Hello Jonathan,

Like to open with a quote from Hamlet Act 2:Scene 2:

"...this brave o’erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire."

Hamlet is essentially complaining that man is the only creature god-gifted with celestial fire (thought) yet cursed in the body of an animal who knows it will die, eventually to be resolved into a "...quintessence of dust. "

He also alludes to what is means to be human: "How noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving, how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals!"

So, what does this have to do with your most wonderful work encouraging us to see Jesus as being fully human?

First, like all good literature, Shakespeare was having fun.

Hamlet while making an allusion to Heaven, the 'o'erhanging firmament', he is also making reference to the torch-lit Globe theatre: a majestical roof fretted with golden fire.

As usual he is also punning with fretted...and don't we fret something serious when trying to make sense out of Jesus, his life and death, as well as of our own impending deaths, as if our lives were indeed on a stage or as Hamlet thought, a sterile promontory, not unlike a cross if you will on Golgotha.

Much has been made of Hamlet and his awareness that his life is on a stage, much has been made of the allusion to the fact that when we die, will there be applause from the audience or stunned silence?

Will we see our lives as having had a good playwright with a good script, a good director or good fellow actors?

Many find solace in the concept that the playwright and director are to be found within the teachings of Jesus.

But not me.

I rebelled against my Christian teachings because I saw not the allegorical spiritual teachings of Jesus but the construct of those whose wish was to subjugate and control the great unwashed, the 'hoi polloi' or the 'groundlings' as Hamlet thought : 'a congregation of stale and pestilent vapours'.

My rebellion continued until I read 'The Last Temptation of Christ' by Nikos Kazantzakis.

Here at last was a fully sensate human being who was noble in reason, who spoke in parables to educate his followers and who was above all compassionate.

As you suggest, by laughing, and dancing and being a welcome wedding guest, he was indeed infinite in his faculties.

And didn't he lose his temper with the money changers?

Was Jesus not express and admirable if not in action like an angel? He healed the halt and the lame, he confronted his demons and metaphorically raised those 'dead to their own humanity or compassion'.

After all, the name Lazarus comes from the Hebrew Elʿāzār (Eleazar) meaning "God has helped"

So back to Hamlet.

Do we all not have a majestical roof, a brain, fretted with golden fire?

And therefore, should we all not use it to divine what is important to us right here and now in the 21st Century?

Do we need to parse scriptures written and mis-translated by the hand of man during a time when most of us were shepherds or serfs, slaves or sycophants?

Or do we need to lighten up and see ourselves as human beings with the potential to live up to Hamlet's words, to turn exaltation into exultation: to be the 'beauty of the world' and to be the 'paragon (a model, a pattern of excellence) of animals'.

And that would accomplish what the new testament Jesus tried to do: to humanize the violent restrictive condemnations of Leviticus and Deuteronomy into the wisdom inherent with a simple phrase: 'let you who is without sin cast the first stone." John 8:7.

You know, 'to be or not to be' Christian and truly bring ‘’love and healing to counter every evil in the world?’’