Untitled by Chris Klassen

I need a final peaceful resting place, I said to God, after all these years searching. I've tried finding it on my own, with my own efforts. But I'm conceding now. I'm admitting that I haven't been successful and I can't keep trying to do it by myself.

"I, of course, can help," God said. "But I'd like us to find it together."

We can find it together, yes.

"You've been separate from me for most of your life," God began. "I know where you have been and how you have searched, but I'd like to hear your perspective. Explain to me your path."

I've been to every continent, I began. In the North, I sat with shamans and listened to them tell frozen legends about spirits that lived in the snow and creatures that lived under the ice and they explained the hidden peace of blizzards. I ate the meat of seals and fish and slept in rooms of ice.

"And it gave you peace?" God asked.

It gave me peace until I decided to stay longer, I answered. But then it became very difficult because I was no longer a guest, I was a resident with responsibilities and I felt the pressure of society. They allowed me in and they tried to be patient with me, but I was greedy and I didn't succeed and they observed that I wasn't succeeding and then there was tension and I started to feel like I felt before, at the beginning.

"I know of course about your beginning," God said. "But you tell me."

In the city, I answered, in a small apartment in a big building with angry yelling neighbours and dirty hallways and too much heat in the summer and too much noise all the time, that's where I began as an unknowing child. My parents did their best and my siblings and I did our best but, with not much money and not much space, we all broke down in our ways and some of us got sick and some of us died early.

"Why do you think you didn't die early?" God asked.

I can't say, I replied. Did You have a purpose for me, maybe?

"I have a purpose for everyone," God said, "but I don't force it on anyone."

Maybe I felt the need to discover my purpose then, I continued. I know that, from the early noisy days in the city, I developed an urge for peace. And from that urge came a strategy. Even when I was surrounded by chaos, I learned that I could, if I chose, retreat into my head with calming images. The calm only lasted a short time, however.

"What kind of images?" God asked.

Well, as an example, I said, there was a park in my neighbourhood with a few thin trees and patches of browning grass. In my head, I re-imagined the park so that its grass was intermixed with small coloured stars and moons and even if I walked on the stars and moons, they wouldn't get damaged. And the sky was always blue so that the sun could beam down onto the stars and moons and make them glisten. Those images, I said to God, helped me temporarily through tough times, but I didn't want to stay retreated in my head forever. I guess that was the realization that made me start to search for an actual real peaceful place. Maybe that was Your purpose for me, to find such a place and then share it with others.

"So where did you go then? I know, of course, but you tell me," God directed.

I left the small apartment and the big building and the city itself when I had finished traditional school, when my parents could give me their grudging permission, and I travelled across the ocean to a new city on a new continent. It too was big and loud but its sounds and smells were different and it had healthier parks with thicker trees and small ponds and people visited often and seemed content and so, initially, I was content too. But I was an obvious stranger and that made me a target and bad things started to happen.

"What kind of bad things?" God asked.

Tauntings and untruths, I answered. I met others who were initially kind and they introduced me to foods and drinks and customs that I had never experienced before. But then they changed and slowly I became their victim. Or maybe I became their victim because I changed, that might be more true.

"That is more true," God replied. "Blaming others is always easier."

Yes, I suppose so.

"But, in this case, why do you think it happened?" God asked. "I know why, of course, but you explain to me the nature of the change."

You are right of course, I stated, very likely it was my fault. Very likely I was arrogant or impatient or perhaps, because I was still in a big city and what I was searching for could not be found in a big city, I became frustrated and I projected my frustrations onto others and they were just protecting themselves by acting against me.

"So you took another step," God suggested.

Yes, when I realized that I could not continue in a big city and find what I craved, I ventured into my head again and I thought of the coloured stars and moons that had helped calm me before and then I expanded my vision so that, beyond the stars and moons that sparkled on the ground, and under a clear blue sky, I envisioned a vast desert with shifting dunes and I left the city and crossed seas to a new continent where deserts were plentiful and new cultures for me were ubiquitous. Peace, I found initially, was in the desert, especially at night, when I sat with tribesmen and listened to them speak in a language the words of which I didn't understand, but the looks on their faces and the tones of their voices still projected universal meaning. And during the days, even when it was so hot, they took me to see remnants of older ages. They took me to the edge of the desert where sheer rock mountains began and they pointed at caves in the mountain walls where people had once lived. And at the entrance to one cave only, a solitary red rope ladder hung, its purpose, I assumed, to allow the occupants to climb from the ground to their home or to descend from their home to the ground.

"The ladder provided another service," God said. "Do you know what it was?"

No, I answered.

"Protection."

I don't know how a ladder could protect, I admitted. It was just rope.

"The ladder, in itself, did not protect," God explained. "The lack of ladder is what offered protection."

I don't understand. How can the non-existence of something actually offer something?

"When the families were in their caves," God continued, "they gathered the rope ladder, pulled it up, stored it. It made access to their home by intruders impossible. It guaranteed their safety."

I've kept the image of the ladder in my mind for a long time, I said, although I never understood its significance until now, until you explained it.

"You stayed in the desert for an extended period," God stated.

I stayed in the desert and in the villages of the desert for some time, I answered, and I experienced new things that soon began to scare me.

"What sort of things?"

I saw cross-legged snake charmers who played music and coaxed venomous snakes out of baskets and they swayed with the music, but once I saw the charmer attacked and bitten and filled with venom. He tremored and fell over and died and then the snake retreated, happily it seemed, back into its basket. I saw religious adherents who had held their arms above their heads for so long that they had become frozen in place. And I tried unusual foods - fungi and roots and spices - that had bitter flavours and caused bitter results so that, shortly after consumption, I sometimes lost proper consciousness. At times I woke up in strange places with strange people. Occasionally my meagre possessions would be gone and I would have no memory of why and I would not know where I was. That was why I left the desert. I was losing trust of everything except for the images in my head - the stars and moons and peaceful sand and blue sky and the rope ladder.

"Where did you go next?" God asked.

I went even farther, farther than I had ever been before, into a region of forest in the East, high up in some hills where there existed a holy thinker who lived in isolation. It took much walking for me to find him. His shelter was at the end of a challenging trail that was lined with large boulders. Its incline, in fact, was so steep that, from the bottom, when I looked up, it seemed like the boulders were precariously balanced like a dubious column, one on top of the other. His shelter sat delicately on the very peak, and when the sun shone, its roof glistened red. A gust of wind, I thought, could have blown it away, yet I had been told that it had rested in its place for many years and had been used by many thinkers prior to him. It's like it was protected.

"It was protected," God said. "It was protected for holy men."

I met the man, I continued. When I had climbed to the top and approached his shelter, he saw me and greeted me and invited me inside and we sat on a mat and had tea silently. He didn't speak a word and I didn't either and, when we finished, he stood and I stood and we both bowed and I then left and returned to conventional society and to now.

"Why did you do that?" God asked.

Because I felt I would never encounter another man like that who emanated such calmness. But I couldn't stay there and I didn't know where else to go. So I came back. This is why I'm conceding to you now and asking for your assistance.

"From all your searching," God said, "what stayed with you?"

Memories, I guess.

"And your images," God added. "The ones that you could retreat to for peace. Tell me again what they were."

They were the coloured moons and stars and the empty desert and the rope ladder and the column of boulders with the shelter at its peak. Sometimes, in my imagination, I made the shelter bigger, like a home. But it still represented the shelter of the holy man to me.

"You retreated to your images individually in separate moments," God stated. "In the story you just related to me, you never said that you found lasting peace in anything external. But you retreated to your images which were internal. And now, instead of thinking of them individually, you have the option, I know, to combine them and consider them as one full solitary image. You can put them together like you would put together a mosaic. Listen when I say that where you are externally is not vital. Where you are internally is vital. You are back in conventional society now but place is not important. You now have one image from a collection of several that can give you internal peace. This is the perspective you were trying to find the entire time. Do you understand?"

I think I do.

"This is why you came to me and admitted you needed assistance."

Yes.

"Do you feel assisted?"

I nodded.

"And if this was the purpose you needed to find, do you think you can share it with others?"

I think I can.