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

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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...