The Orchard That Waits

The Orchard That Waits

Inspired by Gospel of Thomas, Saying 19

Jesus said, "Blessed is the one who came into being before coming into being. If you become my disciples and listen to my message, these stones will become your servants; because there are five trees in paradise which don't change in summer or winter, and their leaves don't fall. Whoever knows them won't taste death."

The Orchard That Waits

There was once a child named Elen, born without a shadow.

The villagers murmured. Some said she had skipped a step in time or perhaps slipped through sorrow too early. She spoke in riddles and walked barefoot even through frost, smiling at things no one else could see.

One morning, when the sky wore no color and the birds refused to sing, Elen wandered beyond the edge of the known woods, past the place where maps ended and memory grew thin.

There, she discovered an orchard that belonged to no season.

The trees did not bloom, nor did they wither. Their leaves shimmered like forgotten dreams, and their roots hummed softly with names she had not yet lived.

A voice from the stillness said:

“You came into being before you came into being. That is why you found us.”

Elen sat beneath the fifth tree, which bore no fruit but sang in perfect silence. She did not speak. She listened.

The stones around her began to stir, not to crush her, but to serve her. They arranged themselves into a circle, not a wall. And inside that circle, Elen remembered the moment before her birth.

She did not taste death.
She tasted origin.

The Trees That Do Not Fall

In Saying 19 of the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus offers a curious and sacred blessing:

“Blessed is the one who came into being before coming into being.”

This is not just a clever wordplay.
It is a revelation.

A summons.
A mirror.

It invites us to recall something older than time. Something buried deep within every soul:

That we are not our beginning,
We are what was before our beginning.

The Preexistent Self

To “come into being before coming into being” means to awaken to your eternal identity, the spark that existed before your body, your name, your first breath.

• It is the image before the mirror.

• The light before the flame.

• The knowing before the thought.

Gnostic teachings speak often of this hidden self, the imprint of the Father’s light, woven into us before the world began.

This isn't reserved for Jesus alone.
He says it to you.
To all who dare to remember.

Stones That Serve

Jesus continues:

“If you become my disciples and listen to my message, these stones will serve you.”

Stones, the most inert things, the symbols of the lifeless and forgotten, will move for the awakened.

Why?

Because when you reawaken to your divine origin, even the hardened world around you begins to respond.

• That which once blocked your path begins to build it.

• Obstacles turn into offerings.

• Walls reshape into circles.

The cosmos itself remembers you, because you have remembered yourself.

The Five Trees in Paradise

Elen sat beneath the fifth tree, silent, fruitless, yet overflowing with song.

In some Gnostic texts, there is a reference to the five trees in Paradise. Jesus says:

“There are five trees in Paradise that do not change, summer or winter. And their leaves do not fall. Whoever knows them will not taste death.”

These trees are not physical.

They are eternal archetypes, symbolic roots of divine consciousness:

• Perhaps the five senses, transfigured into spiritual perception.

• Perhaps five divine aspects of Wisdom, as seen in Manichaean cosmology.

• Perhaps five radiant truths that remain untouched by time, decay, or death.

To know these trees is not to escape death,
But to transcend its illusion.

Invitation to the Orchard

So, I ask you:

• Have you remembered the moment before your name?

• Have you sat beneath the tree that sings in silence?

• Have you allowed the stones around you to become a circle, not a prison?

Jesus does not offer escape from this world.
He offers remembrance, of the world beneath this world.

He does not promise safety.
He promises awakening, and in that awakening, even death becomes a doorway.

Meditation

1. What part of me remembers who I was before I was told who I am?

2. Where in my life have the “stones”, the hard, dead things, begun to stir?

3. Which tree am I sitting beneath, and have I learned to hear its silence?

4. What might it mean for me to “come into being before coming into being”?

Prayer

Father in Heaven,

Stir the memory that sleeps beneath my name.
Awaken the self that never tasted time.

Teach me to walk barefoot through forgetting,
To sit beneath the tree that bears no fruit but truth.

Let the stones no longer block me,
Let them serve.

And when I remember the moment before I began,
Let me rise, not new, but ancient.

Not fearless, but whole.

Amen.