The Dreamseller_ The Calling - Augusto Cury [57]
Wow,” I thought to myself. I had always thought Edson wasn’t much of a logical thinker, but he was proving me wrong.
Then, the dreamseller looked at him and then at all of us.
“Wrong,” he said, then fell silent.
Because I had studied these sacred texts, I thought Edson was right. I waited for the dreamseller’s arguments, but suspected this time he wouldn’t convince us.
“They were always at the center of the project. First, according to Scripture, God didn’t choose a caste of Pharisees, Greek philosophers or priests to raise the young Jesus, but a woman, an adolescent uncontaminated by the ruling class, someone outside the system.”
“Second, the first person who talked about Jesus was a female, the Samaritan woman. She had lived a promiscuous life, been with many men, but his words were enough to satiate her hunger. She gathered her people and spoke of the man who had moved her.” After uttering these words, he stopped to take a breath and took ours away by adding, “A prostitute was more noble than the religious leaders of his time.”
Bartholomew came out with a phrase that broke the tension hanging over us. I don’t know how he came up with such imagination.
“Chief, I’ve always thought women were smarter than men. The problem is, the credit card was invented . . .” And he started laughing. Ironically, he’d given the impression that he was the one who had supported the women in his life. In reality, they had supported him.
The dreamseller, unhappy with our prejudiced masculinity, attacked even further. He asked our acting theologian:
“Tell me, Edson. In the most important moment in Jesus’ life, when his body was withering on the cross and his heart was weak, where were the men, at the center or at the periphery of his plan?”
Edson, paling, was slow to answer. And our faces were flushed. In the silence, the dreamseller said:
“His disciples were heroes when he was shaking the world, but they were cowards when the world came crashing down on him; they kept quiet, fled, denied they knew him, betrayed him. But even then, he loved. Men, I say again, are more timid than women.”
“But don’t men make war? Bear arms? Don’t they start revolutions?” the sociologist in me blurted out.
“The weak use weapons; the strong, their words,” he answered and asked the question we feared most:
“Where were the women when he was dying?”
Humbly, because we were familiar with the Bible, we muttered, “Near the cross.”
“More than anything, they were at the epicenter of his project. And do you know why? Because women are stronger, more intelligent, more humane, generous, altruistic, supportive, tolerant, faithful and sensible than men. Suffice it to say that ninety percent of violent crimes are committed by men.”
We were stunned by so many favorable adjectives about women. The dreamseller didn’t seem like a feminist, nor did he appear to be trying to cast words into the air in an effort to compensate for millennia of discrimination against women. He seemed totally convinced of what he was saying.
To him, the system that controlled humanity was conceived in the hearts of men, although its creators could never imagine that one day they would become the victims of their own creation. It was time for women to come into the picture and sell dreams. Lots and lots of dreams.
The Temple of Fashion
THE DREAMSELLER GAVE US FAIR WARNING. HE REMINDED us that the most cultured of Jesus’s disciples, Judas, betrayed him. The strongest, Peter, denied knowing him. And the rest, except John, ran in fear. After demonstrating masculine fragility and feminine greatness, the dreamseller revealed why he was in the temple of fashion.
He told us that in the past, the male-dominated system had subjugated women, burning them, stoning them, silencing them. In time, they freed themselves and partially reclaimed their rights. He paused and, out loud, said the number “one.” This numerical citation in the middle of a speech made me uneasy. I’d seen how that movie ended.
The dreamseller noted that women had begun to vote, to excel in the academic