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