The son of Mary, Jesus, hurries up a slope
as though a wild animal were chasing him.
Someone following him asks, Where are you going?
No one is after you. Are you the one
who says words over a dead person, so that
he wakes up? I am. Who then could possibly
cause you to run like this? Jesus explains.
I say the Great Name over the deaf and the blind,
they are healed. Over a stony mountainside
and it tears its mantle down to the navel.
But when I speak lovingly for hours with those
who take human warmth and mock it, when I say the Name
to them, nothing happens. They remain rock,
or turn to sand. Other diseases are ways for mercy
to enter, but this nonresponding breeds violence
and coldness toward God. I am fleeing from that. As
little by little air steals water, so praise
dries up and evaporates with foolish people who refuse to
change. Like cold stone you sit on, a cynic steals
body heat. He does not feel the sun. Jesus was not running
from anything. He was teaching in a new way.