“I remember.” Tony laughed. “I remember how it made my day! How could I have forgotten, especially when…”
“Good-bye, my friend,” whispered Maggie, tears spilling down her face as she leaned forward and kissed the man in the bed on his forehead. “I will see you again.”
Tony slid one last time.
20
NOW
Everything we see is a shadow cast by that which we do not see.
—Martin Luther King Jr.
The three of them stood on the side of the hill overlooking the valley that lay below. It was his property but barely recognizable. The river that had destroyed the temple had also demolished most of the walls. What once was burned over and devastated was now alive with growth.
Grandmother spoke. “Now that’s better! Much better!”
Jesus responded, “It’s good!”
What mattered in this moment to Tony was simply being here, inside the relationship with these two. There permeated in his soul an exhilaration and calm, a settled expectancy and wild anticipation clothed in peace.
“Hey,” he wondered aloud. “Where are your places? I don’t see either the ranch house or your…”
“Hovel,” grunted Grandmother. “Never really needed them. All of this is now a habitation, not just bits and pieces. We would never have settled for less.”
“It’s time.” Jesus smiled, stretching his hands into the air.
“Time?” asked Tony, curious. “You mean it’s time to meet your dad, Papa God?”
“No, not time for that. You already met him anyway.”
“I did? When did I meet him?”
Jesus laughed again and wrapped an arm around Tony’s shoulder. Leaning close he whispered, “Talitha cumi!”
“What?” Tony exclaimed. “Are you kidding me? That little girl in the blue-and-green dress?”
“Imagery,” added Grandmother, “has never been able to define God, but it is our intention to be known, and each whisper and breath of imagery is a little window into a facet of our nature. Pretty cool, eh?”
“The coolest.” Tony nodded. “So, what is it time for then? Will Papa God be there?”
“It is time for the celebration, the life-after, the gathering and the speaking,” answered Jesus, “and just to be clear, Papa has never not been here.”
“So now what?”
“Now,” said Grandmother triumphantly, “now, the best comes!”
A NOTE TO THE READERS AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
If you have not read Cross Roads yet, you might want to wait to read this note until after you have—there are a few spoilers here.
The name Anthony Spencer originated with our youngest son’s game avatars. While characters tend to be composites of people I know, in the writing each begins to emerge uniquely. This is not true for Cabby, Molly’s son. He is wholly built on Nathan, the son of friends, a young man who died only a couple of years ago when his hide-and-seek game took him outside of the arena where he was watching the Portland Trail Blazers, and out into the freeway where he was struck by two cars. Nathan had Down syndrome. There is nothing in the character of Cabby that was not true about Nathan, even his favorite epithet and his propensity to “lift” cameras and hide them in his room. While I was working on this story, I was in constant conversation with Nathan’s mom, who provided me the details for the Cabby character. One afternoon she called me, explaining how one of our interactions stirred her curiosity and she went exploring through Nathan’s personal items that are in storage. Sure enough, inside his toy guitar case she found an unfamiliar camera. She turned it on and to her surprise it was full of pictures of my family. Two years before Nathan died, he had been visiting our home and had “lifted” our niece’s camera. All this time, we thought she had simply misplaced it.
There are so many to thank. Nathan’s family, for allowing me the honor to write their son into a work of fiction. I hope I was able to capture both the simple wonder and some of the struggle that coexisted in Nathan’s heart and in all families that face the daily challenges surrounding handicaps and limitations of one kind or other.
I had a lot of help and input on the medical side of the story. My thanks to Chris Green of Responder Life; Heather Doty, a Life Flight nurse and trauma nurse, who was an incredible resource to me with the collapse scenario; Bob Cozzie, Anthony Collins, and especially Traci Jacobsen, who let me invade their space at Clackamas County 911 in Oregon City, Oregon, and ask all the questions I needed to in order to make that part of the story accurate. The nurses and staff at both Oregon Health and Science University (especially in Neuro ICU) and Doernbecher Children’s Hospital (especially in Hematology/Oncology), as well as friend and retired neurosurgeon Dr. Larry Franks.
Working on this part of the story introduced me to incredible people who are truly “in the trenches” of human hurt and crisis. Unless we are fortunate enough to know these folks in our personal lives, we don’t usually intersect with them unless we are in a place of loss ourselves. From first responders, fire, ambulance, police, 911, to medical staff, techs, doctors and nurses, these are special hearts who work behind the scenes and help us cope with the tragedies that invade our everydays. On behalf of all of us who forget you are there or whose presence we so often simply take for granted, thank you, thank you, thank you!
Thank you, Chad and Robin, for letting me write at your beautiful refuge at Otter Rock, and for the Mumford family, who gave me similar space to work up near Mount Hood. Without you, this story would not have made it to the presses in nearly as timely a fashion.
Thank you to my friend Richard Twiss and the Lakota—if you’ve read this book, you already know how you helped me. We all need a Grandmother and a tribe.
We are rich in friends and family, and it would take an even bigger book to list them all. I am grateful for how you are woven into our lives and for your participation in our becoming. Thank you especially to the Young clan and the Warren clan for your constant encouragement. To Kim, wife and companion, our six children, two daughters-in-law, one son-in-law, and six grandchildren (so far), I love you with all my heart… You make my heart sing.
Thank you to all of you who read and shared The Shack and then let me into precious and sometimes incredibly painful places in your stories. You have graced me beyond measure.
Thank you to Dan Polk, Bob Barnett, John Scanlon, Wes Yoder, David Parks, Tom Hentoff and Deneen Howell, Kim Spaulding, the incredible Hachette publishing family, especially David Young, Rolf Zettersten, and editor Joey Paul, and the many foreign publishers who have worked so diligently on my behalf and been powerfully consistent encouragers every step of the way. Special thanks to editor Adrienne Ingrum for her essential input and encouragement. The book is better because of her.
Special thanks to Baxter Kruger, PhD, my Mississippi friend and theologian, and photographer John MacMurray, who have been constant support and critics (in the best sense of the word). Baxter’s book, The Shack Revisited, is the single best book written about The Shack.
Thanks also to our Northwest area family of friends, the Closners, Fosters, Westons, Graves, Huffs, Troy Brummell, Don Miller, Goffs, MaryKay Larson, Sands, Jordans, the NE folks as well as early reader/critics Larry Gillis, Dale Bruneski, and Wes and Linda Yoder.
I continue to be inspired by the Inklings, especially C. S. Lewis (better known to his friends as “Jack”). George MacDonald and Jacques Ellul are always good company. Love to Malcolm Smith, Ken Blue, and the Aussies and Kiwis who are forever part of our lives. Sound track to write by, supplied by a diverse group of musicians including Marc Broussard, Johnny Lang, Imagine Dragons, Thad Cockrell, David Wilcox, Danny Ellis, Mumford & Sons, Allison Krauss, Amos Lee, Johnnyswim, Robert Counts, Wynton Marsalis, Ben Rector, that trinity of old brilliant musicians Buddy Greene, Phil Keaggy and Charlie Peacock, James Taylor, Jackson Browne, Leonard Cohen, and of course Bruce Cockburn.
Any use of local area landmarks and haunts is entirely on purpose and for a reason. Oregon i
s gorgeous and a wonderful place to live and raise a family, and I am grateful to you.
Finally and at the center is the self-giving, other-centered love of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, displayed extravagantly to us in the person of Jesus. Your grace is relentless affection independent of performance—a love that we are not powerful enough to change.
If you look for Truth
you may find comfort in the end.
If you look for comfort
you will not get neither comfort nor truth,
only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin
and in the end, despair.
—C. S. Lewis
If reading or listening to The Shack, or Cross Roads, or The Shack: Reflections has had an impact on you and you would like to share your story with the author, please e-mail it to: [email protected] or mail it to:
PO Box 2107, Oregon City, OR 97045 USA
Please understand that you may or may not receive a response due to the volume of correspondence, but over time we will read every e-mail and letter. Thank you, in advance, for taking the time to do this.
ALSO BY WM. PAUL YOUNG
The Shack
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CONTENTS
Welcome
Dedication
Chapter 1: A Congregation of Storm
Chapter 2: Dust to Dust
Chapter 3: Once Upon a Time
Chapter 4: Home Is Where the Heart Is
Chapter 5: And Then There Was One
Chapter 6: Heated Conversations
Chapter 7: Slip Sliding Away
Chapter 8: What Is the Soul of a Man?
Chapter 9: A Storm of Congregation
Chapter 10: Double-Minded
Chapter 11: Betwixt and Between
Chapter 12: A Thickening of Plots
Chapter 13: The War Within
Chapter 14: Face-to-Face
Chapter 15: Naos
Chapter 16: A Piece of Pie
Chapter 17: Locked Rooms
Chapter 18: Crossed Roads
Chapter 19: The Gift
Chapter 20: Now
A Note to the Readers and Acknowledgments
Contact
Also by Wm. Paul Young
Newsletters
Copyright
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2012 by William Paul Young
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
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First e-book edition: November 2012
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ISBN 978-1-4555-1603-2
Cross Roads Page 26