"Are you this Beside-Helper'?" Emmanuel asked.

"No," she said. "He is a far more puzzling figure than I. If you are having difficulty with me, in determining-"

"I am," Emmanuel said.

He is a latecomer into this world," Zina said. "Not found in

earlier aeons. He represents an evolution in the divine strategy. One by which the primordial damage is repaired. One of many, but a main one. Will I ever encounter him?" You will not be judged," Zina said. "So perhaps not. But all

humans will see him standing by the busy road, offering his help. Offering it in time-before the person starts across the sifting bridge and is judged. The Beside-Helper's intervention always comes in time. It is part of his nature to be there soon enough." Emmanuel said, "I would like to meet him."

Follow the travel pattern of any human," Zina said, "and you will arrive at the point where that human encounters him. That is how I know about him. I, too, am not judged." She pointed to the slate that she had given him. "Ask it for more information about the Beside-Helper."

The slate read:

TO CALL

"Is that all you can tell me?" Emmanuel asked it.

A new word formed, a Greek word:

PARAKALEIN

He wondered about this, wondered greatly, at this new entity who had come into the world . . . who could be called on by those in need, those who stood in danger of negative judgment. It was one more of the mysteries presented to him by Zina. There had been so many, now. He enjoyed them. But he was puzzled.

To call to aid: parakalein. Strange, he thought. The world evolves even as it falls more and more. There are two distinct movements: the falling, and then, at the same time, the upward- rising work of repair. Antithetical movements, in the form of a dialectic of all creation and the powers contending behind it.