From Turin, Italy – May 13, 2010:  Seeing the Shroud in the Cathedral at Turin was one of the most important moments in my life. Nevertheless, as I mentioned earlier, the Shroud was restored in 2002 and controversy has raged over the results ever since.  When I came out of the darkened room, I had tears in my eyes–tears of joy, but also tears of sorrow.

From Turin, Italy – May 12, 2010.  We’re here!!! Because of the recent eruption of volcanic ash, it took Jimmy and I twenty-four hours to get to Turin. We flew right over Iceland and that volcano to see the Shroud of Turin. Does that flight pattern make sense to you? You’d think there’d be a more practical route, given that volcano’s temperment.

Coming in September!

In a few days Jimmy and I will be on our way to Turin, Italy to view the Shroud, and I’ve been thinking about the miraculous image on that cloth. I will share the experience of being in Turin during this rare exhibition next week in blogs and hope you’ll join us. We’ll be with Barry Schwortz, one of the world’s great experts on the Shroud, so I’ll pass along the latest information as we get it.

Leo has entered the room. One way to stop a good party anytime is to have Leo enter the room.

“That’s not very nice,” Emily snaps. I jump. How’d she know what I was thinking?

“Guess,” she says in a tone I think is a little bit sarcastic. “You’re The Writer…aren’t you?” She looks at me and squints, as though she’d never really seen me from this perspective before.

“Yes, I am,” I say, a little chagrined. I’d hoped to keep a low profile back here behind the mirror. But I just get excited, and when I get that way the words just jump out of my mind before I can control them.

It seems beyond coincidence to me that just at this moment with turmoil swirling around us–joblessness, the situation in Iran, the economy in general, corruption in politics–that so much new evidence emerges that the Shroud could be…and maybe was…the burial cloth of Jesus. Here we are the day before Easter and it’s possible to believe that we’ve been given the greatest gift of all, an image on a linen cloth from 2000 years ago showing us the face of the Messiah! Proof that the resurrection occurred–that life extends into eternity!

Last week the History Channel showed an astounding documentary on the three-dimensional aspect of the Shroud. Scientists and photographers and computer experts worked together on a project that proved the image on the Shroud was not created by any technique known to science, and that it is not only a negative image (as in a photograph) where others are positive, but it is also three-dimensional, unlike any other in the world. A photograph of the Shroud was studied using sophisticated instruments that created a topical map of the distance between each part of the body image to the cloth covering it when the image was formed– sort of a mathematical map.