Ted Dekker - Outlaw

“Then show me,” I said. “I’ll do anything to save him.”

“You can’t save him.”

“But you said—”

“You can save only his body. His costume.”

Costume again. But I was understanding more. And I didn’t really care what terms he used, I only wanted to save my son.

“Show me. I’ll do anything.”

He studied me for a moment. A tingling settled over the crown of my head and swept down my spine as his eyes searched mine.

“You must surrender. Everything.”

“I will! I do.”

“Nothing will be the same,” he said.

“I don’t want the same.”

“It may seem difficult at times.”

“Nothing can be as difficult as this hell.”

“It may cost you your life—the one you presently wear.”

He was saying that I might die. But in the wake of the life I had lived, I didn’t care.

“Show me.”

The Nameless One who called himself Shaka sank to one knee and pinched up some dust, which he sprinkled into his open palm.

“Everything you think you see now is far less than what is real,” he said, rising. He spat into his hand. “You will know what to do. Do not forget.” Using his fingers, he mixed his spit with the dust to make mud.

He lifted his eyes to me. “When the light fades, it’s far too easy to forget—we are a narcissistic breed consumed with our costumes and our performances. Remember what you see. Know who you are. Tell only those who have ears to hear.”

I felt my breathing quicken. Something was going to happen, I knew that as much as I knew I was alive. A tingling coursed through me as if the very blood in my veins carried electricity.

“Close your eyes, my child.”

I closed them and held my breath.

He wiped his fingers across both eyes in unison, from the bridge of my nose to my cheeks, very quickly, as if wiping something off, not on.

“See,” he said.

At first I saw nothing. Pitch-darkness. It took only a moment for me to realize that I couldn’t hear either. It was as though I were in a void. No sound, no sight, no sensory perception at all.

And I thought, I’m dead !

I opened my eyes…but I still couldn’t see anything, and for a moment I felt deep fear.

And then the sound came, low, the song that had first called to me in my dreams. Once again I was there above the valley, hearing the haunting call.

Once again I was flying forward as the call grew, higher and deeper at once. A chant joined the call deep down, like the chanting of the Tulim over and over as they danced.

My fear fell away as I became intimately aware that this was deep calling to deep—a call for love. I was being called…

And this time, when I approached the hill on which I’d first seen the form I now knew to be Shaka, I was suddenly there myself, staring out at the valley as if I were Shaka. Before me the jungle and hills fell away to a distant alluvial plain. The sound was coming from the jungle. From all of it. Not only from the trees, but from every living thing—beast and human—groaning for love.

The light of that love is coming , I thought. It’s coming to this world .

The moment I thought it, a single ball of light streaked directly over my head like a meteor, roaring with power. It shot all the way to the alluvial plain and there ignited in a single flash, an expanding, concussive blue-and-white wave filled with a swelling music. The valley came alive with light.

And there, in the Tulim valley, I saw.

I saw everything. Not what it suddenly became, but what it had been all along. One moment I had been blind my whole life, and the next I could see with such vision and clarity that I gasped aloud there on the knoll of the hill.

And immediately I began to weep with joy. Because I saw, you see?

I saw !

I saw that it was staggeringly beautiful, brimming with iridescent red-and-green light seeping from every hill, every tree, every leaf. Even the air itself shifted in translucent golds and blues.

I saw that the valley was whole, a perfect stage streaming with brilliant colors and light that was only abstractly aware of the conflicts raging between the cliffs.

I saw that nothing could possibly threaten or present the vaguest challenge to the power flowing in, through, around, and from me. I saw that my body was only a costume to be worn.

I heard.

The song from my distant dreams. Music, riding the light with such exquisite power that I felt my every bone tremble with it. Deep tones that could not be pushed lower, high melodic strains that danced with ecstasy.

I knew.

I knew that time was an illusion because there is no future and there is no past. There is only now, and what is called the future is just another now.

I knew that my Father was perfect and that nothing imperfect could have come from that perfection, much less threaten it in any way. I was safe. Saved. Now.

I knew that I too was perfect, even as my Father was perfect, and that nothing could possibly threaten me now. There was no longer any separation between me and my Father.

Weeping with gratitude and relief, I became aware that I had dropped to my knees and was shaking as unending waves of power and peace coursed through my body. Fear was as foreign to me as the sky might be to a deep-sea fish; I was swimming in a lake of raw love, pulsing with light and ecstasy.

And within a very short time that might have been many years or only a moment, I knew what I would do.

Chapter Twenty-one

IT TOOK ME two hours to reach the Tegalo valley, judging by the passage of the sun, which slowly dipped into the afternoon sky. But for me it felt like five minutes. Time was still strange for me, now that I had lived a lifetime in the color of that stunning world that was my own.

I know that any attempt to describe my experience on that hilltop can only be truly appreciated by those who have seen truth with their own eyes wide open, and I know that the memory of it easily fades, pulled away by the gravity of entrenched thinking and the law of this world.

Even as I rushed through the Tulim valley without regard for my safety, streaking for the shallow valley called Tegalo, where death was boldly flexing its shadowy, vacant muscle, I was still half-trapped in another vision of jungle around me.

More than green leaves and dark trunks, I saw the unfolding of all creation, welcoming me with open arms as if calling me: Come. Come to me, come and be. Come and live .

More than the birdcalls that I had become accustomed to over the months, I heard the song of angels. More than a path cutting into the valley of death, I ran down a street paved with love and light.

For I had touched the source of all bliss and he was my Father, who is God.

After an eternity on the hilltop, the light had faded. It had taken me a full ten minutes to reorient myself. Shaka was no longer with me, but I hadn’t expected him to be. He had nothing more to say to me. I had heard all that I must.

I knew which path to take: the one that headed east of both the Impirum and Warik villages. To the valley of bloodshed called Tegalo, where the costumes of a deceived world clung to insanity and embraced hatred.

I ran on feet that hardly felt the roots and mud beneath them. It wasn’t until I broke from the tree line onto a hillcrest overlooking the Tegalo valley that I heard the sound that stabbed my surety.

I pulled up sharply, staring up the at the grassy knoll before me, panting. A dull roar rose from the valley beyond, the sound of a monster with interminable breath determined to shake the heavens.

It was then that a small balloon of fear began to inflate deep in my belly. I knew the path that I would take, and any mother or father or wife or husband or child or woman or man might find my choice unthinkable for the pain and sorrow it promised.