Parable of the Talents

Then to defend it

Because we've said it

And at last to embrace it

Because we've defended it

And because we cannot admit

That we've embraced and defended

An obvious lie.

Thus, without thought,

Without intent,

We make

Mere echoes

Of ourselves—

And we say

What we hear others say.

from Warrior by Marcos Duran

I've always believed in the power of God, distant and pro­found. But more immediately, I believe in the power of reli­gion itself as a great mover of masses. I wonder if that's odd in the son of a Baptist minister. I think my father honestly believed that faith in God was enough. He lived as though he believed it But it didn't save him.

I began preaching when I was only a boy. I prayed for the sick and saw some of them healed under my hands. I was given timings of money and food by people who had not enough to eat themselves. People who were old enough to be my parents came to me for advice, reassurance, and com­fort. I was able to help them. I knew the Bible. I had my own version of my father's quiet, caring, confident manner. I was only in my teens, but I found people interesting. I liked them and I understood how to reach them. I've always been a good mimic, and I'd had more education than most of the people I dealt with. Some Sundays in my Robledo slum church, I had as many as 200 people listening as I preached, taught, prayed, and passed the plate.

But when the city authorities decided that we were no more than trash to be swept out of our homes, my prayers had no power to stop them. The city authorities were stronger and richer. They had more and better guns. They had the power, the knowledge, and the discipline to bury us.

The governments, city, county, state, and federal plus the big rich companies were the sources of money, information, weapons—real physical power. But in post-Pox America, successful churches were only sources of influence. They offered people safe emotional catharsis, a sense of commu­nity, and ways to organize their desires, hopes, and fears into systems of ethics. Those things were important and neces­sary, but they weren't power. If this country was ever to be restored to greatness, it wasn't the little dollar-a-dozen preachers who would do it.

Andrew Steele Jarret understood this. When he created Christian America and then moved from the pulpit into pol­itics, when he pulled religion and government together and cemented the link with money from rich businessmen, he created what should have been an unstoppable drive to re­store the country. And he became my teacher.

************************************

I love my Uncle Marc. There were times when I was more than half in love with him. He was so good-looking, and a beautiful person, male or female, can get away with saying and doing things that would destroy a plainer one. I never stopped loving him. Even my mother, I think, loved him in spite of herself.

What Uncle Marc had been through as a slave marked him, I'm sure, but I don't know how much. How can you know what a man would be like if he had grown up unmarked by horror? What did my mother's time as a beaten, robbed, raped slave do to her? She was always a woman of obsessive purpose and great physical courage. She had always been willing to sacrifice others to what she believed was right.  She recognized that last characteristic in Uncle Marc, but I don't believe she ever saw it clearly in herself.

from The Journals of Lauren Oya Olamina

monday, may 14, 2035

I met with my brother earlier tonight

I spent the day helping my latest employer—a likable old guy full of stories of his adventures as a young man in the 1970s. He was a singer and guitar player, with a band. They traveled