Iwo Jima

Mt Suribaci, and the raising of the flag. Have you ever thought how similar that must be to raising the cross of Jesus on the mount?



Often times I have thought that we have mini crucifixions in our lives, and when comparing something like this to the raising of the cross for Jesus, it appears that in our collective lives, we also have symbols of and mini crucifixions.

Somehow the raising of the flag on Iwo Jima equates to the loss of my childhood friend Bobby Thomas' brother Billie, who went off as a child, himself, probably 18 years old, to fight World War 2. I never met him, because I was just coming out of the fog of early childhood, when he went off to war. He may have died on Guadacanal, but in my childhood mind, I see the flag raising on Iwo Jima and recall that sad day, when our neighborhood stopped in mid stream, to register the shock of losing one of us! It became quiet that day, and somber for a week or two, while we all realized how close the war had come to our homes., while mourning his young loss of life.



Later, during the war, as I walked to first grade, I noted a gold star on the window of a home, and asked my Mom, why that was there. It and all the aspects of the war, frightened me. Didn't they know children were growing up?



I just finished reading The Secrets of Judas, it is too scholarly, and repetitive because it is a study, by James M. Robinson, about The Gospel of Judas in relation to other gospels and findings . It reads comfortably for awhile, but then it gets too scholarly, for the lay reader who is just trying to get the story.



Bascially, the gospels and other writings as determined by scholars are not original to one writer, and may have had more than one writer, portions could have been copied, or interchanged, or just changed, by who knows who, why or where.



The interesting conclusion for anyone to come to freely, is that Christ , no matter how you study him, no matter how you dice the subject matter, , no matter what, he changed the world to the good, and that is what counts. The Gospel of Judas, is Gnostic in conclusion and the gnostic belief was not in the man, Jesus, but in the spirit of Jesus the man, which was released at his death. So spirituality is the message in The Gospel of Judas, and I for one agree with that.