I'M BACK, AND RECOUPING LOST GROUND

Picking up a pencil, it seems, in order to write a blog.  My life has been dishevel and in arrears since last winter, and things have gotten behind.
     What did I want to write about?  It was March, the end of Lent, and on Easter weekend there were a number of documentaries on the Holy Land going back to the time of Jesus.
     In one notable moment, Jesus was shown rubbing his thumbs over the eyes of a blind man.  I liked this Jesus:  he was kind of frumpy.  His hair made him seem like he could've been a homeless man in any American city.  I reflected on the classic image of Jesus in commercial depictions.  Vidal Sassoon...was this his stylist?!
     I suppose it was from that moment that I formed a different conception of this man's life.  Yes, he was in all ways unremarkable, unremarkable except that he healed the sick, made the blind to see and raised the dead to life.  A man so unremarkable, in fact, that in the end there were no misgivings about delivering him to the same gruesome execution reserved for thieves and blackguards.
     This, then, is the revelation of the Christian faith, now no longer a mystery.  How unremarkable we all are until the moment when we can see one another, relieved of dross and cloaked in glory.  I further reflected, in avoiding the conventional obsession with the crucifixion, that surely it was the resurrection and not his death that constituted our liberation; but then, what about those of us who have abased ourselves with mayhem and butchery?  Alas, being nailed to a cross couldn't be avoided.
     Buddhists don't have a gory revelation at the center of their theology, only frightening ones.  I think fondly of Mahakhala as the deity who kicks our asses if we somehow upend the Dharma.
     So it remains a mystery how we are redeemed from suffering by being made to focus on it.  But then, is there any worse destiny than to not be forgiven?  Isn't this what hell is made of?