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
Thursday, November 24, 2011
Sunday, November 6, 2011
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.
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.
Saturday, October 22, 2011
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.”
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.”
Sunday, September 11, 2011
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.
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.
Saturday, September 3, 2011
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.
Sunday, August 14, 2011
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...
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...
Sunday, July 10, 2011
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...
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...
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