Ch. 14:
Alexandria had been a city of great wonders as everyone was always saying, with its festivals and its processions and its splendid temples and palaces, and houses such as Philo's house with its marble floors. But here was the green grass.
It smelled good to me, better than any perfume, and when I passed under the branches of the trees, the ground became soft. A little wind was coming from down in the valley that I could see, and it caught the trees almost one at a time. I loved the rustling of the leaves above me. I walked on up the slope until I was out in the grass again, where the grass was thick, and there I lay down. It was damp there, because it had rained in the night, but it was good. I looked off towards the village. I could see men and women working in the vegetable gardens, and beyond that the farmers in the fields. People were picking weeds out of the earth. That's what it looked like to me.
But my mind was on the groves of trees here and there, and far away, and the blue of the sky.
I lost myself. I felt loose. I felt my skin. It was as if I was humming and the humming filled my ears, but I wasn't humming. And it was so sweet. It was the way I felt sometimes before I went to sleep. I wasn't drowsy. I wasn't sleeping. I lay still on the grass and heard little tiny creatures around me in the grass. I even saw the flutter of little wings. I looked right before me, and there was a world of them, these tiny creatures, so very tiny, tumbling over the pieces of grass.
I let my eyes move slowly towards the trees. They had wind in them again and were dancing back and forth. The leaves of the trees looked silver in the sunlight, and they never stopped moving even when the breeze died away.
My eyes went back to the closest thing I could see before me: the little creatures moving, running so fast over the broken bits of earth. It came to me that in lying down as I had done I had crushed some of these creatures, perhaps many many of them, and the longer I looked at them, the more little creatures I saw. Thiers was the world of the grass. That's all they knew. And what was I, coming to lie down here, feeling the softness of the grass and loving the smell of it, and robbing so many creatures of life?
I was not sorry for it. I felt no sadness. My hand lay on top of the blades of grass, and the creatures moved beneath it faster and faster, until their world was all fluttering without a sound that I could hear.
The earth was a bed under me. The cries of the birds were a song. They streaked across the sky above me so fast I could barely see them. Sparrows. And then beside me, I saw right in front of me tiny flowers growing in the grass, so very little I hadn't noticed them before, flowers with white petals and yellow hearts.
The breeze grew strong and the branches above me moved with it. Leaves came down in a shower, a silent rain.
But a man was coming. He came out of the grove of trees down the hill, and made his way up towards me.
It was Joseph, with his head bowed as he walked up the slope. His robe and its tassels blew in the breeze, and he was thinner than when we'd left Alexandria. Perhaps all of us were that way.
I knew I should get up out of respect for him, but I felt so good here on the sweet grass and that humming was going on as if I was doing it, all through me, and I only looked at him as he came.
I didn't have enough sense to know it, but these moments on the grass under the tree had been the first time in my whole life that I'd ever been alone.
I only knew that this peace was broken, and had to be broken. What was time that I could spend it here staring until the world lost all its hard edges? Finally, I climbed to my feet, and I felt as if I was waking up from a deep sleep.
Ch. 26:
A quiet fell over me, just when I thought my heart would burst.
The answer came as if from the earth itself, as if from the stars, and the soft grass, and the nearby trees, and the purring of the evening.
I wasn't sent here to find angels! I wasn't sent here to dream of them. I wasn't sent here to hear them sing! I was sent here to be alive. To breathe and sweat and thirst and sometimes cry.
...
It was so simple, so beautiful. If only I could keep it in my mind, this understanding, this moment - never forget it as one day followed another, never forget it no matter what happened, never forget it no matter what came to pass.
Oh, yes, I would grow up, and there would come a time when I would leave Nazareth, surely. I would go out into the world and do what it was I was meant to do. Yes. But for now? All was clear. My fear was gone.
It seemed the whole world was holding me. Why had I ever thought I was alone? I was in the embrace of the earth, of those who loved me no matter what they thought or understood, of the very stars.
"Father," I said. "I am your child."
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