Part 5

My mother broke through the crowd and embraced me. A little farther on I heard Lazarus call. I saw Martha. She was kneeling, reaching toward me. Peter, Luke, Clibus, Mark. I saw. I loved them, their faces like old graven coins.

I saw them all the way to the spot where they laid the cross on the ground. I prayed for courage, strength to endure, as they stripped off my clothes.

Then men pounded a nail through my hand and I was blinded, torn with pain. Then I felt greater pain as they pounded a nail through my legs and then I felt no more pain until I hung on the cross.

I looked and looked but could make out nothing; then I saw two men hanging on crosses beside me. I looked at them and they looked at me. I saw people below me; I heard women and children crying. I tried to speak to them. But as I hung there everything began to move away from me: a great distance swam around me. I thought of a mirage. Someone put a sponge to my mouth. Then I saw my mother, I saw Martha, Lazarus, people I had cured. A soldier shoved his spear into me. I tried to say something... That is all that I remember.

Joseph of Arimathea obtained permission to remove my body from the cross. He and my disciples placed it in his family crypt. He provided a robe and cloth to cover my face. I lay in his tomb, myrrh and aloe about me; there I lay for three days.

Peter’s Home

Sivan 2

P

eter is a descendant of a nomadic tribe. Euodia, his mother, is a gnarled woman, dark, serious. She and Peter built this house after her husband died. She had had enough of desert privation. Last night she spread a special table for my homecoming: pomegranate juice, melon, cheese, bread, nuts, chromis and another fish, clarias, my favorite. Euodia is an expert with olive oil—perhaps some are nomad recipes. At supper time she accepted me easily; Matthew and Peter were wary, afraid, shy.

While we were eating, Peter said:

“Master, how can it be you were crucified eight days ago... Can you say that you are well?” He brushed his hand over his yellow beard. “I couldn’t forget the terror...will you help us understand? When all of us meet will you explain? Is it faith?...”

We were eating at a makeshift table under Peter’s olives; it was well after sunset and we felt the quiet of the extensive fields that make Peter’s home a retreat.

Matthew, picking at his supper, nervous, kept watching my hands—I knew he was studying the scars.

“I hope you never return to Jerusalem,” he exclaimed.

I agreed: I agreed for several reasons: one reason was my desire to send my disciples to remote places, villages, towns.

“Our work is to be carried out among our countrymen while governments interfere.”

“We love you...we had nothing to do with the crucifixion,” Euodia blurted out.

Love, love after crucifixion is a brilliant but black enigma: it proffers and denies. We know that love helps us forget pain; however I ask myself whether it is evil to forget evil. But I can think of resurrection as a form of love, a love beyond supplication. I take that step and realize that immortality is another form of love.

Desert air pushed in as we finished our meal and we soon felt chilled. I wanted to shed my fatigue by reading but we discussed visiting the spring at Neby. I suggested we leave early if it did not rain during the night and bog the paths. At Neby I wanted to work out a plan for James, Peter and Matthew, if James joined us. When government cruelty diminishes I want Peter to preach in Rome.

In my bedroom I read Ecclesiastes—drowsing at times, aware of my familiar pallet, the good pillow, the candles. I was able to dismiss the imminence of departure. I put it away like a shell under sea grass.

Ecclesiastes meant more to me than weeks ago as I read and re-read passages.

Rain woke me during the night—a pleasant shower smelling like spring. So, we would walk to Neby another day. Here I would be able to go on reading Ecclesiastes and Peter’s copy of the Psalms. When I told Peter that Clibus had found the Ecclesiastes scroll on a trip to the upper Nile they were astonished. They had never seen so ancient a scroll.

Peter’s

Sivan 5

Judas is dead. He took his own life. His body was found by the daughter of Pontius Pilate. Since he was one of us we have buried him; at his grave a downpour struck us and drove us to a shelter. In a few moments the earth was flooded. I can’t recall such rain and thunder.

Judas, born in Gamala, vineyard proprietor, dead at twenty-eight years. As Ecclesiastes says: “Woe unto him who is alone when he falls.”

Startling, on a hillside, on a hilltop, a contingent of Roman soldiers, a new encampment, white tents in rows, banners, standards, smoke. Shields flash as men drill. Camels are hobbled behind the tent town. We can make out men in half armor, men wearing helmets, men at work shoveling, men erecting a large striped tent.

Is this always glory, power and death?

Peter’s—early morning

Sivan 8

Shall we be like trees planted by rivers of water? Shall we mature slowly like the olive? Shall we endure two hundred years? Shall these men replant? They are humble men. Are humble men more or less successful with their lives? These men know ambition and is ambition the safe route? Verily, verily “all is vanity and vexation of spirit,” if we listen to Ecclesiastes. What will evolve when the sil- ver chord is broken? I have answered these questions in the past but I wish to answer them once more.

Peter’s

Sivan 10

Sivan is a beautiful month, a month of subtle changes.

I lay in deep grass yesterday. While I lay in the grass I remembered the fields around Nazareth and I remembered climbing olive trees at harvest time—how we sang and shook down the ripe fruit onto nets.

Mama made the finest olive oil in Papa’s oil press, the finest in Nazareth some Nazarenes said. I hurried to fill our baskets... I wanted to gather more than anyone. I never did.

Tomorrow I go to villages and will heal the sick...it is a joy, a joy rather kindred to lying in deep grass 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 God 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 gratitude.

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 shirt 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 hoarse 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 workmanship.

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 compassion—a constant perception. Mine is a brief, swift looking back: I heal the sick, I renew lives... I remember 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.

Finality may not be a friend...

When I leave shall I carry a handful of earth with me?

James, Peter, Matthew, Mark...Mother and Father...Lazarus...Miriam... each one is mine but for how long?

Peter will pick up my sandals and say:

“These were his.”

Father will say:

“He helped me make this box.”

The Godhead is before me and I struggle with delight and with astonishment.

Tammuz 12

I am entrusting my journal to Matthew. Since we have friends at the synagogue in Capernaum he will leave my journal there.

Verily, verily I say: Fear God and keep His commandments. This is the duty of man.

FAREWELL THOUGHTS

I

hope these thoughts may be helpful. It is very late and lamplight flickers...

Inside a man of light there is light and with this light he lights the world.

The angels and the prophets will come to you and give you strength.

Blessed are the ones who have heard the Father’s word and kept it in truth.

Have you then discovered the beginning so that you ask the end? Where the beginning is, there the end will be.

The kingdom is inside you. When you really understand you will know that you are the son of the living Father. If you do not understand yourself you will be in poverty.

Split wood and I am there. Pick up a stone; there you will find me.

Come to me because my yoke is easy, my lordship gentle. You will find rest.

The kingdom of the Father is spread over the earth and men do not see it.

Blessed are the solitary and the elect; you shall find the kingdom because you have come from it and you shall go there again.

I say, whenever one is one he will be filled with light, but whenever he is divided he will be filled with darkness.

Love your brother as your own soul. Guard him as the apple of your eye.

There will be days when you seek and you will not find me.

NOTE:

These logia appear for the first time in a journal.

They are from the 4th century Coptic book,

The Gospel According to Thomas,

discovered in Hammadi, Egypt,

quoted through the courtesy

of the translator, Dr. Ray Rummers,

Chairman, Department of English, Baylor University.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

P

aul Alexander Bartlett (1909-1990) was a writer and artist, born in Moberly, Missouri, and educated at Oberlin College, the University of Arizona, the Academia de San Carlos in Mexico City, and the Instituto de Bellas Artes in Guadalajara. His work can be divided into three categories: He is the author of many novels, short stories, and poems; second, as a fine artist, his drawings, illustrations, and paintings have been exhibited in more than forty one-man shows in leading galleries, including the Los Angeles County Museum, the Atlanta Art Museum, the Bancroft Library, the Richmond Art Institute, the Brooks Museum, the Instituto-Mexicano-Norteamericano in Mexico City, and many other galleries; and, third, he devoted much of his life to the most comprehensive study of the haciendas of Mexico that has been undertaken. More than 350 of his pen-and-ink illustrations of the haciendas and more than one thousand hacienda photographs make up the Paul Alexander Bartlett Collection held by the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection of the University of Texas, and form part of a second diversified collection held by the American Heritage Center of the University of Wyoming, which also includes an archive of Bartlett’s literary work, fine art, and letters.

Paul Alexander Bartlett’s fiction has been commended by many authors, among them Pearl Buck, Ford Madox Ford, John Dos Passos, James Michener, Upton Sinclair, Evelyn Eaton, and many others. He was the recipient of many grants, awards, and fellowships, from such organizations as the Leopold Schepp Foundation, the Edward MacDowell Association, the New School for Social Research, the Huntington Hartford Foundation, the Montalvo Foundation, and the Carnegie Foundation.

His wife, Elizabeth Bartlett, a widely published poet, is the author of seventeen published books of poetry, numerous poems, short stories, and essays published in leading literary quarterlies and anthologies, and, as the founder of Literary Olympics, Inc., is the editor of a series of multi-language volumes of international poetry that honor the work of outstanding contemporary poets.

Paul and Elizabeth’s son, Steven, edited and designed this volume.

Christ’s Journal

was set in Garamond type by Autograph Editions. The typeface is named after Claude Garamond (c. 1480-1561), a French type designer and publisher and the world’s first commercial typefounder. Garamond’s contribution to the history of typesetting was substantial. He perfected the design of Roman type: The fonts that he cut beginning in 1531 were recognized as possessing a superior grace and clarity, so much so that Garamond’s fonts influenced European printing for the next century and a half.

It is interesting to note that Garamond type is the evolutionary ancestor of the type used to print the first official copies of the Declaration of Independence. In the 1730s, Englishman William Caslon refined Garamond’s version of Aldine roman, the well-balanced typeface became popular, and was introduced to the American colonies by Benjamin Franklin.

Despite his considerable contribution to the evolution of typography, Garamond was not a successful businessman and he died in poverty.

During the past five centuries, so many variations of Garamond’s type designs have been created that the phrase ‘Garamond type’ has come to be used loosely, with little memory remaining of its history.

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VOICES FROM THE PAST

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End of Project Gutenberg's Christ's Journal, by Paul Alexander Bartlett