Sarayu said it

Are you wondering who this Sarayu is? If you think that this should be a God-forsaken person, then you may have to turn the pages of The Shack : Where tragedy confronts eternity, a novel by William P. Young. The #1 New York Times Bestseller had been quite popular with religious men and women and some months ago one of our great men had recommended this novel as a worthy Christmas gift to friends and well-wishers. Here in this novel, Sarayu is one of the three prominent characters, who confronts Mackenzie, the protagonist, who after confronting one of the worst tragedies of life, the loss of his favorite daughter Missy, confronts eternity in the three persons of the Holy Trinity. I would not venture to summarise the story in a few lines and do injustice to the narrative, which resembles in more than one sense the great classic, of John Bunyan, Pilgrim’s Progress.

It is long since I had discontinued the blog and I don’t even remember when I had blogged last, and quite a few friends had reminded me why I had not turned to blogs… was I running short of ideas? Or was I finding it hard to turn to the laptop at the end of the day to pour out the daily collection, before knocking the bed? It would be quite a futile job for me to find valid reasons for not blogging all these days, and I could give more than a dozen reasons why I should have. Be that as it may, the effect of turning the blogging may be one of the wonder works of Sarayu, the third person of the Holy Trinity, attributed to the Holy Spirit. Is she my latest lady love? For those who are scratching their heads, as to why I suddenly attribute feminine qualities to the Spirit, it is because of the Hebrew tradition, where the spirit is presented as the feminine aspects of God.

It is hard to say when the Spirit strikes us; I am aware for many a men, it is only the ‘s’pirit which would strike and knock them down at the end of the day, and seldom could they think of the Spirit to find them in their normal selves. And I am not in a place to say why I suddenly felt like turning back to blogging; there are several things in life, which are beyond all explanation, just like why we fall in love with certain persons and not some others (may be more beautiful and more qualified). That is where life finds meaning and fulfillment. But then let me turn my attention for a while to the novel, which let me caution, is not an easy reading, because of the fact that more than three fourth of the novel deal with Mack’s encounter with the Holy Trinity at the “shack”; this is what we could call Christian theology in a lay person’s perspective, and at times one might struggle to grasp what Young tries to articulate.

Life is quite complicated, and any attempt to unravel the mysteries of life might only lead to chaos and more complication. Young tries to articulate with genuine Christian faith, the reasons why there is evil in the world, and why God permits evil men and women thrive; these are the questions that each and every generation has been confronting, in their own way and in their own pace; not all of them had found satisfactory answers, but they were not altogether disappointed not finding answers to their questions, because what mattered in the process is not so much the destination, but the journey. That is why life on earth is often compared to a journey, and for religious Hindus, life is a pilgrimage (did not Bunyan referred to himself as a Pilgrim, and so did Ignatius of Loyola in the early 16th century called himself a pilgrim!), and everything that may take place during the journey is significant, though we may not heed to their importance but may have realize on hind sight that they had carried important signposts for our going ahead in life.

Young had tried to break the traditional understanding of God the Father, by placing before Mack, God the Papa in a feminine figure, and no wonder there is a preponderance of the feminine throughout the novel, and that is one of the reasons why Mack is all too full when he returns home from his weekend encounter with the sacred. What has been specially interesting for me, was the role of the eight-year old Missy, who from the start has such a lovely heart and demeanor that anyone would love her. There is a more than enough dosage of fantasy, with all the elements of the human world attributed to the divine; imagine the Holy Trinity having a hearty meal, sipping coffee; or just imagine Jesus in jeans and a T-shirt… or Papa listening to modern pop songs on her iPod… Young had presented the Trinity in a modern setup and that makes it all the more enjoyable reading. Now at least I know Sarayu could prick my mind anytime to turn to her, even if that means pouring myself out in the blogs!