The Shack

Pg. 108

“Now here I am telling you about my kids and my friends and about Nan, but you already know everything I am telling you, don’t you? You’re acting like it’s the first time you’ve heard it.” Sarayu reached across the table and took his hand. “Mackenzie, remember our conversation earlier about limitation?” “Our conversation?” He glanced over at Papa, who was nodding knowingly. “You can’t share with one and not share with us all,” Sarayu said and smiled. “Remember that choosing to stay on the ground is a choice to facilitate a relationship, to honor it. Mackenzie, you do this yourself. You don’t play a game or color a picture with a child to show your superiority. Rather, you choose to limit yourself so as to facilitate and honor that relationship. You will even lose a competition to accomplish love. It is not about winning and losing, but about love and respect.” “So when I am telling you about my children…?” “We have limited ourselves out of respect for you. We are not bringing to mind, as it were, our knowledge of your children. As we are listening to you, it is as if this is the first time we have known about them, and we take great delight in seeing them through your eyes.” “I like that,” reflected Mack, sitting back in his chair. Sarayu squeezed his hand and seemed to sit back. “I do too! Relationships are never about power, and one way to avoid the will to hold power over another is to choose to limit oneself—to serve. Humans often do this—in touching the infirm and sick, in serving the ones whose minds have left to wander, in relating to the poor, in loving the very old and the very young, or even in caring for the other who has assumed a position of power over them.”

Pg. 97

Will you at least consider this: when all you can see is your pain, perhaps then you lose sight of me?”

Consider our little friend here,” she began. “Most birds were created to fly. Being grounded for them is a limitation within their ability to fly, not the other way around.” She paused to let Mack think about her statement. “You, on the other hand, were created to be loved. So for you to live as if you were unloved is a limitation, not the other way around.” Mack nodded his head, not so much in full agreement, but more as a signal that at least he understood and was tracking. That seemed simple enough. “Living unloved is like clipping a bird’s wings and removing its ability to fly. Not something I want for you.”

“Mack, pain has a way of clipping our wings and keeping us from being able to fly.” She waited a moment, allowing her words to settle. “And if it’s left unresolved for very long, you can almost forget that you were ever created to fly in the first place.”