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Chapter 16 - The Supreme BeingThe day of the hearing came all too soon, and with it the end was near of Steve and Ushi's visit. As Steve had already warned us, it hadn't been a hearing in the ordinary sense. It had been a war. The deck had been stacked against us. However, we also had a card of our own to play for which the fondi had no counter-card in their deck. The fondi didn't know or couldn't have known, and I was just beginning to realize this myself, that the beach project wasn't important to us anymore. Ushi and I had spotted something greater on the horizon in the dessert in Arizona. We had spotted an opening for the Royal Dance. Every one of us agreed that this was greater than the beach project had been envisioned to be. Steve said that we should have proceeded with the Royal Dance from the start. However, hindsight is cheap. So there we were, having to defend our nudist beach project. The key speaker at the hearing, the key-man speaking against our nudist beach project, had been 'imported' from outside the local area. He even came from outside the state. He came in full dress-uniform, a Man of The Cloth of the old tradition, a truly outstanding speaker who laid his conviction powerfully on the line with total honesty to everything that he stood for. There was no compromise, no wavering, no timidity, or compassion. "WE! have determined," he said, no longer speaking as an individual as he scanned the people's faces with a cherubic smile, "that this, this... this sort of thing cannot be allowed to take root here." He hesitated, his hands here trembling as though he couldn't even speak the word 'nudist' aloud. Then he launched into a long dissertation on fornication and the "imperative need" to protect young people from the scum of society that was poised to "descend upon this God-fearing community and drive the living faith out of people's hearts!" After his introduction to the theme he branched out to the story of Adam and Eve, as an example of all the "fallen of mankind" that were forever banished from the Garden of Eden because they allowed themselves to be beguiled by a "lying, filth-wallowing snake." He paused for a moment and then stared at the people. "Should this, this terrible tragedy become the fate of your community as the result of what these people plan?" Next, he branched into politics. His sermon became a lecture, lashing out against the evil forces of communist infiltration in the schools and the nation's universities, even its houses of government, where "God has been dishonored and the hearts of the people are being poisoned with materialistic idols and philosophies of greed and aspirations for ruling the world." The church itself, "the pillar of society," is under attack, he warned, "and the church is crumbling!" Of course, we were labeled as a specimen of that strange culture that he said "is pulling the holiest into the dust." Eventually he ended his triad. He closed with a solemn, dignified appeal of an honorable church man, calling for moral sanity to prevail, adding; "If you believe in God at all, as I know you do, you must make it your sacred duty to stop those who aim to destroy this great nation of ours. You must stop them before they take root in your community! Do not let them pass!" One could have heard a pin drop, after he sat down. "I thought those people died out with the dinosaurs," was Steve's comment. "Mostly they have," answered Ross, "but there are a few of the old guard left." "I hear they keep training new ones," said Ushi. || - page index - || - chapter index - || - Exit - ||
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