I have to say it. Christ died for my sins and I am forgiven.

I don't know why this is the case, but for the last two months I have delayed writing anything in my blog because I seem to be obsessed with the need to explain my belief that Christ did indeed die for my sins.  This obsession carried through all of Lent and the Easter season.  Pentecost is now come and gone, and so I should perhaps get on with it as well.

The only education I have in metaphysics is 10% of a first-year course in philosophy at the undergraduate level.  So, I feel very inadequate.  I have put very little intellectual energy into this at least until I met Myrta, when I was in my late 50s.  In our family, we did not talk openly about these things and, indeed, I did not talk openly with Myrta about them.  I don't know why I felt compelled to start now.

In any event, I write this blog knowing that there is no point in attempting to handle it intellectually.  I should report to you that I bought and read very carefully a beautiful book by the theologian John Dominic Crossan.  My wife used to read Crossan a lot but I never even asked her about what she was reading.  My Minister warned me that he is pretty dry and uninspiring to read.  She is correct.

The book I bought is called Resurrecting Easter.  I thought, surely, that would give me some inspiration.  It was a very dry travelogue about a number of trips that the author made along with his wife to look at various depictions of the resurrection in the Middle East, Turkey, Italy and France.  The argument he makes and seems to prove from these pictures is that the early depictions of the resurrection showed Christ taking all of humanity with him.  Eastern Christianity never forgot that concept.  Somewhere between the eighth and thirteenth centuries the West forgot it and proceeded to depict Jesus going up alone.

Of course, the debate is very important.  As I say, I don't have the wherewithal to be involved in it.  I do feel, as I get closer to my eighty-third birthday, that I will be okay.  If you will, I will come out just fine on the other side.  We don't know for sure, but I have faith.  I am prepared to let go of what sometimes seems like now to be an isolated existence for the sake of deeper union.

There, I said it and now we can get on with some further blogs in the near future about more frivolous stuff.