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.