Father's Day Kayaking - Essay

Father’s Day Kayaking

I have to watch my own daughter die. In the vast machinery of What Is, in its twisted humor, I understand that anything I do to save her would only hasten her inevitable death and may well harm her further in the short term. I can’t risk that, no matter her fate. So I watch her get sucked further into the dark haunted River of the Illusion. Its insatiable eyes roll back in delight as I watch her brief light extinguished from my view under many layers of deception. It’s a great siren and a howling demon, and my daughter is on it. I shake my head. Her small kayak that is a joke for a river like this.  

I remember the moment she emerged bodily into this world. I saw the light in her eyes that told of worlds without end, planets and love and sunsets and sunrises and pain and joy and joy and joy and light and hope and union and connection with souls just like hers. The details I could never know, but they all left tracks on her beautiful, formless soul… all these tales from experience somehow,streaming in waves of light from the tiny, sighing and newly clothed bundle that slept on my chest for hours, only hours after she had arrived to this great River. Her connection with the ancient heavenly dynamo was intact and easily visible. 

Now she is far away.  

Do you know how difficult it is to give your child over to the Pain? Neither the Biblical Abraham or God the Father have anything on me. After all, Isaac lived and Jesus was resurrected. On some level both Fathers knew their sons would be ok. This must be the case, as Abraham spoke freely with God, and God the Father must know all things. 

And then there’s me, the illegitimate stepchild of this particular Trinity.  

What I know of Creator I feel from Creator’s braille communion. And I still do not know, being immersed and possessed of a mind language inferior to Her messages. Moreover, in this place I am dispossessed of her foreknowledge. I feel her hand on my back, gently, truly comforting at times…but in the end, I am an anxious kayak instructor on the cliff overlooking the Class 4 rapid. I have navigated this river many times and am beginning to know it well. For the first few years of her life, we had conversations about it, he River's currents, beauties, mysteries and dangers. She was a good student; willing and talented. But we were unexpectedly separated by It and I now watch from afar, although providentially our eyes met briefly before she started down this particular rapid. I saw her. She saw me. There was that light again, just an instant of it, that told of fire and determination and spirit. Her adventurous and fearless soul shone in that brief instant, and the thread between us grew by just a tiny strand. 

But I know this hole. I know this hole. And I know she will have difficulty here. Without a doubt, she will flip. When she does, she will feel terror, alone under the furious weight. She will cry under the water, her human salty tears mixing gently with the rage of the river. And it will only laugh. 

But the same thing that is terrifying about the river is also the deliverer of mercy, for every hole ends. She will emerge at the other end of it. When she surfaces she may yet be within or close to the salvation of her own kayak and she may not be. She may have her life vest securely fastened or she may have neglected this preparation. She may gasp for air and then again she may not be breathing. She may curse God and the River and allow her kayak to float away and leave the River forever. Whatever her choice and destiny, it is beyond my control now. The teachings made of words and my experience had their end. I cannot take this rapid for her. The stern river is her Teacher now. Most likely it will kill her. But she, like Jesus, must descend below all things so she, like Jesus, can be resurrected to greater Life than she has the capacity to imagine while she is held by the current. If her fate and preparation allows her to live, another hole awaits, and then another. 

Yes, she will emerge. Laughing, crying, dead or dying, I will see her again. And on the strength of the last time we looked into one another's eyes, or on the strength of the first, she just may one day search the cliff to see if I am in the same place I was the last time she saw me. It is my purpose, mission and life to be here, holding this space on a lonely rock,in case she ever does.

May I not falter, for I am her father.