The judge ordered a suspension of our license but declared at the same time that, the issues being substantive, he would defer his order so as to allow time for a court challenge. It was what I expected. The lawyers and I shook hands and that was it.
But as I was leaving the room one of the spectators stopped me, an older man with gnarled hands and a cane. You are working for the Devil, sir, he said. Shame on you, shame, he called after me. And then in the corridor a reporter I recognized was at my side, walking with me at my pace. Playing the freedom-of-religion card, eh, counselor? You know they’ll really be down on you now. Studies, tests, videotapes, school records. Process of discovery.
Nice to see you, I said.
Anyway, you bought yourself six months. Six more months of doing what you do. Except of course if your boy is nailed before then.
Christ was nailed, I said.
Yeah, the reporter said, but not for having a Swiss bank account.
I WAS RELIEVED to get back to the great valley as a soldier is relieved to get back to his own lines. There was a lovely sense of bustling anticipation as the weekend approached: We were to have an Embrace.
This was a once-a-month occasion when we received outsiders who had heard of us, and made inquiries, or had perhaps attended one of Walter John Harmon’s outside Meetings and found themselves interested enough to spend the day with us. They parked their cars at the Gate and were brought up by hay wagon. In our early days we didn’t think of security. Now we copied down driver’s licenses and asked for signatures and names of family members.
On this Saturday morning in May perhaps two dozen people arrived, many with children, and we greeted them with heartfelt smiles and coffee and cake under the two oak trees. I was not on the Hospitality Squad, but Betty was. She knew how to make people feel comfortable. She was pretty and compassionate, and altogether irresistible, as I well knew. She could immediately spot the most needful tender souls and go right to them. Of course, no one who appeared on these days was not needful or they wouldn’t have come. But some were skittish or melancholic or so on the edge of despair as to be rudely skeptical.
In the end, no one could withstand the warmth and friendliness of our Embrace. We treated all newcomers like long-lost friends. And there was plenty to keep everyone busy. There was the tour of the residences and the main house, where the children put on a sing. And there was the Enrobing. All the guests were given the muslin robe to wear over their clothes. This had the effect of delighting them as a game would delight them, but it also acclimated them to our appearance. We didn’t seem so strange then. Several long refectory tables were brought out from the carpentry shop and the guests helped lay the cloths and carry out the bowls and platters with all the wonderful foodstuffs — the meat pies, the vegetables from our gardens, the breads from our bakery, the pitchers of cool well water and the homemade lemonade. All the children sat down together at their tables and all the adults at theirs, there in the warm sun. Every guest was placed between two members with another directly across. And our Elder Sherman Beasley stood, who had a naturally booming voice, and he said grace, and everyone tucked in.
It was such a beautiful day. I was able to sit in my place at the end of one of the long tables and to forget for a while the threats to our existence and to feel blessed to be here under a blue sky and to feel the sun on my face as God’s warmth.
The conversation was lively. We were instructed to try to answer every question as diplomatically as possible. We were not to give doctrine or theology — only the Elders were entrusted to do that.
A shy young woman on my right asked me why she had not seen any dogs in our Community. She was physically unprepossessing, with thick glasses, and she held herself on the bench as if to take up as little space as possible. This is sort of like a big farm, she said in her thin voice, and I’ve never been on a farm that didn’t have a dog or two.
I told her only that dogs were unclean.
She nodded and thought awhile and after a sip of lemonade, she said: Everyone here is so happy.
Do you find that odd?
Yes, sort of.
I couldn’t help smiling. We are with Walter John Harmon, I said.
AFTER LUNCH came our big surprise. We took everyone to the West Section, where on a prelaid cement base a house was going up for a recently sworn in couple. The framing was done and now as everyone sat in the grass and watched, we men arose and, under the guidance of our carpenters, some of us went to work on the board-and-batten siding, others were up on the roof beams, laying out the planking, and the skilled among us were fitting out the doors and the windows. Of course none of the inside finishing would be done that day, but the thrill our guests had was in seeing so many of us making such quick work of building a home. It was a lesson without words. In fact it was a kind of performance because we had built the identical home many times over and each man knew what he had to do and where each nail went. There was a natural music to all the hammering and sawing and hauling and grunting and we could hear our audience laugh and occasionally applaud with delight.
At the end, as we all stood by, Elder Manfred Jackson presented a scroll to the new first-floor occupants, the Donaldsons, a gray-haired couple who held hands and wept. After the Donaldsons were embraced by several members and brought to sit down among them, Elder Jackson turned to the visitors and explained what they had witnessed: They had witnessed the Third Attainment.
Manfred Jackson was our only black Elder. He was an imposing figure, tall, his shoulders as squared as a young man’s though he was in his eighties. His hair was white and he wore the muslin robe like a king. With the Third Attainment, he said, these communicants of the Unfolding Revelation have forsworn all their personal property and given their wealth to the prophet. The Third Attainment is a considerable step up, for it is no small matter to abjure the false values of the world and rise from its filth. The prophet teaches us there are seven steps to God-worthiness. Ours will be the kingdom of the chaste and the absolved, because whatever is ours, whatever we possess, whatever we think we cannot do without, we give to the prophet as his burden. He has brought us to live apart from the clamor and lies of the unbelieving. We wear his muslin to declare ourselves in transit. We live in homes to be blown away in the tornado of God. Manfred Jackson pointed out over the valley where the Holy City would descend: We wait upon the glory that needs no sun, he said.
ALL THIS TIME Walter John Harmon had not been seen. As the day went on, heads turned this way and that as our guests wondered where was the man who had drawn them here in the first place. By mid-afternoon all the organized events, the choir recital, the walking tour of the sacred land, and so on, were concluded, and the visitors began to think of leaving. We had collected their muslin robes as if to give them leave to depart. They were indecisive. Some of their children were still playing with ours. The parents were looking for someone to make the first move toward the hay wagons. In the meantime we Elders and members continued to walk with them and express pleasure at their coming, gradually drifting with them back toward the Tabernacle. We knew what to expect, but we let them discover for themselves the prophet sitting quietly there beside the wood table. A child saw him first and called out, and it was the children who ran ahead, their parents following, and a murmur of awe went through them as they slowly gathered in the grass and looked upon Walter John Harmon.
This was always a thrilling moment for me, a culmination of the day’s Embrace. See? I wanted to call out, do you see? a great surge of pride filling my breast.