The Dreamseller_ The Calling - Augusto Cury [34]
A Very Complicated Disciple
ALL SIGNS POINTED TO THIS BEING JUST ANOTHER CON FOR the Miracle Worker: He used his supposed spirituality to take advantage of others’ naïveté. “Normals” have a strong tendency to listen to leaders without questioning them. After watching the Miracle Worker’s scheme, I looked at Dimas and thought, “Not even Angel Hand would do something that low.” In turn, Angel Hand, knowing something of my nature through Bartholomew thought, “Not even this arrogant intellectual would manipulate other people like that.” Bartholomew, more honest than either of us, said out loud, “Only after two bottles of vodka could I hallucinate like that guy.”
As soon as my friends and I criticized the Miracle Worker, our legs trembled. We looked at one another and had the same thought: “Why is the dreamseller so interested in this character? Could he be interested in calling him to join the group?” The thought rattled us so much that we said, simultaneously, “I’ll leave!”
This worried us. We watched the dreamseller’s actions carefully, hoping he would turn and leave, but he went up to the man who had captured his attention. Our hearts pounded. The Miracle Worker met the dreamseller’s gaze and, to our relief, our leader said nothing, merely shaking his head in disapproval.
The dreamseller may have had his faults, but he never set out to manipulate another person. To him, a person’s conscience was sacred. Freedom of choice should always prevail. His strongest criticism of society was that it surreptitiously sold a nonexistent freedom, a freedom found in the pages of democracy but not in the pages of history. Too many had been enslaved by their troubled minds.
After disapproving silently, but without exposing the Miracle Worker publicly, the dreamseller made two statements and two conclusions:
“Miracles don’t convince people. If they did, Judas would never have betrayed Jesus. Miracles can change the body, but not the mind. If they could, Peter never would have denied knowing Jesus.”
Edson remained silent. He didn’t know how to reply because he had never considered that. Then came the bombshell that rocked me as a professor.
“The man you claim to follow never used his power in order to control people,” the dreamseller said. “Jesus never used his power to seduce audiences and win over followers. That’s why he, unlike politicians, told his followers, ‘Don’t tell anyone!’ Unless they followed him out of the spontaneous emotion of an unfathomable love, he didn’t want followers. He wanted friends, not servants.”
These words got me to thinking about our own history. I remembered that in centuries past, atrocities were committed in the name of Christ: People killed, tortured, waged war, conquered, wounded, excluded in his name. They ignored the gentleness of Jesus, who never manipulated anyone, who would not hear of servants. Centuries of opposition and hatred toward Muslims followed, an animosity whose roots are perpetuated even today. In traveling with the dreamseller, I had begun to suspect I wasn’t the confirmed atheist I thought I was. Deep down, my disgust was with organized religion.
The Miracle Worker was dumbstruck: Never had anyone corrected him without scolding him. The dreamseller, having said all he needed to say, turned and left, leaving several who witnessed the confrontation confused. We were immensely relieved. For how long? We didn’t know.
The next day, a newspaper report on the recent events appeared in The Times, under the headline, “A Stranger Turns a Wake into a Garden.” A photo taken secretly as we left the wake was on the front page of one section. The reporting wasn’t an attack; instead, it contained many interesting facts. It said that a bold stranger wanted to change the dynamic of wakes, to transform them from settings of despair into platforms for paying homage to the dead.
The journalist had interviewed people who had heard the dreamseller speak. Some said they planned to write their families to say that, when they died, they didn’t want a funeral marked by despair, loss and self-pity,