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      The walls were purposely kept rough-hewn in order to create a harmony between them and the backgrounds of the paintings. Tunes for the flute were chosen among dozens of entries. They are played by Farid Fakhry, who, in his own words, offered them as a gift to the spirit of my brother Gibran.
      And the monastery was finally transformed into a Gibran museum. And ever since 1975, there is a silent dialogue between Mar Sarkis in his Carmelite monastery, and Gibran in the monastery of his Prophet and his immortal masterpieces. The dialogue engaged behind the visible appearances, accomplishes, in its internal peace, the spiritual heritage that surges up in ripples from the depths of Wadi Qadisha towards the infinite blue. It is a dialogue whose spiritual breeze finds its way furtively to the heart, at once through the physiognomy of a painting and the harmony of a word... And, at any rate, it is a creative dialogue between the inventor and the destined to take form.
      Gibran was born in spirit in this region at the end of the last century, at a time when there was hardly a worthwhile architectural edifice in Bsharri other then the monastery. In its primitiveness, it was the stage for his dream about Jesus. Here is one of his dreams as Mary Haskell recorded it on January 10, 1914. It will retrace, in words, the natural and human appearances as well as the vestiges revealed by this chronology.
Gibran dreamt of Jesus in the meanders of Mar Sarkis monastery.

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Gibran's dream:
One of the Italian monks there was a great friend of my grandfather, Bishop Michael. They always talked Latin together as you and I speak English. Everyone in town knew the monk and loved him. He was very venerable - stout and short, with white hair and bright colour and large bright blue eyes. I remember him perfectly but I had not thought of him for years. And it was he that I was talking with in my dream. We were walking towards the old Phoenician tomb - and he motioned me to notice an ax that was lying by one of the big walnut trees. It was the biggest ax I ever saw. The old monk picked it up and swung it with a smile and than he began to hit the big walnut tree with it. The blows made a tremendous sound that filled all the valley. I remarked to myself with surprise that they sounded not like steel on wood - but like a great bell - as if the tree was made of metal. I walked on slowly and rapidly the sound grew less. With each step it was so much less that I was very much interested - and in a moment I was saying to myself, "I am only fifteen yards away, and near at hand those blows sounded through this whole valley. Now I can hardly hear them." And in a step or two more I did not hear them at all. Then I saw Jesus coming towards me down the road. The walnuts and weeping willows arched over the road, and I could see the patches of sunlight falling through on his face. It was the same face as always - an Arabic type of face, aquiline nose, black eyes, deep-set and large, yet not weak as large eyes are apt to be, but as masculine as anything could be, with his straight black brows. His skin was brown and healthy, with that beautiful flush of red showing through." - (Mary: Was he bearded?), "Yes, with a thin beard like the Arabs - and his hair was abundant and black but not well kept, head bare, as always. He had on the same brown robe, loose, with a cord round the waist and a little torn at the bottom - and the same rough, heavy, common kind large sandal on his feet - they were as usual a little dusty. But he was not walking as usual. His staff high, and with his bosom projecting" - and here K. stood up and faced me with the royal mien he indicated. "Staff held in front - eyes piercing - and he walked like a peasant who deliberately walks like a king. When we met he turned and walked back with me toward the Phoenician tomb. There is a large, large rectangular stone in front of the tomb carved with inscriptions. We sat down on it and talked. There is no noting of time in dreams of course - but when I waked I had the sense that we had talked a long time. And wet I can't remember what we talked about. Only the same old thing. Mary, as we sat he took his staff and marked in the sand with it just as any of us would do and often do. And one thing I remember that he said, in Arabic: "Yes, it does sound like copper." And when he said this, though for some time I had not been hearing the monk chopping the walnut tree - I now heard him again - and it did sound like copper. But there was nothing striking about the conversation. We simply talked."
Today I was unusually aware of him. It is my joy of joys that he never hides from me. "With you, Mary", he said today, "I want to be just like a blade of grass, that moves as the air moves it - to talk just according to the impulse of the moment. And I do." I told him my delight in that - and how it seems to me the highest honour one can do another - to be free and himself with her. To be this, is to treat one's friend as one's equal.

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