Forgive and comfort him, lest he be swallowed up by excessive sorrow. Confirm your love to him.—The Unity Project
On their way back, Foster asks Bea what it would take to end up in Chapman House. He wants, he says, to be close to Lev. Bea understands that feeling. She is close to Lev but there’s always a part of her that wants to be closer than that. She feels some distance, a space reserved only for God, and she wonders if the longer they belong to each other, the less discernible the distance will be.
Come when he calls, Bea tells him. The natural progression is from Morel, to Bellwood to Chapman, once you’ve proven yourself.
She wasn’t the natural progression, he points out.
What Lev and I went through, she tells him, was different.
It’s the opening he’s seemingly been waiting for. He’s heard the story, but never directly from her, and some things about Lev and The Project should never be posed as a question. He makes sure it’s not a question now:
I believe everything—but I’d like to hear you say it.
And Bea tells him.
Lev Warren brought her sister back from the dead.
She lives in the memory as she walks Foster through it, and the miracle lights on his face as though he is there, witnessing it in real time.
He wishes he could have witnessed it.
Where is she now? Foster asks of Lo.
Lev’s seen her in The Project, Bea says, and she has held onto that vision every day since joining because every day, there’s something beautiful happening in The Project and she finds herself so eager to share it with Lo. But when is not for me to know.
They pull up to his apartment. Before Foster leaves the truck, he tells her to wait a moment. He has something he needs to say to her, something he needs her to hear.
He wants her to know how empty his life was before her. He wants her to know how he’d get up every morning feeling his purpose as a healer, but day by day, it was slowly ripped away from him, buried under bureaucracy, until he had none. He wants her to know he never thought he would be able to live in the aftermath of that dead child, and all those fingers pointed at him, but she arrived with God’s forgiveness in her open hand and gave him the will to continue. He tells her that he read in the Bible to take hold of hope and that hope is an anchor of the soul.
She gave him hope, she anchors his soul, Foster tells her, reaching into his pocket to produce a small jewelry box.
He wants her to know how grateful he is.
JANUARY 2018
“We’re family,” Casey explains. “You take care of your family.”
I’m sitting in her office. My recorder sits on her desk, capturing every word between us. I’ve brought everything I thought I’d need for an interview and everything Google told me I would. An audio recorder, my phone to play backup for it, and a legal pad playing backup for them if they should somehow both decide to fail me. A pack of pens. A small Moleskine with all of my notes and the questions I’ll ask Lev when I’m in front of him. It shouldn’t seem like I’d need more than that but it wasn’t like I could ask Paul for advice.
Casey gave me a tour of Chapman House. I saw bedrooms, offices, recreation spaces for adults and children alike, the kitchen. Now she’s breaking down how The Unity Project’s work is possible. There’s a reason Casey plays spokesperson for the cause. She’s incredibly polished, poised. She speaks in a tone of voice that would sound perfect on TV, in the same way her sermon voice sounded perfect for the sermon, and the way it sounded so perfectly cold when she was telling me my sister wanted nothing to do with me anymore—and to please stop calling.
“Project members are housed together in residencies across Morel, Bellwood and Chapman,” she says. “We’ve invested in multiple properties in those areas and some members have donated their own homes to invite their brothers and sisters in. We have a system in place that ensures the care of our membership.”
“Walk me through it.”
“All right.” She clasps her hands together. “Let’s say you work full-time for The Unity Project. You’ll live in Project housing and we’ll assume all the financials—living expenses, groceries, utilities, medicine. Whatever ensures your personal well-being, we handle. There’s nothing you need to worry about. If you work part-time for The Unity Project, we’ll offset certain expenses to make it easier for you to contribute to the cause. We arrange travel, childcare, things like that.” She pauses. “What it’s really highlighted for me is how many people want for the opportunity to be a part of something this meaningful and important—but they just can’t afford to. The red tape of living gets in the way. We want to remove that, to get rid of all burdens or obstacles—financial, physical, emotional, whatever—so they can. Not only do we care for our members, we invest in them. We sponsor members—”
“Sponsor?”
“We’ll pay for their education or professional courses if they pursue or are on a career track that can give back to The Project’s work. For example, we have some members who are pursuing employment in the healthcare field. We’ll assist them, and in turn, they’ll volunteer their services at The Unity Centers and avail themselves to members in need.”
“Where do you get the capital to do this?”
“Donations, tithes, fundraisers, we have several benefactors—”
“Your father?”
“This is completely off the record, but yes. He’s made significant contributions to our work over the years.” She moves the conversation along before I can pursue this. “On the record, what I’m most proud of is the way we all come through for one another. The Project represents a wide-ranging group of people with varying skill sets and talents. Their assets help us determine their placement—full-time members are assigned to communities that can most benefit from their expertise, whatever it may be—but what they offer others, they also offer to each other. Like I said, we’re family. That’s what family does.”
“You think everyone here truly believes in God and Warren’s New Theory, or do you think there’s a chance they’re just in it for the perks?” I ask. She stares at me and I shrug. “I could pretend to be a believer for a lot of what you’re offering.”
“But everything we offer is to facilitate God’s work,” Casey says. “And answering that call isn’t easy. Becoming a member means exercising total selflessness and giving up everything to give your life to God through acts of service to others. To exemplify the way the world can—and will be—if we all make the same choice. It’s not a free ride. It never has been.” She pauses. “Speaking of family, Emmy’s here.”
“Speaking of family, how come nobody knows Lev Warren has a kid?”
Casey pauses, as though she wasn’t quite anticipating that going on the record. “Lev is no stranger to threats on his life. People want to hurt him. And sometimes the easiest way to hurt someone is to hurt what they love the most. We all agreed that Emmy be invisible to the public eye until she was old enough to make that choice herself. We’ll have to talk about how you approach this in your profile…”
“Does The Unity Project have a lot of enemies?” I ask.