I’m not quite sure how it started. Perhaps an side remark about or a joke about President Josiah Bartlet sending us to Africa. Regardless, those of us who were huge fans back in the states (and who indeed watched multiple seasons live on NBC) were slowly adopted by the converts that had laid the ground before us. Before you knew it, pockets of conversation in workstations around the country turned to which seasons were to be had by who, where someone was in the progression of the show and whether if you ever heard God talking, it would sound like Martin Sheen, only more so.
I’m currently on the downside of season seven and it has been a good ride. Thus far on my idealistic endeavor, I understand that striving to change a land awaiting the dawn of reason can be soul-crushing. Reliving those episodes was having my thirteen year old self return and promise that we weren’t wrong. That progress just needs to be awoken, not sculpted from clay nor imbued with the essence of the Lord. For while some days it seems putting Benin on the right track would require an act of Genesis, those are beyond my secular purview. Someone better call Martin Sheen.
