Jesus the Son of Man (Illustrated Edition). Kahlil Gibran

And He would give other children the sweetmeat I had given Him, before He had tasted it with His own mouth.

      He would climb the trees of my orchard to get the fruits, but never to eat them Himself.

      And He would race with other boys, and sometimes, because He was swifter of foot, He would delay so that they might pass the stake ere He should reach it.

      And sometimes when I led Him to His bed He would say, "Tell my mother and the others that only my body will sleep. My mind will be with them till their mind come to my morning."

      And many other wondrous words He said when He was a boy, but I am too old to remember.

      Now they tell me I shall see Him no more. But how shall I believe what they say?

      I still hear His laughter, and the sound of His running about my house. And whenever I kiss the cheek of my daughter His fragrance returns to my heart, and His body seems to fill my arms.

      But is it not passing strange that my daughter does not speak of her first-born to me?

      Sometimes it seems that my longing for Him is greater than hers. She stands as firm before the day as if she were a bronzen image, while my heart melts and runs into streams.

      Perhaps she knows what I do not know. Would that she might tell me also.

       Assaph Called The Orator Of Tyre: On The Speech Of Jesus

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      What shall I say of His speech? Perhaps something about His person lent power to His words and swayed those who heard Him. For He was comely, and the sheen of the day was upon His countenance.

      Men and women gazed at Him more than they listened to His argument. But at times He spoke with the power of a spirit, and that spirit had authority over those who heard Him.

      In my youth I had heard the orators of Rome and Athens and Alexandria. The young Nazarene was unlike them all.

      They assembled their words with an art to enthral the ear, but when you heard Him your heart would leave you and go wandering into regions not yet visited.

      He would tell a story or relate a parable, and the like of His stories and parables had never been heard in Syria. He seemed to spin them out of the seasons, even as time spins the years and the generations.

      He would begin a story thus: "The ploughman went forth to the field to sow his seeds."

      Or, "Once there was a rich man who had many vineyards."

      Or, "A shepherd counted his sheep at eventide and found that one sheep was missing."

      And such words would carry His listeners into their simpler selves, and into the ancient of their days.

      At heart we are all ploughmen, and we all love the vineyard. And in the pastures of our memory there is a shepherd and a flock and the lost sheep.

      And there is the plough-share and the winepress and the threshing-floor.

      He knew the source of our older self, and the persistent thread of which we are woven.

      The Greek and the Roman orators spoke to their listeners of life as it seemed to the mind. The Nazarene spoke of a longing that lodged in the heart.

      They saw life with eyes only a little clearer than yours and mine. He saw life in the light of God.

      I often think that He spoke to the crowd as a mountain would speak to the plain.

      And in His speech there was a power that was not commanded by the orators of Athens or of Rome.

       Mary Magdalene: On Meeting Jesus For The First Time

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      It was in the month of June when I saw Him for the first time. He was walking in the wheat field when I passed by with my handmaidens, and He was alone.

      The rhythm of His steps was different from other men's, and the movement of His body was like naught I had seen before.

      Men do not pace the earth in that manner. And even now I do not know whether He walked fast or slow.

      My handmaidens pointed their fingers at Him and spoke in shy whispers to one another. And I stayed my steps for a moment, and raised my hand to hail Him. But He did not turn His face, and He did not look at me. And I hated Him. I was swept back into myself, and I was as cold as if I had been in a snow-drift. And I shivered.

      That night I beheld Him in my dreaming; and they told me afterward that I screamed in my sleep and was restless upon my bed.

      It was in the month of August that I saw Him again, through my window. He was sitting in the shadow of the cypress tree across my garden, and He was still as if He had been carved out of stone, like the statues in Antioch and other cities of the North Country.

      And my slave, the Egyptian, came to me and said, "That man is here again. He is sitting there across your garden."

      And I gazed at Him, and my soul quivered within me, for He was beautiful.

      His body was single and each part seemed to love every other part.

      Then I clothed myself with raiment of Damascus, and I left my house and walked towards Him.

      Was it my aloneness, or was it His fragrance, that drew me to Him? Was it a hunger in my eyes that desired comeliness, or was it His beauty that sought the light of my eyes?

      Even now I do not know.

      I walked to Him with my scented garments and my golden sandals, the sandals the Roman captain had given me, even these sandals. And when I reached Him, I said, "Good-morrow to you."

      And He said, "Good-morrow to you, Miriam."

      And He looked at me, and His night-eyes saw me as no man had seen me. And suddenly I was as if naked, and I was shy.

      Yet He had only said, "Good-morrow to you."

      And then I said to Him, "Will you not come to my house?"

      And He said, "Am I not already in your house?"

      I did not know what He meant then, but I know now.

      And I said, "Will you not have wine and bread with me?"

      And He said, "Yes, Miriam, but not now."

      Not now, not now, He said. And the voice of the sea was in those two words, and the voice of the wind and the trees. And when He said them unto me, life spoke to death.

      For mind you, my friend, I was dead. I was a woman who had divorced her soul. I was living apart from this self which you now see. I belonged to all men, and to none. They called me harlot, and a woman possessed of seven devils. I was cursed, and I was envied.

      But when His dawn-eyes looked into my eyes all the stars of my night faded away, and I became Miriam, only Miriam, a woman lost to the earth she had known, and finding herself in new places.

      And now again I said to Him, "Come into my house and share bread and wine with me."

      And He said, "Why do you bid me to be your guest?"

      And I said, "I beg you to come into my house." And it was all that was sod in me, and all that was sky in me calling unto Him.

      Then He looked at me, and the noontide of His eyes was upon me, and He said, "You have many lovers, and yet I alone love you. Other men love themselves in your nearness. I love you in your self. Other men see a beauty in you that shall fade away sooner than their own years. But I see in you a beauty that shall not fade away, and in the autumn of your days that beauty shall not be afraid to gaze at itself in the mirror, and it shall not be