From Gibran's book on Jesus, including Gibran's picture of him.
http://leb.net/mira/works/jesus/jesus.html
A Philosopher
On Wonder And Beauty
WHEN HE WAS with us He gazed at us and at our world with eyes of wonder, for His eyes were not veiled with the veil of years, and all that He saw was clear in the light of His youth.
Though He knew the depth of beauty, He was for ever surprised by its peace and its majesty; and He stood before the earth as the first man had stood before the first day.
We whose senses have been dulled, we gaze in full daylight and yet we do not see. We would cup our ears, but we do not hear; and stretch forth our hands, but we do not touch. And though all the incense of Arabia is burned, we go our way and do not smell.
We see not the ploughman returning from his field at eventide; nor hear the shepherd's flute when he leads his flock to the fold, nor do we stretch our arms to touch the sunset; and our nostrils hunger no longer for the roses of Sharon.
Nay, we honor no kings without kingdoms; nor hear the sound of harps save when the strings are plucked by hands; nor do we see a child playing in our olive grove as if he were a young olive tree. And all words must needs rise from lips of flesh, or else we deem each other dumb and deaf.
In truth we gaze but do not see, and hearken but do not hear; we eat and drink but do not taste. And there lies the difference between Jesus of Nazareth and ourselves.
His senses were all continually made new, and the world to Him was always a new world.
To Him the lisping of a babe was not less than the cry of all mankind, while to us it is only lisping.
To Him the root of a buttercup was a longing towards God, while to us it is naught but a root.
Mary Magdalen, Thirty Years Later
On The Resurrection Of The Soul
ONCE AGAIN I say that with death Jesus conquered death, and rose from the grave a spirit and a power. And He walked in our solitude and visited the gardens of our passion.
He lies not there in that cleft rock behind the stone.
We who love Him beheld Him with these our eyes which He made to see; and we touched Him with these our hands which He taught to reach forth.
I know you who believe not in Him. I was one of you, and you are many; but your number shall be diminished.
Must your break your harp and your lyre to find the music therein?
Or must you fell a tree ere you can believe it bears fruit?
You hate Jesus because someone from the North Country said He was the Son of God. But you hate one another because each of you deems himself too great to be the brother of the next man.
You hate Him because someone said He was born of a virgin, and not of man's seed.
But you know not the mothers who go to the tomb in virginity, nor the men who go down to the grave choked with their own thirst.
You know not that the earth was given in marriage to the sun, and that earth it is who sends us forth to the mountain and the desert.
There is a gulf that yawns between those who love Him and those who hate Him, between those who believe and those who do not believe.
But when the years have bridged that gulf you shall know that He who lived in us is deathless, that He was the Son of God even as we are the children of God; that He was born of a virgin even as we are born of the husbandless earth.
It is passing strange that the earth gives not to the unbelievers the roots that would suck at her breast, nor the wings wherewith to fly high and drink, and be filled with the dews of her space.
But I know what I know, and it is enough.
