“Geez!” he exclaimed. “You startled me.”
“I am sorry, Mackenzie,” she apologized, “but supper is almost ready and it is time to invite you to make your way back to the shack.”
“Have you been with me the entire time?” inquired Mack, a little ramped from the adrenaline rush.
“Of course. I am always with you.”
“Then how come I didn’t know it?” asked Mack. “Lately I’ve been able to tell when you’re around.”
“For you to know or not,” she explained, “has nothing at all to do with whether I am actually here or not. I am always with you; sometimes I want you to be aware in a special way-more intentional.”
Mack nodded that he understood and turned the canoe toward the distant shore and the shack. He now distinctly felt her presence in the tingle down his spine. They both smiled simultaneously.
“Will I always be able to see you or hear you like I do now, even if I’m back home?”
Sarayu smiled. “Mackenzie, you can always talk to me and I will always be with you, whether you sense my presence or not.”
“I know that now, but how will I hear you?”
“You will learn to hear my thoughts in yours, Mackenzie,” she reassured him.
“Will it be clear? What if I confuse you with another voice? What if I make mistakes?”
Sarayu laughed, the sound like tumbling water, only set to music. “Of course you will make mistakes; everybody makes mistakes, but you will begin to better recognize my voice as we continue to grow our relationship.”
“I don’t want to make mistakes,” Mack grunted.
“Oh, Mackenzie,” responded Sarayu, “mistakes are a part of life, and Papa works his purpose in them, too.” She was amused and Mack couldn’t help but grin back. He could see her point well enough.
“This is so different from everything I’ve known, Sarayu. Don’t get me wrong-I love what you all have given me this weekend. But I have no idea how I go back to my life. Somehow it seemed easier to live with God when I thought of him as the demanding taskmaster, or even to cope with the loneliness of The Great Sadness.”
“You think so?” she asked. “Really?”
“At least then I seemed to have things under control.”
“Seemed is the right word. What did it get you? The Great Sadness and more pain than you could bear, pain that spilled over even on those you care for the most.”
“According to Papa that’s because I’m scared of emotions,” he disclosed.
Sarayu laughed out loud. “I thought that little interchange was hilarious.”
“I am afraid of emotions,” Mack admitted, a bit perturbed that she seemed to make light of it. “I don’t like how they feel. I’ve hurt others with them and I can’t trust them at all. Did you create all of them or only the good ones?”
“Mackenzie.” Sarayu seemed to rise up into the air. He still had a difficult time looking right at her, but with the late afternoon sun reflecting off the water, it was even worse. “Emotions are the colors of the soul; they are spectacular and incredible. When you don’t feel, the world becomes dull and colorless. Just think how The Great Sadness reduced the range of color in your life down to monotones and flat grays and blacks.”
“So help me understand them,” pleaded Mack.
“Not much to understand, actually. They just are. They are neither bad nor good; they just exist. Here is something that will help you sort this out in your mind, Mackenzie. Paradigms power perception and perceptions power emotions. Most emotions are responses to perception-what you think is true about a given situation. If your perception is false, then your emotional response to it will be false too. So check your perceptions, and beyond that check the truthfulness of your paradigms-what you believe. Just because you believe something firmly doesn’t make it true. Be willing to reexamine what you believe. The more you live in the truth, the more your emotions will help you see clearly. But even then, you don’t want to trust them more than me.”
Mack allowed his oar to turn in his hands as he let it play in the water’s movements. “It feels like living out of relationship-you know, trusting and talking to you-is a bit more complicated than just following rules.”
“What rules are those, Mackenzie?”
“You know, all the things the Scriptures tell us we should do.”
“Okay…” she said with some hesitation. “And what might those be?”
“You know,” he answered sarcastically. “About doing good things and avoiding evil, being kind to the poor, reading your Bible, praying, and going to church. Things like that.”
“I see. And how is that working for you?”
He laughed. “Well, I’ve never done it very well. I have moments that aren’t too bad, but there’s always something I’m struggling with, or feeling guilty about. I just figured I needed to try harder, but I find it difficult to sustain that motivation.”
“Mackenzie!” she chided, her words flowing with affection. “The Bible doesn’t teach you to follow rules. It is a picture of Jesus. While words may tell you what God is like and even what he may want from you, you cannot do any of it on your own. Life and living is in him and in no other. My goodness, you didn’t think you could live the righteousness of God on your own, did you?”
“Well, I thought so, sorta…” he said sheepishly. “But you gotta admit, rules and principles are simpler than relationships.”
“It is true that relationships are a whole lot messier than rules, but rules will never give you answers to the deep questions of the heart and they will never love you.”
Dipping his hand in the water, he played, watching the patterns his movements made. “I’m realizing how few answers I have… to anything. You know, you’ve turned me upside down or inside out or something.”
“Mackenzie, religion is about having the right answers, and some of their answers are right. But I am about the process that takes you to the living answer and once you get to him, he will change you from the inside. There are a lot of smart people who are able to say a lot of right things from their brain because they have been told what the right answers are, but they don’t know me at all. So really, how can their answers be right even if they are right, if you understand my drift?” She smiled at her pun. “So even though they might be right, they are still wrong.”
“I understand what you’re saying. I did that for years after seminary. I had the right answers, sometimes, but I didn’t know you. This weekend, sharing life with you has been far more illuminating than any of those answers.” They continued to move lazily with a current.
“So, will I see you again?” he asked hesitantly.
“Of course. You might see me in a piece of art, or music, or silence, or through people, or in Creation, or in your joy and sorrow. My ability to communicate is limitless, living and transforming, and it will always be tuned to Papa’s goodness and love. And you will hear and see me in the Bible in fresh ways. Just don’t look for rules and principles; look for relationship-a way of coming to be with us.”
“It still won’t be the same as having you sit on the bow of my boat.”
“No, it will be far better than you’ve yet known, Mackenzie. And when you finally sleep in this world, we’ll have an eternity together-face-to-face.”
And then she was gone. Although he knew that she was not really.
“So please, help me live in the truth,” he said out loud. “Maybe that counts as prayer.” he wondered.
When Mack entered the cabin he saw that Jesus and Sarayu were already there and seated around the table. Papa was busy as usual bringing platters of wonderful-smelling dishes, again only a few that Mack recognized, and even those he had to look at twice to make sure they were something he was familiar with. Conspicuously absent were any greens. He headed for the bathroom to clean up, and when he returned the other three had already begun to eat. He pulled up the fourth chair and sat down.