THE ANSWER:  If I gave you just once guess; where would that be?  “Egypt?”  You’re right and probably for all of the very reasons that I have already expressed to you in terms of my youthful experiences in an even then ancient land.  First off, I had pretty much expressed rather completely and repeatedly my only youthfully conceived offering for a true salvation of my Hebrew people, and it just wasn’t that relentless worship of some vengeful and fearful god full of wanton and repeated wrath. It was only this singular and perhaps too simple idea of expressing the ‘truth’ in the face of a corrupted priesthood that selfishly and persistently falsified reality.  I just couldn’t have been any more direct or complete in my simple and perhaps too idealistic mission.  I think that even some of my own disciples were getting rather weary of hearing the same old thing day in and day out, and if they were to ever have had any ministry of their own, it had to be without me looking over their burdensome shoulders and telling them what was the right thing to do or say; at any rate, it was time for me to move on to something else for the rest of my life.  After all, I had no hopes or even intentions of living forever, and beating a drum to the exclusion of every other man’s right in choosing his own fate.  I was indeed my brother’s keeper, but I just couldn’t bear the needless burden of being responsible for their salvation.  My only simply and certainly self-imposed responsibility was to tell them the ‘truth’ that I had so struggled to discover for myself, and what they accomplished with that truth was entirely in their own hands.  Where my heart always grieved was with the innocence of the children and the often-gruesome fact that they were, and will always be, so naturally dependant upon the spiritual integrity of their parents.  This was the underlying dilemma that was so dramatically related in that story about Moses and his awesome ordeal for some forty years in that desolate wilderness.  It’s of little consequence as to whether the story is true or not, but what remains a reality is that children raise by parents that have no love or respect for that which is right and truthful, simply cannot be expected to become righteous citizens in any given society, god fearing or not.  I would go so far as to suggests that the underlying problem with so much of society today is precisely this disparity between reality and what most children are taught as the truth of their actual origins, and I mean all of that in terms of that still raging debate between those who so earnestly claim that there was some imagined god only six to eight thousand years ago that actually created all of this mess as opposed to the blatant reality that has only in the most resent history been un-refutably supported by man’s continuing discovery of his ancient past and its mysterious connection to the entire universe; a universe, that I might remind you, does NOT revolve around this one little minute planet.  I wish that I had been so informed in my own day, as I would have been heralded as a ‘prophet’ of the highest magnitude or else suffered much like Galileo at the hands of the Catholic Church.  In either case, reality remains the same, as it truly was in my own day even if we were so innocent about the full knowledge and understanding of our magnificent universe.  In any case, back to the question: I did indeed returned to Egypt where I was in more congenial company that wasn't bent on crucifying me to some cross, and when I returned there I simply continued where I had left off some years before.  To avoid fully relating my near-death experience in Judea I had simply explained those hideous and newly acquired scares that I then bore as the result of working with my father on some heavy-duty carpentry projects.  Yes, I actually lied about the truth and did so as I didn’t wish to burden my old friends with my own personal or political problems.  In any case, I left that past in Judea to deal with itself, the dead to bury their own, and told no one in Judea of my actual intentions of returning to Egypt with only one singular and rightful exception, my very much beloved, Mary Magdalene.  She was, after all, my closest disciple, my very best friend and not known by most, my intimate lover and betrothed.  Because of my exceptional education and also because my physical health had been a bit compromised, I didn’t seek to support my physical needs with the skills that I had learned from my father, but instead, sought to become a teacher and more often, I just tutored young students of the few richer people that still remained in the place of my youth.  As fate would probably determine much of what eventually happened, I quickly gathered a small circle of close friends that still shared an interest in just the intellectual exploration of the ideas of the day and even the remaining portions of Alexandria that was once so filled with scholars still supported the lofty idea of man exploring his known universe with the ideas and speculations that just wasn’t entertained in most other parts of the know world.  Rome had certainly become the center of political power, but with that power there apparently came some restrictions on what the citizens ought to think, know and not know about the rest of the world, and most particularly what the rest of the world possibly thought about Rome.  The delight of my life was the eventual and expected arrival of Mary some three years after I had left Judea.  It was easy for her to find me amongst the local scholars as I stood out just a bit being seen as more Arab/Hebrew appearing than many of the Greek residents that I had come to know.  And, I was the only man that had these unusually hideous scares about his wrists.  Mary was immediately welcomed in this all-male intellectual society most assuredly because I had spoken of her so often and her unusually gifted mind that was equally full of creative thoughts.  I believe that many of my friends felt that they were already well acquainted since I had shared so much of her with them, and it was quite obvious from the beginning that I wasn’t about to be in any association where Mary was apt to not be equally welcomed.  To add to my joy of her joining me, Mary was soon with child even though she was a bit past the youthfulness of childbearing.  We were blessed with a son that we named, Joseph in remembrance of my own father, and because Mary was already an age beyond that of other younger mothers, we were thankful to have this one blessing so late in our lives.  When Joseph was born we were kindly invited to move into the home of one of my older friends who had remained in the grand home of his birth.  There was a rather obvious emptiness that had been left with the then recent passing of his own parents, and with his brother and sister both well situated in their own homes and with their own families, Jason welcomed the added company.  It was a most joyous household that never hungered for some new adventure as we all sort of relived memories from our own youth through this wonderful and most delightful child, Joseph.  Bring up Joseph and educating him with what all three of us had to offer along with a hosts of educated friends gave more meaning to my simple life than all those trials and tribulations that I and even Mary had once experienced in the land of Judea.  It is amazing, the joy that can be had when love abounds and there just aren’t those ominous burdens that can so easily plague one’s spiritual life based on endless falsehoods.  There really is, only joy when you come to love those around you and harbor no ill feelings towards any of your neighbors, and for me and my beloved Mary that included the entirety of Judea and its diverse occupants that we had left far behind.  Times were not always easy as there were some seasons that were plagued with drought and many of us would simply have to learn to do with less, but we all seemed to overcome together even the worse of times, especially in the presence of so many wonderful and generous friends.  Just when I thought that I had experienced all the good that life had to offer and Joseph was at the threshold of his manhood with an exceptional head full of such diverse learning, the most incredible event occurred with the unexpected arrival of an old and dear friend from Judea.