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Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Sundays, we take a deeper dive into these ancient topics with excerpts from the Stoic texts,

audio books that we like here recommend here at Daily Stoic and other long form wisdom that you can chew on on this relaxing weekend.

We hope this helps shape your understanding of this philosophy and most importantly that you're able to apply it to actual life.

Thank you for listening.

We can always be born again. In the year 33, a philosopher was executed by the Roman authorities. This was not an uncommon thing back then.

Cicero had his head and hands and tongue put up in the forum by Mark Antony. The Stoic Gaius Rubellus Plautus had his head cut off and his nose mocked by Nero.

Cicero was poisoned, had his wrist slit and was smothered at the orders of the man who he had chewed her into adulthood.

Paul of Tarsus, who studied Stoicism, was also beheaded. Justin Martyr, who also studied Stoicism during Mark's Realist's time, was beaten and then whipped until the skin was torn from his body and then beheaded.

But this man, referred to Christus in Tacitus' writing, was beaten. Then he was killed on full display after being forced to carry the weight of the tools of his annihilation to the sight of his ultimate demise, where he was then brutally crucified and entombed.

But then, and this is where his story is said to diverge from the Stoics we mentioned above, but then supposedly Christus, three days later, rose again.

Now whether or not you consider the events of Jesus' death to be holy or not totally true or not, there's nevertheless a powerful lesson in them.

A man went bravely to his death. A man with his last words said, forgive them father for they know not what they do. A man died willingly, believing he could absolve mankind for its sins.

And then from this loss he and mankind were given a clean slate.

We should take this day Easter Sunday as a moment to reflect on the beauty of rebirth and redemption, especially this Easter as we emerge from the long dark tunnel that has been our collective journey to the COVID-19 pandemic.

No matter what has happened, no matter what we've done none of us are beyond redemption, even in the brutality of Jesus' execution, there is evidence of this.

Well known as the story of the Roman soldier who as Jesus was riving on the cross offered him a sponge soaked in vinegar.

This has long been taken as an example of extreme cruelty. In fact, it is the opposite.

The Roman legions drank vinegar wine to reduce their thirst. This was an act of mercy, quite possibly, at great risk to the soldier.

There is good in all of us, even those of us who have done bad things. There is hope for all of us.

The future can be brighter as dark as the last years have been. Let today regard this of your beliefs mark a moment of rebirth, of rejuvenation, of reemergence.

Whatever our faith we always have the ability to be reborn, each day that we awake we can choose a new life, a new way, to rededicate ourselves to philosophy.

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