Let the Love Light Shine
Forget those horror stories about the Children of God. They've gone respectable, and they love you!
(Page 3 of 3)
So tonight while everyone else is studying the teachings of MO, or of Jesus through him, I'm pursuing the amazing resemblance of Jada. the colony's leader, to a friend of mine, a certain Dr. duBerry of Houston, and looking for Nogah, a woman I'd met earlier who had seemed, by the way she put me at ease in this hyper-sedate environment, possessed of a real sort of grace, the kind that the Lord doesn't succeed in visiting upon everybody.
When I find her in the kitchen cleaning up after dinner, it's evident my impression of her wasn't an illusion. Of all the people here she seems to have the most balance, not in thought (for there is no variation, no trace of heresy from one person's expressed thought to another's) but in bearing: Nogah has style, maybe even buried somewhere she has taste. She also has shaved legs, which leads me to ask her a few questions about the division of labor among the Children. She answers, unapologetically, that the women do most of the cooking, most of the typing, most of the sewing; and she manages to convey without saying it that sex discrimination, here where sex is only elliptically in evidence, is a moot point.
And while there may be naivete in work here there is also some authority: Nogah used to hang out with the Bandidos, the San Antonio little league Hell's Angels; she's taken a lot of dope and been betrayed by almost every facet of hip life, and now, with a remarkable pioneer-woman gentleness and acceptance, she seems to know what she wants.
The living room is still crowded with people from the other colonies who are about to go home. Pretty soon a circle is formed out of hands to see them on their way. Jada leads an impromptu prayer that culminates in a crescendo of thankyoujesuses and waving arms. I get hugged by a) Lakum, who politely asks if I can handle it, not having Jesus in my heart, and b) a slouchy, beautiful girl in green silk with a tambourine.
After they've left the Dallas colony is by itself again and settles back once more into study. I go up to introduce myself to Jada, offering my hand but ending up nose-to-ear-lobe in a bear hug. He's tall and loose and it's evident just from watching him that his leadership has a light touch: there seem to be no visible power struggles around. Everyone, including Jada, seems content just to listen to what MO has to say. The Lord gave Jada this position out of some sort of seniority; it's an appointive rather than a political hierarchy that makes decisions in the Children of God.
"We're all in love with the same vision here," he says. "There's no hassles. People obey out of love."
He tells how the Children have realized that not everyone is suited to the communal life: they no longer recruit, they simply bear witness. If somebody wants to join they have to come to them and undergo a trial period.
"Believe me, I know what it is to have Jesus shoved down your throat. That's not where we're at anymore."
It's getting late. Jada announces, to near-delirious response, that tomorrow is a "Free Day," meaning people can do whatever they want. Jemima is on the floor witnessing to a Puerto Rican kid who wandered in ("I spoke to him in Spanish, man. I can't speak Spanish. It was God, man!") I'm sitting on the couch with Messepha, who used to be "pro-evolution and anti-babies" and who is reading me a MO-letter about Gaddafi, of Libya, who is, because of his vast oil holdings, the man that may finally bring Amerika (as MO calls it) to its knees and leave the way clear for the Antichrist to step in and fulfill the prophecies of Revelations. Messepha is also into some weird talk about how "The Mark of the Beast" is going to be a credit card burned into the skin of members of the Antichrist government.
But it's too late, and MO's prophetic tie-ins are getting a little hard to follow, especially now since he's stopped tying them into the Bible and is using the story of Aladdin's Lamp instead. People are now drifting chastely upstairs to bed and Messepha, who sleeps down here in the living room, seeing that MO's letter has about four more pages of near-microscopic type, allows how it's probably God's will just to go to sleep.
The thunderstorm has arrived: God may or may not flood the basement, Jada's going to check on it later in the night. But right now the Children of God are going to sleep.
"By the way," says Messepha from across the room as I'm getting into my sleeping bag. "MO says it's a good idea to air out your underwear at night."
And it probably is.
At 7 a.m. there's no one but me stirring until Messepha wakes up and begins a discussion of Brother Sun, Sister Moon. Then Uzzi who, like an uncanny number of his fellow Children, has a strikingly familiar, average face, comes down from the dorm and opens up his Bible.
"Boy," he says, "the Bible's really neat."
It's the first act of the day, opening and reading the Bible to get back in touch. Everything in the colony is owned in general. If someone needs something to wear he or she gets it from the storeroom (even now Uzzi is admiring the new off-brand tennis shoes the Lord has provided), but Bibles seem to be something of a possession: there's a slightly visible consternation when one is loaned out, as though it were the last allowable symbol of the renounced life.
A girl of about 18 comes to the door. Her name's Linda, here today finally with her parents' consent, a trainee. She's wan and reserved, talks about Jesus and professes love with an air of embarrassment and maybe detachment. She has a new, boxed, miniature Bible from a suburban bookstore and a nervous smile among her elders that makes it obvious she's learning a new way of life here.
"Does everybody love Linda?" Uzzi bursts out, and Linda smiles and looks down while the answer comes back so loud it's physical.
And so most of the morning passes that way, in reading the Bible or studying MO, in strumming one of the five or six guitars around the floor or in singing one of the five or six songs that get sung in this house.
Before lunch is a public reading of the latest MO-letter, a tract about Man of La Mancha and the Quixotic nature of the Children, with an epic poem rhyming gladness and sadness and madness in nearly every stanza.
After this is an ornate version of "Mighty Fortress," then more ecstatic prayer, with joy flowing over the upturned faces like a spotlight and the sound of words geared into the sound of tongues, rising and meeting in an arc in the center of the room.
Later Nogah and I sit on the porch and argue about the end of the world and America and love. She reads me a MO-letter about the treachery of the white race. She reads haltingly, with a paranoid eye out for the grammar teacher but with the fervor of a Maoist. But everything she reads is distant and rhetorical. It seems so pointless for Nogah, who has seen so much first-hand, to get her facts from a wizard academician.
But she's happy. "Before I was so complicated in my head." And now it's not complicated anymore: Now she can watch a caterpillar crawl across the porch steps and not feel estranged; she can feel love for people she can't stand to be around; she has order, everything accounted for and awaiting the Final Judgment.
But now it's mid-afternoon and people are drifting out of the house to witness and to solicit donations. I go with Nogah and Jeroboam, who has a guitar and seems to be able to play at least a few chords on it, on a witnessing expedition to a shoddy park down the street.
For a while we walk up and down the park trying to decide whom to approach. The prospects, even to my untrained eye, are not spectacular: mostly chicano kids splashing in a muddy municipal pool with their mothers standing guard.
Then we all see the target at once: a 15 or 16-year old kid sitting under a tree, surrounded by his siblings who scatter as soon as they see us coming. But he's too polite, even though he does not speak English, not to listen to what Nogah and Jeroboam have to say.
"¿Esta Jesus en tu corazon?"asks Jeroboam in primitive Spanish.
And the kid's pretty embarrassed; he doesn't know what to do or say or how to get away. And although I know how he feels, I find, to my shock, that I'm not really on his side. I want him to understand what they're trying to say to him.
But it ends up a stalemate, with communication being assumed so everybody can leave. Jeroboam sings a song called "Gracias Jesus".
It's a drab day for witnessing. No other prospects present themselves so we walk back to the house and eat donated Willy Wonka Chocolate Skrunch Bars.
When it's time for me to leave everyone in the colony is in the living room reading the Bible. I'm wondering exactly how I can arrange an inconspicuous but friendly exit when I hear Nogah's voice.
"Does everybody love Steve?"
Yes, they do. And they form a circle in the room while Nogah makes me a prayer.
"Lord give Steve a safe ride back to Austin Lord show him the real reason he came here Lord God he didn't come here for any silly article Lord you know he'll be back Lord thank you Jesus thank you Lord."
And I am hugged by Secundus and Cephas and Turn and Uzzi and Messepha and Lakum and Jemima and Michel and Deuteronomy and everyone else. They all tell me they love me and I'm terrifically moved and a little bored: All this love without the risks and responsibilities of individual committment seems somehow tiresome. But that's my problem, not theirs, and when it comes time to embrace Linda and I'm feeling the common ground between non-believer and novitiate I'm able to tell her, and mean it, that I hope this is an answer for her.
"Sorry about that trick I pulled on you in there," says Nogah as she walks me to my car. "We do it to everybody."
I tell her I'm glad she did it, thank her for everything, wish her well. She says that she really loves me and, hoping it sounds as true as I mean it to be, I tell her that I like her a lot.
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