And all at once, caught up in a whirlwind of passion,
Flesh begets flesh.
It began with a man; and also a woman.
The man asked for her hand,
her father gave it,
the man took it.
He took her hand and placed a ring on her finger,
and all of the woman became his.
And she also placed a ring on the man's finger,
and he became wholly hers.
They became one flesh with God and men as
witnesses of their union.
And they lay down together.
A fire was lit in their loins, and their union was consummated.
And a seed was planted.
A seed was planted in the woman's body,
and also in the union of the man and the woman.
And as their marriage grew, so also grew the shoot within
the woman.
And in time and in its right season, this tree of marriage
flowered and bore fruit.
The fruit was a new man.
So what was begotten of flesh was flesh, and the flesh
could have borne no other thing but that to which
it gave birth.
Now, inside this man and woman resided a spirit.
And the same one spirit in both of them.
But this spirit came not from the union of the man and the woman.
No, but by this spirit they were united in spirit, and
apart from this spirit they would have no union but for that
which is of the flesh.
This spirit gave them life, and before he came they were dead.
Thus, when their flesh bore fruit, the child was born dead.
Indeed, from the time of his birth he began
to decay and putrefy.
Now when flesh decays, what does it become?
Soil. Dust.
And so as this boy grew, he did not so much grow as he did spread out,
just as the sands of the desert move to cover new land as
the wind blows it to and fro.
After some times, the Spirit who had made the dust-
for it was He who so stirred the man and woman,
and it was He who watered and caused to grow
the seed in the woman's womb
-Remembered the dust, and He caused one of his
Living Ones
to plant a seed in the desert, and another to come along
and water it,
and the Spirit himself was the sun who shone on it and
caused it to grow.
And the seed that was planted burst out of the dust and grew.
And as it grew, its roots thrust themselves deep,
and the roots began to grow through the dust.
So many little roots grew that if you took the dust away,
you could yet see where the dust had been,
for the roots had retained the shape of the dust
which had fostered them.
In this way the dust lived on through the tree.
Indeed, the dust, in a way, became the tree.
Although he looked much the same as what he
used to be,
he was a new creation.
The old had gone and the new had come.
And the new could never pass away because
the spirit who had planted him had taken the seed
from His own fruit.
Just as the Spirit is eternal,
so His fruit,
so His seed.
