2012
I’m eager to prove myself, Bea whispers.
She watches the timer on the Tascam, feeling strangely vulnerable. She pushed record sixty seconds ago and waited for whatever words would find her.
Now they’re out, and she can’t take them back.
This is her first Attestation. Each week, members are expected to go into the Reflection Room alone and lay their souls bare to a microphone: to share their triumphs and setbacks, fears and hopes, how they feel about Lev and The Project and The Project’s path forward, how they feel about each other. Lev then listens to the recordings and addresses what he’s heard at family meetings. Bea loves those meetings more than anything, more than sermons, even. They leave her in awe. The way Lev calls out their names and stands before them, making sure they feel seen, letting them know they’re heard. He asks questions, offers solutions, shifts roles so effortlessly depending on the demands placed on him—and those demands seem endless. At the meetings, Bea watches him become father to some, friend to others, therapist, shoulder, arbiter, savior … and that was another miracle, wasn’t it? To see someone be so much to so many, yet never the same person twice? He met them with an incredible specificity that not only assured her of his specialness to the world—but of her own specialness to him.
Bea managed to avoid Attestation until Lev pulled her aside at the end of the last meeting, sunrise creeping up the horizon, and told her he’d missed her voice. It made her shiver to think he should miss hearing it, that he should want to hear it at all. She didn’t want to burden Lev—she had nothing important to say—but Casey told her that would be impossible.
He never wants to feel distance from us. Movements like ours depend on this level of connection. Attestation is, at its core, prayer. You may understand prayer as an asking or a giving of thanks—and it is. But we also want you to think of prayer as an expression of your heart and soul. Lev wants to hear you pray, Bea. Pray to him.
She led Bea to the Reflection Room. It was spare, with a solitary window pointed in the direction of the baptismal lake. There was a list of prompts taped to the small table next to the Tascam, if Bea needed a guide. She didn’t. She pressed the record button twice and waited until her devotion found her.
There are six hundred active members in The Unity Project. Their primary objective is growth, expansion. Lev is establishing a concentrated presence in Morel, Bellwood and Chapman, cities and towns along the Hudson Valley that are just small enough to quantify the difference The Project can make and big enough that such differences won’t go unnoticed. There is a point when their message will propagate itself, but for now we’re building an army. If they don’t have the numbers, they will never be a movement and if they do not become a movement, they will never be able to show people the path.
Lev sends Bea, with Casey and a handful of other members—Jenny, Aaron and Dan—to the May Day Protests in New York City. They spend the night at the Garrett Farm in Bellwood, then take the Hudson Line from Tarrytown to Grand Central. They’re armed with literature about The Project. Casey reminds them to be careful, thoughtful in their approach. Look for people who are open. Be real. No one wants to feel like they’re being sold something—not even salvation. She tells them to remember they’re guests to this demonstration and to emphasize the overlap in The Unity Project’s values.
We’re offering what’s left of the Occupy Movement a way to continue their mission. We join their rallying cry against inequity, against the 1 percent, against keeping institutional power unchecked, against those who would burn the world to preserve their wealth.
Bea suspects her presence is a direct result of her Attestation. Lev saw them off and she doesn’t think she imagined that he held her a little longer than everyone else, doesn’t think she imagined the way he squeezed her shoulder and how deeply he looked into her eyes before she got into the car. If she comes back to him empty-handed, she will have failed.
On the train to the city, Bea’s mind flows through the script Casey gave them. What The Unity Project offers people, in its simplest terms, is food if you’re hungry, water if you’re thirsty, clothes and shelter if you need it, and family if you lack it. All it asks in return is being part of, and upholding the tenets of, a revolution that pays it forward.
It’s raining when they get to Grand Central. Casey acts as guide; she knows the city well. Some of her childhood was spent here, in her father’s brownstone, and her familiarity shows in the indifferent way she navigates them through the everyday commotion of the city. Bea can’t imagine feeling indifferent to it. She hasn’t been to New York City enough to not be overwhelmed by all this life. She loves to be where the action is, and here there’s so much, so many different bodies moving in so many different directions, so many people breathing and so many hearts beating at the exact same moment in time. It’s magical.
With a sudden twinge, she thinks of Lo. Lo’s been to NYC twice. Once, when she was too young to remember and again when she was twelve, the year before Mom and Dad died. They’d gone to Rockefeller Center to see the Christmas tree and the sisters’ individual responses ended up disappointing their parents. Bea, at eighteen, felt small and touristy and hated it because that was the year she wanted to be cool. Lo had found the tree’s awesome display much less interesting than all the people who had come to see it. She stared openly at everyone.
Look at all the stories, she’d said. That was how she saw them. Stories. Bea wonders if Lo still thinks of people that way. If she still wants to write.
Are you all right? Casey asks her, and it shouldn’t surprise Bea, but it always does, how attuned Casey is to her moods. Bea nods and tells her she’s nervous because this is true. Casey grips her hand and doesn’t let it go and Bea feels stronger for it. She senses the others nearby and feels stronger for their presence too.
Together, they make their way to Bryant Park, which is beautiful and green and wet. Bea doesn’t mind the rain because the energy feels so good. She’s in the heart of a gorgeous cacophony of music and chants.
Mind the cameras, Casey tells them, nodding to various camera crews. Bea eyes them warily, imagining tonight’s news reducing these protests to millennial burnouts looking for a day off work rather than presenting it as it really is. The media loves to distort the truth, but like Lev says, The world is falling around them—and they will fall with it.
Bea takes in the protest signs, loves them all.
OCCUPY WITH ART!
TAX THE MILLIONAIRES!
WE ARE THE 99%!
She bumps into a woman dressed as a zombie.
What do you represent? the zombie asks, though Bea thinks the question should be the other way around. Bea clumsily shoves a pamphlet in the zombie’s hands. The zombie sneers and tosses it to the ground and Bea feels like an idiot as she watches it get trampled by protesters. She feels even worse when her next few encounters prove to be as fruitless. She can’t seem to find the words to make people listen to her for long. She should be able to connect with their skepticism, to break through it, because she too was once a skeptic—but she can’t remember what that felt like. If they could see inside her heart, they’d run to her, ask her to speak it.
She watches Casey and the others work the crowd effortlessly, handing over as many pamphlets as they’ve brought. They seem to know exactly who to approach and how. They preach Lev’s gospel without making it seem like preaching. Bea spends more time watching Casey than doing anything herself.
Have you heard of Lev Warren?
We’re a group based out in the Hudson Valley …
I like your sign. I know someone who’d agree with it …
What The Unity Project offers is a lot like this …
How is Bea so bad at this?
Doesn’t she believe enough?
She can feel Casey’s eyes on her, assessing her, so Bea folds herself into the crowd, moving toward two girls who look as uncertain as she feels. They’re holding hands.
Here, Bea says stupidly, thrusting a pamphlet at one of them.
They don’t take it. They wordlessly move away from her.
Hey, what’s that? Can I have one?
A man materializes from nowhere and Bea can tell by the way his eyes greedily roam her body there’s only one thing he’s really interested in. She wordlessly hands a pamphlet to him. He studies it for a moment and then makes a face.
Lev Warren? That cult asshole who thinks he’s God?
Bea takes a step back, as pissed as she is embarrassed and then ashamed for being embarrassed. Embarrassment is supposed to be beyond those who know God’s truth.
He’s not an asshole, Bea snaps. He’s real.
Sure.
The man rolls his eyes. Casey moves toward them and Bea feels her face get hot in the wake of still more failure. She ends up blurting out, He brought a girl back from the dead!
The man stares at Bea and then bursts into raucous laughter, reaching out and grabbing someone as they pass.
Hey, you’ll never believe what this chick just told me …
It’s true! The hot fury invading Bea’s body is greater than all common sense. Lev Warren brought a girl back from the dead!
Bea, Casey says sharply, grabbing her by the elbow. They move away from the immediate crowd and Bea’s anger disappears, a series of apologies falling from her lips, which feels worse than anything has felt so far—like she’s denying Lev.
Do not give them a reason to discredit us, Casey says.
But it’s true, Bea replies weakly.
People aren’t ready for the truth.
During the march to Union Square, Jenny gets trapped in a wave of protesters and the push and pull of the crowd sends her to the ground. She lands hard on her wrist. She says it’s fine, but by late afternoon, is surprised to discover it swollen and purple—broken. Bea volunteers to take her to the hospital, hoping to seize at least one opportunity to be useful before the day is over. Casey is happy to let her have it. In the taxi, tears stream silently down Jenny’s face and Bea realizes Jenny probably knew her wrist wasn’t fine long before she ever said something. Bea asks her why she didn’t say something.
The work is more important, Jenny whispers. And then, Maybe it’s because we’re too far away from Lev. Something bad was bound to happen.
A chill courses over Bea’s body. Jenny has articulated something that cuts straight to everything Bea’s been feeling. The inherent warmth, love and safety of Lev’s presence is absent here. She felt something akin to it in Bryant Park, but it was incomplete and in its incompleteness, they were left vulnerable and harm happened to them.
She wants to go back home.
The feeling intensifies at the hospital. She hasn’t stepped foot in one in what feels like a longer time than it’s actually been. Her body rebels; she’s instantly nauseous, overcome with sense memories. The antiseptic smell, the crude overhead lights, the almost-music of the place; the oddly respectful hustle of it interrupted by moments of chaos signaling someone’s worst nightmare, followed by the altogether surreal reconstruction of peace once the emergency has passed. Her soul moves back through time and ages another thousand years. She splits in half. The Bea of her present, the Bea of her past.
When they admit Jenny, Bea sits in the waiting room, lacing and unlacing her fingers, breathing slowly in through her nose and slowly out through her mouth, trying hard not to throw up. She’s thinking of Lo again, but in a way that’s crushing her. She leans back in the uncomfortable plastic chair and hears her sister’s plaintive, drugged voice in her ear.
I’m here. Why aren’t you here?
Bea hasn’t spoken to Lo since that call in February, but Lo has called for her since. Each time, Casey answers the phone. Bea hid in the hallway once to eavesdrop and found Casey’s cold rebuffs so devastating, she vowed never to eavesdrop again.
It’s part of God’s plan, Lev promised her.
It is all a part of God’s plan.
You are transitioning into faith. You must become secure in it. You cannot be weak. I’ll tell you something now: your sister will join The Project. I’ve seen it. Her path to us cannot be known to you, but I promise you’ll be waiting for her at the end of it—but only so long as you do not intervene. Her faith depends on yours.
Would it be intervening to call Lo just to hear her voice? Bea wouldn’t have to say anything herself. Her hand slips into her pocket for the cell phone Casey issued her and she has Patty’s number half-dialed when a flurry of orderlies hurrying past shock her back to her senses. She’s horrified with herself. She lets go of the phone and buries her head in her hands. She shouldn’t have been the one to bring Jenny here. She didn’t realize how close to the surface everything would be here—that every hospital would become that hospital.
She clasps her hands together and prays to God to give her strength.
Please.
The words of her prayer are fraught, desperate, as she awaits God’s hand to lift her past her weakness. When it doesn’t happen, she gets to her feet. She paces the waiting room until such restlessness gives way to roaming and she roams the halls until she reaches areas of NO ADMITTANCE at which point she forces herself to carve new paths back to where she came. She presses her palm to her chest, feels a curious fluttering there, a lightness taking hold, one she typically attributes to Lev, to being close to his grace. She closes her eyes and listens to her heartbeat. The hospital sounds slowly fade away until it’s only her heartbeat and then—another, resonating somewhere beyond her own.
She opens her eyes and makes a small circle, ignoring the strange looks it earns her, until she feels a pull in her gut and heads in that direction. She reaches a crossroads, and then does that small turn again, letting the pull guide her to where she needs to go next, through one hallway and down another, past rooms holding the young and old, the sick and convalescing, their friends and family, doctors, nurses, past a double set of doors and into—
The chapel.
It’s moments like these that make Bea feel foolish for going so long without believing in God. To think of everything she could not See before her heart was willing to give itself over to a power greater than her person. It terrifies her to know she almost jeopardized everything tonight with a single call. But she resisted.
And now, as reward, she’s received a call of her own.
In the pew at the very front, a person.
The heartbeat she hears that’s not her own belongs to this person. It’s so loud, so uncertain, so lost. She moves her way slowly up the aisle until she’s at the pew’s edge. A man is slumped forward, his arms rested against his knees. He’s wearing scrubs, a badge. Bea puts her hands in her pockets and sits beside him and from this angle, she can see his face is wet with tears. There’s a sadness coming off him and it’s so strong she feels it in her bones. The prickling over her body intensifies. He stiffens at the audacity of her closeness but she pays it no mind. God brought her here. She just needs to wait for the man to realize it.
After a time, it happens.
Foster, she says softly. His name is Foster, and she doesn’t know how it comes to her, if she had glimpsed it on his badge and it took this long to register, or if God was waiting for the perfect moment to whisper it in her ear.
She knows what she chooses to believe.
Foster’s breath catches in his throat.
He presses his palm against his chest.
Bea often wonders what it would be like to be inside Lev’s mind, to parse his divine mystery.
How does God speak to him?
What does it feel like when he does?
Bea’s only received a taste. The magnitude of his own calling must be beyond comprehension, but those nights when his urgency flows like a current from him, electrifying them all, almost enables her to imagine it. They’re sitting outside Chapman House, on the ground, a bonfire crackling at the heart of the circle they’ve formed, Lev next to it, his beautiful dog, Atara, next to him.
The early spring air is a little bitter, but it’s hard to mind being cold in Lev’s presence, especially when Lev himself doesn’t seem to mind being cold in theirs. He stands before them and tilts his head back, as though he can see past the starry sky and into eternity.
He’s received revelation.
In October, the nation will blanket itself under the false security of the election and hate will take root in the gaps created by that complacency. Their Father has shown him the signs; this year will herald the end of innocence. But they must be strong. Their role is to witness it, to not break before it, and to offer redemption and refuge to all those broken by it.
No one, Lev says, is too broken for them.
But what are they? a voice calls from the crowd. What are the signs?
Lev’s gaze seeks the member out until it settles on a man sitting just across from Bea.
Rob.
He’s one of Lev’s closest friends; he’s been in The Project since the beginning. Bea isn’t sure she understands why. Rob is constantly questioning Lev, questioning God, questioning the work. He cannot give his tithe without asking why. He can’t accept his assignments without asking why. The selflessness their work demands of them is absent in Rob, and even if he ultimately participates, Bea wonders how much his participation is truly worth if he can’t seem to do it while keeping his disrespectful mouth shut. Lev studies Rob and then makes his way over, crouching to Rob’s level before pressing his hands against the sides of Rob’s face. He kisses Rob’s forehead. Light dances across their skin. Despite the crackle and pop of the fire and how quietly and closely Lev speaks, they all hear his voice.
Faith, my brother, Lev says, is not a question. It’s the answer.
Everyone around them is still, watching.
Do you have faith? Lev asks.
Yes, Bea thinks, though Lev isn’t asking her. Rob swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing nervously up and down. Even the minutest hesitance, Bea feels, must be an answer.
The wrong one.
But if we knew what you know, Rob says, raising his chin, we would be better prepared. We would be stronger for it.
Faith is what prepares you in the face of the unknown. Faith is what enables you to stand before it and to stay standing when others fall. Lev rises. God chooses what to reveal to us and when. If you were meant to know, don’t you think I would have told you? How long have you walked with me, Rob? Do you walk with me still? Where is your faith?
It’s here, Bea calls out before she can stop herself. She shrinks when Lev finds her in the dark … but then other voices follow.
Here! It’s here! And here!
Lev turns back to Rob and asks him again: Where is your faith?
Rob is frozen, his mouth hung open.
The world is being shaken, and what is not shaken will remain. Where. Is. Your. Faith?
Rob says nothing.
Lev tells him to stand.
After the meeting, Lev sends for Bea, and Casey leads her to his small cabin near the edge of the lake, tucked away from the house. Inside, it holds only a small kitchen, a bathroom, a desk, a bed. Lev doesn’t need much more than that. He stands at the window, staring out at the moonlit night. Atara greets Casey and Bea at the door and Bea runs her hands over the husky’s fluffy coat. She’s nervous, worried she spoke out of turn at the meeting, that she’s disappointed him somehow.
Thank you, Casey, Lev says.
Casey dismisses herself, shutting the door quietly behind her.
Lev faces Bea, regards her tenderly.
You did well at the protest, he tells her. I knew you would. You brought Foster to us. That’s why I sent you. And tonight—you rallied our people in the face of another’s doubt.
She nods.
Where is your faith, Bea?
She presses her hands against her heart.
He crosses the room to her, bringing his hand to her cheek. She feels warmth spread throughout her body from his palm.
How long have we known each other?
Six months. She can’t believe it’s only been six months.
And yet I can no longer imagine The Project before you, he says, his eyes on hers. When I enter a room, the first face I look for is yours. God called me to you in a way He has called me to no other. You must feel that too.
She nods, her eyes filling with tears.
From the very first moment he came to her, she felt it.
I was the question, she says, her voice trembling, her body trembling. You were the answer.
He rests his forehead against hers.
There is no flaw in you, he says.
He presses his mouth against hers.