45. They call him the Word and his defeat at the Temple does not silence him for long. He heals quickly under Her magic hands and returns to speaking almost every night. He touches on all of his favourite themes - Love, the coming Revolution of Love - but there is a new intensity in his speech about these things, as though he were now certain of previously uncertain things, as though his speech has become pressured by our closeness to the Holy City.

 

46. In earlier days he spoke haltingly to the small crowds that would gather to our camp. As we moved through country he found himself speaking to listeners who turned very quickly from curious to devout. People heard of his power over words and they increasingly sought him out, they begged him to speak and he obliged them and gradually he grew more capable. His speech loosened and talk of his miracles grew and after a point it became dangerous for him to speak at all. Fine words engender jealousy and there were pointed glances amongst those who heard him speak. When he declared that the Keys to the Kingdom were in fact words, that he had been gifted those keys and the Kingdom would very soon be opened. We were often exposed in open country without any cover or retreat, and despite Her own desire to hear him talk She was painfully aware of the danger that it posed.

 

47. Now he is permitted to speak only to the People. But there is also grave danger in this, a subtle danger which thrives in the intimate space his words create. When he speaks of Love every listener feels his words directed entirely towards them, his words feel created for them and for the healing of the wounds they bear in their hearts. He speaks of Love with such conviction that his words actually become Love, it streams out of his heart with his every word and phrase and it moves every heart just the same. He speaks to abused children who have never known love in their lives, they crave the least bit of tenderness and they are completely opened to him. The sincerity in his words, their genuineness and intensity: there never was an orphaned child who could hope to resist such words.

 

48. Love was there in the beginning, he says, when the world came to be. And the human heart was originally composed out of Love, which is why this profane world wounds us so badly. This world which fell completely out of Love and can only be our temporary home. We seek Love out, and after our brief sorrowful journey it is to Love that we will return, to our birthright and our True Religion and what we were always meant to be. He assures us that soon enough Love will open Her books of account, and that the loveless who betrayed their true nature will be exiled from Her Communion. Our lives are a short road, he says, ending at a narrow gate, we are here only to be proved of our Love and our claim to return to that Pure Land out of which we are fallen souls.

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49. He perfects the words that he is given to say. Love is patient, Love is kind, Love is humble and gentle and slow to rancour. Love delights in the truth and dishonours falsehood. Love restores the barren places with pools and streams of water, it could turn the Negev into watersprings and the deserts into bloom. Love is steadfast and constant and always walks beside us, we cannot be lost to Love because it is not different from what we are and what we were made to be. Many waters cannot drown Love nor can quick rivers quench it. Love is the foundation of our being and our place within the world. Unless Love underpins the home they build, they labour in vain who build it.

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50. But to the wicked Love is fierce and says: what right had you to declare my statutes, or take my name upon your lips? These are the hypocrites and the Thieves of Love who give their mouths to gossip, who lie and slander and let their tongues frame deceit. You will know them if you are watchful, he says, you will hear the emptiness of their words and their deeds will ring like hollow bells. Those who barter with thieves, who collude with those betraying their wedding vows, who heap up gold and silver thinking that riches will admit them into the Kingdom. Who are cruel and who exult in their cruelty, who molest the weak and the vulnerable. Love will cast them out into the darkness, where they will continue to clutch and grasp, too full of greed to ever see: that if anyone tried to buy Love with all of the wealth of his house, contempt is all he would get.

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51. His Words of Love are bolstered by the many parables he tells. They speak about the least deserving of people, thieves and wastrels and others of that kind. These wretches lurch and founder until they admit the error of their ways, and they are always forgiven and restored by the hand of a righteous father, who rejoices to take his wayward children back into his home and their inheritance. And how much more joyfully will you be received, he says. You who are blameless, you who have been brutalised, you who have never known the tenderness of a loving parent. The Father sees how you have been beaten, how you have been degraded, how you have been violated and cast down and left to eat husks that even swine would baulk at eating.

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52. The Word is like music to every ear and that may be the best way to describe it. I know the origin of his words and what he can do with them, he perfects them as literal speech but there is much more to it than that. His words retain the arcane power of song, which is our original speech, they cut and bind his audience in a much less ephemeral way than ordinary speech can do. This impact endures as a kind of loving bondage, his perfected rhythms and the tumbling melody of his speech cutting directly through his listeners. It makes the face of every girl shine out with desire, and the longing to touch him gently and to soothe him by that touch. And there are times when he will actually break into song, and interpolate that singing speech into the rhythmic structure of his words, and this song-speech serves to cast everyone even further under his spell.

 

53. Hs words do not end. They seem to recount endless things but even his repeated speech sounds fresh and convincing. Their priests tell you to love God with all of your hearts and minds, he says, but this is a false commandment. Because God is Love, God filled your hearts with Love. Why would God demand to have it back? There is only one commandment, he says, and it comprises three words: one is Love, one is One, and one is Another. Love One Another and he says it so often, and everyone listening knows that this part of his speech is true. When he says with sighing sounds that Love is now poised at a tipping point, where the levee banks of commerce and false religion might be washed away, so that Love will become a flood to fill every right heart instantly and usher us back into Paradise.

 

54. The words he speaks transcend mere generalities. He looks out at us with his deep eyes burning and tells us that he loves us, in a personal and ordinary way, that his heart rejoices over every one of us and this really sets the People to sighing. If you could just feel the love I feel, he says. If you could let it flood you and fill you up and overspill into the world like my own love does. It takes nothing but a ready heart and the desire to requite Love with more Love, so that it builds to the point where it can no longer be restrained. Break down the dams within you, he begs, for even our small communion of People could precipitate a flood which would utterly cleanse the world.

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55. She is moved like everybody else but there is a secret dimension to Her response. When She looks into me on quiet nights She seeks out the words that nestle amongst my visions of the future. She finds words of power and words of Love and at their intersection She finds words with the power to transform hearts and not just the hearts of a few damaged children. I can never properly interpret the words She takes from me but She knows them when She sees them and She searches for them increasingly. All of these red-letter words that the future has in store. She carefully records them in the scrolls of Her heart and then imparts them to him while he sleeps. She then waits anxiously for the next night to come, when She will hear these words cascade back out of him but always made more beautiful, always completely transformed.

 

56. They call him the Word and without doubt this is true speech. To take even Her stolen words and make them more beautiful than they were. The more words he speaks the more She comes to me for supply, She plunders words from whatever future She can find and feeds them back to him while he sleeps. Creating a loop of infinite perfectibility: bringing him words so he can turn them more golden in his mouth, seeking them again and again for his further purification. His words become so keen that they are impossible to resist: like magic swords that cut straight through any heart, like magic charms that raise both speaker and listener into new heights of communion and ecstasy. She falls more in love with him with every stolen word, She knows him and desires him so much more deeply than the girls who ring him tightly whenever he comes to speak.

 

57. His speech always grows more personal as the night approaches its crescendo. He tells us again that we are worthy of Love because we come from a Place of Love, and to prove it he looks out at the People with tears now streaming down his face and says: I love you. I love each and every one of you. And I know you feel it, because I have no doubt that you love me too. Through his tears he repeats these declarations until the People are all falling about weeping. They cry back that they do love him, that they always will, they go to express their gratitude for his Love but sobbing chokes the words out of their mouths. These children who have known nothing but exploitation and brutality for the whole of their lives and yet they know the truth of Love when they hear it. When they hear that they are worthy of Love and find a man who will tell them so, without any fear of ridicule, who speaks to their need and their longing and the love they have to give as well.

 

58. He is a master of speech and thus of crowds and he always breaks from speaking at the same emotional peak. He stutters a few times as his words begin to fail him, he holds his head and slumps forward as though he were overcome. The People cry out for him and She rushes to his aid, She puts a blanket around him and pulls him to his feet and bundles him back into the caves. The People continue to cry out for him even when he is gone, they weep for his Love given to them at such terrible expense to himself. These are true feelings although some girls also weep out of their unexpressed desire for him. They hear that Love is not partial, that it belongs equally to us all, but in their hidden hearts they long to be unequal in his eyes, to cultivate his particular devotion even as their words beg to differ.

 

59. The Word is seductive but it does have tremendous practical effects. The People become more and more loving towards one other, they help and care for each other and they freely wish to serve. Because Love is patient and kind they treat each other with patience and kindness, they take on the burdens of those who are struggling and they make special efforts when they feel exhausted. All of this has the power of uplifting us: as each one makes a more loving effort it inspires others to do the same. It requires no priestly hierarchy, no tablets full of rules, although She and the Twins will always occupy their central place amongst the People. We are simply lost children who have been shown a better way, having known such cruelty that the least bit of kindness seems to fall on us directly from Heaven.

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60. I must testify however that his words do not seduce me. They are full of beauty and he has his own beauty too, he is made of the same stuff as his brother and it would be foolish to deny it. But he wants too much to be beautiful. Her girls cut his hair and lighten his skin and he looks so much like a Roman, and amongst escaped slaves I can only guess why he would covet such a look. It makes him seem indolent and cruel and I hear some of that seeping into the words that fall from him. He winds a fine cloak around himself when he speaks into the evenings, a seamless mantle of white wool and linen with a continuous blue and gold braid that must have been terribly expensive. He looks very fine and the girls love him for it but they forget who dressed him in such finery. Just to see Her gaze at him should make it very clear that She will be the one to take him, if he is to be taken at all.

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61.My beloved sits at the edges of these gatherings with His head bowed out of respect. He does not interrupt but I see Him marking out patterns in the sand in front of Him. He listens for notes of danger much more than He listens to the Word, His men also remain attuned to sounds well outside of our circle. They are protecting us of course but there is more to it than that. The Word seems not to entice men the way it entices women, men admire his faculty with words but they never lose their minds. With the One who is most lost always inclining to his side, nodding and sighing with every word that he perfects. My beloved sees the danger in this, I know that this is true, She favours the other twin but it is not jealousy that prompts Him towards concern. He feels disaster drawing closer with every word His brother speaks, He feels madness growing in the depths of our ranks and there is nothing He can do to prevent it.