Will moved Arthur back into the family home and spent a few months nursing Arthur back to health.He saw Arthur's downfall as his own fault and decided that he would do a better job this time around fulfilling his promise to their mother. He went to their local parish and got the name of Fr. Bernard, a priest with a counseling degree who was an accomplished musician and started bringing him by the house to counsel Arthur. Fr. B also spent a lot of time talking with Will and helped him realize the mistakes he had made with the Sweet World. Will decided that if he helped Arthur put a band together with people he liked who were living good, Catholic lives, and if he held back the pressures of touring and recording, Arthur would be able to become the person he was meant to be. Arthur loved the idea and named the group Brand New Life, which Will modified to Arthur White's Brand New Life.
The early days of Brand New Life were some of the best Will and Arthur had together. Will rented a home in the country and moved the whole band in together. Everyone, even Will, went to daily mass. Everyone played music, cooked meals, did chores. After a while, Agniesczka even visited with the children. Will was able to keep an eye on the company, which helped resolve some tensions with Anthony, who was still angry that Will completely dropped out of the picture during The Sweet World days. Arthur especially bonded with Joe Lazarus, a guitar player and recovering drug addict. The two of them became accountability partners and, for the first time, Arthur had a male friend he could trust other than his brother. He and Arthur both took to their therapy of praying while making felt banners, and together they made the album cover for the first Brand New Life album. The band played softball with the Rockets and other Detroit bands, which Will loved because it gave him a chance to goof around with his old buddy Johnny Bee Badanjek.
The success of Brand New Life was a complicated blessing. Arthur's therapy and prayer life helped him so much that he not only regained his ability to return to the Sweet World almost at will, but he realized that the woman was the Virgin Mary and her child was the baby Jesus! Arthur's channel to the divine reopened, and this time around, Arthur could enter it as a healthy adult. The result was that by the time Arthur was supposed to make the second Brand New Life album, he was ready to make an album of prophecy about Christ's redemption of a fallen America--not at all the sort of record Will wanted the group to make. Will was like most Catholic Americans: he believed in a happy medium of heaven and earth in which heaven is the optional cherry on top of the sundae of a productive life. He was like parents who get their kids Catholic educations to get them into college--not heaven. Will would see Kierkegaard's ethical sphere as the highest acceptable sphere of existence, but the religious sphere is just nuts.
Somehow, he never once had an experience of God that disrupted his concrete view of reality even for a moment.
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