Sivan 10
Sivan is a beautiful month, a month of subtle changes.
I lay in deep grass yesterday. While I lay in the grass I rememberedthe fields around Nazareth and I remembered climbing olive trees atharvest time—how we sang and shook down the ripe fruit onto nets.
Mama made the finest olive oil in Papa’s oil press, the finest inNazareth some Nazarenes said. I hurried to fill our baskets... Iwanted to gather more than anyone. I never did.
Tomorrow I go to villages and will heal the sick...it is a joy, a joyrather kindred to lying in deep grass in the warm sun.
I have read my journal. I will return it to Matthew’s care. Among ourdisciples he is the most reliable.
Sivan 12
So, as I write with my bronze stylus, I listen to the evening,familiar sounds; through my window I see the Milky Way and the greatconstellations and I am aware God is affirming his handiwork.
I write very slowly, lingering over each letter, the square letterssuperior to the old script. I go on listening. The lamp burnssteadily. There is no wind. There is gratitude.
Nazareth
Sivan 17
Father has suffered from his imprisonment. His hands tremble. Afterseeing me on the cross he is unable to believe that I am alive.
I held out my arms to him as we stood in front of our home. He backedaway.
“...Father, remember how we visited together at Qumran? Remember thatold long-bladed saw, how I repaired its handle three times?
“Mama gave you that shirt at the Feast of Lights...”
He turned and walked away, trembling.
When I was staying at the home of Gehazi, after preaching in thesynagogue, after healing, Barabbas appeared. Jamnia is his villageand he entered the house of Gehazi without knocking. A great tallhulk, he loomed over me; then he knelt and begged me to accept him.
Dressed in goat’s skin, his face and beard wild, he seemed ill,perhaps deranged. I tried to calm him, to reason with him.
“I should have been crucified,” he repeated in a hoarse voice.
For a long while we remained together, talking, praying, hoping.
Peter’s
Sivan 24
Patience—we need patience.
Going from village to village, town to town, means walking five days,four days, two. It is a five day walk to Nazareth. It is a two daywalk to the village of Gehazi. Most walks are pleasant. It can becold, windy, hot; and when it rains there is seldom any shelter.
Sometimes we travel together; sometimes we walk alone; these days Iprefer my solitary walks. I am aware of close communion when alone.Patience, patience...but the calendar moves on: Shevat, Adar, Nisan,Iyyar, Sivan...
Peter’s
Tammuz 3
I
will miss Peter’s little house, its rough walls, its crooked windows,its clumsy thatched roof. The floors have interested me. He foundpieces in some Babylonian structure; he hauled them here in an oxcart. I have come to love this isolation, its olive trees.
Today is a summer’s day.
Great clouds, great sky.
Peter sought me out as I sat in the bedroom reading. Again he askedfor forgiveness. Kneeling by me he promised he would carry theword... “to Rome, if you wish. Teach me courage, teach me strength,teach me to be wise...”
He and I have worked at the carpenter’s bench lately, in Lazarus’shed. It took the three of us to line up a door. Of course it wasvery old. Laughing, we had to admit our clumsy workmanship.
We are proud that there are more than seventy of us now. I send themout in pairs.
The home of Lazarus
Tammuz 8
It seems to me I view mankind with a sense of compassion—a constantperception. Mine is a brief, swift looking back: I heal the sick, Irenew lives... I remember the hart and the brook...man’s insatiablethirst.
Children come and animals come...the ox and the donkey have beenfriends. A shepherd, I still follow hills, hills of resurrection theymay be. Perhaps history may call me a man of righteousness. Perhapshistory may not stop. I speak to history. I say, once again:
“Go and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father,the Son and the Holy Ghost...”
Teach as I have taught...remind them of grace.
Tammuz 11
I leave no tomb, no crypt, no marker.
Finality may not be a friend...
When I leave shall I carry a handful of earth with me?
James, Peter, Matthew, Mark...Mother and Father...Lazarus...Miriam...each one is mine but for how long?
Peter will pick up my sandals and say:
“These were his.”
Father will say:
“He helped me make this box.”
The Godhead is before me and I struggle with delight and withastonishment.
Tammuz 12
I am entrusting my journal to Matthew. Since we have friends at thesynagogue in Capernaum he will leave my journal there.
Verily, verily I say: Fear God and keep His commandments. This is theduty of man.
FAREWELL THOUGHTS
I
hope these thoughts may be helpful. It is very late and lamplightflickers...
Inside a man of light there is light and with this light helights the world.
The angels and the prophets will come to you and give youstrength.
Blessed are the ones who have heard the Father’s word and keptit in truth.
Have you then discovered the beginning so that you ask theend? Where the beginning is, there the end will be.
The kingdom is inside you. When you really understand you willknow that you are the son of the living Father. If you do notunderstand yourself you will be in poverty.
Split wood and I am there. Pick up a stone; there you willfind me.
Come to me because my yoke is easy, my lordship gentle. Youwill find rest.
The kingdom of the Father is spread over the earth and men donot see it.
Blessed are the solitary and the elect; you shall find thekingdom because you have come from it and you shall go thereagain.
I say, whenever one is one he will be filled with light, butwhenever he is divided he will be filled with darkness.
Love your brother as your own soul. Guard him as the apple ofyour eye.
There will be days when you seek and you will not find me.
NOTE:
These logia appear for the first time in a journal.
They are from the 4th century Coptic book,
The Gospel According to Thomas,
discovered in Hammadi, Egypt,
quoted through the courtesy
of the translator, Dr. Ray Rummers,
Chairman, Department of English, Baylor University.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
P
aul Alexander Bartlett (1909-1990) was a writer and artist, born inMoberly, Missouri, and educated at Oberlin College, the University ofArizona, the Academia de San Carlos in Mexico City, and the Institutode Bellas Artes in Guadalajara. His work can be divided into threecategories: He is the author of many novels, short stories, andpoems; second, as a fine artist, his drawings, illustrations, andpaintings have been exhibited in more than forty one-man shows inleading galleries, including the Los Angeles County Museum, theAtlanta Art Museum, the Bancroft Library, the Richmond Art Institute,the Brooks Museum, the Instituto-Mexicano-Norteamericano in MexicoCity, and many other galleries; and, third, he devoted much of hislife to the most comprehensive study of the haciendas of Mexico thathas been undertaken. More than 350 of his pen-and-ink illustrationsof the haciendas and more than one thousand hacienda photographs makeup the Paul Alexander Bartlett Collection held by the Nettie LeeBenson Latin American Collection of the University of Texas, and formpart of a second diversified collection held by the American HeritageCenter of the University of Wyoming, which also includes an archiveof Bartlett’s literary work, fine art, and letters.
Paul Alexander Bartlett’s fiction has been c
ommended by many authors,among them Pearl Buck, Ford Madox Ford, John Dos Passos, JamesMichener, Upton Sinclair, Evelyn Eaton, and many others. He was therecipient of many grants, awards, and fellowships, from suchorganizations as the Leopold Schepp Foundation, the Edward MacDowellAssociation, the New School for Social Research, the HuntingtonHartford Foundation, the Montalvo Foundation, and the CarnegieFoundation.
His wife, Elizabeth Bartlett, a widely published poet, is the authorof seventeen published books of poetry, numerous poems, shortstories, and essays published in leading literary quarterlies andanthologies, and, as the founder of Literary Olympics, Inc., is theeditor of a series of multi-language volumes of international poetrythat honor the work of outstanding contemporary poets.
Paul and Elizabeth’s son, Steven, edited and designed this volume.
Christ’s Journal
was set in Garamond type by Autograph Editions. The typeface is namedafter Claude Garamond (c. 1480-1561), a French type designer andpublisher and the world’s first commercial typefounder. Garamond’scontribution to the history of typesetting was substantial. Heperfected the design of Roman type: The fonts that he cut beginningin 1531 were recognized as possessing a superior grace and clarity,so much so that Garamond’s fonts influenced European printing for thenext century and a half.
It is interesting to note that Garamond type is the evolutionaryancestor of the type used to print the first official copies of theDeclaration of Independence. In the 1730s, Englishman William Caslonrefined Garamond’s version of Aldine roman, the well-balancedtypeface became popular, and was introduced to the American coloniesby Benjamin Franklin.
Despite his considerable contribution to the evolution of typography,Garamond was not a successful businessman and he died in poverty.
During the past five centuries, so many variations of Garamond’s typedesigns have been created that the phrase ‘Garamond type’ has come tobe used loosely, with little memory remaining of its history.
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