Station 2

The weight of waiting, acrylic paint and ink on wooden panel, 80 x 119cm. Image courtesy of the artist.

As a child on my Dad's farm, I would climb to the top of the tallest wheat silo to watch the birds soar as the sun lowered to the horizon and imagined I was pure energy—that I could fly. Knowing that if I began to think I would fall. I have never broken a bone.

At 21, I watched my grandmother breathe her last breath. Her chest rattled with each prolonged gasp, then a long silence before another. Then another.

In my early 30's, on the eighth day of a ten-day silent meditation on sensations and surrounded by sixty others, I lost my body. I no longer heard the birds outside, or the crickets in the late summer afternoon. I felt no cloth on skin or soreness from sitting still. No feeling of breathing in or out. I sensed nothing. I was nothing but a consciousness—both calm and terrified.

At 33, Jesus knew he was going to die. He was stripped naked then whipped in front of a crowd until his skin fell off his back in ribbons. A crown of thorns pressed into his head and emperor’s robes placed on his back. The crowd jeered. His friends were gone. An average-looking Jewish man of that region. Being marched slightly less than a kilometer with a crossbeam on his back that he would soon be nailed to. Bloodied, torn, and broken.  

Matthew 27:27-31

A cardiologist's perspective:
“At the praetorium, Jesus Christ was flogged – a preliminary to almost every Roman execution. The instrument was a short whip with several single or braided leather thongs of variable length, in which small iron balls or sharp pieces of sheep bones were tied at intervals. The victim was stripped of his clothing, and his hands were tied to an upright post. He was then struck on the back with the whip encircling the side and part of the front of the chest. The iron balls of the whips resulted in deep contusion, and sharp piece of sheep bones caused deep cuts into the skin and subcutaneous tissue. The extent of blood loss may well have determined how long the victim would survive on the cross... it is not known whether the number of lashes was limited to thirty nine, in accordance with the Jewish Law.”