So, You Want to Join a Cult - Part XXXIX - More Purges

In the previous installment I brought up the purge of gays (derided as "homos") as well as anyone who was suspected of having gay fantasies or even sympathies for gay people. But this was only one of a series of purges of the ranks of Way "believers". 

Predating the "homo purge" (their term, not mine) was the "no debt" purge. Despite common sense and even a cursory knowledge of modern economics indicating that reasonable debt could be a good thing, Martindale banned all debt based on a verse that read "Owe no man any thing, only to love". Obviously unsecured long-term credit card debt should be avoided, but how many people could afford to pay cash for a house? Or even a new-ish car? Understanding the future value of money might cause one to finance a purchase of a home appliance rather than pay cash up front. But Martindale was insistent. No debt. Period. No exceptions. If you were in debt you couldn't be a fellowship coordinator, you couldn't enter or remain in The Way Corps, you couldn't attend the Advanced Class. But people were in debt. People owned homes, had car loans, student loans, home improvement loans. All things that no one thought would be "off the Word" as recently as the previous year. People who owned homes were counseled to sell their homes and start renting. There was utter chaos. As usual Martindale gave no thought to how his pronouncements would affect people. Once this new edict filtered down to the rank and file the "confrontations" started. In our area there was a man who appeared to be developmentally disabled. He usually dressed very shabbily, and leadership talked to him about buying some new clothes. Which he obediently did — with a credit card. Bam! Debt! Confronted! Marked and avoided! My eldest son, who at the time was living with Fred Brown, the aforementioned local leader, worked several part time and temporary jobs throughout the year. As anyone who has ever been in that position knows, none of the part time employers withhold enough taxes — the withholding formula assumes that there isn't any other income, so when it comes time to file, there is a tax liability due rather than a refund. Fred told him that he was in debt and therefore "off the Word". When asked to explain his reasoning about how paying taxes was debt, all Fred could come up with was "Tell me how it isn't". Of course some leaders managed to work around the new rules. Some lived in homes that were in their parents' names; one local man had concocted an elaborate workaround to convince himself that his debt wasn't really debt. 

There was also a series of new classes that Martindale recorded, all of which were mandatory. Advanced Class graduates who had not taken the old class were no longer considered Advanced Class grads — for what that was worth. Anything from before this time period was called "old wineskins" Anyone speaking nostalgically about "the old days" was suspect — and confronted and marked and avoided. The little blue pin that WOW Ambassadors received and which they had always worn proudly as a reminder of their service was no longer approved. An old nametag indicating an old class, the same. Anyone who had been around for a long time was derided as an "Old Grad", not as someone honored for their long service, but one whose opinions and input were disrespected or ignored. Men and women who were not in The Way Corps themselves but were married to Way Corps grads had always been given the courtesy designation of "Spouse Corps" and were treated as Way Corps, but no more. Any Corps married to non-Corps were no longer considered Corps grads and were relieved of any leadership responsibilities unless they submitted themselves to four years of Way Corps training. Some of these couples had served faithfully in leadership positions for 20 years or more. More thinning of the ranks. 

For years the top leadership had been extremely stingy with funds, requiring reams of red tape for the smallest expenditures, so it came as a surprise in the mid nineties when Martindale decreed that all active Way Corps would be receiving a salary as full time employees of The Way. As part of the "benefit" of not having to work a secular job (Fred had been a drywaller) the Way Corps had to submit to a ratcheted up level of control, including prohibitions on smoking and other habits and having to ask permission before starting a family. In order to justify having Way Corps with small numbers of people to "oversee", Martindale changed the definition of a branch from seven twig fellowships to two, basing this on a misunderstanding of a Hebrew phrase in Exodus. Like most excrement, it all flowed downhill. Free from working a "9-5", Way leaders had all the time in the world to snoop into the affairs of their flock. Fred and his new wife Elaine started scheduling "witnessing" excursions mid-day and popping over for inspections and meetings. I worked at home and we home-schooled our children, so these visits were quite disruptive. We had to keep track of who we talked to about God, the Bible etc., who we invited to twig fellowship, who attended and reasons for being turned down. The 10% tithe wasn't enough — we were now pushed to increase our "abundant sharing" to higher percentages. It went on and on. Along with this, the confrontations increased and people were thrown out. 

A weird addition to the Way Corps becoming full-time employees was "no gift" policy. Way protocol for many years had been for the "believers" to present their leaders with some kind of gift at the completion of classes or at major events. Martindale at this time became convinced that gifts to leaders constituted bribes and were banned. Once, my five-year old son wanted to give Fred a little trinket — I think it was an animal-shaped pencil eraser — but Fred turned it down, reiterating to us the "no bribe" policy. 

Despite Martindale's claim that he got the idea to make all Corps full-time employees from God, the idea soon hit the brick wall of reality. The Way International was hemorrhaging money. In addition to the salaries, they had to remit payroll taxes on all of it, and none of these people, who had previously been gainfully employed, were tithing or "abundantly sharing", reducing The Way's gross income while expenditures had multiplied. 

Remember that every one of these changes begat grounds for more suspicion, more confrontation, more people humiliated and kicked out of active involvement in The Way. As this state of affairs progressed (or regressed) the air of suspicion and accusations of devil spirit possession reached into every corner, not exempting marriages, including mine.

Start from the beginning: Part I

So, You Want to Join a Cult - Part XXXVIII - Purges

Deprived of their usual targets of alleged spiritual impurity, the wives of the Women's Cabal turned on their husbands. Couldn't afford whatever your wife thought was a necessary purchase? You could forget about a reasonable conversation reviewing the household budget and the state of the bank account — you "weren't believing" for prosperity. Cold or flu making the rounds at your house? Obviously the "head of the household" wasn't believing for health. What this had become was a dictatorship by the women, who made all the decisions, but all blame was put on the men when things went wrong. This was by no means a universal phenomena. Some Way men emphasized the "man as head" model and made all the decisions, relegating the wife to the role of silent enabler, nothing more than a cook and baby-maker. In Lincoln, the tendency of local Way woman to challenge decisions that they didn't agree with was strengthened by that one word in Titus: oikôdespotês. In practice, Way leaders took advantage of this dichotomy, the confusion about who was in charge (as if anyone needed to "be in charge") to exercise control, pointing out marital discord as evidence of devilish influence.

But this was all just a sideshow to the purges.

Most cults take pride in growth, pointing to it as "evidence" of God's favor. For most of its history The Way did as well. Much was made about the large number of people who attended the annual "Rock of Ages" gathering every August; the thousands of new Way believers in Zaire was celebrated as were record numbers entering the Way Corps or serving as Word Over the World Ambassadors. But after losing around 80% of its membership and leaders in the late 80's, some rationale had to be constructed to make sense of it all. That rationale was the teaching of "the faithful remnant". This was the doctrine that stated that God wasn't about quantity, but was more concerned with quality. The smaller number of active Way people was celebrated as being more pure, more godly, more "on the Word" than what had been around before. And not only were we supposed to view the shrinking numbers as somehow positive, but leadership began to actively reduce the numbers by imposing strict standards of behavior and obedience to leaders that had never been seen before. The most intense was what we profanely referred to as the "homo purge". (I'm using term and placing it in quotes because that's what it was called in The Way, I do not endorse describing gay people simply as "homos")

For most of my early years in The Way, homosexuality wasn't addressed, at least that I noticed. I didn't know of any "out" gay people and I can't recall a single sermon on the subject until the mid nineties. The times were not friendly to gay people outside The Way, and in retrospect Way people were probably as homophobic as the typical straight people of the time, but it just wasn't a focus. In 1995 it became a focus. Way President Martindale began making homosexuality THE sin to be on guard against. You know the verse about the love of money being the root of all evil? For Martindale homosexuality was the root of all evil. Everything that would or could go wrong was blamed on supposed closeted gays in our midst. In 1995 he cancelled the WOW Ambassador program with no notice in the midst of the Rock of Ages. His "reasoning" was his belief (that God supposedly told him) that 10% of the outgoing WOWs were homosexuals. Hundreds of Way followers had uprooted their lives — quit their jobs, sold their homes, said goodbye to their friends — in order to spend the year witnessing and recruiting people to The Way. And Martindale threw it all away based on "revelation". He encouraged people to point the finger at suspected homosexuals, as long as you had "a genuine spiritual suspicion" — whatever that was. Martindale wasn't slowed down by the inconvenient fact that few if any actual gay people were found to be hiding out among the believers. That deterred him not in the slightest. He came up with the terms "Homo fantasizers" and "homo sympathizers" and they became were corollary targets, based on that ephemeral "genuine spiritual suspicion". 

I'm not proud of my behavior during this time. Actually, I'm ashamed of my behavior during that time. Growing up I had taken a laissez faire attitude about gays. If I knew any, I didn't know that they were gay. I probably made ignorant jokes — because I was ignorant. When I moved to Nebraska and got involved in KZUM, however, I came in contact with a lot of gay people and became friends with many of them. This was during the time when my ex-wife and I were not actively involved in The Way, 1983-1990. Even after getting back involved with The Way in 1990, homophobia and gay bashing hadn't taken hold yet, but once the organization which I viewed as having a handle on God's Truth started preaching against gays, I'm ashamed to say that I jumped on board. I probably wasn't as vicious about it as some, but I was vocal. I'm sure there are family members who haven't forgotten my homophobic remarks made in those days. 

Fred Brown, our local Way Corps leader discovered that I had a talent for accurate note-taking. Why was this a valuable skill to have in a cult? Because the manner in which purges were conducted was a "confrontation". The local leader, along with a subordinate leader if there was one, and several witnesses would "confront" the person suspected of homosexuality (or some other sin — there were multiple, overlapping purges that I will get into in the next installment). This was supposedly the "Biblical" way to address "evil". The leader would grill the confronted one, aiming to pin some sin on him or her with the inevitable result that they were kicked out of Way involvement. My job was to take notes and read statements back to the leader when asked to, with emphasis on finding contradictions and lies to pin on the person being confronted. The term we used for kicking a person out was "mark and avoid" based on a verse which said "...mark them which causes divisions and offenses...and avoid them". Not only was a person who was marked and avoided kicked out of the fellowship, but none of the active members were allowed to have anything to do with them. Someone who was marked and avoided was cut off, not only from any friends that they had, but often from their family as well. This went on for several years and I was involved in dozens of mark and avoid confrontation sessions. 

Along with the other purges, this was my Way lifestyle for around five years, always looking my shoulder, watching what I said and to whom, including my own family, and all the while I was complicit in the evil. 

Start from the beginning: Part I

Go to: Part XXXIX

So, You Want to Join a Cult - Part XXXVII - Pointing Fingers

The "Woman's Cabal", which included my ex-wife Pat, mainly concerned themselves with criticizing local Way leadership, being part of the informal power as known as Old Grads they felt that they had the knowledge and standing to question anyone that they thought was "off The Word". Fred Brown, the newly appointed leader, freshly graduated from the Way Corps and exposed to Way President Craig Martindale's paranoid ravings for four years was not having it. He began cracking down on any dissension,  and in line with what Martindale was preaching every week, directed any dissension among the believers away from leadership and toward each other.

This was a big change. The power struggle among leadership during the second half of the eighties had caused the rank and file to question the leadership. Any problems — sickness, financial issues, even divorce was traced back to leaders being "off The Word", or — and this was an accusation that was thrown around more and more — devil spirit possession.

Now the same issues, when they arose, were being laid at the feet of ordinary Way followers to the point where if Martindale caught a cold it was blamed on lack of believing by the Way "household" (i.e. the whole body of active Way participants). I was even present when a thunderstorm that caused the campground at a Way event to be flooded was blamed on the lack of "community believing", rather than the poor planning of leaders who designated low ground as a campground during the rainy season in Ohio. 

This change in focus of spiritual responsibility had the effect of making people paranoid that their own negative believing could cause harm in the household of believers and also intent on pointing the finger at others. The women of the cabal struck out in multiple directions.  

One of the many classes that The Way created was called "Defeating the Adversary" (i.e The Devil). The Way, despite having a fair number of women in leadership positions, (usually single women) was extremely patriarchal and fundamentalist in its interpretation of verses that related to marriage. They very much believed that the husband was the head of his wife (although not that any random man was the head of any individual woman) although what that meant was left unclear. In the Defeating the Adversary (DTA) class Martindale made reference to Titus 2:3-5 where, in English, women are described as "keepers at home". He claimed that this was a translation of the Greek word oikôdespotês. Oikos means "house", or "home". As for the second part of the Greek word, I think we all know what a "despot" is. This was interpreted to mean that wives were the undisputed rulers regarding household decisions. It was left unclear how this meshed with the husband being the head of the wife. 

Deprived of the traditional targets of incompetent leadership and armed with supposed Biblical justification for being a dictator over their own households, Way women began refusing to discuss household decisions with their husbands, and if the husbands wouldn't cooperate, accusing them to leadership as "off The Word" or even possessed. Fred was happy to entertain these accusations and fostered an environment where married couples were fighting with each other, justifying their intransigence as "keeping the household pure". This bubbled beneath the surface for several years. It started to affect me in my marriage, but there were so many other accusations going around, with kangaroo courts and "confrontations" the issues in my own marriage flew under the radar for a while. 

Purges were on the horizon.

Start from the beginning: Part I

Go to: Part XXXVII

So, You Want to Join a Cult - Part XXXVI - The Pyramid

 There was a lot going on from the mid to late nineties, so I may be jumping back and forth regarding the years and events. It was around this time that the escalation in cultishness began to have an affect on my marriage. I mentioned in earlier installments that (1) My wife Pat and some of the other women constituted an informal cabal, where they picked apart the actions of local leadership and gossiped about their fellow "believers" and (2) A new leader was appointed for Lincoln who was trained from Day One in Martindale's post-"Fog Years" paranoia and iron-fist style of leadership. These two facts would come together to make my home life miserable. 

[Pat & I got divorced as the 00's began, and there were many reasons for it, some which had nothing to do with The Way, but others that very much did; I will try to only address the actual cult behaviors and avoid reliving a years long plunge toward divorce]

One of the first things that Fred did upon settling in to his new responsibilities as Way Branch Coordinator in Lincoln was to take on what I have referred to as The Women's Cabal. One thing that many people don't realize about cults is the existence of competing bases of power. Theoretically there's a leader at the top of the cult pyramid who calls all the shots and all the cult members fall into line, obeying the cult leader's demands. That's certainly true, but what that picture misses is the parellel levels on the pyramid. 

The Way referred to their organizational structure as The Way Tree, which when you looked at it, was just an upside-down pyramid with the power and authority working its way up from the roots, rather than down from the apex of the pyramid. The cult leader's title was the President, he and two other members of a Board of Trustees ran the organization from the root, the New Knoxville Ohio headquarters. Springing up from the root was the trunk, which represented the entire United States. (In theory, other countries could be categorized as trunks if they were large enough, I believe the country coordinator of the United Kingdom at one time was considered the Trunk Coordinator of Europe). The trunk was divided up into limbs, each state was its own limb. (There was an intermediate un-tree-like step, the region, which was made up of several states, and in later years as The Way shrunk, several states would be combined into one limb). Each limb was divided into branches. A branch was composed of multiple home fellowships, usually in the same city. Originally a branch was envisioned as having seven home fellowships, in the 00's Martindale, based on a poor understanding of grammar and an over-reliance on the Old Testament, decided that a "branch" was actually two or more home fellowships. The home fellowships were called twigs, with the individual members as leaves. (There were also intermediate levels between a limb and a branch during The Way's membership heyday — four branches were an area, four areas, or large geographic areas within a state were territories.) 

That was the official Way Tree, but circles of influence existed and functioned outside the official hierarchy. The Way membership was based at the lower levels on a series of classes. Foundational, Intermediate and Advanced Power For Abundant Living. Graduates of the Advanced Class were considered to have achieved a level of knowledge whereupon they could be looked upon as potential future leaders. Advanced Class grads were often called upon to teach at fellowship meetings and could have some influence on what went on in an area. WOWvets were another outside-the hierarchy caste. Veterans of the Word Over the World (WOW) Ambassador program were looked at with awe by those who never participated. Sometimes alternate sources of influence derived from people who just had natural leadership ability but for some reason weren't officially sanctioned leaders. Then there's the amorphous group informally known as "Old Grads". Old Grads weren't necessarily old in years, certainly not senior citizens, but they were Way members who had been around for as long as anyone could remember, having taken the PFAL class in the seventies or early eighties. They were usually Advanced Class grads and were often WOWvets as well. An Old Grad may have come to an area as a WOW and "opened it up", i.e. started the first Twig Fellowship that eventually grew into a branch or a limb. Several members of the Women's Cabal, including my ex-wife Pat, were "Old Grads". Several of them had come to Lincoln in 1972 or '73 as Wows and started the first fellowships. Some had left and come back, some had been here all along. 

One reason that power bases outside the hierarchy flourished during this time was what then-President of The Way Martindale called "The Fog Years", a time of internal divisions. Various leaders spent several years accusing each other of deviating from "The Word of God" as defined by founder Wierwille. When the dust had settled Martindale remained as the de jure head of The Way while other leaders started their own offshoot ministries. This emboldened Way believers at all levels of The Way Tree to question, not necessarily Way doctrine, but individual leaders' fealty to it. This is what the Women's Cabal saw as their mission, and what Martindale, through his newly appointed field leaders such as Fred Brown, was determined to quash.

Start from the beginning: Part I

Go to: Part XXXVII

So, You Want to Join a Cult - Part XXXV - Fred Brown

After the so-called Fog Years, Craig Martindale was determined that the rebellion by his senior leaders would not happen again. In his secondary role as Director of The Way Corps he made sure that anyone who made it through the four year program was not only doctrinally toeing the line, but was also personally loyal to him. Previous Nebraska state leaders had graduated from the program before the shit had hit the fan. Gary had been appointed state leader simply because he was the only Way Corps person in the state to remain when the rest of them had left to join splinter groups or start their own. Fred Brown was different. His entire time in The Way Corps was under Martindale's bullying paranoia and refusal to accept any disloyalty, which he defined rather broadly. Fred was a True Believer and was fully on board with Martindale's mission to purge The Way of any dissent. 

Of course dissent was framed as devil spirit possession and loyalty reflected being "on the Word". 

Convenient. 

At the time each home fellowship met twice weekly. Once mid-week and again on Sunday morning. At this period in Way history, at least in Nebraska, most of the active participants were married couples with children, so oftentimes family commitments such as sports, or sick kids too precedence over Way fellowship meetings. It was now mandatory — and attendance was taken. "Witnessing", or organized attempts to recruit, were, pre-Fred, casual affairs and consisted of "believers" talking to people in social situations. I personally recruited a guy named Donnie at O'Rourke's tavern one night. In the new administration witnessing nights took place at regular times, also mandatory. We were to keep track of how many contacts we made each week and how many of those ending up attending a Way fellowship meeting. Little by little, all aspects of our lives were tracked by Way leadership. But it still hadn't gotten as bad as it was going to get. 

The real purges hadn't started yet. 

Start from the beginning: Part I

Go to: Part XXXVI

So, You Want to Join a Cult - Part XXXIV - The Nineties (for real)

Like any organization, how precisely theory and practice coincide depends on the people who are tasked with executing the rules and regulations. We've all worked for companies where everything changed when a new manager was brought in. The Way's leaders were no different. The chaos that followed Wierwille's death and the proliferation of splinter groups led by former Way leaders resulted in a culture where non-leaders would push back against leaders that they didn't like, convinced that they held the true and accurate interpretation of how things should be. 

When we reestablished our relationship with The Way the state leaders were Way Corps graduates Gary and Mary Ehman. For the most part Gary was an easy-going guy. Oddly, for an organization that put so much emphasis on reading and researching the Bible, Gary was functionally illiterate. This made it difficult for him teach the finer points of the definitions of Greek and Hebrew words, which The Way put much stock in, when he could barely read English. In contrast to Gary's friendly and non-dogmatic approach to leadership, the President of The Way, Craig Martindale, was continually teaching his version of fire and brimstone, which included no room for those who didn't toe the party line. It wasn't as if Martindale's polemics were only heard by the top tier of leadership as Wierwille's were — his weekly Sunday rantings were sent out in cassette tape form to anyone who wanted them. Often an area would be "dialed in" directly to hear the teachings live. Several women in our area, inspired by Martindale's clear direction on what was "on" and what was "off" informally anointed themselves as the arbiters of what was "off The Word" in the lives of the local Way "believers". My then-wife Pat was one of them, Gina, the wife of a Lincoln fellowship overseer, was another. 

Even though the actual local leader was not pushing the extremism of the head man, the women's circle was doing the work of evangelizing behind the scenes. Fingers were pointed, people were being accused of being "possessed" by devil spirits, even Gary was the recipient of these accusations. It was a bubbling cauldron of suspicion and judgement. And since Gary wasn't getting involved, neither taking their side or condemning their actions, there was no outlet. The pressure was building. 

Each year, around summertime, the Board of Trustees and other top leaders would work on Way Corps assignments. New graduates would be given their new jobs, veterans would find out if they were staying in their positions or being moved around. That year, Gary and Mary would be reassigned and our new state leader would be a single guy — Ed Wentworth. Ed was also pretty easy going, so nothing changed. Ed lasted a year. His replacement would be a newly minted Way Corps graduate named Fred Brown. With Fred's arrival everything would change — things were going full cult!

Start from the beginning: Part I

Go to: Part XXXV

So, You Want to Join a Cult - Part XXXIII - The Nineties (prelude)

A lot was going into the nineties. My first wife, Pat, and I completed our family — Steven, our youngest of six children, was born in December 1990; another child became deathly ill due to mold and bacteria after our rental home was flooded; there were continual changes and challenges at my job in circulation at the Omaha World-Herald newspaper; we started home schooling; and we were adapting to the changes that re-involvement in The Way was causing. 

In late 1990, when we got back involved with The Way, Pat and I had been married for nine years. We had developed a routine that had nothing to do with organized religion, including The Way, although we still believed broadly in the doctrines taught by The Way. It wasn't really obvious back then, but Pat and I had two divergent world views. Pat would have fit right in with today's right-wing Christian Nationalist types. She had a down-in-the-bone conviction that there was a literal spiritual battle going on in the world, literally believed that the Devil and his minions were actively working against Christians. As we had isolated ourselves from, not only The Way, but from any type of organized religion, she didn't have the vocabulary to articulate those beliefs. I, on the other hand, wasn't as literal-minded in my beliefs. I still had some residual thoughts about devil spirits, prayer, etc., but didn't really make it part of my daily life. The other characteristic in which we were opposites was that I was usually willing to compromise, or reach a consensus, whether it was in my marriage, work life, or personal relationships, while Pat was more of a black-and-white thinker — no grey areas whatsoever. Most of the time this didn't present any problems — areas that she was uncompromising on, were often areas here I could go either way; when it did present problems, I acquiesced to her wishes in order to maintain peace. This difference in personality would become important as our nineties in The Way progressed. 

The main divergence in opinion came about when our two oldest were in fifth and third grades respectively. Ben, our oldest, got bullied a lot at school. Chris, two years younger, didn't have that problem, but was habitually behind in his schoolwork and had continual struggles with reading and understanding. Pat thought that the solution to these problems would be home schooling. 

I'm not saying that home schooling is always a good choice, or always a bad choice. I certainly don't accept the criticism that home schoolers are socially awkward and have no friends, or never leave the house. My kids were involved in sports (and in fact were outstanding in track), 4-H and several of them achieved the rank of Black Belt in Tae Kwon Do. The younger children were involved in Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts. But home schooling, if done right, takes a lot of time and effort. Initially, Pat put in that time and effort. She had gone to college to be a teacher, although she did not graduate. She was organized and for the first several years did put in the time and effort. My role was more peripheral. I had a full time job that took me out of town several days a week, so Pat did most of the work. Maybe the fact that the bulk of the work of home schooling would fall upon Pat made it easy for me to give in. I also didn't have any strong arguments against home schooling. 

Although the initial impetus for considering home schooling was Chris' need for more one-on-one attention, and Ben's being bullied, the rationale changed to more of an emphasis on spiritual warfare. The local home schooling support group was dominated by evangelical-fundamentalist Christians, who believed that the public school system was the Devil's playground and that public school students were being actively taught to turn against God. Pat absorbed this mindset; it meshed perfectly with The Way's position on the so-called spiritual battle, even though The Way did not encourage home schooling. 

As we transitioned into Way life, we (at least one of us) was primed to see everything as a God vs. The Devil struggle, yet not at all prepared for the increasing level of control that being involved in The Way necessitated. Yet we both had retained a belief that Wierwille, the original leader of The Way, had hit upon an interpretation and application of The Bible that was, not only correct, but not to be found anywhere outside The Way. Problems that we had encountered in The Way we chalked up to people, leaders who had strayed from the path set by Wierwille, not to The Way itself. 

In some ways we were primed for the increased cultishness of The Way in the nineties, in others we were ticking bombs of rebellion, waiting for our moment to explode.

Start from the beginning: Part I

Go to: Part XXXIV