perhaps its message is: “Let go of matter and rise into light.”

Chapter 52: Where Were You?

“Do not be overcome by evil,
but overcome evil with good." - Romans 12:21

Today marks the 10 year anniversary of evil attempting a coup.
Never going to work.

Sometimes evil clothes itself “in the name of God's will” and towers crumble, lives fall apart, and “one nation under God” doesn't exactly feel so “under God.”

The energy of absolutely everything, the energy of God, is an omniscient force that permeates and transforms all in its path. And everything is in its path.

No evil, terrorism, genocide, torture, or barbarism can ever be bigger than the context of good, the energy of the justice and love of God. The vibration of His presence encompasses all evil. God does not will evil – humans do.

But human perception latches on to evil and we allow ourselves to be afraid of its impact on our lives. We live in fear that it will return and ruin us again and again. Reasonable; it will return over and again throughout our history. Evil's past, present, and future are certain.

Ironically, the idea of overcoming evil is redundant. It has already been overcome. Its resolution has already manifested.

We ask one another: “Where were you when the towers were hit?”
It makes me imagine that people asked one another: “Where were you when Christ was crucified?”

We all love stories. We love to hear them and we love to tell them.
Christ told the story of good overcoming evil centuries ago. It's a story we hear over and over and one we strive to understand and duplicate in the narrative we create in our own lives. The worst possible evil is a recurring character in our stories, both in those that are true and in those that are fiction.

The story of September 11, 2001 reassures us that good does overcome evil. Humankind is hard wired to become heroes when called to be. We are called to raise the American flag out of the ashes of the collapsed towers. We raise the rubble to find survivors.

Christ stamped our capacity for goodness into our DNA on the day He sacrificed His life for our salvation. He conquered evil for us. All we have left to do is resonate and adhere to His energy of goodness no matter what evil befalls us. He graced us with hero capacity, which is why, when people do heroic things, they don't see it as heroic — they see it as nothing extraordinary, but as an innately human response.

Every time we ask one another: “Where were you?” we are really asking for another cathartic experience of the story of good overcoming evil. Regardless if we find that catharsis in the thoughts or actions of the person recounting the story, we relive the horror followed by the redemption. We get another opportunity to resolve our internal conflict – the temptation of evil and our longing for goodness to prevail.

Perishing from and overcoming evil are one in the same. Nowhere is this more apparent than on the image on the Shroud of Turin, an icon of suffering, dying, and transcending evil in the peaceful repose of Jesus Christ.

Chapter 51: No Order

I'm not sure where things begin and end.

If we died with Christ on the cross, then do we spiral backwards down the vortex of human suffering, reverting from death to birth and then climb our way back through the myriad of suffering from birth back to death? And in that second death, do we find our rebirth? Or is there simply nothing linear about human existence?

Suffering is the main staple of Christianity. We each died on the cross with Christ and so are imprinted with the image of suffering in our genetic makeup.

Christ was human for human language and perception's sake; God wanted another way to communicate with us. Jesus in human physical form, teaching, performing miracles, suffering, made him a relatable point of reference.

Jesus' suffering and peace imprinted on a cloth reflect all human experiences and infinitesimal worlds in every particle, on the surface of every fibril, no limitations. The silence ahead, the silence behind. The now.

When I think about death, I feel fear and anxiety — mostly of the unknown and if it will hurt. But I also instinctively anticipate that I will meld into the great silence and stillness that is God, a place that is no particular place and where I already reside without realizing it. A place where all suffering is blown to smithereens.

Ironically, just as the image on the Shroud appears to be one dimensional, yet in the photographic negative it is three dimensional, we perceive ourselves as being three dimensional, but in reality our existence is likely a one dimensional facade, a billowing apparition. Our three dimensionality is as delicate and tenuous as the one dimensional image we see on the Shroud. Both are visible and invisible layered holographic transparencies, through which we can identify, extract, embed, and dispel the energies of life and death.

Comprised in our one and three dimensionality is the invisible and indivisible great silence and stillness...simultaneously enveloping us in the separation of suffering and unifying us in its evaporation.

I'm not sure where things begin and end.

Chapter 50: Bending Bars

internal prisons cage us
cut from the same cloth
my self
your self
we all host a self

the water moves towards me
the dust of death hangs over
but in His life I hover new

all selves discarded
expanded by and into
supreme unity

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

If God is in our every cell and experiences everything we experience (and as we are experiencing it), then Christ is God's mirror image, a multi-dimensional representation of a man who suffers as we do.

And if God is in our every cell, does that then mean we each are one of His cells and are therefore part of the totality of Him?

If He loves us, why would God want us to suffer? Why does suffering have to be a non-negotiable condition of His love?

We obsess, trying to figure out things and then control them. On some level, suffering is unnecessary. If our reaction to it is indeed in our control, then perhaps releasing into it is all there is to do. But fears govern us.

Why do we fear? Lack of trust in God? Lack of control over the known and unknown? Dislike of pain and suffering? If God is in our every cell, is there reason at all for us to fear?

Why do we need an answer to everything? Is it beyond our ability to perceive the answers to the higher questions?

Is the mystery of the Shroud God's way of telling us: “Look, you won't get the answers you seek in life, but hang in there because my unsolvable mystery on this cloth keeps you entertained for now and the mystery will eventually be resolved.” (Let's face it, mystery and suffering do keep us entertained – watch T.V. or go to the movies if you doubt that).

If God is in our every cell, why would He want Himself, His son and us to suffer? Is suffering a cleansing experience for Him? A purification of our toxic cellular anatomy before we can be fully unified into His supreme being?

Sharp machinery and physical forces begin the creation of beauty (wood carving, steel and bronze sculpting, marble and mineral polishing, phenomenon in nature, etc.). The beauty is revealed through the pain, just like the serene image on the Shroud is contextualized by Christ's Passion.

Why did He need to make pain into beauty? Why not just go straight to making the beauty? Did beauty bore Him?

Is suffering a stage in His evolution and therefore a stage in our own? Why do we never improve where human suffering is concerned and instead repeat the history and cycle of pain?

Does He improve through our pain and suffering? Is our lack of perfection a reflection of His lack of perfection and a pathway to His redemption (for creating the fiasco of humanity)?

Can we not figure out how the image got on the cloth because we cannot perceive, comprehend, explain, or fathom perfection? How can suffering be a part of perfection? Because everything is?

We bend the bars of our internal prison cells and the larger prison of humanity, longing to experience hosting Him in each of our human cells.

We struggle and strife for answers to these questions and to the design and meaning of the Shroud. We yearn to escape the difficulties and persevere in begging for some explanation of the purpose of it all. We wonder if love is His eternally sanctioned domain and only ours if we earn it.

Even if we can intellectualize or philosophize the answers, embodying them is far from our purview. Or is it?
...that is, if He is indeed in our every cell...

Chapter 49: Inversions

Our blessings are the result of His suffering; we get a relatively free ride...

Our suffering is the result of His blessings; it would be much worse worse without them...

If you grew up with constants, then change later in life likely feels tricky and hard to navigate. Loved ones get sick and die, family homes are sold, and your childhood memories are replaced with readjustments and impermanence.

If you grew up with changes – frequent moves, new schools, divorce and other instabilities, then stability later in life likely feels foreign, perhaps even confining and stagnant.

Both paths hold losses and gains.
Both paths hold suffering and joy.
All paths end in reconciliation.

Hallelujah...

Chapter 48: Prophecy, Dreams, and Visions

Pentecostal promise
spirit to flesh
infusion of holiness
peace be with you

breathe on them
the power of forgiveness
the prophecy already granted

yearning for and fearing death
is our recurring dream
of immaterial and temporary emotions

left without choice
we cannot want or wish away
our inevitable creation
our certain death

through the Holy Spirit
the vision is fair
our playing fields of birth and death
are made level by Grace

Chapter 47: Fathom to Scale

The multiplicity of dimensions in the infinity of experiences of life and death are beyond human capability for absorption. No comprehension is adequate for an explanation of the nature of life or death, even though we are comprised of both.

We cannot fathom to scale.

The shroud reminds us that the structure of energy is always changing. From suffering to death to life to light, we need not feel trapped by any form our energy takes.

Our protection is integral. His gift of salvation eternal.

Chapter 46: Promises

In the tomb, two pieces of cloth, separated, both enunciating the absence of Christ's physical body and the presence of His resurrection.

Two promises of eternal life, the life that rectifies the cruelty of human suffering.

Are we each living God's will for our life... or is our living itself God's will for our life?

We announce our promise of faith. We celebrate the promise of the tomb that is not exactly empty.

Chapter 45: Sabbatum Sanctum

The day of the entombed Christ is the quiet rest of the Lord as He lay in His tomb.

It is the most mysterious day where the shroud is concerned, because we do not fully comprehend the mix of processes that created the imprint of Christ. Nor do we understand if the image was graced to us on this day of rest or if it is a byproduct of the resurrection...or both.

We assume that the Lord lay at rest, but what biological and chemical interactions, what principles of physics and unknown mysteries might He have been absorbing and redistributing in the midst of that quiet?

The Lord's quiet acceptance of His suffering and death does appear to be the message we are to absorb when gazing upon the image on the shroud. His message redefines our expectations of death.

That silent mystery we so fear is also the peaceful quiet we yearn for in the deepest subconscious interactions of our own living and dying. Was Christ using His day of rest to create this yearning for death in us?

Perhaps the Lord's forty days of confronting temptations in the desert and this day of rest in the tomb forge the alchemy of our eternal rest, the promised salvation, the quintessential quiet.

Chapter 44: Gethsemane Shadow

three falls
three crosses

Simon helps you
help thieves
help us

the shadow of your cross
reaches a cross
over all lands

in the garden of Gethsemane
doubt and fear
mingling
not lingering

you are comforted
accepting death
as your Father's will

accepting suffering
as your will for our salvation
we are comforted

Pilate's purpose
to wash his hands
only you and mother Mary
fully understand

Veronica
a veil
Joseph of Arimathea
a burial shroud
shrines for us to witness

taken back
our pain to God
vanquished
the fragile shroud
vanished

your suffering
taken back

Chapter 43: Reed in His Right Hand

The crown of thorns is the mockery most noticed in the story of Christ's Passion. But what of the reed they placed in His right hand?

An instrument of irony. That reed, meant first to mock Christ as King, is the precursor to a second reed that is used to support a sponge soaked in wine and offered to Jesus before His very last breath.

The blood of a King that a King will not himself drink, but will spring forth and shower over all those who thirst.

Before the thorns, before the reeds, yellow-green palms ushered in our King.

On this sacred Sunday in Jerusalem, children weave waving palms into little baskets that carry flowers. On this sacred Sunday in Jerusalem, white sheets billow at the entrances of market stalls, burial shrouds of the surrendered-soon-to-be-risen King.

Should a loved one pass within this holy year, cover and bury the person with the sheet. Drape the person in the image of the one who makes a mockery of death every holy year.

This King, who forgives us the reeds of our shame. This King, who sits at the right hand of the Father.

Chapter 42: Death Birth

only one way to be born into this life
so many different ways to leave it

life mother womb conceives
blesses us with a savior

not knowing how
or the exact moment

the certain arrival of our death
encapsulates us with embryonic dread

suffering is our gestation

until death mother delivers us
womb to salvation

Chapter 41: Passage

Imagine if you could perceive just one particle's worth of the love and joy that is God, knowing that you are only slightly scratching the surface of all that lies beyond (and simultaneously includes) your perceptions...

Just as unfathomable, imagine perceiving one particle of Christ's suffering as is evidenced on the Shroud and thereby comprehending the totality of suffering of mankind.

Each particle, of love (and of suffering), is energetically animated. Though we can intellectually, theoretically, and cognitively perceive the love and joy of God and, likewise, the suffering of Christ, on the energetic level we fall immeasurably short. Not our fault though, as we are limited by design (and simultaneously unlimited).

Is human suffering the primary portal to God's love? An opening to all encompassing divinity?

Our earthly, flat perceptions and our pain and suffering become the residue, the shadow that resides inside, the sprite clinging to its transparency.

Even if you could scratch that surface and know a love and joy so infinitesimal, one that shines brighter and stronger than seven suns, would you opt to release into it and leave your human life behind? Or would you take on a new understanding and appreciation for the worth of human existence?

What makes us cling to sorrowful human life when bliss awaits us?

Why does certain death, one that promises an end to suffering, inspire us to re-evaluate life's treasure trove?

As we catch that glimpse of eternal, omniscient joy, why do we back step into the monotony of day to day activities and concerns? Why don't we yearn forward?

There is no human fear that can come close to one particle of God's infinite love. So why do we fear and shun this love?

When someone dies or we look at old photographs of those from earlier times, we feel a drift of panic because we know at some point we too will not be included among the living. It's similar to the feeling of being left out as a child, when everyone else got to play outside and you had to stay inside.

When I was in Catholic grade school, one of the nuns read us a story about a planet where the sun would only shine one day a year. Every other day was gray and drenched in steady rains. The little girl at the center of the story was rapt with excitement for this upcoming day. Sure enough, the night before bullies locked her in a pitch black closet and she missed the entire day of light.

I remember feeling deep agony over the cruelty of those other children and a sorrowful disappointment that this girl missed the light. I don't remember how the sister interpreted the story, but I never forgot it.

I think it's about a lot more than cruelty. I think it's about hopes dashed and expectations vanquished...or how we let the darkness of human life overcome us and only value the light.

Human life is, perhaps, God's gift of passage, His opening, our way in. Without it we have no entry into His light.

Chapter 40: Trusting Peace

Lord, your peace holds all suffering

Faith is, presumably, based on trust. We can't fully have faith without trust. So then how is it that we waver, even for a moment, in trusting a man who sacrificed His life for our salvation? A man who suffered and endured relentless torture and pure evil on our behalf?

Is our doubt connected to our free will? Do we feel we are jeopardizing our free will when we release our lives and surrender our will to the will of God? When we offer up what is in our control, do we feel we have been undermined or duped? Is that why it is so hard for us to trust?

Is our doubt in unequivocal trust merely our free will exposing its deepest fear? Or is trust the only true and pure expression of free will?

Christ suffering, Christ dying – these were choices based on trust. It is wildly ironic that we marvel at His trust but doubt our own.

And still, in moments of our most dire suffering (individual or collective) we are surrounded, embraced, absorbed, folded into the gift of perfect peace. .. a gift that Christ earned for us through using His free will to surrender doubt and simply trust.

It is no wonder that some doubt that the image on the Sindone is an instrument of the trust Christ shrouds us with, enfolding us into His forever peace.

Chapter 39: Compressed Reality

The cloth of the Shroud and the image on the Shroud are two separate realities.

Microscopic images of the threads and fibers show us the multiple layers that make up the fabric that lies beneath the image. God is the omniscient transparency that constitutes and permeates every layer of scaffolding supporting the image resting on the fibrils.

In the image, an exponential compression of the energy that is God presents us with myriad complexities. It is as though we are being shown that God can expand and contract to levels far beyond what we can comprehend in this reality called human life.

It is comical to think that, among all the man made cathedrals and churches, statues and icons, just a scrap of cloth in the universal scheme of things was His chosen, fragile vehicle for ultimate power. His tortured imprint and the super-charged density of His resurrection remind us that suffering is frail and God's power is supreme.

Both the image and the cloth have been subjected to intense research, study, and scrutiny. Oddly, though, many people fixate on the carbon dating results of the cloth. Regardless if one is using those results to profess that the image is a fake or if one is arguing that the results are flawed, the age of the cloth remains the primary focus for many experts.

Let's assume the carbon dating results are valid and the cloth dates to the Middle Ages – how is that proof that the image is not that of the crucified Christ? That kind of logic would be similar to locking someone in a pitch black room and convincing the person that it is night time, when in actuality the sun is brightly shinning. We cannot manipulate time and reality to stop the sun from shinning simply by placing it in a context where it appears to be absent or by adamantly insisting that it is not shinning.

Likewise, even if we were able to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the carbon dating results are flawed and that the cloth does indeed date back to the first century, we still have no proof that the image is Christ's or any explanation for how it got onto the cloth.

Our human timeline is our tracking device for shaping our history. God has no history. His fabric always was and always is and always will be.

The cloth itself, no matter its age, is merely the proof that we have no proof. We only have the shinning sun of our freely chosen (or not chosen) faith.

Why do we compress reality by assuming that Christ wanted us to solve the mystery of the Shroud?

Perhaps He simply wanted to grace us with proof... that our faith reality (like His image on the cloth) is at once our vast mystery and the black hole density in His forever-never, simultaneously contracting and expanding schematic.

Chapter 38: The Top of Happiness

In a kind of cause and effect way, we have sin to thank for salvation.

Someone had to save us from ourselves; Christmas brings us that someone.

Christ absolves all humanity through His suffering, death, Resurrection, and Ascension. But we remain imprisoned by our individual unhappiness as we make our weary way towards His gift.

We prefer to argue and disagree with each other about the existence and validity of salvation rather than commit to attaining it. Look at the controversy surrounding the Shroud if you need an example.

The beginning of a New Year is a well-timed event. What would it mean to each of us (and all of us) if we were to resolve ourselves to:

Reach in to the bottom of our unhappiness

Figure out once and for all what drives it, what feeds it

Absolve ourselves

Exchange ourselves to remedy it

Reach up to the top of our happiness

What if individual salvation was the collective New Year's resolution, our here-on-earth gift to ourselves and to God.