who spoke for justice without fear or favour. The ‘touched’ ones, who got their tongues burnt with burning coals and all that sort of thing. I realised he might be a ‘touched’ one, touched by something real big, or just something real. Because, even with the shock of this turn in the conversation, when I looked at him, I still believed he had my interests at heart. I’d never had a conversation with someone who was so ‘present’ for me. Not just with me – for me. So, I decided to play my wild card, to go all in with him on the weirdness and wildness. I said to him, ‘Mate, I can tell that you’re one of those prophets, like in the old days. But I don’t know what you’re doing here or why you’re talking to me. You’re dead-set not from our church mob, or from this place. And I’ve left that all behind anyway. We don’t believe the same things. You got your ideas, and we’ve got ours. I’ve got mine. I don’t think you want to know who I really am. You don’t want to go there. I don’t think I’m who you’re looking for. I don’t … I don’t think that if you knew about me, you’d want to know me.” And even as I said it, I regretted it. Because I did want him to know me. I didn’t want him to pull away. He was weird – but weird-good. He put his hat on the counter, and he stared out into the light of the rising sun, cutting in through the dirty front windows, through the ads for longdiscontinued soft-drinks and cigarettes. For a long time, I thought he’d given up on me, decided that I wasn’t worth knowing. Then he turned back to me and his eyes had gone sad and dark and, just for a moment, I thought he was going to cry. “Woman,” he said quietly, looking into my eyes again, “believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship God neither in this place or in the city. Your lot worship what you do not know; my lot, we worship what we know, for salvation starts with us. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when all true worshippers will worship God in spirit and truth, for God seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” 62
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