John the beloved disciple in his old age
On Jesus the Word
YOU WOULD HAVE me speak of Jesus, but how can I lure the passion-song
of the world into a hollowed reed?
In every aspect of the day Jesus was aware of the Father. He beheld Him
in the clouds and in the shadows of the clouds that pass over the earth.
He saw the Father's face reflected in the quiet pools, and the faint print
of His feet upon the sand; and He often closed His eyes to gaze into the
Holy Eyes.
The night spoke to Him with the voice of the Father, and in solitude He
heard the angel of the Lord calling to Him. And when He stilled Himself
to sleep He heard the whispering of the heavens in His dreams.
He was often happy with us, and He would call us brothers.
Behold, He who was the first Word called us brothers, though we were but
syllables uttered yesterday.
You ask why I call Him the first Word.
Listen, and I will answer:
In the beginning God moved in space, and out of His measureless stirring
the earth was born and the seasons thereof.
Then God moved again, and life streamed forth, and the longing of life
sought the height and the depth and would have more of itself.
Then God spoke thus, and His words were man, and man was a spirit begotten
by God's Spirit.
And when God spoke thus, the Christ was His first Word and that Word was
perfect; and when Jesus of Nazareth came to the world the first Word was
uttered unto us and the sound was made flesh and blood.
Jesus the Anointed was the first Word of God uttered unto man, even as
if an apple tree in an orchard should bud and blossom a day before the
other trees. And in God's orchard that day was an aeon.
We are all sons and daughters of the Most High, but the Anointed One was
His first-born, who dwelt in the body of Jesus of Nazareth, and He walked
among us and we beheld Him.
All this I say that you may inderstand not only in the mind but rather
in the spirit. The mind weighs and measures but it is the spirit that
reaches the heart of life and embraces the secret; and the seed of the
spirit is deathless.
The wind may blow and then cease, and the sea shall swell and then weary,
but the heart of life is a sphere quiet and serene, and the star that
shines therein is fixed for evermore.
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