Chapter Four
Faith Walk
One year later
“I’m not ready for this!” I exclaimed loudly.
“Yes you are,” Kuri said calmly.
“No, I’m not!”
“Yes, you are. Now calm yourself and continue on with the exercise.”
I gritted my teeth to bite back any further protest. My nostrils flared wide in search for more air as I focused on moving my foot on the tight rope and inching it onwards a bit further on the rope.
Oh No!!!
“You’re too stiff! Relax your posture and be easier with your breathing,” Kuri called out.
I spared a glance from the rope beneath me to look ahead towards Kuri, “What happens to your plans if I die right now?”
“You’re not going to fall. Come to me. I wouldn’t have put you up to this if I didn’t think you were ready for it.”
I glanced back down to my lifeline and desperately fought to hold steady on it against a sudden updraft of air from the valley below. Sweat was running off me as if I was being rained on. My entire being was sick with the fear that I felt at my current endeavor.
My eyes took in the drop of several hundred feet which formed the narrow mountain gorge between two upthrusts of rock across which was stretched the rope I stood on. There was no soft landing below, only more rock.
I would die if I fell, of that I had no doubts. If I didn’t get off this rope soon I’d become too stiff with fear to even maintain my balance and that would be the end of me.
“Benaiah?”
I looked up to Kuri from my sealed fate that waited below.
“Come.”
I had to get off this rope and somehow he thought I could do it!
I took a big step and then another and another, until in my haste to escape the rope my foot slipped and I fell. I banged up hard against the wall of the cliff and was momentarily puzzled as to why I wasn’t still falling.
In a daze I looked upward and saw that Kuri had a hold of one of my hands.
“I won’t let you fall Benaiah.”
I nodded and he pulled me up the rest of the way. Quickly I crawled away from the cliff’s edge and pressed up against the wall of the ledge that ran along the side of the mountain.
Pulling up my knees I hugged them to me and buried my face against them. My whole body was shaking and even though the day was warm I felt cold. I was such a coward!
“I have something to tell you Benaiah,” Kuri said, as he sat down beside me and stretched out his arm to pull me against his side consolingly.
“It took courage to cross that gorge. You had courage to start out and then to get over halfway across, but then you let the fear of failing get to you and trip you up. At no point were you to be absent of the fear of attempting to cross such a dangerous obstacle, but you let fear control you instead of you controlling it. Next time you’ll do better, because you went farther than you thought you could when you started out. Now there’s less for you to fear on your second attempt.”
“I don’t see it that way,” I said before then adding, “I fell!”
“And I caught you. Next time you won’t fall.”
“I wish I had your confidence about that!” I said with feeling.
“You’ll see.”
“Why does there even need to be a second time of crossing this rope?” I asked hopefully.
“Well, just like with life, it’s a certain fact that you’ll need a liberal application of courage more than once and so is there the possibility of coming to a gorge like this that needs to be crossed.”
I sighed loudly. There was no way around my mentor’s devised strategies or plans for my advancement into learning to be like him. It was a very hard journey.
I deeply wanted to learn and excel at everything that he was teaching me, but why did it have to be this hard?
“Come along Benaiah. There’s something I want to show you.”
Kuri was on his feet and pulling me up to mine. He started out along the ledge above the cliff and I followed along, curious to know what it was he would show me.
We had lived for a year now in the lower slopes of the Holy Mountains. During that time we had never ventured farther into the mountains than we were now.
The trail curved out of view and rounding the corner I gasped at the sight of what was revealed. In direct contrast with the desert sands that lapped up against the base of the mountains all along the northern front, I now found myself gazing down into a garden paradise of vivid greenery.
Nestled in amongst the lofty peaks lay a large continuous valley that was more lushly green than I had ever before seen in nature. While I didn’t know much about the topography of Ayenathurim as a whole I did know some, and to date I had never heard of this place.
I turned my shocked eyes to Kuri’s and was surprised to see that he was gazing down into the idyllic valley with an unsmiling gaze that bordered on anger. What would move him to be angry in the face of such beauty as existed in the mountain valley below us?
I had come to trust Kuri’s instincts on all things so I looked at the valley more closely, in particular the open stretches of terrain not covered by verdant tree canopies. I soon picked out the shapes of moving objects in the lush grass of the valley. There were a lot of something and they were big!
For the distant objects to look so big so far away must mean that they were absolutely huge up close. Kuri, in a grim tone, spoke into my study of the valley and its huge occupants, “This place, like so many others, was once a paradise, but now it has become corrupted. Some of the creatures that you see are of fallen Malachim design. They are a plague to the higher-order creatures that were given this valley as their home. There is a war going on down there. A war between simple animals perhaps, on the surface, but a war between good and evil at its heart. The evil kinds are trying to devour and drive out all the good that remains in this valley. You’ve completed your first year of training and now it’s time to begin the next.”
I turned my eyes from the valley to Kuri, even as I prayed that he wasn’t going to say what I knew he was. His eyes were confirmation enough and his words were only a mere formality for what I knew was coming, “Over the next year you and I and the created higher-order kinds of pure blood that remain within the valley are going to kill and drive out all the unclean flesh that has made this sacred valley their home. Light cannot coexist with darkness. Even so, that which is of El Elyon has no place with being mixed with the abominations of darkness’s delight.”
I looked away from Kuri to the valley below once more. In my mind’s eye, a valley of idyllic beauty populated with the fallen Malachim's created monsters made the gorge back in the mountains behind me look like a thing of child’s play. As if in tune with my thoughts I heard the roar of one of the monsters from the valley below echo up to us.
“Come along Benaiah. We need to get back to camp so we can pack up and move into the valley in the morning.”
Kuri headed back the way we had just come and with my mouth suddenly dry I asked, “Isn’t there another way that we can go back to camp?”
Kuri never stopped walking as he called out, “This is the straightest path to our destination. There is no sense in diverging from it.”
Oh I could beg to differ with that, but I kept my thoughts to myself and obediently followed. With the coming task at hand looming large I nonetheless retracted my thought of crossing the tight rope as being a thing of mere child’s play.
It took everything within me just to dare myself to cross such an obstacle again. How was I going to be able to kill monsters, if the current task before me was too great for me to accomplish?
Kuri seemed to think I was up for this so, armed with that confidence, I started out on the rope that was now stretched out before me. In a way, I guess I had to first conquer my own fears and bring them into subjection before I could face a monster that invoked fear just by the sight of it.
The task at hand was not easy, but it helped to look away from the gorge below to Kuri up ahead on the other side, confidently waiting for me to join him. I made it across in half the time and I didn’t fall this time.
Even though Kuri hadn’t had to catch me, it seemed as though the magnetized power of his gaze had helped pull me across my worst fear to date.
*****
I stared into the campfire somberly. This was to be our last night on the outer reaches of the mountains. I’d been here a year already and yet the time had seemed to fly.
During that time we hadn’t encountered so much as one person. That was all right by me. Well, mostly all right.
A persistent ache seized hold of my mind. It would’ve been nice to see a girl.
I’d seen so few of them in my life, as I’d rarely had the chance to leave the farm, but I remembered what they looked like. Memories however were no substitute for reality.
Kuri tossed a log onto the fire and sparks leapt upward for a moment. Completely startled I blinked rapidly from the disruption of my thoughts. I glanced dazedly at Kuri before guiltily looking away.
After a tension filled moment on my part I heard him ask in his deep voice, “Is there something you want to talk about?”
I remained silent in my shame, as I knew full well how much of an open book even my private thoughts were to Kuri. He could see everything. My eyes closed in shame as I delved back over the thoughts I had just been having.
“What do you want to know about women?”
My eyes opened and I gazed at Kuri, startled. My lips fumbled out, “What?”
Kuri just smiled and eased back against a log more comfortably. I looked away from him, not sure what to think of his question, let alone what to ask.
Staring into the flames Kuri spoke, “In the beginning El Elyon fashioned man after His own image and out of the man He fashioned the woman, together the two are one. So by having stated that, I hope you can see that there’s nothing wrong with the desire within you to be one with the other half of your creation. It’s a natural, even Creator attributed, function of being a man.”
“Benaiah?”
I glanced over to him and met his gaze as he said, “There’s nothing wrong with you and I certainly don’t disapprove of you fulfilling your created function and the desire intended for you to experience from the union. There is only one thing that I will caution you on. Your desire should only be fulfilled with the other half of you, which means I want you to wait until you find that woman. Don’t be like the men who visited your mother or, for that matter, the Kingdomer’s who have a wife at home but visit brothels every chance that they get when away from home.”
I nodded and looked down. I had a question and I asked it, “How do you know when you’ve found the other half of yourself? The girls that I’ve seen…… well…… I was attracted to a lot of them. How do you know which one is the right one?”
“It’s easy to say, but hard to explain Benaiah. You’ll know her when you see her. The important thing is to wait for her and that can be a very hard thing to do as a man.”
I gazed into the fire, privately acknowledging the truth of those words. I wondered how long I would have to wait. I glanced at Kuri to see him fire gazing as well.
I had another question, but I didn’t know how he’d take it. His eyes left the fire to come to mine and I realized that I might as well ask my question anyway as it was common knowledge now.
“Did you ever find your woman or are you still waiting?”
He spoke slowly, as if seeing a scene from the past play out into the present moment, “I was engaged to be married, but she wasn’t ready. More simply put, she didn’t want me. So I guess you could say that I’m still waiting.”
I stared at Kuri incredulously. What woman could possibly pass up on a man like him?
I swallowed nervously as I contemplated how slim my own chances might be at finding the right girl based on his luck. Hesitantly I asked, “So what are you going to do? Are you going to find another woman who will want you?”
Kuri smiled bittersweetly, “I suppose for some that would be an option, but you see Benaiah, for me the situation is that I still love her.”
“Even though she turned you down?”
He nodded.
“You’re going to continue waiting for her to change her mind?”
He nodded and said, “Yes. My love for her has no bounds. Whether she changes her mind or not, I will be waiting patiently for her until there is no more time.”
I shook my head in consternation, “Kuri, you’re the best man I’ve ever met, if anybody deserves to be happy in life it’s you!”
His bittersweet smile turned to one of warmth then as he said, “Oh, I will be Benaiah. You’ll see.”
“You have that much faith that she’ll change?”
“I do.”
“What about all the time that’s already been wasted?”
“None of that will matter as long as we’re together in the end. As I told you, Benaiah, my love for her is boundless. I truly mean that. My love for her is not based out of what I will gain from the union, but rather out of the love I have for her the person.”
I shook my head, “I don’t understand.”
Kuri smiled and just went back to staring into the flames.
I felt anger against this woman who had rejected my mentor and friend. He seemed to have no anger towards her though, so why should I?
I hoped I didn’t suffer rejection from a woman like he had and still was. Why did everything have to be so complicated?