Voices from the Past Part 60

Tomorrow I go to villages and will heal the sick...it is a joy, a joy rather kindred to lying in deep gra.s.s in the warm sun.

I have read my journal. I will return it to Matthew's care. Among our disciples he is the most reliable.

Sivan 12

So, as I write with my bronze stylus, I listen to the evening, familiar sounds; through my window I see the Milky Way and the great constellations and I am aware G.o.d is affirming his handiwork.

I write very slowly, lingering over each letter, the square letters superior to the old script. I go on listening. The lamp burns steadily. There is no wind.

There is grat.i.tude.

Nazareth

Sivan 17

Father has suffered from his imprisonment. His hands tremble. After seeing me on the cross he is unable to believe that I am alive.

I held out my arms to him as we stood in front of our home. He backed away.

"...Father, remember how we visited together at Qumran?

Remember that old long-bladed saw, how I repaired its handle three times?

"Mama gave you that s.h.i.+rt at the Feast of Lights..."

He turned and walked away, trembling.

When I was staying at the home of Gehazi, after preaching in the synagogue, after healing, Barabbas appeared. Jamnia is his village and he entered the house of Gehazi without knocking. A great tall hulk, he loomed over me; then he knelt and begged me to accept him.

Dressed in goat's skin, his face and beard wild, he seemed ill, perhaps deranged. I tried to calm him, to reason with him.

"I should have been crucified," he repeated in a hoa.r.s.e voice.

For a long while we remained together, talking, praying, hoping.

Peter's

Sivan 24

Patience-we need patience.

Going from village to village, town to town, means walking five days, four days, two. It is a five day walk to Nazareth. It is a two day walk to the village of Gehazi. Most walks are pleasant. It can be cold, windy, hot; and when it rains there is seldom any shelter.

Sometimes we travel together; sometimes we walk alone; these days I prefer my solitary walks. I am aware of close communion when alone. Patience, patience...but the calendar moves on: Shevat, Adar, Nisan, Iyyar, Sivan...

Peter's

Tammuz 3

I

will miss Peter's little house, its rough walls, its crooked windows, its clumsy thatched roof. The floors have interested me. He found pieces in some Babylonian structure; he hauled them here in an ox cart. I have come to love this isolation, its olive trees.

Today is a summer's day.

Great clouds, great sky.

Peter sought me out as I sat in the bedroom reading.

Again he asked for forgiveness. Kneeling by me he promised he would carry the word... "to Rome, if you wish. Teach me courage, teach me strength, teach me to be wise..."

He and I have worked at the carpenter's bench lately, in Lazarus' shed. It took the three of us to line up a door. Of course it was very old. Laughing, we had to admit our clumsy workmans.h.i.+p.

We are proud that there are more than seventy of us now. I send them out in pairs.

The home of Lazarus

Tammuz 8

It seems to me I view mankind with a sense of compa.s.sion-a constant perception. Mine is a brief, swift looking back: I heal the sick, I renew lives... I re- member the hart and the brook...man's insatiable thirst.

Children come and animals come...the ox and the donkey have been friends. A shepherd, I still follow hills, hills of resurrection they may be. Perhaps history may call me a man of righteousness. Perhaps history may not stop. I speak to history. I say, once again:

"Go and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost..."

Teach as I have taught...remind them of grace.

Tammuz 11

I leave no tomb, no crypt, no marker.