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

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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...

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.