Having worked all day, Joseph walked on the coast along the sea.

The sun was low, and Joseph thought that God had made all things again

And rested in the light.

There Joseph saw Mary.

And Mary was young and beautiful, as he was

And he desired her.

And Mary, still a maiden, saw Joseph, and desired him.

As there was a woman, there was a man

As there was a man, there was a woman

And each felt at the sight of the other

What in those days did not yet have a name.

They spoke near the waves, and parted

And then thought of each other at night under the stars

And thought of each other at work and in their homes

And thought of each other at sunrise and sundown.

In later days, Joseph and Mary joined each other in secret, saying

These laws and traditions of our villages, the will of our family, this is nothing to us,

We will leave this place,

Joseph, I will follow you where you work,

Mary, I will be home with you in all countries.

So Joseph and Mary, young and pure, knew each other, and wandered

Following the houses Joseph built

Seeing all the land -

And this was in the time when the Empire of Rome ruled the nations

And the Law of the Hebrews ruled the hearts.

Mary became pregnant.

Still wandering when the term came, Joseph and Mary took refuge at night

In a barn under the stars.

Joseph was away when night fell, and Mary began to give birth alone.

A crack in the ceiling revealed the lights of the sky,

That Mary looked at while she cried alone in pain,

And there she saw the eyes of a God behind the night,

That seemed to whisper

« Do not fear, woman,

Here comes life,

Here comes the promised child »

And again she cried in pain, and was alone, but the stars seemed to shout

« Do not fear, woman !

Here comes life !

Here comes the promised child ! »

And Joseph, still away at work, rushed to the barn with gifts and many tears, and delivered the baby of his own hands.

Amidst Mary’s tears he took her face in his hands

And swore an oath of protection to her and the boy

For it was a boy that was born on that night

And the night was filled with Joseph’s cry of joy

As the child, born serene, without a shout,

Was named by his name - Jesus,

Son of Joseph, son of Mary,

And the night was sacred.

*

Outside of Mary’s village, Joseph built a house on a hill.

There, the boy Jesus grew in body and spirit, under their gaze.

When he was but an infant, they took to this habit :

To end each day under their lonely tree,

By a long contemplation of the sun

As it sank behind their hill over the house.

They spoke with the boy at night before sleep

And the boy was patient, and listened avidly.

Soon it was seen in the village that the boy could think and speak as adults do,

Talking in riddles, telling stories that attracted the fascination of other children.

The boy learned the Law and could recite it, and see through it, revealing secrets.

In the evening, he would talk for a long time with his father of all the things that are

In preparation for his visit to the Temple.

When he came of age, Jesus was presented to the Temple,

Where the rabbis ruled.

There again he caught the eye of many,

As he spoke of the Law, with a raised hand, citing the old writings,

Understanding them beyond his years.

The rabbis were surprised and talked all day of the gifted child, and said

Here is a child favoured by God.

Soon, however, the villagers grew weary and jealous, saying

How could it be, that a favour of God would touch a house of sin ?

How could a bad tree bear good fruit ?

His father is a simple builder and seducer,

Who married on a whim and disappeared,

Leading a strange life outside of our Law.

This talk in the village grew with the years,

Again and again the rabbis said

The son of the builder Joseph walks with God.

The chatter of men and women, like small streams out of each house

joined in a mighty river hurling through the street

And a rumour was born, saying,

Jesus is not the child of Joseph

Another one has come into his house

When he was not there.

Again the chatter was heard all around

Who crouched at the door and preyed on Mary, daughter of this land ?

One could not defile her name and shame Joseph without consequences,

For there was honour in the land and in the houses,

And words like knives could make men bleed.

Then, someone, somewhere in the village, thought of a joke, and laughed merrily.

This thought had come to him like a serpent crawling up his spine, and biting in his tongue

And the idea came out of his laughing mouth, as if his tongue had given birth to a thousand serpents the same.

« Did not God give to Hannah her child Samuel, when she prayed to him in the temple ?

Did not God give and take all children, making them wicked or blessed according to his will ?

Surely, He is the one who passed the door

And we should say that this boy is of God and not of his father. »

This, a serpent thought, said, and laughed.

*

The boy Jesus grew into a man, and took up the work of his father.

Yet something was amiss in his life,

And as Jesus aged he began to feel ashes on his tongue.

In women he did not find true love, and in the Temple, no true religion

He had heard of the innocents killed by tyrants,

Of that Roman Peace gained at the price of cruel wars.

More than once he was heard speaking against the Law,

More than once he was heard speaking against the Empire,

And he preferred the company of misfits to that of the villagers

For he had heard the rumour more than once,

And heard there something missing from the Law and from the book of God,

Missing also from the pagan’s rule and Empire,

Missing from the world

And this that was missing was not called by its name in that time,

It was seen in his mother’s eyes,

In his father’s hands on his head,

In their evenings together as the sun was setting over their lonely house

And in all that had taken place before he was born,

So that he could be born :

The young man dreamed of love.

Find yourself a woman, as I have found your mother when such thoughts were mine, said Joseph.

Find yourself a woman, that will bring you peace and children, said Mary.

But Jesus could find no woman to appease him, and would not marry for marriage’s sake.

When he became 30, and still unmarried, Jesus heard once again the rumour

That he was not the son of his father, but of this land’s Father,

And this was also a way of saying : the son of chance, anybody’s son

And he heard them laugh,

As the more he grew in stature,

The more Joseph was scorned,

And cast in the shadow of his son.

Now, in those days, the desert lied in the West,

There the horizon could be seen all around,

And the sun, moon and stars seemed to live over its edge.

At night, Jesus dreamed of faraway places,

And of what he could be out of his country.

To this dream he gave much thought, until the strains in him of rebellion, courage, fear, and thirst for love joined in a a single voice,

And whispered into him :

Go, now, into a strange place, and do what has to be done.

On a morning’s eve, armed with the sword of his mind, he departed

To challenge the Law and Empire,

To turn the rumour into a claim,

From a fiction, to find truth,

And from a father a Father create.

Before he went on to spread the rumour of his birth across the Land,

Jesus went to take with him his friend

One whose parents would not forbid the time spent at the house of sin

One so close to him in his childhood and youth that he was as a brother to Jesus,

One they called Judas, a lonely, unmarried man.