Thirty years later, standing in that neighborhood, I look back and see Preacher Man and the others praying and see people striving for dignity in a harsh world. I see mothers working minimum-wage jobs, trying to raise three children alone. I see a teenager fingering a small cross and see a young woman abused by a father addicted to whatever. I see Preacher Man living across the tracks in a beat-up shotgun shack or low-income housing or whatever, desperate to stay clean, desperate to make sense of a world that has given him little.
