He Said... and I Said

He said: Has it never seemed to you, one day, when you see at the bend of the road a person coming toward you, that his familiar face hides another face for which you know no name?

In fleeting moments when the senses grow clear, the glittering veils behind which man conceals himself fall away, and his first truth appears before him: and behold, he is a collection of vices, most like a mass of serpents writhing one over the other.

I said to myself: If the curtains were drawn aside, if the cells of the body came undone — and how quickly they come undone — then woe to man for what he would see. The least he would say is: Cursed be that hour in which the women rejoiced around my mother, announcing the glad tidings of my birth. Flight? But whither?... A cry for help? But to whom?... Or can a man hide from his own self?... Narcissus and Cain! Illusion and truth: had Narcissus possessed the eye of Cain, he would have cast himself into the water.

Man has painted his body with potions only to cover his defect, and he invented games only to divert himself from his deadly reality. He who formed the son of Adam bestowed upon him nothing but shortness of sight.

I said: Man's pride is a mask with which he hides from himself the beauty of the world, and his tyranny is a fetter with which he binds his own soul and distorts its measures. Say: If man lifted from his eyes the film of selfishness — and how easily it may be lifted, for a single look of tenderness suffices — the world would appear to him beautiful, all of it.

Have you never felt, one day, when weariness was wrecking your nerves, and your eyes fell upon the eyes of a child absorbed in his heavenly dream — have you not felt purity spreading around you, flooding you with its fragrance, pouring rest into your soul?

Would that man understood this lesson which innocence recites to him, and saw existence as it is, in its absolute truth: a homeland of the eternal love that fashioned it in its own image.

Terror? And why terror, when the world is a message of love?

He said: The son of Adam built place after his own likeness, deformed in its very atoms, and wove time as a passageway for his crimes toward nothingness. Is not history a register of vice, and its commentary a justification of it? I have contemplated the work of man and found nothing but sin, pointing its finger at its maker.

Here is a city — no sooner do your feet touch it than you imagine its walls oozing hatred; and another, faded, as though its meaning lay in meaninglessness; and a third over which the specter of selfishness holds sway. There is a street you pass through as though it were a grave; another whose windows seem to hide thieves lying in wait for the passersby; another stained with blood; and the one after it gnawed by worms. Listen to the voices of the crowds. Do they not resemble now the howling of wolves, now a throng of ravens, and now the wailing of the mourning women?

I said: Behind the events that follow one another through the days lies what the days cannot touch, and in the depths of history, what surpasses the knowledge of the historians. Have you not read in the books that He who created the world passed through it and saw that it was beautiful, all of it, and therefore chose it as a footstool for His feet; and then formed man free and strong, to complete on the seventh day the work of the first?

Love has no skull, O man, that the senses might grasp it. And purity springs up only apart from all eyes, lest man make of it a commodity.

In the eyes of the child is what the learning of all the learned cannot reach, and in the modesty of the girl a riddle that has baffled the minds of the pretenders.

He said: How often you have told me of days when you would sit upon the summits of the Cedars, the mountain of the Lord, where you look out over the holy valley. Did it not seem to you, as you climbed the rock, that something like a choking gas was tracking your footsteps, rising with you, as though in its spreading it sought to engulf the worlds of the firmament?

Know, then, that this is nothing but the flame of evil pouring from the hearts of men as dark smoke, wishing it could return existence to the first nebula. Open your eyes, look closely: do you not see the face of the earth as a stage for worms in perpetual ferment, like a fit of rage against the serenity of the ether? Have you not read in the books: Cursed is the earth that you tread?

I said: In the heights, where the earth touches infinity, the soul is united with the life-giving Spirit that mantles existence and pierces it forever, to restore it to its pure essence.

Yes, I have sat upon the summits of the mountain of the Lord, and the sky appeared to me a wave of purity flooding the earth, and the earth an Eden in which the angels play.

He said: The dwelling of man is like the hyena's den — black, filthy; the sun looks upon it only to hide her face for shame. And man is like the thief, son of the night, sheltering under the wing of darkness to aim his blows. His feats are crimes, his books insults which the worms ought to gnaw before they come out into the light.

I said: Man's foot is in the dust, but his head is in the heights, where it touches the creative Word. A son of light he is, and in the light he lives. As for his evils, he exposes them, like crimes, to the fire of the sun, that she may root them out; and he remains clear as the face of the sky.

He said: Or do you suppose that medicines can heal what ails the soul? If that is your opinion, then know that man has used up all the perfume without so much as touching the stench.

Consider the worms: how they multiply the more one persists in fighting them. So is the soul — a gushing spring of poisons: the more harshly it is treated, the more it secretes.

I said: Or do you suppose that the dirt clinging to a child's body hides his purity, or that the filthy rags in which he is wrapped can veil that clear radiance that distills from him?

And if water is powerless to polish away the rust, yet in every soul there is compassion enough to wipe out the sins of the whole world. Have you not seen — you, the clear-sighted, the enlightened — tolerance behind fanaticism, and forgiveness behind crime?

In the clothing of every wolf there is a lamb, and in the conscience of every thief a saint. Bind up man's wounds and you will see him as he is in his eternal truth: a spark of the first light.

He said: Weak is man, and abject his heart. He enslaves others to hide his cowardice and to fill the emptiness of his soul.

His intentions are evil, his thought is sin, his freedom a fetter. When will the hour strike, and he return to the dust? When will time halt its course and sink into the eternity of nothingness? If there is any prayer, it is that burning sigh which rises at every moment from his heart, when he asks his Creator to put an end to the great tragedy.

I said: Look at the world with the eye of the fox and you will see it a den of intrigues; with the eye of the tyrant, and you will see it a theater of battle. Look at it with the eye of the child and you will see it forever new and delightful; with the eye of the girl, and you will see it white and pure.

Remove from your eyes the film of cunning and affectation, and you will come to know the secret of life. Beautiful she is, because the hand of the first Artist fashioned her; all hope, because she sprang from love.

If you ask her children about her, they will point you to her, for they knew her before knowledge came to be.

She is where art is, where beauty is, where goodness is; in the lily that spreads its fragrance over all without distinction, in the glances of the child brimming over with hope,

in the sun that pours her light upon the good and the wicked alike, in the soul of the artist who adds beauty to her beauty,

in the heart of every human being who answers her call.

Look at this woman, waiting days and nights, her soul filled with trust — waiting for her only son. She calls him, and her voice will not tire of calling until he returns; and he will return...

In her resolve is a strength that pierces the horizons,
in her eyes a light that scatters the clouds,
in her gentleness a hope that dispels despair,
in her love a life that triumphs over death.

The voice of the people... the voice of the poor...
the voice of the bereaved mothers... the voice of life... the voice of love... the voice of woman...