Page 101 - Eggs and Ashes pages

100 Eggs and Ashes

their eyes meeting,
love and pain mingling in their questions,
receiving no answers they could understand.

Part four

So what happened in those years, Jesus?
Did you begin to wonder who you were?
Did Mary tell you about the angel, the massacre?
Did Joseph tell you about the shepherds, about Egypt, about his fears?

If they didn’t, someone in the village must have told you about the census,
must have let slip that your family
went missing for a few years and then reappeared.

You didn’t think like your parents, did you Jesus?
They couldn’t answer your questions – that worried them;
and you wondered if they were refusing to answer you.
What did they know about you that they wouldn’t tell?

Did you continue to talk with the teachers in Jerusalem year after year?
Did you want to join them?
Were your parents over-protective, or did they let you do your own thing?
Was there enough work for you to stay in the family business?
Did you go out with your friends? Did you have a girlfriend?
Could you relax in the village or did you feel a stranger?

And of God – what did you know?
Did you know as much as your growing mind could take?
Were you able to believe it? Who could you talk to?
Who would believe you? Who might laugh at you?
Who might threaten you?

Adolescence is full of questions –
of mind and body and emotions out of gear –
why for you should it have been any different?
And, in the end, did you know who you were –
or what was going to happen to you?
Or did you, like us,
have to live your life and see what happened next?

Ruth Burgess