That evening, after dinner, she rapped on my door: she is very tall, very elegant; dressed in an Egyptian gown, she made a little bow, and presented me with a bronze stylus. “It will be better than your wooden one,” she said. While enjoying my stylus someone brought me a dish of lemon paste. Sadly, more than twenty years have passed since our Nazareth synagogue acquired a scroll. Our scrolls are in tatters and all are asked to refrain from using them. Learning this, Clibus has offered several scrolls. “I’ll send two of my men...one to carry the scrolls, the other to see that the first man doesn’t wander off.” Perhaps little Nazareth may have a worthwhile collection someday. Jerusalem Adar 20 My enemies come closer. Verily, I say unto you, the man who climbs the sheepfold wall is a thief. He who enters by the gate is the shepherd. To him the porter opens and the sheep hear his voice and he calls his sheep by name and leads them... My parable is realistic but people do not listen. They push one another, talk. When I encountered a blind man, a man who had never seen during his lifetime, I sent him to the Siloam pool. He bathed there and at my touch his sight became normal. He stumbled, fell, rushed about, shouted. Trembling he raced for home. He brought friends and there was great rejoicing. Then, stunning everyone, authorities questioned me rudely. Because he defended me and called me his healer he was put in jail. I had to go before the local magistrate, affirm his honesty; then he was freed. I said to the magistrate: “I came into this world to help men see...” Last week I cured lepers on the Jericho road, men and women, all in rags. All were afraid of me, afraid of themselves. I thought I could change their minds but their minds were in tatters like their clothes. One man thanked me, a young man from Tyre; the others, quarrelling, pushing one another, tearing at their rags, left the road to crawl into a cave. I asked the man from Tyre what he knew about the others but he could not concentrate on what I said: he was so moved, so pleased, so enraptured over his health he stood in front of me, smiling, laughing. He kept holding up his arms and hands—showing me. I asked him about people I knew in Tyre. He shook his head, laughed, kissed my hands, rushed off. A caravan was passing, camels, drivers, onlookers; he disappeared among the camels, the dust. Jerusalem Adar 25 Today I received a message: the mebakker at Qumran has invited me to return to the monastery for a second residency. He wants me to instruct others in the Messianic Rule. I am no longer in accord with Qumran’s rigid communal life: such sharing would be difficult for me; certainly none of my disciples would understand. But I think of the Qumran desert; I think of the cliffs and caves near the monastery. Morning and evening shadows! What great fogs used to engulf us! Urusalim Adar 28