The Greatest Spiritual Secret of the Century by Thom Hartmann

Author:Thom Hartmann
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hampton Roads Publishing

Chapter Eight

The Power of Belief

Paul looked around at the expectant faces, feeling like a trapped animal.

He scanned his surroundings, and noticed with a shock of realization that the wooden boxes along the tracks were not packing crates, as he’d originally assumed, but individual residences. The one to his left and behind him had a door half-covered by a blanket, and inside he could see a mattress on the floor, a painting on the wall, a table covered with books and an oil lamp.

These people live here, Paul realized. No rent, no taxes, living off what they could scavenge from dumpsters, getting money by collecting cans and turning them in to recycling centers. Running gauntlets of punks and street gangs to get into and out of their underground world, to get their money safely home from the recycling centers.

They’re poor beyond imagination, Paul thought, and they want whatever it is I have.

He did a quick inventory, remembering that his driver’s license, MasterCard, and American Express Card were in his shirt pocket, where he transferred them every morning, along with a gold Cross pen, when he got dressed. It was better than carrying a wallet in a city filled with pickpockets. In his right pants pocket was about fifty dollars in cash; there was another hundred or so back in his apartment…if they hadn’t already gotten it. Maybe bringing him here was just a ruse to get him out of the way while they stripped his apartment?

“You okay, man?” Jim said, pulling Paul back to the conversation and people around the fire.

“I’m fine,” Paul said. “I just need to get back home right away.” He pulled his hands out of his jacket pockets, pushed himself out of the recliner, and stood up, flexing his cramped fingers. He’d been clenching his hands in tight fists without realizing it.

Jim glanced at Joshua, who made a tiny gesture, a slight lifting and dropping of his shoulders. “I can take him,” Jim said.

Joshua said to Paul in a soft, compassionate tone of voice, “What are you worried about?”

“I need to get back to my life,” Paul said. “My apartment, my girlfriend, gotta find a job. I was fired yesterday.”

Joshua scratched the smooth skin of his chin. “You’re a man of principle.”

Paul wondered if their casing of him had included his job at the Tribune. “I like to think so.”

“You believe in journalistic integrity, and in your own integrity. You believe in the importance and power of truth, although you’ve also recently come to believe in the importance of power itself.”

“I suppose so.” That was it, they’d even checked out his employment. He stomped his feet as if he were cold, feeling impatient. “I’ve gotta go.”

Jim stood up.

Joshua said, “Like that time at Richter’s store.”

“What?” Paul said. The name was familiar, but from a far distant time and place.

“When you were ten. And Alvin Christian stole the little toys off the cereal boxes in Richter’s General Store. And you told your father, who called Mrs. Richter.”

The memory

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