The Shack

  powder off his jeans and shirt as Mack approached.

  “Hey there, Mack! I was just putting some finishing touches on my project for tomorrow. Would you like to go for a walk?”

  Mack thought about their time last night under the stars. “If you’re going, I’m more than willing,” he responded. “Why do you all keep talking about tomorrow?”

  “It’s a big day for you, one of the reasons you are here. Let’s go. There’s a special place I want to show you on the other side of the lake and the panorama is beyond description. You can even see some of the higher peaks from over there.”

  “Sounds great!” responded Mack enthusiastically.

  “It looks like you have our lunches, so we’re ready to go.”

  Instead of angling off to one side of the lake or the other, where Mack suspected a trail might be, Jesus headed straight for the dock. The day was bright and beautiful. The sun was warm to the skin but not too much, and a fresh scented breeze softly and lovingly caressed their faces.

  Mack next assumed that they would be taking one of the canoes nestled against the dock pylons, and he was surprised when Jesus didn’t hesitate as he passed the third and last of them, heading directly for the end of the pier. Reaching the end of the dock, he turned to Mack and grinned.

  “After you,” he said with a mock flourish and bow.

  “You’re kidding, right?” sputtered Mack. “I thought we were going for a walk, not a swim.”

  “We are. I just thought going across the lake would take less time than going around it.”

  “I’m not that great a swimmer and besides, the water looks pretty damn cold,” complained Mack. He suddenly realized what he had said and felt his face flush. “Uh, I mean darn, pretty darn cold.” He looked up at Jesus with a frozen grimace on his face, but the other man seemed to be actually enjoying Mack’s discomfort.

  “Now,” Jesus folded his arms, “we both know that you are a very capable swimmer, once a lifeguard if I remember right. And the water is cold. And it’s deep. But I’m not talking about swimming. I want to walk across with you.”

  What Jesus had been suggesting, Mack finally allowed into his consciousness. He was talking about walking across on the water. Jesus, anticipating his hesitation, asserted, “C’mon, Mack. If Peter can do it…”

  Mack laughed, more out of nerves than anything. To be sure, he asked one more time, “You want me to walk on the water to the other side-that is what you are saying, right?”

  “You’re a quick one, Mack. Nobody gonna slide anything past you, that’s for sure. C’mon, it’s fun!” He laughed.

  Mack walked to the edge of the dock and looked down. The water lapped only about a foot below where he stood, but it might as well have been a hundred feet. The distance looked enormous. To dive in would have been easy, he had done that a thousand times, but how do you step off a dock onto water? Do you jump as if you are landing on concrete, or do you step over the edge like you are getting out of a boat? He looked back at Jesus, who was still chuckling.

  “Peter had the same problem: How to get out of the boat. It’s just like stepping off a one-foot-high stair. Nothing to it.”

  “Will my feet get wet?” queried Mack.

  “Of course, water is still wet.”

  Again Mack looked down at the water and back at Jesus. “Then why is this so hard for me?”

  “Tell me what you are afraid of, Mack.”

  “Well, let me see. What am I afraid of?” began Mack. “Well, I am afraid of looking like an idiot. I am afraid that you are making fun of me and that I will sink like a rock. I imagine that-”

  “Exactly,” Jesus interrupted. “You imagine. Such a powerful ability, the imagination! That power alone makes you so like us. But without wisdom, imagination is a cruel taskmaster. If I may prove my case, do you think humans were designed to live in the present or the past or the future?”

  “Well,” said Mack, hesitating, “I think the most obvious answer is that we were designed to live in the present. Is that wrong?”

  Jesus chuckled. “Relax, Mack; this is not a test, it’s a conversation. You are exactly correct, by the way. But now tell me, where do you spend most of your time in your mind, in your imagination, in the present, in the past, or in the future?”

  Mack thought for a moment before answering. “I suppose I would have to say that I spend very little time in the present. For me, I spend a big piece in the past, but most of the rest of the time, I am trying to figure out the future.”

  “Not unlike most people. When I dwell with you, I do so in the present-I live in the present. Not the past, although much can be remembered and learned by looking back, but only for a visit, not an extended stay. And for sure, I do not dwell in the future you visualize or imagine. Mack, do you realize that your imagination of the future, which is almost always dictated by fear of some kind, rarely, if ever, pictures me there with you?”

  Again Mack stopped and thought. It was true. He spent a lot of time fretting and worrying about the future, and in his imaginations it was usually pretty gloomy and depressing, if not outright horrible. And Jesus was also correct in saying that in Mack’s imaginations of the future, God was always absent.

  “Why do I do that?” asked Mack.

  “It is your desperate attempt to get some control over something you can’t. It is impossible for you to take power over the future because it isn’t even real, nor will it ever be real. You try and play God, imagining the evil that you fear becoming reality, and then you try and make plans and contingencies to avoid what you fear.”

  “Yeah, that’s basically what Sarayu was saying,” responded Mack. “So why do I have so much fear in my life?”

  “Because you don’t believe. You don’t know that we love you. The person who lives by their fears will not find freedom in my love. I am not talking about rational fears regarding legitimate dangers, but imagined fears, and especially the projection of those into the future. To the degree that those fears have a place in your life, you neither believe I am good nor know deep in your heart that I love you. You sing about it; you talk about it, but you don’t know it.”

  Mack looked down once more at the water and breathed a huge sigh of the soul. “I have so far to go.”

  “Only about a foot, it looks to me,” laughed Jesus, placing his hand on Mack’s shoulder. It was all he needed and Mack stepped off the dock. In order to try and see the water as solid, and not be deterred by its motion, he looked up at the far shore and held the lunch bags high just in case.

  The landing was softer than he had thought it would be. His shoes were instantly wet, but the water did not come up even to his ankles. The lake was still moving all around him and he almost lost his balance because of it. It was strange. Looking down it seemed that his feet were on something solid but invisible. He turned to find Jesus standing next to him, holding his own shoes and socks in one hand and smiling.

  “We always take off our shoes and socks before we do this,” he laughed.

  Mack shook his head laughing as he sat back on the edge of the dock. “I think I will anyway.” He took them off, wrung out his socks, and then rolled up his pant legs, just to be sure.

  They started off with footwear and lunch bags in hand and walked toward the opposite shore; about a half mile distant. The water felt cool and refreshing and sent chills up his spine. Walking on the water with Jesus seemed like the most natural way to cross a lake, and Mack was grinning ear to ear just thinking about what he was doing. He would occasionally look down to see if he could see any lake trout.

  “This is utterly ridiculous and impossible, you know,” he finally exclaimed.

  “Of course,” assented Jesus, grinning back at him.

  They rapidly reached the far shore and Mack could hear the sound of rushing water growing louder, but he couldn’t see its source. Twenty yards from the shore he stopped. To their left and behind a high rock ridge he could see it, a beautiful waterfall spilling over a cliff‘s e
dge and dropping at least a hundred feet into a pool at the canyon floor. There it became a large creek that probably joined the lake beyond where Mack could see. Between them and the waterfall was an expanse of mountain meadow, filled with blooming wild-flowers haphazardly strewn and seeded by the wind. It was all stunning, and Mack stood for a moment breathing it in. An image of Missy flashed in his mind, but didn’t settle.

  A pebbled beach awaited their approach, and behind it a backdrop of rich and dense forest rose up to the base of a mountain, crested by the whiteness of freshly fallen snow. Slightly to their left, at the end of a small clearing and just to the other side of a small babbling brook, a trail disappeared quickly into the wooded darkness. Mack stepped off of the water and onto the small rocks, gingerly making his way toward a log that had fallen. There, he sat down and again wrung out his socks, placing them and his shoes to dry in the near-noon sun.

  Only then did he look up and across the lake. The beauty was staggering. He could make out the shack, where smoke leisurely rose from the red, brick chimney as it nestled against the greens of the orchard and forest. But dwarfing it all was a massive range of mountains that hovered above and behind, like sentinels standing guard. Mack simply sat, Jesus next to him, and inhaled the visual symphony.

  “You do great work!” he said softly.

  “Thank you, Mack, and you’ve seen so little. For now most of what exists in the universe will only be seen and enjoyed by me, like special canvasses in the back of an artist’s studio, but one day… And can you imagine this scene if the earth was not at war, striving so hard just to survive?”

  “And you mean what, exactly?”

  “Our earth is like a child who has grown up without parents, having no one to guide and direct her.” As Jesus spoke, his voice intensified in subdued anguish. “Some have attempted to help her but most have simply tried to use her. Humans, who have been given the task to lovingly steer the world, instead plunder her with no consideration, other than their immediate needs. And they give little thought for their own children who will inherit their lack of love. So they use her and abuse her with little consideration and then when she shudders or blows her breath, they are offended and raise their fist at God.”

  “You’re an ecologist?” Mack said, half as an accusation.

  “This blue-green ball in black space, filled with beauty even now, battered and abused and lovely.”

  “I know that song. You must care deeply about the Creation,” smiled Mack.

  “Well, this blue-green ball in black space belongs to me,” Jesus stated emphatically.

  After a moment, they opened their lunches together. Papa had filled the sacks with sandwiches and treats and both ate heartily. Mack munched on something that he liked, but couldn’t quite decide if it was animal or vegetable. He thought it might be better not to ask.

  “So why don’t you fix it?” Mack asked, munching on his sandwich. “The earth, I mean.”

  “Because we gave it to you.”

  “Can’t you take it back?”

  “Of course we could, but then the story would end before it was consummated.”

  Mack gave Jesus a blank look.

  “Have you noticed that even though you call me Lord and King, I have never really acted in that capacity with you? I’ve never taken control of your choices or forced you to do anything, even when what you were about to do was destructive or hurtful to yourself and others.”

  Mack looked back at the lake before responding. “I would have preferred that you did take control at times. It would have saved me and people I care about a lot of pain.”

  “To force my will on you,” Jesus replied, “is exactly what love does not do. Genuine relationships are marked by submission even when your choices are not helpful or healthy.”

  “That’s the beauty you see in my relationship with Abba and Sarayu. We are indeed submitted to one another and have always been so and always will be. Papa is as much submitted to me as I to him, or Sarayu to me, or Papa to her. Submission is not about authority and it is not obedience; it is all about relationships of love and respect. In fact, we are submitted to you in the same way.”

  Mack was surprised. “How can that be? Why would the God of the universe want to be submitted to me?”

  “Because we want you to join us in our circle of relationship. I don’t want slaves to my will; I want brothers and sisters who will share life with me.”

  “And that’s how you want us to love each other, I suppose? I mean between husbands and wives, parents and children. I guess in any relationship?”

  “Exactly! When I am your life, submission is the most natural expression of my character and nature, and it will be the most natural expression of your new nature within relationships.”

  “And all I wanted was a God who will just fix everything so no one gets hurt.” Mack shook his head at the realization. “But I’m not very good at relationship stuff, not like Nan.”

  Jesus finished the last bite of his sandwich and, closing his lunch bag, placed it down next to him on the log. He wiped off a couple crumbs that still adhered to his mustache and short beard. Then grabbing a nearby stick he began to doodle in the sand as he continued. “That’s because like most men you find what you think of as fulfillment in your achievements, and Nan, like most women, find it in relationships. It’s more naturally her language.” Jesus paused to watch an osprey dive into the lake not fifty feet from them and slowly take flight again, talons gripping a large lake trout still struggling to escape.

  “Does that mean I’m hopeless? I really want what the three of you share, but I have no idea how to get there.”

  “There’s a lot in your way right now, Mack, but you don’t have to keep living with it.”

  “I know that’s truer now that Missy’s gone, but it has never been easy for me.”

  “You’re not just dealing with Missy’s murder. There’s a larger twisting that makes sharing life with us difficult. The world is broken because in Eden you abandoned relationship with us to assert your own independence. Most men have expressed it by turning to the work of their hands and the sweat of their brow to find their identity, value, and security. By choosing to declare what’s good and evil you seek to determine your own destiny. It was this turning that has caused so much pain.”

  Jesus braced himself with the stick to stand and paused while Mack finished his last bite and stood to join him. Together they began walking along the lake shore. “But that isn’t all. The woman’s desire-and the word is actually her ‘turning.’ So the woman’s turning was not to the works of her hands but to the man, and his response was to rule ‘over’ her, to take power over her, to become the ruler. Before the choosing, she found her identity, her security, and her understanding of good and evil only in me, as did man.”

  “No wonder I feel like a failure with Nan. I can’t seem to be that for her.”

  “You weren’t made to be. And in trying you’ll only be playing God.”

  Mack reached down, picked up a flat stone, and skipped it across the lake. “Is there any way out of this?”

  “It is so simple, but never easy for you. By re-turning. By turning back to me. By giving up your ways of power and manipulation and just come back to me.” Jesus sounded like he was pleading. “Women, in general, will find it difficult to turn from a man and stop demanding that he meets their needs, provides security, and protects their identity, and return to me. Men, in general, find it very hard to turn from the works of their hands, their own quests for power and security and significance, and return to me.”

  “I’ve always wondered why men have been in charge,” Mack pondered. “Males seem to be the cause of so much of the pain in the world. They account for most of the crime and many of those are perpetrated against women and,” he paused, “children.”

  “Women,” Jesus continued as he picked up a stone and skipped it, “turned from us to another relationship, while men turned to themselves and the ground. The world, in
many ways, would be a much calmer and gentler place if women ruled. There would have been far fewer children sacrificed to the gods of greed and power.”

  “Then they would have fulfilled that role better.”

  “Better, maybe, but it still wouldn’t have been enough. Power in the hands of independent humans, be they men or women, does corrupt. Mack, don’t you see how filling roles is the opposite of relationship? We want male and female to be counterparts, face-to-face equals, each unique and different, distinctive in gender but complementary, and each empowered uniquely by Sarayu from whom all true power and authority originates. Remember, I am not about performance and fitting into man-made structures; I am about being. As you grow in relationship with me, what you do will simply reflect who you really are.”

  “But you came in the form of a man. Doesn’t that say something?”

  “Yes, but not what many have assumed. I came as a man to complete a wonderful picture in how we made you. From the first day we hid the woman within the man, so that at the right time we could remove her from within him. We didn’t create man to live alone; she was purposed from the beginning. By taking her out of him, he birthed her in a sense. We created a circle of relationship, like our own, but for humans. She, out of him, and now all the males, including me, birthed through her, and all originating, or birthed, from God.”

  “Oh, I get it,” Mack interjected, stopping in midthrow. “If the female had been created first, there would have been no circle of relationship, and thus no possibility of a fully equal face-to-face relationship between the male and the female. Right?”

  “Exactly right, Mack.” Jesus looked at him and grinned. “Our desire was to create a being that had a fully equal and powerful counterpart, the male and the female. But your independence with its quest for power and fulfillment actually destroys the relationship your heart longs for.”

  “There it is again,” Mack said, sifting through the rocks to find the flattest stone. “It always comes back to power and how opposite that is from the relationship you have with the other two. I’d love to experience that, with you and with Nan.”

  “That’s why we’re here.”

  “I wish she were too.”

  “Oh, what could have been,” Jesus mused. Mack had no idea what he meant.

  They were quiet for a few minutes, except for some grunting as rocks were thrown and the sounds they made skipping across the water.

  Jesus stopped just as he was about to throw a rock, “One last thing that I want you to remember about this conversation, Mack, before you go.”

  He tossed the rock. Mack looked up surprised. “Before I go?”

  Jesus ignored his question. “Mack, just like love, submission is not something that you can do, especially not on your own. Apart from my life inside of you, you can’t submit to Nan, or your children, or anyone else in your life, including Papa.”

  “You mean,” Mack interjected a little sarcastically, “that I can’t just ask, ‘What Would Jesus Do’?”

  Jesus chuckled. “Good intentions, bad idea. Let me know how it works for you, if that’s the way you choose to go.” He paused and grew sober. “Seriously, my life was not meant to be an example to copy. Being my follower is not trying to ‘be like Jesus,’ it means for your independence to be killed. I came to give you life, real life, my life. We will come and live our life inside of you, so that you begin to see with our eyes, and hear with our ears, and touch with our hands, and think like we do. But, we will never force that union on you. If you want to do your thing, have at it. Time is on our side.”

  “This must be the dying daily that Sarayu was talking about,” said Mack and nodded.

  “Speaking of time,” said Jesus, turning and pointing at the path that led into the forest at the end of the clearing, “you have an engagement. Follow that path and enter where it ends. I’ll wait for you here.”

  As much as he wanted to, Mack knew that it would be no use to try and continue the conversation. In thoughtful silence he put on his socks and shoes. They were not totally dry by this time, but not too uncomfortable. Standing up without another word, he squished his way toward the end of the beach, stopped for a minute to look once more at the waterfall, jumped over the little brook, and entered the woods down a well-maintained and marked path.

  11 HERE COME DA JUDGE

  Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.

  – Albert Einstein

  Oh my soul… be prepared for him who knows how to ask questions.

  – T. S. Eliot

  Mack followed the trail that wound past the waterfall, away from the lake, and through a dense patch of cedar trees. It took less than five minutes to reach an impasse. The path took him directly to a rock face, the faint outline of a door barely visible on the surface. Obviously he was meant to enter, so he hesitantly reached out and pushed. His hand simply penetrated the wall as if it wasn’t there. Mack continued to move cautiously forward until his entire body passed through what appeared to be the solid stone exterior of the mountain. It was thick black within and he could see nothing.

  Taking a deep breath and with his hands outstretched in front of him, he ventured a couple small steps into the inky darkness and stopped. Fear seized him as he tried to breathe, unsure whether or not to continue. As his stomach clenched he felt it again, The Great Sadness settling on his shoulders with its full weight almost suffocating him. He desperately wanted to back out into the light, but in the end he believed that Jesus would not have sent him in here without a good purpose. He pressed in farther.

  Slowly his eyes recovered from the shock of moving from daylight into such deep shadows, and a minute later they adjusted enough to make out a single passageway curving off to his left. As he followed it, the brightness at the entrance behind him faded and was replaced by a faint luminosity reflecting off the walls from somewhere ahead.