Splinters (A Remembrance).
It begins where it ends.
Something happened yesterday. Something that had happened too many times, and something that had never happened before. A Jew from Nazareth died. He said that he had come to save us all and then we killed him. In my grief, in the sadness of my heart I knew, that the long awaited death of this innocent man had given life to the world to come.
I sit at my evening fire, looking down at my sore hands; using a thorn from an Atad tree to push out the splinters. My tears had been dried by the fire and my old eyes could see clearly once again. Perhaps more clearly than ever before in my life. My hands looked different, everything looked different now. The sky, the land; and the people started to think differently. The town started talking about the stories from the temple, the man from Nazareth and the stories that Moses and David had written so long ago. The words he spoke and the miracles witnessed in Galilee and Judea. After so many years God was with us again. And we rose to greet him, to welcome him and to know him. We had been groping for so long in that dark cave of ignorance and now he has come and led us out to be bathed in the warmth of the Son.
My name, lost in the wilderness of ages past, does not matter. I was just another ragged beggar who gathered wood in the province of Ludaea, between Jerusalem and Bethany. And though I have never killed, for I am not a soldier, my eyes have seen more death than any Roman sword. For too long I have witnessed the weeping and suffering of too many nameless men. Before he came I could not sleep, for their faces haunted me, I could not speak for no words could describe the cruelty I had seen. Yet each day I awoke and breathed again. Each day I wandered, searching for the bones of the trees; fodder for someones hearth.
I have built my house in a place called Gethsemane, a pleasant grove of twisted olive trees east of Jerusalem. I have always lived here, in the valley beside the tombs, next to the city of the dead on mount Har HaZeitim. When I was a child I remember the trees being just as large as they are now; I simply believed that olive trees did not grow but were born old. How I long for the carefree days of my childhood climbing and playing in the olive trees. He had been in the olive grove many times. Sometimes with a large group and sometimes alone. Out of fear I avoided their camp. Often, through the trees, I could see their campfire and hear them conversing.
Starlight revealed my path, but I did not need to see, my old sandals knew the familiar trail. I relish the cool dampness of the night, it settles the dust pounded from the chalky ground by the thousands of sandals before mine. As I walked in the darkness before the dawn, I remembered, and thought how odd it was that death had a pleasant smell. By the sea the palms made their dates and the olives were for oil but in the mountains, the sweet smelling cedars were for building.
On those certain days I raced the dawn to sit before starting my work, taking time to watch the sun rise against the city walls. I was paid a penny mite for each beam that I dragged back to the Roman prison so that it could be reused.
The beams were rough where the nails had been pulled out. The wood still fragrant even after years of soaking by rain and sun and blood. Painfully, my rough hands hardened by years of handling the heavy cedar logs, were not immune to the jagged splinters. The nails were usually taken with the body and the garments, but the long heavy beams remained. If I arrived too late in the morning they would be taken by others to be used for firewood or the roof of someones house. I wondered how many homes were covered by these scaffolds of pain. And after how many years of evil would these beautiful trees once again be used for good. Once on a hillside, standing tall and giving shade to hot and weary travelers and now, once again sheltering a family from the sun.
Many times over the years I had heard the talk that a man had come to fulfill the prophecies of the Messiah. One I had seen, and many I had been told about. These men were like the vendors of the town, trying to sell you an old rag by telling you it was finely woven. In my heart I knew that this man, this poor Jew from Nazareth was different. In Beth anya I heard the story of Mary and her brother Lazarus. One of the Mary's that always followed him, even to that wretched hill, even to his last breath . Normally I did not go to see the executions, but I went to Gulgalta that day, the day that they killed him. I arrived under a violent storm. The sky was angry, God was angry. Black clouds shaded, the at first agitated, then quiet multitude of guilty faces. It became so quiet that only the weeping and gasping could be heard above the wind. I did not see him until his tormented body was too weak to speak, until the soldiers had done their worst. Once he gazed toward his companions in death; the two wretches beside him with broken legs. He had not come to sell, but to give. He came to give us back the love of our Lord, he gave us hope of forgiveness and he gave his mortal life. Many messiahs entertained us and then went away but this poor man was the only one to fulfill the prophecy written so long ago in the praises of King David. He was the only one to die for us.
I did not know anyone that could read or even anyone that had something to read. I had seen paper. Sometimes there were papers put up by the Romans on the gates to the city. I could not read them. As I could not read the sign the Romans had hung over his head. The only ones that could read were the priests of the temple and the Romans. I was too dirty and ragged to enter the temple. But I had heard the prophecies and the stories of this man talked about by the rabbis and citizens as they left the temple. Did the people not know that it was prophecy that they would despise him?
While he gasped and wept, the soldiers argued over who would take his valuable purple cloak; those pitiful dumb beasts dressed as men but without compassion or souls. As I stood behind the crowd, I thought how odd that a trouble maker sentenced to death would be draped in the color of royalty. I know now how appropriate that purple cloak was. I know now that he did not weep for himself but for us; tears of forgiveness, like the rains God sends to cleanse and renew us.
The three Marys, unafraid and always with him, also watered the rocky ground with their tears. Theirs were tears of love and loss. He had told them what must be, but they still felt his wounded body, they to where want for breath. The chosen friends of the man were hiding and not to be seen at the hill on that day. Only the women and the curious came to witness that cruel spectacle and mourn his passing: his mother Mary of Nazareth, Mary of Bethany and his most beloved Mary of Magdala.
The beams were left on the rounded rocky hill of Skulla, a place of death, littered with human bones. By morning two beams and two dirty naked bodies remained. The man treated most cruelly was the only one lovingly carried away for a proper burial. The man from Nazareth, the one called Jesus the Christ was not there.
Twice today I dragged a forgotten body down the valley south to the smoldering hell of Gehenna to be burned with the other rubbish and discards of the world of men. Blinded by my weeping, my mind confused by both sadness and joy, I wandered back to my home in the olive grove to be alone with my thoughts, about a man that I never met, about a man who had died for me.
It ends where it begins.
1599 Geneva Bible (GNV)
16 For dogs have compassed me, and the assembly of the wicked have enclosed me:
they pierced mine hands and my feet.
17 I may tell all my bones, yet they behold, and look upon me.
18 They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture.
Vincent, Easter Sunday,April 20, 2014