Ted Dekker - Outlaw

I turned back. I wasn’t sure what to think, much less say. It occurred to me that Melino would be searching for me, frantic by now. The sun was already high in the sky. Wilam might be facing off with Kirutu in the Tegalo valley as we spoke. How many had already died?

“My problem is very real,” I said.

“Is it?”

“Who are you?”

“The question you should be asking,” he said, shifting his eyes to meet mine, “is who are you?”

“I’m Julian. Carter. Julian Carter.” So many months had passed since I’d last spoken my own name.

“Julian.” The man who called himself Shaka smiled. “A nice name for a costume. And who is Julian Carter’s father?”

“Richard Carter,” I said. “He died a year ago.”

“No one dies,” he said. “They only shed their costumes.”

His reference immediately connected with me, because I knew some things about spiritual beliefs, both in major world religions and among the Tulim. He was calling my body a costume.

“Who are you?” I asked again.

For a long time he didn’t answer. I forgot that I was standing on a hill deep in the jungle. I saw only him. Only Shaka. My heart raced.

It raced because I suddenly saw myself in the dream that had first called me to leave Atlanta. Could Shaka be that one who’d called to me with his haunting melody?

“You’re confused, my child. It’s OK—so is most of the world. You don’t know who you are.”

“I…I’m Jullian.”

“No. This is only your costume. Your role. Daughter. Wife. Woman…” He paused, eyeing me. “Mother.”

An image of my Stephen sprang to mind. He was in Kirutu’s arms, reaching for me. Crying.

Our predicament stormed back into my awareness. We were both the victims of a cruel world.

“I have a son…” I stammered, tears welling in my eyes.

A gentle grunt came from the man’s throat, one of infinite patience that made me feel as though I knew nothing. He tapped the butt of his long ironwood spear in the dirt and stepped forward to the crest of the knoll, ten feet from where I stood by the boulder.

A single thick scar ran across his lower back, the mark of a battle with man, beast, or jungle. I walked up to him and faced the breeze, still disoriented.

“What I tell you today, you must never forget,” he said. “The truth calls to all, but few hear. You’ve waited a long time for this day, so you must hear. You must see.”

“Hear what? I’ve waited?”

“Hear that you are not wife, daughter, or mother,” he said. “They killed the body of one who spoke this truth a long time ago. They refused to hear and hung him from a tree. It was he who said that you’re not your son’s mother.”

I recoiled at the absurdity of his suggestion. Not only that I wasn’t a mother, but at the suggestion that the Christian faith had ever suggested any such thing.

“Here in this world, in a much lesser way, I suppose you are a mother, but where it counts, you’re not,” Shaka continued. “When they brought the Master his mother, he said that his mother was all who had ears to hear and eyes to see. All, one mother. It was he who also taught that if anyone tries to find the narrow way and does not set aside who they think they are and what they think they need, they cannot follow.”

Shaka raised his right eyebrow and peered at me. “You say that you follow this one? Our Master. Jeshua.”

“I…” He was talking of my faith. “Yes.”

He smiled. “The roles you identify with are not the true you, they are only the costume you wear for a short time. The time has come to put your eyes on the light of the world, which shines brightly. All who follow need not walk in darkness. They walk instead in that kingdom within, where there is no darkness, beyond the laws which bring suffering. This is the Way. On this path the yoke is easy and the burden is light. But that Way is hard to find. Few ever do.”

I didn’t understand all that he meant, but looking into his eyes I felt his deep sincerity settle me. Those kind eyes were the anchor in my stormy sea.

He put his hand on my shoulder. “Hear me, my child…you suffer now because you are blind to the light that shines even now. You look for your identity among costumes. These are not your true self, one with your true Father. Being his offspring, his love flows through you already. What love can you possibly need from the world if you are already full of his? None.”

He removed his hand and lazily gestured at the horizon as if the world about us were only an afterthought.

“Once you surrender to this truth, you will see that all of your suffering is insanity. Until then you will be lost in darkness. Adrift in the black sea, trying to keep your head above the water so that you don’t drown. You cannot drown. Nothing can threaten the child of God.”

“You know about the sea?” I asked in a cracking voice. I swallowed. “That I was taken from there by the Tulim?”

“I do. I’ve been waiting more than two years, knowing you would come. I knew the moment he was born.”

“Who was born?”

“Stephen,” he said.

A hum ignited in my mind. So then…I was right. Shaka was the one from my dreams. In that moment, having suffered far too much, I felt my resistance drain from my bones. I still didn’t fully grasp his entire meaning, but I felt no compulsion to do so. His words spoke to my heart more than my mind.

“How can you hope to save this son you call yours if you yourself are walking in blindness?”

New tears blurred my vision and a knot filled my throat.

Shaka looked at me tenderly, with bottomless understanding. “Do you see the light I speak of, or are you groping in darkness?”

He wasn’t talking about any ideological condition of my soul beyond this life, but the here and now, that very moment, standing on that hillside.

“I’m in darkness,” I whispered. My sense of loss and hopelessness swelled and I could not hold back my confession. “I’m lost in it.” Tears slid down my cheeks. “I can’t see, I’m dying. God has abandoned me.”

“No, my child. God is no more capable of abandonment than he is of disappointment. He’s not that small or threatened. The light of his smile shines on you now. You will see that when you surrender.”

“Surrender to what?”

“Surrender your false self. Your costume. Your attachment to this world.”

“My son…” I trailed off, thinking of his earlier words. Anger and confusion lapped at my mind. What he suggested seemed impossible to me.

Shaka shifted his eyes to the horizon again.

“From this valley comes a great calling that will awaken many so that they might see the light beyond the dim glass. They will hear the drum and come. They will step out of the law of death and walk in the kingdom within, that eternal reality filled only with light and love.”

He said it with such confidence that I could not help but believe. Believe what, I didn’t yet know, because understanding was still out of my reach.

“Stephen will live an obscure life, but he’s destined to find and call all of those who would step out of the law and find the narrow path. Many will follow—some won’t. He will be tested in ways that few have been, but he must be if he is to show them the Way. It begins here, today, if you are willing. You don’t need to understand everything now, only that the path isn’t difficult when you let your old costume pass away and allow all things to be new.”

He was right, I didn’t understand. But he was speaking of a path that I wanted to take because, if he was right, it meant Stephen could live. Shaka might not consider me Stephen’s mother as such, but I wasn’t seeing the world his way yet.

I had to save my son.