The competent and dedicated disciples recruited by the daughter were helping her to organize and develop a ministry that some observers admired and others envied. As spring warmed to summer, she was visiting towns and holding assemblies further and further away from the lake. Whenever she ventured into new territory, she visited the towns she thought most challenging and sent her collaborators to the others. Two or three times a week, she organized an assembly in a place where the inhabitants could come, spend the day and return in the evening. For the time being, she avoided the cities, where advocates and opponents of inviting her were claiming disinterested motives and accusing each other of selfish ones. Reporters asked when she would take her ministry to them and she replied that she had to consolidate it in the towns and the country first. Yet frequent trips by the manager to the state capital, the city nearest the lake, indicated that she had begun to prepare for the next phase in her ministry.
 

One day, she told me that he had obtained a permit to organize a march from the fair grounds to the civic center and an assembly in the plaza. It was early on a muggy, foggy morning, when the usual variety of rustic vehicles arrived in the parking lot of the most popular beach along the lake. Leading the procession, the first fisherman drove the daughter in his pickup and the others followed. A kilometer in length when it left the beach, it had grown to five by the time it reached the fair grounds, where thousands of people greeted the daughter. She was wearing a white blouse and a full brown skirt with daisies that seemed to wave in the wind as she walked. The sun had evaporated the fog, the heat felt good and the crowd was in a festive mood. Once the last vehicle in the procession had parked, the daughter invited everyone to make his neighbors' acquaintance and she celebrated the sacrifice of bread and water. A picnic lunch followed, while she and her collaborators circulated among the crowd, which the urban population had enriched with an even greater diversity. After lunch, she led a march as wide as the four-lane avenue it followed, a kilometer in length at the fair grounds and three upon arrival at the civic center, where a hundred thousand others awaited it. As more arrived, the assembly 

____________________________________________________________

began to overflow into the streets approaching the plaza from the other sides. Despite the numbers, discipline and good humor prevailed, so the daughter's marshals and the policemen enjoyed their responsibilities. She ascended a platform three meters high erected in front of the city hall and furnished with a podium and several chairs for the mayor and other notables. Below them, a larger, lower platform accommodated an orchestra and a choir which had been practicing for several days. A dirigible carrying a television camera circled overhead.
 

The daughter had revised her message to suit her urban audience. She addressed the issues of poverty, minorities, housing, congestion, pollution, crime, emergencies, water, waste, recycling, etc. Cities should keep striving to solve these problems, but only God's community could provide definitive solutions. The one insuperable obstacle they enountered was selfishness, which he would ban from his community. The daughter defined sin as serving oneself at the expense of his other creatures and his creation. She denied that breaking rules established by priests was sin, whether they justified them by written or oral claims of communication with God. These rules themselves were sin, because they deceived fellow men and subordinated them to the priests who proclaimed them. The worst deception came from obscure traditions attested by an uninterrupted succession of witnesses, if we could believe those who had the greatest interest in persuading us. They extrapolated the existence, competence and integrity of all these witnesses from the often inconclusive documentation of some. The prestige of an ancient origin distracted from the apologetic vulnerability of the tradition. From such traditions, nonetheless, priests extracted rules and legends which they imposed on believers. Denying an idea or breaking a rule offended God, they insisted, as if he necessarily agreed with them. When priests led believers in prayers addressed to God and worship free of propaganda, however, they rendered them a valuable service. Preaching solidarity with their fellow men and respect for nature prepared worshipers for God's community. Nothing contributed more towards solving urban problems than the generosity of citizens.
 

____________________________________________________________

Nothing impeded the solution of these problems more than the ambition of citizens determined to exploit others to their own advantage. They didn't offend God -- how could a perfect being take offence? -- but they did oppose his will and that was sin. Superiors who induced subordinates to sin committed an even more flagrant sin, but subordinates also sinned. Even victims sinned if they submitted to their tyrants without resistance by all the means available to them that didn't harm innocent people. Reason, which God had given them, demanded unification of the oppressed, overthrow of the oppressors, planning and organization to achieve this end, determination and persistence in execution. They had the right to oppose violence by violence as long as they spared the innocent. Abuse of the creation necessarily implied abuse of creatures, who belonged to it, so they had the duty to resist. Both kinds of abuse would undergo ultimate defeat only when God established his community. He would admit all who had done their duty and turn the others away. Members of the community would enjoy a happy life, while sinners would die and cease to exist. Nearly everyone who was listening to this sermon, the daughter assured them, would live to see the advent of God's community.
 

The daughter illustrated this sermon by a parable: "A city councilman ran for mayor against an incumbent whom he denounced for corruption and cronyism. Elected, he fired all the parasites his predecessor had hired and canceled all the contracts he had traded for political support. He hired only as many employees as he needed and, always, the best qualified ones he could find. The most cost-effective bid won every competition for a contract despite subtle attempts to curry his favor. The first businessman who tried to bribe him went to jail and he was the last, while other businessmen complimented him on the integrity of his administration. His predecessor had ignored the poor; he gave them his immediate attention. He provided the homeless with temporary food and shelter; replaced slums by subsidized housing; contracted with providers for health care; built recreation facilities; established day-care centers, a retirement home and a counselling center. The kind and degree of support for the poor depended especially on need, but also on the length of residence in the city and the willingness to work. The mayor required every able-bodied recipient of support to agree on a schedule that led to economic independence. He developed a job-training program, for which he 

____________________________________________________________

recruited instructors and raised funds. His promise to reallocate revenue spent on the poor as they began to earn a living persuaded many of his constituents to volunteer time and money. Eloquence, persistence and tact instilled in all of his fellow citizens the ambition to create a community where everyone who could work did and no one went hungry. This dream anticipated God's community.
 

"The police department offset discouragement of delinquency by encouragement of civic responsibility. It took pride in hiring officers who represented the population in all of its ethnic diversity. Spending most of his time on foot, every officer contacted someone in every house and every store on his beat at least once a month. Public solidarity enabled the force to distinguish itself by successful investigations, arrests and convictions rather than swaggering officers, screaming sirenes and flashing lights. Swift intervention and determined prosecution discouraged crime. A downtown zone where little girls and old women could walk safely at all hours expanded gradually. Teachers and parents collaborated on a reform of the school system, which subordinated seniority to proficiency and training in methodology to knowledge of the humanities and the sciences. Limiting class size strictly to twenty students, it required courses in academic subjects with special emphasis on language and math, and it relegated vocational and practical training such as shop and driver training to an auxiliary status. The termination of interscholastic sports yielded savings that funded instruction in music and art without depriving intramural athletics. The mayor founded a college, which admitted high-school graduates unable to enter or afford a residential institution. Ignoring pressure to stress professional and technical training, he insisted that instruction in the sciences and humanities receive equivalent support. The emergence of a youthful, well-educated and well-trained workforce attracted new business and industry, but he made no exceptions to pollution, waste and safety regulations.
 

"He initiated a policy of discouraging construction and encouraging renovation of neglected, unused and abandoned buildings. His plan provided for simultaneous expansion of pedestrian zones, reduction of

____________________________________________________________

vehicle traffic and development of public transportation. It halted the proliferation of slums, malls, parking lots and multi-lane streets with stoplights at every corner, which it began to transform by the insertion of islands planted with trees, shrubs and flowers surrounded by traffic circles. Similar islands appeared in parking lots, and the landscaping around commercial property improved. Streetcars replaced busses, busses with natural gas engines replaced those with diesels, while commuter rail expanded to serve suburbs and the airport. The mayor joined with other officials, railroad executives and business leaders to restore passenger service on a railroad between his city and the nearest one on the same line. Restoration of the downtown station, improvement of the roadbed and purchase of fast and comfortable electric trains promised competition for airline and automotive interests, which tried in vain to sabotage the project. The number and variety of shops and restaurants at the airport, the train station, in parks and on other city property depended on the needs and health of users. Leases required prices comparable to those charged elsewhere and conformity with esthetic standards that minimized advertising. The city kept advertising; air, water and sound pollution; waste and junk disposal under strict controls. The efficiency of its water purification; flood control; recycling; waste disposal; sewerage treatment; leaf, snow and ice removal won national acclaim. The mayor strove to narrow the gap between the standards of public hospitals, clinics, nursing and retirement homes, and those of similar private institutions. The latter had to improve their care to maintain a competitive advantage. Regulation of service stations; power, gas, telecommunication and cable companies ensured safety and competition. The city even persecuted phone trees and recorded messages designed to avoid live contact with the public by a personal representative.
 

"The mayor assumed responsibility for developing cultural resources neglected by the private sector. He left construction of a stadium, an arena, a convention center and multiplex cinemas to businessmen; let them establish football, basketball, baseball and hockey teams; organize conventions, fairs, pop concerts, etc. But he built a theatre; a 

____________________________________________________________

concert hall; an art gallery; natural, historical and scientific museums; a central library and several branch libraries. The city partially subsidized a theatre company, an opera, an orchestra, a dance and a chambre ensemble. For public recreation, it added new playing fields, gyms and swimming pools to existing ones which it improved. New parks included a wooded area converted to a nature preserve. The zoo shifted its emphasis from exotic animals like lions, giraffes and elephants, which it kept, to local fauna exhibited in local flora. Birds and animals that couldn't compete in the wild, either because of injury or domestication, acquainted visitors and especially children with their natural environment. The most significant improvement in the life of the city, however, was the enthusiasm of the population, which distinguished it from all others. People took pride in solidarity with each other. It had begun to resemble God's community so closely that some of them became complacent.
 

"By the end of his second term, the mayor had not only won the admiration of his fellow citizens, but also that of the state, the nation and other countries. Delegations were coming to see his accomplishments and study his policies; he was accepting invitations to give lectures and advice in cities near and far. His enemies -- who doesn't have them? -- were accusing him of spending more time entertaining and traveling than doing his duty. Facing re-election to a third term, he found that the former mayor and his friends, who had lost jobs, contracts and other favors, were raising a lot of money for the campaign against him. They were courting wealthy suburbanites whom he had offended by discouraging the use of private vehicles downtown, taxing commuters who worked there and incorporating areas beyond the city limits. Every leg of the construction spider joined them with the complaint that he had infringed on their right to spin their webs. Teachers who had lost the advantages of seniority and educationism, some of whom were coaches, sided with sports fanatics who hated the loss of interscholastic sports. Doctors who resented the competition of public health, which had cut their profits, also contributed to the campaign against the mayor. A growing number of other businessmen, professionals and politicians added their voices to criticism of his tax and spend administration. Most of these critics 

____________________________________________________________

considered aid to the poor a subsidy for people too lazy to earn a living and hence an incentive to vote for him in elections. They even carped on his cultural achievements, which most of them enjoyed, on the grounds that the private sector could do better for less.
 

"Encouraged, the former mayor's party nominated a young lawyer who had made a reputation by defending the construction industry. She cultivated the mayor's enemies by confidential promises to redress their grievances and vague attacks on his socialism. Since they amounted to only one third of the electorate, however, she courted an uncommitted third by promises to pursue the mayor's uncontroversial policies and yet make them more effective and efficient. Polls suggested that she was winning their support, so her third of the electorate and the state committee of her party increased their contributions to her campaign fund. The same polls forced the mayor to let the city coast on its bureaucratic momentum and dedicate himself entirely to his campaign. His third of the electorate were the least wealthy, but the most willing to ring telephones and doorbells without pay, which his opponent's workers routinely received. Some of them expected the kind of gratitude that had made his predecessor vulnerable. Entrusting sollicitation of funds and votes to a deputy, he challenged his opponent on the issues that interested the uncommitted third of the electorate. This opponent, he charged, depended on contributions from people who were counting on her to favor their interests over those of the community. Denying this charge, she retorted that the mayor was squandering taxes paid by the diligent and the responsible to buy the votes of the lazy and irresponsible. The press loudly deplored the mutual recrimination and quietly delighted in it. The mayor relied on reason and facts, while his opponent, who had a charming smile and laugh, preferred common sense. Each cited figures and statistics that contradicted those of the other. The polls continued to show that a slight majority of the middle third favored the lady lawyer and they explained that they felt more comfortable with her. Thus the mayor saw that he would lose unless he did something drastic.
 

"In a series of secret meetings, he promised middle-third competitors of his opponent's supporters that, if they helped him win the election, he would see that they received contracts that gave them an advantage. When the polls revealed the effect of this agreement, the lady lawyer, 

____________________________________________________________

who guessed what had happened, promised to cut taxes on automobiles. Despite the resulting uproar, the mayor knew he would lose unless he met this challenge. Having made additional promises, he won by a few hundred votes. Keeping his promises nonetheless started a trend he couldn't stop, which, by the end of his third term, had bogged him down in corruption and cronyism as foul as that of his predecessor. All of his policies suffered accordingly and likewise his reputation and that of the city. Yet his supporters, who were now the wealthiest third of the electorate, enabled him to win election to a fourth term against the same lawyer. This time, she ran on a reform ticket that bore curious resemblance to the one that had enabled him to win his first election. No one had ever climbed closer to God's community and no one had ever fallen further away from it."
 

As usual, the crowd remained silent for a while after the prayer with which the daughter ended her sermon. It was so large this time that she postponed questions and comments to a series of smaller meetings, which she and her collaborators would hold in different places during the next few days. Meanwhile, she, the orchestra and the choir led them in singing hymns which people could hear miles away. Afterwards, she said a final prayer and they dispersed happily and peacefully as the sun declined and the colors intensified. I attended the meetings she held herself, where everyone who wished could participate in discussions and see her privately afterwards. One which took place in a college auditorium reminded me of the one she had held in her hometown. While the journalists were no more aggressive and provocative than usual, the applause and laughter that encouraged them suggested a conspiracy confirmed by a bus parked around the corner. A few of these hecklers challenged the daughter with well-rehearsed remarks, such as: "This isn't a cow pasture." "We have our own churches and preachers." "Claiming that you are God's daughter is blasphemy." "Your prophecy of God's community is just an excuse to grab power." The daughter didn't even have to reply because the overwhelming number of her supporters drowned the hecklers in scorn and laughter. Individuals stood, took the microphone and identified one of the remarks as a quotation from such and such an enemy of the daughter, who had sent hecklers for fear of facing her himself. The applause inflicted visible humiliation on them. Every attempt to disrupt the proceedings also gave the daughter an 

____________________________________________________________

opportunity to adapt her message to her audience.
 

Both the hecklers and the reporters nonetheless put old issues in a new context and raised new issues, both in reaction to the extension of her ministry to the city and the parable she had told. While continuing to question her claim to represent God, theologians now objected to what they saw as her sociological interpretation of sin and her confusion of religion with politics. They protested against her criticism of founding religion on ancient traditions attested by an uninterrupted succession of witnesses. Her neglect of sacrifice, ritual and litany offended many of those whose religion emphasized them. Her rejection of prophecy, miracles and especially resurrection to an eternal life either in heaven or hell shocked most of them. The tolerance of religions which she had often expressed, as if she weren't founding one herself, incited every reaction from perplexity to sarcasm. Yet these critics ignored the embarrassing number of ministers who supported her. The wealthy continued to rail against her alleged conflation of wealth with evil and indifference to virtue commensurate with charitable deductions, but they now insisted on their God-given right to enjoy the fruits of their labor and multiply them exponentially. The regulation of business that she advocated had both chiefs and indians on the warpath and her objection to phone trees struck sparks from one chief's eyes. Everyone from investors to employees in the airline, automobile and construction industries reminded the public of the need to create jobs and stimulate the economy as if they had forgotten customers. Subtler arguments slipped from the tighter lips of the health-care and pharmaceutical industries implying that the daughter was opposed to research and development in medicine. Economists, who disagreed on everything else, agreed that the daughter would drive the economy into a recession. Politicians avoided a dispute between the police chief and the manager over the number of people who had assembled in the city center, but they lost sleep trying to decide which estimate was closer to the truth. Some devised tactics to undermine her reform of city government, while others raised arguments in favor of it to embarrass the mayor, who had reluctantly welcomed the daughter. In their telephone, mail, fax and e-mail sollicitation, the brotherhood of policemen targeted her supporters, 

____________________________________________________________

insinuating that their safety depended on the experience of professionals who knew how to enforce the law. The teachers' union and the schools of education declared an education day, on which they urged all teachers to convert their class into a teach-in or teach-out against amateur interference with their profession. Sports professionals incited amateurs and fans to call or write their state and federal representatives. After the national anthem at baseball games, the leading players on both teams shared a microphone at home plate and, with their peculiar eloquence, condemned the daughter's remarks about sports as the crowd cheered. I could add other negative reactions, but haven't I already begun to misrepresent the situation by stressing the more energetic adversaries at the expense of the far more numerous sympathizers?
 

People who resented the daughter or felt threatened by her rallied around a beautiful business executive who wielded more influence over the local economy and city government than anyone else. She organized a secret campaign against her ministry. Statements and quotations reported by the press, speeches and sermons, remarks by participants in talk shows and call-in discussions amplified the hostility of the minority led by her. Individuals and groups accosted the daughter and her collaborators wherever they went, seeking to embarrass or provoke them by contemptuous or sarcastic remarks, and eventually by vague insults and threats. Yet these tactics usually backfired because the bystanders disapproved of them and the intentions behind them, and they admired the victims' serenity. When the affront necessitated a response, the daughter gently asked God to relieve her adverariese' anxiety and the first fisherman roughly, to restore their dignity. While the former inspired murmurs of "praise the Lord" and the latter, laughter, both confounded the perpetrators and exasperated the instigators. Thus the latter resorted to confrontation, shoving, shouting and jostling in an attempt to intimidate their victims, but they only succeeded in provoking the crowd, who intervened to defend them. Escalation resulted in violence by gangs swinging first their fists, then baseball bats and finally bottles with the ends broken off. Repelled by a growing number of designated and spontaneous defenders, they threw stones, bottles and other objects from a safe 

____________________________________________________________

distance. On the excuse of  keeping order, the police escorted the communitarians, as they were now called, delaying them in places where the gangs could assault them and intervening only when they got the upperhand. Arresting the communitarians on the slightest pretext, they ignored the aggressors unless the defenders caught them, in which case they freed them. At first, the press reported only the opinion of the daughter's enemies, who blamed her and her collaborators for these disorders. As evidence of these enemies' responsibility accumulated, however, an increasing number of people turned away from or against the press, who now tried to cover both sides fairly. Yet the numbers of readers, listeners and spectators continued to decline, so the press began to sympathize with the communitarians. They even applauded their courage in facing thugs hired by cowardly enemies with selfish motives. Newspaper circulation, radio and television audiences improved, but not at a rate that satisfied management.
 

During the ten days that the daughter spent in the city, she multiplied her followers by four. The wounds inflicted on her followers persuaded her to grant a request by her disciples to unite her staunchest defenders in an organization responsible for discipline and protection. She appointed the first fisherman to lead it and plan for security. No one, as far as I know, and not even her enemies thought this measure ominous then. Years later, a dispute would erupt over the intiation of a chain reaction that eventually resulted in an armed force. At the time, everyone knew that the lady executive had started and escalated the violence, however difficult it might have been to prove in court. I can testify that, from the beginning, the first fisherman kept the security squad under tight control. He even dismissed a few of its members for losing their nerve or temper. Even before those ten days had come to an end, the lady excutive realized that her attacks on the ministry not only resulted in the humiliation of her henchmen, but also resentment against her party and solidarity with the daughter's. Thus she persuaded her friends to suspend confrontation until the daughter took her ministry elsewhere. Perhaps the collaborators she left behind would prove less formidable. This was an illusion. Before she left, the daughter held an assembly of her collaborators to discuss consolidation of her ministry in the city. Among them was an opposition councilman who exposed the lady executive's new strategy. A 

____________________________________________________________

pollster found that over two thirds of the population supported the daughter. A courtesan completed his report by testifying to even greater solidarity among the unpolled. A minister urged a continuous program of meetings and other activities to sustain the faith. A retired police sergeant recruited by the first fisherman reported that most officers resented the role their chief had ordered them to play. Various businessmen, professionals and government officials reminded the assembly that many of their colleagues opposed the lady executive. At this point, the daughter proposed a committee to continue her ministry in the city and, encouraged by the assembly's approval, appointed several of those who had spoken to sit on it. The banker recommended an insurance company executive whose experience with the united fund had enabled the ministry to raise, spend and invest more money in a week than during the previous month. The daughter appointed him to chair the committee.

Towards the end of her stay, she was visiting the courtesan and her friends in her house, which contrasted with the surroundings. On both sides and across the street, garish signs advertised all kinds of sex except the one that resulted in a healthy family. Indeed one annouced "ALLSEX" in pink letters on a purple background. Not that other kinds of vice didn't thrive in the same neighborhood, such as alcohol, which was visible, and drugs, which were invisible. A large electric sign high on the facade of a corner building in a nearby square displayed a foreshortened naked woman on her back with her knees raised. Her knees kept separating and reuniting alternatively. Each time they separated, a star flashed between her thighs, increasing in size as they moved apart and decreasing as they moved back together. Above her appeared the title: "LOVE" in dripping red on a black background. The part of the press subservient to the lady executive gave this sign maximum publicity. The courtesan's house, on the other hand, received only fleeting attention and yet it resembled the cottages built along fashionable waterfronts by nineteenth-century tycoons. The historical commission had innocently caused a scandal a few years earlier by declaring it an official monument.

The courtesan was showing the daughter around when a commotion 

____________________________________________________________

broke out in front, where guards were holding the crowd back. The crowd had let an invalid in an electric wheelchair through and he demanded access to the daughter. She could help him extract an indemnity from the company responsible for the accident that had relegated him to the wheelchair. The guards had instructions to tell such people when and where they could have an interview with her, but the invalid objected that he couldn't travel as easily as other people. Exasperated, he withdrew and, with a friend, who worked for the fire department, went around behind the house. The fireman took him up a fire escape on his back and, finding the window locked on every floor, climbed all the way to the widow walk at the top. Undaunted by the rusty lock on the trap door, he kicked it loose and descended with the invalid to a room, which the courtesan and the daughter had just entered. The sudden descent of such a football player with a water boy on his back struck both women as funny and their laughter was contagious, infecting even the invalid despite his chronic bad humor. Both women promised to see that he got his indemnity and got it he did.
 

There you have the incident as I observed it. Long after a subsequent controversy over the daughter's associations had subsided and after everyone who had witnessed the scene in the upper room had died except me, two different accounts began to circulate in obscure circles. Both affirmed that the invalid had come for a cure and had been unable to steer his wheelchair through the crowd. One confirmed that he had gone around in back with a fireman, who had carried him up the fire escape to the roof, but it says nothing of a widow walk. The fireman cut a hole in the roof with his axe, which he had brought along, and lowered the invalid down into the upper room with a rope and a sling, which he had also brought along. Then the daughter told him to get out of the sling and, doing so, he found that he could walk again. According to the other version, the commotion in front of the house brought the daughter up on the widow walk, from where she told the invalid to get out of his wheelchair. As soon as he stood up, she raised him to her level with one gesture and invited him to walk across to her with another. At first, he took hesitant steps, but then, as his self-confidence increased, he walked more easily. Meanwhile, the tightly packed crowd of upturned faces below him gaped and groaned 

____________________________________________________________

an eerie "ahhhh" that varied in pitch and intensity with each step. Neither the fireman nor the courtesan figures in this version and yet the daughterian faith has recently made saints of them.
 

The initial month in the lake district had allowed the daughter to develop methods suitable for rural areas and small towns. During her ten days in the state capital, she had adjusted them to suit an urban population. In consultation with her disciples, she now planned to expand her ministry to the surrounding region which included several states. First, they drew up an itinerary that followed valleys and rivers across the region and, then, a calendar that assigned dates and places to her and each of them except the manager. As they fanned out across the region, they recruited disciples to continue their work and organize local extensions of the ministry. The manager stayed behind in the state capital to develop the regional administration and establish communications with the new extensions. The daughter and her other principal collaborators strove constantly to adjust their appeal and message to suit different conditions, customs and concerns. While they kept each other informed and coordinated their activity by satphone, she answered questions, offered solutions and gave advice. Both forceful and tactful, she impressed all of them by her effective and efficient supervision. Their success lagged behind hers, but they attracted large crowds almost everywhere they went and converted most of each. They quickly learned to let their listeners rebuke rude, biased or provocative reporters. Erroneous or unfair coverage by the press offended people who had heard one of them and stimulated the curiosity of people who hadn't. The daughter's enemies tried and often succeeded in anticipating her arrival or the arrival of a disciple, but a majority nearly always sided with the ministry. She reserved the places where she expected the greatest resistance for herself.
 

Recent immigrants from a distant country predominated, for instance, in one of the towns on her itinerary. Only nine little old men were waiting for her in the supermarket parking lot, where a warm drizzle was falling. All had a stony face, but they were in their best clothes, which hung loosely on them. The daughter approached with a subtle, sympathetic smile and greeted them: "Good morning, Gentlemen!"

____________________________________________________________

Imitating the one in the middle, they bowed and replied: "Good morning, Madame!" in a tinny voice.

They all smiled, made a deeper bow than the elders' and replied: "Good morning, Madame!"

Pleased, the chief elder bowed and said "yes!" three times at well-spaced intervals and each more emphatically than the other. Then he said the name of their chief god, which, since I found it unpronouncable, I simply translated as "the ultimately omniscient and powerful being."

He visually consulted the other elders, who bowed their consent and he bowed his to the daughter.

After a few seconds of hesitation, the chief elder nodded to the others, who told the people behind them to send their little children to the daughter.

____________________________________________________________

and powerful being. It appeared on the front page of every newspaper, the home page of every internet provider, the newscast of every television channel, and often several times. The daughter's blessing, which accompanied it visually or audibly, said: "Oh Lord, bless these children, because they are your children and the children of your children who stand with me here. Let them grow up in health, happiness and prosperity. May they delight their parents by their dedication to you and their solidarity with all of your children. Above all, oh Lord, encourage them to hope and prepare for entrance to your community. Praise the Lord." Instead of "Praise the Lord," the immigrants said another word in their language which meant "I agree and approve." Translated into the language of every nation who didn't speak ours, the prayer particularly delighted the one to whom the immigrants belonged. The ministry had already excited national curiosity; now it began to excite international curiosity. 
 

The encounter with this ethnic and religious minority inspired some new ideas, which the daughter integrated in her sermons. Here is a summary: God hadn't told her to discourage the veneration of lesser gods or endorse any religion at the expense of the others. He had only entrusted her with the announcement of his community and the education of its future citizens. Although he prescribed no moral code, he expected solidarity between his human creatures, kindness to all living things and respect for the inanimate universe. People who persistently disappointed these expectations wouldn't enter his community. Instead, they would die a death of personal oblivion like all of those who had died from the rise of the human species, yet all would survive in genetic heirs who would enter God's community. There would be no resurrection; there was no migration of souls. Every human being who heeded the daughter's message would enter God's community, which would materialize right here on earth. It wouldn't eliminate forest fires, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, tidal waves, storms, floods, etc., but it would enable its citizens to cope with them by solidarity with each other. Most of the daughter's followers would live to see it and most of them would enter it.
 

From his office window, the manager of a coal mine saw his big deputy running towards the administration building where he sat. Running in 

____________________________________________________________

his case amounted to shuffling his feet quickly as his body bounced on his bones. A cold sweat broke out on the manager's skin. The deputy burst into his office pointing back whence he had come: "There's a lady in jeans went down with the shift." Shouting was his only volume.

"A lady in jeans?"

"The one on TV?"

"God's daughter? What's she doing here?"

"You mean the mouse that got the cheese. Or the cat that..."

"Send her back up right away. Tell her to get the hell off the premesis..."

"I was talking to you, not to her."

"How come everybody's laughing? What's so damned funny?"

"There ain't no hell? Why don't you turn your phone down?"

"OK, OK, as long as they mine coal. Nobody needs a strike."

"Will there be coal mines in God's community?"

"Will there be any difference for us and our families?"

____________________________________________________________

for your health and life. Improved wages will allow you to live a good life and look forward to a comfortable retirement. Millions of people will be grateful for the power and light that your labor provides them with. The poverty, disease, anxiety, hatred and strife that characterize your occupation will become history. Management and labor will cooperate in good faith for a common purpose. Although God's community will not substitute a supernatural life for this one, it will optimize the attitude of his human creatures towards each other."

"No clouds, no angels, no happy reunion with relatives, friends and lovers?"

"Well, a coal mine is like hell."

"I had sort of been looking forward to heaven."

"No eternal life?"

"You mean all of those people were fooling themselves for all that time?"

____________________________________________________________

before them? Do the number of people who believe something and the length of time during which they believe it prove that it's true? What if the ones who started the trend were deluding themselves or deceiving others? Unfortunately, reason enables us to think wishfully and also to deceive the gullible, either to manipulate them or flatter an illusion of superiority. God will turn these sinners away from his community."

"Then we have nothing to hope for except his community?"

"Selfishness is the root of evil."

A county fair exhibited a great variety of animals, plants, products, produce, chemicals, machinery, etc. Yet the human variety exceeded that of the animals by far. A happy crowd circulated in the alleys between the stands, chatting, stopping, staring and moving on. Others clustered around food and drink stands, outdoor grills and picnic tables. The occasional calls of the animals punctuated the hubbub of many people talking, shouting and laughing. Every smell from the odor of horse droppings to the scent of flowers mingled in the air while a hot sun shone between clouds, which sprinkled drops as they passed. Followed by a growing crowd, the daughter moved along making acquaintances and visiting stands. She asked the owner of a heifer how it would be slaughtered and what precautions would be taken to keep its suffering at a minimum when it died. She also asked him how he had raised it, the ingredients of the feed he had given it, if he had let it graze on healthy grass during the warm season, if he had given it good water to drink, how much space he had allowed it to live in and how he felt about it. These questions pleased the farmer because he knew his answers would satisfy the daughter and the crowd that followed her. A big man in coveralls whose belly rounded well in front of him, he had a trapazoidal head that tapered to a crewcut of sparse blond hair. When he smiled or laughed, his mouth and eyes deepened the wrinkles spreading out from them on either side. His voice rumbled in his throat and his blue eyes sparkled in their slits. How did he feel about his heifer? He threw his arm over its neck and patted its cheek on the other side. "Does it like little children?"

____________________________________________________________

"Sure, if there aren't too many of them all at once."

"Praise the Lord."

The daughter moved on to another stand where white chickens crowded into a pen were pecking at grains on the floor. After speaking to the owner, a short man with a red face, beady eyes, a bald head and a wide moustache, she watched the chickens awhile. "They don't seem to have enough room," she said.

"They don't need much room, M'am," he said with a slightly condescending smile. "As long as they can move around each other."

"We don't raise these to lay eggs, M'am. They are fryers. They have a little more room in the shed."

The farmer shifted his weight to the other leg. "Yes M'am, it's easier to control their diet and keep them healthy on a floor. We open skylights and let the sun in when the weather allows it. No telling what they might eat wondering around on the ground."

____________________________________________________________

drove him to admit that, when his fryers had reached optimum growth, he packed them into cages designed for automatic processing and shipped them to a factory that converted them into packaged meat in a half hour. She was horrified.

"They are just chickens, M'am," he kept saying with an increasingly desperate shrug of his shoulders.

"They aren't used to strangers, M'am."

"No M'am, I don't let them do that. The chickens would panic, even if I did it myself. You have to raise more than you can treat as pets. I bet your chickens get lots of personal attention. I would like to do that too, but I couldn't afford it." The one he held suddenly began to shriek, struggle and flap its wings again so that it almost got away from him and he hastily dropped it back into the pen, where it jostled and excited the others. His contempt showed in his face.

He shrugged patiently: "They are just chickens, M'am. I raise them as best I can and try to make an honest living. There are people who can't say that."

"I go to church every Sunday, M'am."

His eyes popped and his face sagged. He didn't know what to say.

____________________________________________________________

animals and land. While recognizing the need to improve farm machinery, she questioned the wisdom of building ever bigger machines. The crowd following her had grown so large that the ones in back couldn't hear what she was saying, so she led them to a field, stood in back of the first fisherman's pickup and addressed them with a megaphone. She noted that farmers interacted with nature more closely and continuously than members of other professions. They had the responsibility to exploit the creation without depleting or polluting it and provide fellow humans with healthy and savory food. She urged them to unite with each other to defend their true interests, which were also those of their creator. They should also collaborate with consumers to keep industrial and commercial intermediaries from taking more than their share of the proceeds. Perhaps they could short-circuit the transformation of their production into tempting but unhealthy food by distributing it more directly to consumers. They should resist another danger, the persistent encroachment of urban development on farmland. Greed rather than need was behind sprawling industrial and residential construction on fertile land. Shouldn't the reservation of productive land for agriculture always take precedence over the profit motive? Farmers ought to cooperate with each other in refusing to sell their property without a contractual guarantee that it will remain undeveloped, and electing representatives and officials who will pass and enforce laws against spoliation by developers. These were steps that they must take to enter God's community.
 

As usual, this sermon elated most of her listeners and offended a few, thus adding to the majority who supported her and the minority who opposed her. During the question-and-answer period, the reporters echoed the hostility of her enemies, repeating arguments by them that tended to justify the abuses she denounced. They had also begun to amplify a more general reproach against her. How did she respond, they asked, to critics who accused her of dividing segments of society that had previously been united? Before her sermon at the state fair, for instance, the agricultural community had been living in peace and harmony. Now the famers would declare war on agro-business. Wasn't that a disservice to both?

"Not to us it isn't," objected one of her listeners. "The agro barons have always punished any farmer who resisted their 

____________________________________________________________

tyranny. They can't punish us all without ruining themselves."
A second: "The peace and harmony we live in enriches them at our expense. Unity means nothing without justice."
A third: "Tell us how much of your advertising income comes from them and we will tell you how much they cheat us on the prices they pay for our products."

The daughter headed for the young woman who had ignored her, took her book, marked her place and put it down on the table beside her. Then she slid her arms under the astonished patient's body without disturbing the towel, lifted her, carried her with remarkable ease to the end of the pool and descended with her. Raising her eyes, she said: "Let us pray," and we all lowered ours. "Please, oh Lord, cleanse your creature of sin, so that she may dedicate the rest of her life to you. Praise the Lord."

____________________________________________________________

"Praise the Lord."

The daughter kept visiting places no one else did, such as the regional office of the federal tax bureau. She timed her visit so that she could meet the employees as they left the cafeteria after lunch. Unaccustomed to such attention, they welcomed her and listened eagerly to everything she had to say. When most of them had assembled, she reminded them that no civilized society could function without certain services that only a government could render, the legislative, executive and judicial ones to begin with. All of these services cost money most of which had to come from taxes, so collecting them served the public interest as long as the bureau applied the law fairly. Yet tax laws themselves were never fair, because they resulted from compromises between representatives, each of whom wanted to please constituents who had voted for him or helped to fund his campaign. Yet tax bureau employees couldn't collect taxes without tax laws, however imperfect they might be. If they did 

____________________________________________________________

their job conscienciously, they deserved more gratitude than their fellow taxpayers felt for them. "God is just. He distinguishes between people who collect taxes lawfully and those who squander them. He will admit conscientious tax collectors to his community and exclude unscrupulous politicians."

A young employee raised her hand: "I have only been working here for a few months. Every day, all day long, I see just how unfair the tax laws are. Is there such a thing as a scrupulous politician?"
Everyone laughed.

They laughed.

____________________________________________________________

sounded and even sometimes smelled as ferocious as I expected, yet one was like a little boy grown up but not older. A shock of hair hung over one of his sparkling eyes, his grin suggested a disarming confidence in us and his intonation implied the "heck!" or "shucks!" I kept expecting him to say. "Do you think I could make it?" he asked the daughter optimistically.

"What could you contribute?"

"Useful innovation will be even more valuable in God's community than in ours. Has yours been useful?"

"I heard that you are particularly clever at appropriating other people's inventions to make billions for yourself."

She laughed too: "God often overrules human judgments, but I suspect that you are not in here just because you licked a little girl's candy cane when she was looking the other way."

"You could make it, but you don't want to."

"You aren't willing to make the sacrifices you would have to make and you wouldn't like God's community anyway."

"Especially if you were the only one who didn't?"

"To begin with, persuade these gentlemen [she waved her hand at the guards] that they are wasting their time."

"Yes, you would. Because they would move you to a cell with one or two others. Then you would have a real chance to show God that you mean business."

"You know what I mean."

____________________________________________________________

"Look: the Lord made me like that. It's not my fault."

"He made you like that and it is your fault, because you want to use your fellow creatures rather than help them."

"Aren't you fellow creatures of God?"

"They weren't mistakes, because he made you that way on purpose. But he made everyone else imperfect too. He wants us to overcome that imperfection. I hear you treat each other almost as badly as you treated people on the outside. Is that true?"

"God endowed each of us with the ability, which he gave none of his other creatures, to decide how much he dedicates his life to himself and how much, to others. How would you treat an inmate who dedicated his life entirely to you?"

"What if he weren't trying to fool you?"

The daughter smiled: "They put all kinds in here. There are 

____________________________________________________________

all kinds everywhere. Everywhere. I'm afraid what you really mean is that you won't let them be themselves. You don't like the contrast, because it hurts your pride. You force them to imitate you... Don't you?"

"You and only you can change your life inside these walls. No one else can help you. God gave you what you need, so he isn't going to intervene and change his creation to suit you. Pious signs and gestures and words won't change his mind. He doesn't believe hysterical displays of repentance and especially those that occur towards the end of life. God doesn't change his mind. He wouldn't be God."

"Even the sacraments of bread and water are not for God. They are for us. Prayer too. Will you join me?"

To the surprise of the warden and the guards, the inmates' attitude did change subtly after the daughter's visit. Violence diminished, they cooperated with each other, shared pleasure and pain more generously. Those who had curried favor with the guards did so less and those who had defied them toned this defiance down. The guards noticed pride in a rudimentary feeling of reciprocity, which the daughter encouraged by sending disciples from time to time. Overjoyed when he saw the daughter leaving the compound as she had entered it, the first fisherman volunteered for the first such mission. The inmates never attained anything like a prison utopia, but they did set an example closely watched by corrections officials and experts as well as wardens of other prisons. Once again, the daughter's personality, reputation and action didn't adequately explain the results she achieved. Yet her wine, as I and others had drunk it, hardly satisfied the palates of the miracle mongers, who laced it with their suger and alcohol. They would have us believe that the little boy with the cute smile had thrown himself on his knees, his eyes flowing with tears of blood, and kissed the daughter's foot. She had raised him and he had converted all of the inmates confined to individual cells and under special guard. Once

____________________________________________________________

she had celebrated the sacrament of flesh and blood with the assembled inmates, the building trembled and a voice rumbled through it, echoing down the corridors: "This is indeed my daughter. Heed her words." I was there: I saw and heard nothing of the kind.
 

By midsummer, the press finally managed to cook up a great controversy over the daughter's idea of the creation. They echoed the outrage of priests, theologians and intellectuals who kept challenging her to state her position. Did she espouse any of the creation stories in the sacred books of various religions whose followers numbered hundreds of millions? They described an artistic performance. Or did she accept the evidence of a cosmic explosion that set the universe in motion? Hundreds of millions of others credited this scientific account. The reporters who attended her next assembly in a large city were so impatient that they interrupted her sermon several times, guessing wrongly that she was about to finish and forgetting that she always did so by leading her audience in a prayer. "I will ask for questions and comments when I am done," she admonished them gently. When they finally had their opportunity, she let five of them ask essentially the same question, instead of inviting her followers to answer each one as soon as it was asked. The first reporter displayed an elaborate indifference to both opinions, while each of the others couched the question in rhetoric that tended to support one or the other. "Two votes for an artistic performance, two for a chemical explosion and one abstention," she observed with a smile. "Are no other opinions possible?" The reporters demanded that she express the others, but she replied: "You will be quoting attempts to express them for an entire week." Their consternation made her audience laugh. Indeed, the press entertained the public with endless discussions by experts, who, having condemned speculation, confidently guessed what the daughter had in mind. Yet the opinions they proposed resulted from a modification of one of the two already expressed.
 

Although reporters kept asking her for her opinion, she put them off to a meeting she was planning at a city high school where the school district was holding a summer school. Her collaborators urged her to send one of them in her place for fear that the students might disrupt 

____________________________________________________________

the proceedings or mistreat her, and the first fisherman volunteered. She insisted on going herself, but she let him come with her to show the students that God admitted all kinds of people to his community. The two of them only seemed to have two traits in common, dedication to him and fear of nothing. The students and the teachers were watching when he parked his pickup, which nearly all of them had seen on television. They made a strange couple, her with her erect posture and graceful stride, and him with his dangling arms and wobbly gait; her with her harmonious proportions and him with his bulging muscles; her with her comely hairdo and him with his gray hair waving in the wind of his walking; her with her well-ironed white blouse and gray skirt, and him with his well-wrinkled green shirt and baggy brown trousers. He looked as if he had taken every punch life had thrown and she, as if it hadn't dared to swing at her. They were the same age and yet he looked like her father. Entering the school, she spoke to the students she met and followed their directions to the auditorium. Their respect for her contrasted with their tough appearance. Little accustomed to respect for anyone who didn't wield a bigger stick, they were trying with the determination of genuine desire. Noisy and a little wild, the crowd in the auditorium quieted and calmed when the couple appeared on the stage and they listened with surprising attention when the daughter spoke. Breaking with her routine, she descended and paced the aisles, swishing her skirt and asking questions: "What do you think God looks like?"

No one answered.

Everyone laughed, except the exhibit.

"Maybe," said a girl with her hair in complicated braids.
"Maybe," other girls echoed.
"God isn't a girl," objected a boy with a chiseled face.
"No," chorused other boys.

"He's got to be different from us," a boy with cat whiskers decided.

"He knows everything," purred whiskers.

____________________________________________________________

"Everything," others agreed.

"Everything," they repeated.

"No," said a boy who looked like he had built a few himself. "This world isn't just a wall."
"No," "not just a wall," the others echoed.

"No," "no one like us."

"No," he replied.
"No," confirmed braids.

Indecision.

"No," said chisel face.
"No," the others agreed.
"He did it all at the same time," said the bricklayer.
"He thought it and that did it," said whiskers.
"Yes, yes..."
"He started it and he kept it going," said braids.
"Yes, yes..."

"If there was a big explosion, somebody had to ignite it," said the first fisherman to everyone's surprise.

"Yes, somebody had to ignite it," "somebody had to ignite it," "somebody."

"Yes, yes..."

 Continue Reading

 Homepage