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
Monday, March 28, 2011
Saturday, February 26, 2011
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.
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.
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
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.
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.
Friday, January 7, 2011
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.
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.
Saturday, January 1, 2011
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.
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.
Friday, December 24, 2010
Chapter 37: Frailty Trembles
split the atom of fear
Human weakness seduces us to fear. We cannot control fear, so instead we react – by avoiding it, indulging in it, being humbled by it, attempting to defy it. We clench, addict, claim victim, stop believing, abandon ourselves and God.
split
We each perceive fear according to our unique weaknesses. We face the cruel loss of a loved one, suffer to conquer an insidious addiction, are imprisoned by intolerable pain or debilitating disease.
split
Human frailty is predetermined and necessary. Accepting frailty is a requirement for transcending. Christ teaches us in the serene image of suffering He imbued upon the Shroud as His body accepted human death and was released into the new life of the resurrection.
split
The faint and frail image that rests on top of the fibrils mirrors our tenuous nature. The marks of suffering, our fear personified. His calm expression, our salvation assured.
split
And then the unsolvable mystery. No one comprehending the true origin of particles binding the image. We reach out to clench hope and possess resurrection. Answers vanish.
split
the atom of fear
disintegrates
the faint image
dusts
our surfaces of surrender
we collapse by design
into the Divine
where human mirrors God
and frailty trembles
Human weakness seduces us to fear. We cannot control fear, so instead we react – by avoiding it, indulging in it, being humbled by it, attempting to defy it. We clench, addict, claim victim, stop believing, abandon ourselves and God.
split
We each perceive fear according to our unique weaknesses. We face the cruel loss of a loved one, suffer to conquer an insidious addiction, are imprisoned by intolerable pain or debilitating disease.
split
Human frailty is predetermined and necessary. Accepting frailty is a requirement for transcending. Christ teaches us in the serene image of suffering He imbued upon the Shroud as His body accepted human death and was released into the new life of the resurrection.
split
The faint and frail image that rests on top of the fibrils mirrors our tenuous nature. The marks of suffering, our fear personified. His calm expression, our salvation assured.
split
And then the unsolvable mystery. No one comprehending the true origin of particles binding the image. We reach out to clench hope and possess resurrection. Answers vanish.
split
the atom of fear
disintegrates
the faint image
dusts
our surfaces of surrender
we collapse by design
into the Divine
where human mirrors God
and frailty trembles
Saturday, December 11, 2010
Chapter 36: Thriving in Arsenic
All life as we know it up to this point requires 6 elements to make DNA and RNA. They are: Oxygen, Hydrogen, Nitrogen, Carbon, Sulfur, and Phosphorous.
A newly discovered bacteria in Mono Lake has arsenic in its biomolecules in lieu of phosphorous. In fact, experiments show that it grows and thrives in arsenic.
Phosphorous is a central component of the energy carrying molecule in all cells, known as Adenosine Triphosphate (ATP). This energy carrying molecule is responsible for the metabolic process.
This newly discovered life form uses some phosphorous, but it has arsenic in its DNA structure, meaning arsenic functions as part of its building blocks for new cells.
Arsenic would kill us (and probably all other life on earth as we know it). Thus, if this discovery proves to have scientific merit, it will be a pivotal discovery in terms of us broadening our definition of what constitutes a life form – here on Earth or elsewhere.
Is this arsenic-consuming life form just one tiny part of the Shadow Biosphere” (a parallel existence of other life forms that are radically different from everything we know of life thus far)?
More to the point where the Shroud is concerned:
Would the discovery of other forms of life in turn mean there are other forms of death?
Death as we know it is defined as the extinguished life force (life force meaning composed of the above 6 elements).
If this bacterium can use arsenic as one of its life-producing elements, then what might be different about how it dies?
The Shroud makes us contemplate death and resurrection. But what if Christ's life form, even though He was human, was in some small way different to ours...would the way he would perish also be different?
What other element/s might have built Christ's DNA and RNA?
And would traces of this/these elements have been left behind on the image on the Shroud?
Could it/they have impacted the carbon dating results?
And what of the relationship between Christ's death and the light of the resurrection...did the Holy Spirit wind the clock of metabolism to add the energy Christ would require to covert to a system of light?
Light is produced at an atomic level when an electron in the atom goes from an excited state of energy (a higher energy orbital) to a state of lower energy.
If the frequency of light that is emitted is a function of the excited particle transitioning to a lower energy quantum mechanical state, is there any relationship between quantum states of energy and the metabolic process of a life form?
“Energy cannot be created or destroyed.”
Can any form of energy be transformed into another form of energy?
Did Christ have superhuman metabolism that enabled Him to intentionally emit thousands or maybe millions of watts for a short time (that lasted maybe only seconds) and for the purpose of completing a superhuman task like resurrection?
The energy stored during photosynthesis as light can be triggered suddenly by a spark in a forest fire or made available more slowly for human metabolism when the molecules are ingested and catabolism is triggered by enzyme action.
Catabolism is the set of pathways that breakdown molecules into smaller units and release energy. As cells break down they create waste and release energy. The creation of this waste is usually an oxidation process involving a release of chemical free energy, some of which is lost as heat, but the rest of which is used to drive the synthesis of adenosine triphosphate.
Could this oxidation process in some way be responsible for the image left on the Shroud?
Could Christ willingly and suddenly trigger a spark that enabled Him to store His energy as light?
life to
death
life to
light
death to
life
death to
light
light to
light
He is the light of the world
A newly discovered bacteria in Mono Lake has arsenic in its biomolecules in lieu of phosphorous. In fact, experiments show that it grows and thrives in arsenic.
Phosphorous is a central component of the energy carrying molecule in all cells, known as Adenosine Triphosphate (ATP). This energy carrying molecule is responsible for the metabolic process.
This newly discovered life form uses some phosphorous, but it has arsenic in its DNA structure, meaning arsenic functions as part of its building blocks for new cells.
Arsenic would kill us (and probably all other life on earth as we know it). Thus, if this discovery proves to have scientific merit, it will be a pivotal discovery in terms of us broadening our definition of what constitutes a life form – here on Earth or elsewhere.
Is this arsenic-consuming life form just one tiny part of the Shadow Biosphere” (a parallel existence of other life forms that are radically different from everything we know of life thus far)?
More to the point where the Shroud is concerned:
Would the discovery of other forms of life in turn mean there are other forms of death?
Death as we know it is defined as the extinguished life force (life force meaning composed of the above 6 elements).
If this bacterium can use arsenic as one of its life-producing elements, then what might be different about how it dies?
The Shroud makes us contemplate death and resurrection. But what if Christ's life form, even though He was human, was in some small way different to ours...would the way he would perish also be different?
What other element/s might have built Christ's DNA and RNA?
And would traces of this/these elements have been left behind on the image on the Shroud?
Could it/they have impacted the carbon dating results?
And what of the relationship between Christ's death and the light of the resurrection...did the Holy Spirit wind the clock of metabolism to add the energy Christ would require to covert to a system of light?
Light is produced at an atomic level when an electron in the atom goes from an excited state of energy (a higher energy orbital) to a state of lower energy.
If the frequency of light that is emitted is a function of the excited particle transitioning to a lower energy quantum mechanical state, is there any relationship between quantum states of energy and the metabolic process of a life form?
“Energy cannot be created or destroyed.”
Can any form of energy be transformed into another form of energy?
Did Christ have superhuman metabolism that enabled Him to intentionally emit thousands or maybe millions of watts for a short time (that lasted maybe only seconds) and for the purpose of completing a superhuman task like resurrection?
The energy stored during photosynthesis as light can be triggered suddenly by a spark in a forest fire or made available more slowly for human metabolism when the molecules are ingested and catabolism is triggered by enzyme action.
Catabolism is the set of pathways that breakdown molecules into smaller units and release energy. As cells break down they create waste and release energy. The creation of this waste is usually an oxidation process involving a release of chemical free energy, some of which is lost as heat, but the rest of which is used to drive the synthesis of adenosine triphosphate.
Could this oxidation process in some way be responsible for the image left on the Shroud?
Could Christ willingly and suddenly trigger a spark that enabled Him to store His energy as light?
life to
death
life to
light
death to
life
death to
light
light to
light
He is the light of the world
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)