Poetry and Fiction - Jesus Awakes
by Life Positive
He felt that he was not asleep at all but rather, standing body and soul in the Jordan, refreshed. The desert sand was being removed from his body and the virtues and vices of mankind from his soul – leaving it again virgin. It seemed he was no longer himself, Jesus, the son of Mary of Nazareth, but rather Adam, the first man to be created – he had come out of the Jordan, taken a green, unbeaten path and entered a dense orchard full of blossoms and fruit. While he lay and ripened under the sun, birds fluttered over his head, flew from tree to tree, and promenaded on the springtime grass. They conversed among themselves, twittered, looked at the new creature who lay on the grass, and examined him with curiosity. Each had his say and then continued on; and he, versed in their language, rejoiced to hear them.
The peacock, proudly fanning out its feathers, strolled up and down, threw oblique, seductive glances at this Adam stretched on the ground, and explained to him: “I used to be a hen, but I loved an angel and became a peacock.
Is there any bird more beautiful than I am? None!” The turtledove flew from tree to tree, lifted its throat to heaven and cried, “Love! Love! Love!” The thrush: “Among all the birds, only I sing and keep warm in the thickest of frosts.” The swallow: “If not for me, the trees would
never blossom.” The cock: “If not for me the morning would never come.” The lark: “At dawn when I fly up into the sky to sing, I say goodbye to my children because I never
know if I shall return from my song still alive.” The nightingale: “ Don’t look at me as I am now, in my poor clothes. I too had large gleaming wings, but I turned them into song.” And a long-nosed blackbird came and clung to the shoulder of the first-created man, bent over to his ear and spoke to him softly, as though entrusting a great secret to him: “ The doors of heaven and hell are adjacent, and identical: both green, both beautiful. Take care, Adam! Take care! Take care!”
Exactly then, at dawn, with the blackbird’s song in his mind, Jesus awoke.Great things happen when God mixes with man. Without man, God would have no mind on this Earth to reflect upon his creatures intelligibly and to examine, fearfully yet impudently, his wise omnipotence. He would have on this Earth no heart to pity the concerns of
others and to struggle to beget virtues and cares which God either did not want, or forgot, or was afraid to fashion. He breathed upon man, however, giving him the power and
audacity to continue creation.
However, man, without God, born as he is, unarmed, would have been obliterated by hunger, fear and cold; and if he survived these, he would have crawled – midway between the lions and the lice – he would never have been able to escape the tight, warm, tender embrace of his mother the monkey. Reflecting on this, Jesus felt more deeply than he had ever felt before that God and man could become one.
