FROM THE MOUNT OF OLIVES, we took the last look back on the city of Jerusalem.
Joseph told me what I knew, that three times a year we would come up to Jerusalem for the great Feasts, and that I would come to know the great city very well.
Our journey was a quick one back to Nazareth, as we didn’t have the whole family with us, but we were never hurried, and we fell into easy conversation about the beauty of the land around us, and the little things of our daily lives.
When we finally came over the ridge, and the village was clearly in sight, I told both my parents that I would never do again what I had done—that is, leave them as I’d left them. I didn’t try to explain what had happened. I simply told them that they need never worry that I would go off on my own away from the family again.
I could see that they were pleased but they didn’t want to talk about what had happened. They had already let it slip deep and away from the current of everyday thoughts. At once my mother talked simple things to do with the household and Joseph was nodding to what she said.
A stillness came over me.
I walked with them, but I was alone.
I thought about what my mother had said—her quotation of Joseph, that the darkness tries to swallow the light and the darkness never succeeds in swallowing it. These were beautiful words, but they were words.
In my mind, without feeling, without crying, without shivering, I saw the dead man in the Temple, I saw the Passover lamb bleeding into the basin, I saw the children I’d never seen killed in Bethlehem. I saw the fire in the night leaping up to the sky from Jericho. My mind went over and over these things.
When we entered the house, I sat down and rested.
Little Salome came up and stood before me. I didn’t say anything, because I thought she would set down a bowl or a cup and then go away as she always did, the busy little woman that she was.
But she didn’t do this. She stood there.
Finally I looked up.
“What?” I asked.
She knelt down and she put her hand on the side of my face. I looked at her and it was as if she’d never left me to be busy with the women. She looked into my eyes.
“What is it, Yeshua?” she asked.
I swallowed. I felt my voice would be too big for me if I tried to say it, yet say it I did.
“Only what everyone has to learn,” I said. “I don’t know why I didn’t see it before.” The man on the stones. The lamb. The children. I looked at her.
“Tell me,” she said.
“Yes!” I whispered. “Why didn’t I see it?”
“Tell me,” she said.
“It’s so simple. It won’t mean anything to you until it comes to you, no matter who you are.”
“It’s this. That whatever is born into this world, no matter how, and for whatever reason, is born to die.”
She didn’t answer.
I stood up. I went outside. It was getting dark. I walked through the street and out to the hillside and up to where the grass was soft and undisturbed. This was my favorite place, just short of the grove of trees near which I loved so to rest.
I looked up at the first few stars coming through the twilight.
Born to die, I thought. Yes, born to die. Why else would I be born of a woman? Why else would I be flesh and blood if it wasn’t to die? The pain was so terrible I didn’t think I could bear it. I would go home crying if I didn’t stop thinking of it. But no, that must not happen. No, never again.
And when will the angels come to me with such bright light that I am not afraid of it? When will the angels fill up the sky with singing so that I can see them? When will angels come to me in my dreams?
A quiet fell over me, just when I thought my heart would burst.
The answer came as if from the earth itself, as if from the stars, and the soft grass, and the nearby trees, and the purring of the evening.
I wasn’t sent here to find angels! I wasn’t sent here to dream of them. I wasn’t sent here to hear them sing! I was sent here to be alive. To breathe and sweat and thirst and sometimes cry.
And everything that happened to me, everything both great and small, was something I had to learn! There was room for it in the infinite mind of the Lord and I had to seek the lesson in it, no matter how hard it was to find.
I almost laughed.
It was so simple, so beautiful. If only I could keep it in my mind, this understanding, this moment—never forget it as one day followed another, never forget it no matter what happened, never forget it no matter what came to pass.
Oh, yes, I would grow up, and there would come a time when I would leave Nazareth, surely. I would go out into the world and do what it was I was meant to do. Yes. But for now? All was clear. My fear was gone.
It seemed the whole world was holding me. Why had I ever thought I was alone? I was in the embrace of the earth, of those who loved me no matter what they thought or understood, of the very stars.
“Father,” I said. “I am your child.”