At some undetermined moment, for Time is truly measured in moments and not minutes, the Fresco came to life. The paint began to inhale and exhale in a rhythm slower than the human eye could see. The colors that were purely mixed deepened into the true green of pine by the river, gray of craters on the moon, pink of the flesh between one's tongue and gums and the ever-invisible color only children can draw to represent a soul, air and thoughts. As each new character was sketched and colored, their persona added a deeper, more rounded knowledge to the consciousness of the Fresco. In its unfinished state, it was in a dangerous and lethal limbo. For if A Time to Mourn was completed before A Time to Dance was finished to balance it out, unsuspecting observers would be overtaken by a sadness so deep in their souls that they often landed on the river bank staring endlessly at the water passing under the bridge. If A Time to Lose happened to be completed before A Time to Get could balance the slate, many a church lady made a paltry excuse to return home to check for unplugged irons, open windows and untended fires lest she lost the little security in her home she had washed and scrubbed so hard to achieve.

The Fresco, once it overcame extreme vertigo from experiencing the earth's rotation within the contrasting galactic movement, quickly developed a skill for listening to people's hearts, seeing into their souls and whispering words to the depths of their subconscious minds.

It just so happened, on the third day of the Fresco's awakening, that a mother and son were passing through the south wing after morning chapel. The mother guided the young man along slowly since he struggled with one leg longer than the other, a limp left hand, a wide forehead unable to contain his short-term thoughts and a mouth unable to retain the fluid surrounding his tongue. In short, he was what some would call an invalid and the mother often prayed for a lifting of his burden.

It came to pass that on that day as the pair were walking slowly through the work zone, that the panel for A Time to Break Down was newly completed and still shining with wet paint. But the balance of A Time to Build Up was not yet sketched.

The voice of the Fresco spoke to the pair. Since children, mentally afflicted and geniuses are the most open to frequencies beyond the normal human ear, the young man was the only one to notice the sound. He stopped in his tracks and looked wildly around for the source of the voice calling to his soul. It knew of his yearning to run, throw a ball, speak a sentence and sing a folk song. It also knew of his anger towards hospital syringes, shame at needing help in the lavatory, and violence towards small animals.

A time to break down. Break down. Break the body down. Tear through the muscles and bones and be free. A living, thinking being is imprisoned inside the drooling and distorted slump of a boy. Break down. Break out.

Wildly, before his mother or anyone could stop him, he began to throw paint cans, brushes, and sketches up at the backs and legs of the crew. He attacked the scaffolding as if it were his own skeleton to dismantle. His new brute strength snapped metal joints, wooden platforms and brush handles with little effort. Several crew members fell from a height of fifteen feet, one hung to the wooden platform with white moon knuckles. The largest painter jumped on the boy's back and pummeled his head with punches. The mother screamed. The Fresco howled. Armand watched in horror. Duval cowered behind a marble column. It took ten minutes and five large laborers from the mine to calm the boy after much destruction and trauma to all involved.

The priest, returning from a trip to the candle maker, arrived only to see the aftermath, a path of destruction not unlike a small tornado. The crew immediately began to clean up the mess. Duval, annoyed by a new bruise on his already injured wrist, attempted to clean the paint splotches from the stone floor with little luck. Amazingly, no one was seriously hurt, and Armand sent everyone home early.

Armand sat on the stone bench and stared at his creation.

When a baby is born, the mother knows every square inch of his body, the time of day when he burps, the number of hours he sleeps. But as the baby grows, he displays characteristics that become his personality — traits separate and unique from those of his parents — traits that no one could pinpoint the origin — traits unwritten in the genes but stamped in the soul: a certain lift of the chin, a preference for books over sports, a tendency to wear red instead of green. Suddenly the mother sees the child as an entity totally separate from herself with thoughts, experiences, desires, that she cannot know or control.

All this Armand began to realize over the course of the next few weeks as he observed the extreme reactions of observers after the completion of new panels. It was then that he discovered the necessity to work on the panels in the duality of the Ecclesiastes phrases. He also realized it was time to bring in the children. If the Fresco had a voice, he mused, then it had the capacity for good and evil.

It is time to teach the Fresco innocence before it's too late.

This time the Rabbi accompanied his charges through the Cathedral and to the south wing.

"Thank you for coming!" Armand greeted them. "I have a particular favor to ask each and every one of you."

Their eyes glowed with curiosity and Armand winked at the Rabbi. They had agreed ahead of time that this would be a good way to create good memories for the children from what had been a traumatic interlude in their young lives.

"You see the paintings above your heads? The stories in the panels?" They all surveyed the crew busily working above. "My painters need some help, some ideas, for what kind of pictures to draw. And I can tell..." he surveyed the faces of the eager children bursting with energy and excitement, "that each of you is full of good pictures." They all nodded vigorously.

"Guess what?" a boy with thick eyeglasses piped up and pulled the sleeve of Armand. "I'm five!" He proudly held up five fingers with smiley faces on the tips of each.

Under Duval's instruction, the children spread out their bags and materials on the floor. Each was given a charcoal pencil, paper, colors and an Ecclesiastes phrase.

"Rabbi says you"ve studied Ecclesiastes -" Armand began.

"Oh! Oh!" a little boy in a starched white shirt thrust his hand in the air.

"Yes?"

"The Ecclesiastes script is King Solomon's philosophy of life. He was our ancient king."

"Me! Me!" an older boy eagerly waved his hand. The Rabbi beamed. "The Hebrew title for Ecclesiastes is 'Qoheleth' which translates as wisdom from the speaker at a public assembly."

"Is that so?"

"Oh! Me!" Armand winked at the Rabbi.

"Yes, you."

"It was written approximately 945 B.C., that's the Roman calendar, your time."

"My turn!" the oldest girl, looking to be 10 or 11, requested. "The first four pairs deal with life on earth, the next two are about our feelings and the last six about our spirits."

"My! That is excellent!" Armand praised the children. "Now, here's what I"d like you to do. Each of you has been assigned one part of the phrase -"

"I have A Time to Die!" the little girl with bouncy curls complained.

"- and I want you to draw a picture and tell me what you think it means. And you know what?" He cupped his ear and circled his hand.

"What?!" they all yelled in unison.

"There's no right or wrong! You can draw off the page, put the nose upside down, give a guy twenty toes — it's okay! As long as it's what you really want to draw. All right, let's go!"

The Fresco kept silent and listened to all the excited voices describing its being. It closely watched the little girl with bouncy curls draw a dead pigeon with wings on its soul flying to heaven. It listened to the little boy telling the Rabbi about planting his baby teeth in the garden. It watched the youngest draw an elephant embracing a mouse with its ears. It watched, listened and learned.

Armand walked around, marveling at all the scenes and finally sat down next to the Rabbi. "They know more about Art and God than I do," he nodded.

We are never dreaming, only forgetting, the Fresco echoed from Magdalena.

"Children seem to be born with the undeniable acceptance of mystery, which teachers systematically eradicate with logic. Then we spend our whole adult lives trying to remember that we found God in the mud puddles, in the sparkling specks in the sand, in the patterns of the clouds," Armand mused.

The Fresco thought about the dead pigeon and whispered a question to the alert artist. The girl jumped up and faced Armand and the Rabbi.

"Why do we have to die?" she asked. The Rabbi took her hand and pulled her into his lap.

"Ay, little one, dying and living go hand in hand." The Fresco listened closely and realized it would die someday too. "Everything that lives, eventually dies. That's what makes living the most important job of all our tasks. Did you know," he turned to Armand, "I was reading a science journal yesterday that said every seven years our cells die and regenerate. Brain cells, therefore, are a miracle. Each cell seems to pass on to the cell which replaces it the memory of the past so that, even though my brain cells have changed, the memory goes back beyond the life of the cell itself."

"Fascinating," Armand pondered. "I wonder if inanimate cells have such memory. Does the water in the Fresco paint retain the feeling of traveling down a waterfall? Does the stone under our feet retain the solitude of the quarry?"