Through Clibus I have written a letter home. Mother will find someone to read it aloud. I don’t want Mother and Father to come here. They dislike the city. Father has been unable to work and needs to husband his strength. He must avoid danger. Getting up at dawn I have been able to memorize lines from Horace, lines that help. The tiny garden helps. The children help. But when John’s cousin, Elihu, came, distortion returned as we talked of John’s imprisonment, torture, death. Elihu is a frail soul, so unlike John. He is so in need of encouragement. He tells me that a storm flooded homes in Nazareth. They did the best they could with shovels and baskets. Jerusalem Nisan 8 I look forward to resurrection. The promise of resurrection sustains me although I am, at times, confused, confused because resurrection means a blurring of the future, perhaps a cessation of the future. I can not plan a sabbath. I can not say “We shall meet together at Samaria.” Since the beyond is truly incomprehensible today is distorted as well. I must warn myself of the onslaught of pain that will crush me during the crucifixion. How to bear it? Gird my loins, perhaps. It will not be easy to die for my fellowmen. Will my ascension help others rise from their tragic lives? Dread eats away at me. Hate undermines me. Broken covenants...Golgotha, place of skulls...rocky Judea... Caesar Augustus, your crimes are everywhere...imperator...killer! I need to be baptized with love. With wisdom. Yesterday, in this city of rocks, I noticed straw in a stable, yellow straw, fresh, clean, glistening in the sun. I took a few. Straw is simplicity. Simplicity points to a balanced way. Bethany Nisan 12 Yesterday I walked to Bethany. Martha and Mary said that Lazarus had died. Among graves and stunted trees, in a stinging wind, I became keenly aware of the days I spent at their home, with the three of them. How often Lazarus and I had done carpentering under his thatched shed. Here, with his sisters, friends and relatives, here at the tombs, I knew death was not the answer. I walked to the crypt where Lazarus lay. Loose rocks tumbled underfoot. Wind whipped. A boulder blocked the crypt and I asked Martha to have her friends help me drag it aside. Men consulted and argued that it was useless; they glared at me savagely as they pushed and dragged the stone. At the opening I bent over and cried: “Lazarus...come... I am the resurrection and the life...come...this is Jesus!” I needed him. His family needed him. Mary and Martha. Death did not need him, surely. Men jeered and howled. But I knelt and shouted as the wind spat on all of us. Ah, sorrowing women, yellow rocks, death, a man in his crypt, cold stone, a hawk screaming... I called again and again. “Lazarus, this is Jesus. Arise! Come with us! Remember us, remember I am the resurrection and the life. Come unto me...believe...God is here...” It was late afternoon: the sun was behind the yellow cliff.