A Summer With the Moonies
DECEITFUL LOVE
When I joined the Unification Church I had no idea it was the Reverend Moon’s organization I was joining. I had simply decided to stick around after a seminar and see what would develop among a pleasant little group of people who called themselves the Family. I thought this “family” was something local, enthusiastic, and intent on somehow fostering love in a world gone rotten with selfish individualism. I took Sybil for my “spiritual parent.” She was an extraordinarily vivacious woman with great brown eyes who had left her group and come over and talked to me during the seminar. It was her overwhelming enthusiasm (and my immediate attraction to her) that tipped the scales in favor of this new and seemingly hopeful adventure.
The morning after the training session (we called them training sessions once we were inside) I was sitting on the couch in the living room of the Dana Street house, home of the “Oakland Family.” Sybil bounced in and sat down next to me and fixed me with those wonderful brown eyes and said, “What are you going to do?” “Well,” I said, “I think I’ll just hang around awhile and relax and get a feel for the atmosphere, and uh, I don’t know.” I shrugged.
“It doesn’t work that way.” She was smiling when she said this, but I was a little taken aback. I wanted a free ride for a while. Then I thought: these people really move, they really zing out and do it. Loafing is obviously not where it’s at with these folks. I decided I liked the idea.
“Well, O.K. Is there something I can do? Do you have a job or anything? If you have a job for me to do, I’d be happy to do it.”
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