Shortly after class ended, Cass’s phone buzzed—the text was from Sister Maria and all it said was “meet me out front for a drive.”
She found the director behind the wheel of SGI’s Subaru Forester. She was still buckling in when the car shot out of the lot—the director was known as an aggressive driver. If someone expressed surprise that the woman who ran an alternative healing institute drove like a Dhaka cabbie, she always said the same two things. “I learned to drive in the Third World—fewer rules.” And “cops don’t give tickets to nuns, even former nuns. Just warnings.” They took Route 24 toward Colorado Springs, the nearest city.
“Are you enjoying yourself at SGI?” she asked Cass, and then quickly said, “actually, I assume you are, or maybe not. What I meant to ask was, do you have any idea why you were picked to come here?”
“Um, they said it was because of the cafeteria workers thing at Rutgers?” Cass said. “I mean, that we won?”
“People win fights all the time,” Maria said. “Generally, when you fight you win, which is why it’s such a shame most folks don’t fight. But anyway, I see bios of a hundred student campaigners every year, and they’ve all won something—stopped the gift store selling sweatshop sweatshirts, took back the night. It’s all good. What made you stand out?”
“Actually, I have been wondering. I don’t have any particular talent.” “Right. You’re not good at networks and decryption like Raul or Ick, you’re not good at graphic design like Stefania, you’re not good at rigging and rappelling like the Rodriguez brothers. Also, you’re a white American, which is not ideal. What are you good at?”
Cass sat there, fiddling with the phone in her hand, wondering if she was offended—she wasn’t used to adults talking this way. Adults had always told her she was great, was doing great things, had a great future. But she didn’t feel particularly wounded, because Maria was clearly right about all the things she wasn’t good at. She decided to be curious instead of hurt.
“I don’t really know,” she said.
“I read the essay you wrote for your admissions exam to Rutgers,” Maria said.
“I thought that was confidential,” Cass said.
“Doubtless,” Maria said. “Most interesting things are, which is why we have Professor Lee and her gift for computer networks. Anyway, in it you said you’d read the Narnia books a dozen times—that they ‘shaped your sense of the possible.’ Was that what you really thought, or was that something for a college application?”
She swerved quickly to the left across a double yellow, passing an Audi and a BMW and then dropping back into her lane with at least three seconds to spare in front of an oncoming Escalade. The maneuver gave Cass time to think, and she said “Well, I did read them a lot, if that’s what you mean.”
“I thought so, especially when I saw you’d managed to work them into four term papers freshman year,” Maria said. “Tell me about Aslan.”
“Aslan is—the only way I’ve ever managed to think about God,” said Cass. “Right,” said Maria. “That’s why you’re here.” She flashed her lights at the pickup in front of them.
“Because I like Aslan?”
“Because you understand stories. Stories are how the world works. Every campaign, every movement, is a story. You’re a Jew, right?”
“Not a very good one,” said Cass.
“Of course not. If you were a good one you’d be home finding someone to marry. But what’s the key story.”
“That . . . we wandered in the wilderness until we got to the promised land?”
Maria flashed her lights again, and the driver of the pickup held his middle finger out the window. “That’s not nice to do to a nun,” Maria said.
“Right, Moses. There are a zillion other good stories in there too. The tower of Babel, Noah, Jacob wrestling the angel. Samson, that’s an excellent story. But coming out of Egypt, that’s the template. That’s the story that gets retold every Passover at the seder meal. God passed over our houses. God split the sea in half. God gave us food in the desert. God picked us. The point is, if you can tell a better story you win, and no one’s won for longer than the Jews.”
They hit a stretch of road with a passing lane, and zipped neatly around the pickup, Maria offering a cheerful wave at the driver. “Old guy,” she said. “They let them keep their licenses forever. Anyway, that’s your special skill, I think. You understand stories, or at least you like them, so you can come to understand them. And you have to, because if you control the narrative you control the outcome. The normal story is, ‘everything’s okay, the world is working fine.’ That has to be the normal story or you couldn’t have a society. But we constantly have to figure out how to say: ‘It’s not working. It could work better.’”
Cass looked at her, puzzled. “The old story for a long time was, ‘gay people are disgusting,’” Maria continued. ‘The new story was, ‘gay people are your uncle and your postman, and they want to get married, and weddings are nice.’ Once that was the story most people heard, then gay people won. Think of Dr. King. When he turned the story about black people into Exodus, what chance did the bad guys have? Because his people suddenly knew how the story was going to come out. ‘It might take a while but we’re going to get to the promised land.’ That’s a good story, especially if the other side grew up reading it too.”
They dropped down into the Colorado Springs, past the red and pink fins of sandstone in the Garden of the Gods. Before they got to the center of town, Maria turned north on to Interstate 25, and got off an exit later, right by the entrance to what looked like a college campus, big solid buildings surrounding one massive structure with a ten-story steeple. “Church of the Ark,” she told Cass. “Of all the megachurches in Colorado, the mega-est.” She parked and they walked briskly across a broad expanse of pavement into the lobby, where a touch-screen sign showed the night’s activities, from Saving for the Lord: Christian Finance in the Zechariah Ampitheater to Striking Down the Enemy: Christian Bowling in the Goliath Recreation Wing. A man in a blazer asked them where they were headed. “Ministerial Alliance Meeting,” she said.
He looked at his tablet. “That’s in the Exodus Room,” he said, pointing down a long hallway.
“See what I mean?” said Maria to Cass, as they strode down a long, wide hallway.
They slipped in the back door of the Exodus Room, where a man was talking—like most of the men in the room he was youngish, smiling broadly, and wearing khakis and a polo shirt. “Colorado Springs, obviously, is one of the most churched communities in North America, for which, obviously, we give thanks,” he said. (“That’s Reverend Joe Hardesty of SonRise Ministries,” Maria whispered to Cass. “This should be interesting.”) “But as we all know that doesn’t mean everyone fears the Lord. Nearly a third of our neighbors voted for Democrats in the last election. A third! We’re going to be coordinating a 24-hour pray-in next week to make sure that nothing like that ever happens again—to erect a prayer shield.”
“Thank you Pastor Joe,” said the man who was leading the meeting. “I’m sure as many of our congregations as can will join you for that important work.” (“That’s Tim Timmons—this Ark is his place. Very smooth. They call him Noah behind his back.”) “Are there other announcements?”
“Bob Tompkin, Cornerstone Baptist,” said a handsome man in a thin merino sweater. “I know Halloween seems like a long time away, but we’re already at work on our Haunted House ministry. As you may know, 431,000 people visited last October, and this year we’re aiming for half a million. I’m just sending out the word that we’ll need volunteers too—and ideas for new rooms.”
“I thought the part where the girl went to the rave and took drugs and died and went to hell was excellent,” said a cheerfully enthusiastic woman sitting down front. (“Never seen her before,” whispered Maria. “But clearly a comer.”) “I think we need to keep it all, like, in the news. What about a room where people are dying of something like covid? And they get saved right before they die so they go to heaven?”
“Yes, thank you for your excellent work,” said Reverend Timmons. “By the way, there’s been some talk here at the Ark about having a haunted house of our own—Scaremare, the kids are calling it. We’re praying on it.”
Reverend Tompkin seemed taken aback at the thought of the com-petition. “Well, we’ll pray on it too,” he said—a little aggressively, Cass thought.
“Are there other announcements?”
“I’m Janice Sanchez from First Unitarian,” said a woman. “I’m new here, and I’d like to thank you for inviting me. We have a soup kitchen for homeless people? And we could use some more volunteers? And soup?”
“Other announcements?”
Maria waved her hand energetically, and Reverend Timmons—a bit reluctantly, Cass thought—said “Sister Maria?”
“It is always so good to be here at Ministerial Alliance,” she said, suddenly speaking slowly, and with a noticeable accent that Cass had never heard before. “At New Life Alternative Healing Center we are busy busy busy. All of you can come. We have yoga with trees next month. You can pray to trees.”
“You mean pray amidst the trees, sister,” said Reverend Timmons.
“No, to trees. With trees. Trees are very old and wise. Aspens—their roots flow together. It’s all one connected organism. They teach us about sharing everything in common. And we teach them yoga.”
“Everything in common? That doesn’t sound right,” said Reverend Hardesty. “That sounds like the Democrat party.”
“Isn’t yoga Buddhist? Like from Asia?” the Ebola lady asked.
“It’s more like Hindu,” said Reverend Tompkin. “The sun salute? That’s paying homage to a Hindu god. Seriously. There was a yoga studio in our Haunted House last year. At our church we have PraiseMovers, which is stretching but with Bible verses. Very popular.”
“Yes, yes, yes,” said Maria. “Yoga is very popular. Everyone is doing yoga. For the next month we have Wiccan Yoga. It’s all sold out, but if people want to come, you are my friends.”
A hubbub erupted—all Cass could hear was people saying ‘Wiccan’ in loud voices. But Reverend Timmons hit a button on his console, and as the lights dimmed soft rock music filled the room. “Our meeting time has come to a close. It is so good to share fellowship in the Lord. Our youth leader, Tamara Haskins, will give us a closing prayer.”
A young woman in a knee-length skirt rose. “Oh Lord we give you praise Lord. We thank you for being Lord, Lord. All praise to you, Lord . . .
Cass felt a tug on her hand, and Maria led her out the back door, walking quickly back towards the lobby. They passed an ATM, a busy fitness center with a giant mural of Jesus doing bicep curls, and a Chick-Fil-A outlet with a sign that said “Nourish Your Body, Supersize Your Soul.” The same volunteer they’d seen on the way in opened the door for them, and they walked to the North lot where they’d left the car.
“Fun, right?” said Maria, as she accelerated out of the church, using its own on-ramp back to the interstate. “You wonder who voted for Trump? That’s who.”
“What on earth were you doing?” Cass asked. “I thought we were supposed to be hiding away up in the mountains. Wiccan yoga? Those people are going to be all over us. And why were you talking with that accent?”
“Oh, they might have been suspicious otherwise. I mean, tree yoga is a little over the top. But the combination of Catholic and foreigner—they’ll believe anything bad about that. Especially now with Francis, talking about the environment.”
“But they’ll be all over the institute,” Cass repeated. “They’ll go crazy.”
“My thought exactly,” said Maria. “For years no one has paid us much attention. We’re just a little New Age center up in the hills. If anyone gives us any thought, one look at the webpage should convince them we’re harmless nutjobs. But I have a feeling things are going to get more intense, that people are going to be looking a little harder than before. This Dalai Lama stuff means the Chinese government, it means the American government, it means everyone. So I think we’re going to need some serious smoke covering us. If I know Joe Hardesty—and I do, because I went on two of his prayer warfare SEAL team expeditions—he’ll be up there praying by Sunday evening. You know what SEAL stands for? Son’s Evangelical Artillery League. They have uniforms and everything. Night vision goggles.”
“But if they’re there, won’t they figure out what we’re doing?”
“It’s called misdirection,” said Maria. “Sleight of hand. If every time anyone googles us they come to 200 stories about tree yoga, that’s all they’ll think about. No one would take seriously the idea that we were both dangerous subversives and aspen worshippers. Think of it as our prayer shield. I feel much safer now.”
There was almost no traffic, and their progress back up Rte 24 was extremely rapid. “I felt sorry for the Unitarian lady,” Cass said.
“Janice?” said Maria. “She’s still new in Colorado—she’ll stop going to the Alliance meetings soon. Her soup kitchen is great—I go down and help some weeks. You should come.”
“Everyone just ignored her,” said Cass.
“Back to stories,” said Maria. “Unitarians are probably the best people in the world. If there’s a good thing going on in any community, chances are some Unitarians are doing it. But most people aren’t Unitarians, because there’s no story. There’s no Jesus, there’s no Moses, there’s just doing the right thing. It’s like their Scripture is Bartlett’s quotations, and only the nice quotations. And for most people that’s not enough.”
“Are they Christians?” Cass asked
“They were once,” said Maria. “But now they’re . . . everything. What do you get if you cross a Jehovah’s Witness with a Unitarian?”
“I don’t know,” said Cass.
“Someone who knocks on your door but can’t remember why. I mean, there’s 300,000 of them in the whole country. And compare that with—there are like 5 million Mormons. Mormons have a story—it’s kind of an odd one, but it works. What I’m trying to say is, as you study at SGI, your job is to think about how to make campaigns into a story that makes people drop what they’re doing and come. Think about Moses. Think about Jesus—the story of one guy getting executed for no reason, that’s still driving people all over the world today. Some of them are nuts and some of them aren’t, but they’re all thinking with that story. Whatever the fight is—someone wants to build an incinerator in your neighborhood? You need the facts, but you need the story. That’s your job.”
Cass was silent a long moment, as they pulled off the highway and on to the long driveway up to the healing center. She figured it might be a while before she got to ask Maria more questions, so she said, “Do you have to believe in your story to make it work? Like, can anyone take Moses or Jesus or something and use them to make their point?”
Maria didn’t answer immediately, and Cass thought it was the first time she’d ever seen her look even slightly indecisive. “I’m not sure,” she said. “That’s a good thing to think about.”
She pulled into a parking spot on the outer edge of the lot, which was filled with cars belonging to visitors there for the Reiki workshop. (The Prius next to them had a bumper sticker that said “If You Can Read This You’re Close Enough for Me to Feel Your Energy State.”) Before Maria could unbuckle, Cass asked her another question. “Is this place really that important? We’re just a few professors and fifty students—would it really matter if someone tracked us down and closed the doors? Don’t people start new movements every day with no help from us?”
“Ah,” said Maria. “Another excellent question. Probably not. Or maybe so. My job is to tell the story of this place, at least to a few people. It might matter to them. It might matter to you. And it might matter to the bad guys, if they came to think we were important. And that might help. Remember, misdirection.”
Cass was thoroughly confused, but Maria was out of the car, and striding toward the center, and she had to hurry to catch up. Just as she caught up, though, Maria’s assistant Ron came out the double doors to meet them. “Glad you’re here, boss,” he said. “Trouble.”
“The DL?” she asked.
“Oh. No, sorry. Not important trouble. Local trouble. One of the Reiki students is insisting that there was gluten in the gluten-free carob brownies.”
“Was there?”
“Of course not. I tasted it—completely inedible. But he says he has a hive. He’s threatening to give us one star on Yelp.”
“See if he wants a free week of tree yoga,” Maria said. “Tell him it’s the next big thing.”
This is great fun--including the comedic yet entirely imaginable rendering of the Ministry Alliance meeting--especially in CO Springs! My wife and I just laughed to the point of tears: "If you're close enough to read this..." And the vital importance of story; movingly spun. Looking forward to another chapter or two after dinner ; - )
As a Unitarian Universalist, I approve of this chapter! Interesting idea that we need a story...