He stopped, wiped the sweat off his brow with the back of his hand, and looked back at her.  “You alright?” he asked her.  She stalked towards him, eyes looking down to step over or around the roots stretched over the forest path.  Both her hands grasped the straps of her pack and pressed against her chest.

“Yeah,” she replied as she approached him and joined him in stopping their hike, a little out of breath.  The sun peaking through the tree canopy above made the sweat on her forehead sparkle.  He walked behind her, unzipped the pack, grabbed the water bottle and handed it over to her.  “Thanks.”

He looked around the old forest.  “Beautiful,” he said in legitimate awe.  He looked ahead up the path and could see the clearing that they were aiming for was about a kilometer off.  “Let’s go?”

“Hold on,” she replied softly, “let’s just hang out for a sec.”

“Is the pack heavy?”

“A little.”

“Here,” he said as he took the weight of the pack off her shoulders and slung it on to his, “I’ll take it.”

“Thank you,” she said as she sat on a nearby stump.

He followed her cue, dropped the pack to the floor and leaned back against an adjacent tree.  He looked around at the forest again.  He took a deep breath through his nose to take in the fresh smell so different from the city.  He stood in the silence broken only every few minutes by the call of a nearby bird.  He dropped his hands down behind him and felt for the bark of the tree and then turned around and placed both his hands in front of him on it while he studied it with a curious and soft gaze.  He looked up to the top of the tree and then to the tops of the other trees around him.  “Amazing…”

“So, I saw your Bible.  I didn’t know you were Catholic?”

“I’m not, really,” he responded.  He knew that she was.  He knew of and had great respect for her studies and knowledge of not only Catholicism, but most religions.  “I like autobiographies and biographies.  Jesus seems to me a man worth reading about.”

She smiled at him.

“What’s your favorite book of the Gospel?” he asked her, eager to hear what he should read next.

She got up from the log, seemingly much lighter and full of energy from the loss of the pack.  “Let me know when you get to Romans.”

“Romans,” he repeated to himself, making a mental note.  She walked ahead of him up the trail towards the clearing ahead and he followed behind.

***

They sat beside each other on a large rock on the shore of the lake in the middle of the massive clearing.  He looked back behind him to the forest and then back at the serene, still water.  The mountains and clear sky above reflected in the light blue water.  This was different.  In the presence of this lake and these mountains, a calm pervaded him.  Pervaded everything.  His being became still as the water and strong and immovable as the mountain.  His mind was empty just because he was there.  There was no trying.  They sat there together for a long time before either of them said a word.

“What do you think of the judgement and the wrath of the Christian conception of God?  Do you think it’s a little much?” she asked him.  She was happy for the opportunity to sound off some of her doubts and questions she often kept inside while studying on searching for the answers.  On this rock, by this lake and these mountains she felt secure in her insecurities.

“Well…” he began, chin resting against his hand looking across the water.  He took a moment to collect and arrange his thoughts.  “Well…”

“To me, as it stands, I don’t see God as personal,” he started.  “So when I think of the wrath and the judgement of God towards ‘sinners’, I don’t think of God above us or around us, or wherever God may be, personally doling out judgement and wrath.”

“To me, God is everywhere, God is in everything,” he continued in the midst of beautiful natural affirmation of his current feeling in the scene around him.  “I think that this ‘God’ could be expressed in so many ways.  Maybe it is a certain scientific compound that is in everything, or a certain mathematical law, or some sort of energy or vibration, or it’s Love, or it’s Nature, or maybe it’s more like the traditional God who is in everything.  But anyway, I think that there are ways to live and be in harmony with God and also ways to live and be out of harmony with God.  Feel free to substitute the word God for any of the listed expressions or one of your own.”

“Yep,” she said in both understanding but also a signal to him that she was not so closed off in her Catholicism to dismiss or be offended by his ideas.

“I think that deep down in us, beneath the Ego, it really is only God,” he stated.

“I think that everyone can access that place, but even if we’re not quite there, it serves as a little voice inside of us that tells us when we are acting in or out of harmony with God.  The results of this acting (in this case) out of harmony with God are, to me, ‘God’s judgement and wrath’.

“And I think we witness this every day; when we act out of hatred, we get violence and war and suffering and death.  That’s God’s judgement and wrath.  Or when we act out of greed in our exploitation of the planet by destroying the environment, we get global warming and droughts and extinctions and tsunamis and different kinds of plagues.  Or when we act out of lust, we get emotional suffering and heartbreak.  And on and on.  That’s God’s judgement and wrath.”

All the while he spoke he was gazing towards the lake and the mountains.  As he finished, he looked over to her and her head moved quickly from gazing towards him and to the lake and the mountains.  He looked at her for a moment then looked back out, mind blank.