The Dreamseller: The Calling by Augusto Cury Page A

command you!”
    This time, everyone heard and was startled by his command. He expected the woman to sit up in her coffin and the crowd to acknowledge his tremendous power. But the old woman showed no further signs of life.
    He figured all he needed was just a little more faith to make the coffin move again. And this time, he gave the order to the body again, glancing at the crowd: “Rise, woman!” he begged the corpse, which would not respond to his appeal.
    The longer the woman remained motionless, the weaker his knees became. He broke into a cold sweat, his mouth dried out and his heart raced. Half dazed, he finally saw the drunk trying to regain his balance by steadying himself on the coffin. The Miracle Worker knew he had made a fool of himself. He felt like a wounded deer amid a pride of lions. But this Miracle Worker still had a few tricks up his sleeve. He raised his voice again and said firmly:
    “Woman! If you won’t rise to live in this evil world, then rest in peace!”
    Several “normals” answered in chorus, “Amen!”
    The Miracle Worker ended his performance by taking out a handkerchief to dry invisible tears and said solemnly, “Poor,
poor
woman. She was
such
a good person.”

A Very Complicated Disciple
     

     
    A LL 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 setout 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 exposingthe 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