Promises, Covenants, Reconciliation...

But I still insist the promises, the covenants and the reconciliation of the world in the Christ Event very definitely are for everyone, whether or not everyone consciously affirms them. The obliteration of death is a done deed. And, our God has no trouble with anonymity – it's us humans who like to get credit for everything we do. OK, it's we humans who insist on getting credit for everything we do!

You said, "I think we are meant to learn from this very public death of [Jesus'] body that we survive death of the body, that no matter what happens to our bodies, nothing happens…" But Jesus did die; he died forsaken by his friends and he died feeling completely forsaken by the Father. And he was raised from death on the third day ["day" in Semitic thought and languages means an entire day or part of a day; you told me "3" is the number for birth in Gematria!]. It so strikes me that he wasn't raised immediately! In wisdom God realizes we need time to grieve and in many ways to not feel the pain and the betrayal. When you’re dead you don't know you’re dead…trust me, I know that from experience! True, and also very probable that Rome didn't officially record Jesus' death, as he simply was just one more incidental Jew. I've written before about early Christianity's editing, troping and glossing of scripture, though I don't use those words in a negative or depreciatory or derogatory sense. Those people just needed to make their point about Jesus; they wanted to convince us!

You wrote about the Holy Spirit: "Mostly it's a memory." I challenge your word, "Mostly!" Because I trust the HS is a lively, active, generative and regenerative – re-forming – force of being that includes memory, as memory's one of the ways we recognize the presence and action of the HS, but which is really present in a way that plain memory simply is not. The whole discussion of the Risen Christ's "Real Presence" in the Eucharist…

Later you said, "For me, the Holy Spirit is the remembrance of Love that God has gifted all of His separated children with, that need of remembrance, saved for us in our minds for that day when we choose to remember. We don't need to accept it or acknowledge it for the Holy Spirit to exist in our mind." Yes, with some reservation. Memory is critical to our lives in the Spirit; you know how often Israel forgot and how completely Israel forgot; you remember the consequences! I believe our memories are part of the Spirit's gifts to us. However, I also trust the Spirit of Life indwells each of us, indwells all creation, and this Lively Spirit has a force and a will of its own.