The womb, the ground of our existence, is the environment in which we as mere seeds are held and nourished, the repository of mother’s hopes and dreams passed to us.  Indeed, the aspirations of an entire lineage center there where an outline takes shape -- a pattern against which our physical lives will play out. The people of Christian faith and their descendants were given the Holy Spirit and would always have spiritual yearning and the promise of the Christ in the very fabric of their being.  We were born that way because of the sacrifice on the cross and our belief in its salvation; and it was upon that obscure and subtle basis that True Father called us, not only to discipleship, but into the womb. 
 
As I was growing up, I experienced a gradual loss of love between me and my mother as that relationship became strained in ways I did not understand and eventually stretched to the breaking point and a lasting estrangement over which I felt powerless.  I always felt responsible for this separation, though I did not know how to mend it. The difficulty with my mother was a cross I bore for many years – it now serves as an important backdrop to this story.
 
At the age of 20, I met the huge, simple, and profound idea of “True Parents.”  I remember how the idea struck me as so obvious that I ought to have thought of it myself.  It was the most enlightening notion I had ever heard, and I was completely enamored.  I had joined the Creative Community Project in Berkeley, California, and spent time on the farm in Booneville before travelling the West with a Mobile Fundraising Team (MFT) and then to the east coast to meet the Unification Church in New York City and Washington, D.C., a span of nearly five years.
 
Fortunately, I was able to see True Father at Belvedere where he was accompanied onstage by True Mother, Hak Ja Han, and their children.  I was always grateful that Father had a beautiful wife, and Hak Ja Han was clearly that.  Nonetheless, outside of one Church sister who experienced abdominal pain whenever True Mother was pregnant, I never heard anyone else claim to have a relationship to the Mrs. Moon most of us only knew at a distance. 
 
Of course, there were layer upon layer of Church leadership between the foot soldiers, people like me, and True Father.  I knew the odds were such that I would never meet True Mother in person (nor a True Child for that matter), so I did not give it much thought. It seemed to be none of my business in any case, and I was too young to care about anything beyond my immediate mission. When I attempt to remember even one day of my life in the early Unification Church in the United States, it is mostly a blur.  Some incidences stand out, but by and large there was just too much to do all the time in serving the Providence.
 
By 1980, a series of unfortunate situations had conspired to push me out of the Church. Regrettably, I did not have the kind of strength it took to endure at that time: I was too young to have the perspicacity needed to negotiate, in particular, matters that arose in relationship to central figures. From indirect and false accusations of “Chapter Two” to being outright dismissed for some reason unknown to me and then sent packing, I lost my connection to the leadership and to a mission. I thought that getting out of the way for a while might help and hit upon the idea of going back to school, which became a mantra and strategy for decades to come. 
 
However well returning to school served me, it did nothing to ameliorate my need to connect with a Church mission. Even though I lived in the World Mission Center, my overall impression was that the Church did not need me.  There was just no one home, except foot soldiers – everyone else was chasing a mission or new directive, and nobody seemed to know where central figures were or how to get in touch with them.  The Church always seemed to be in a rush, and some of the flock got left behind.  As I look back, it might have been the role of a mature True Mother to tend to those who were storm tossed, in need of a personal moment and help in finding a place within the Church.  In retrospect, the absence of a mother figure seems portentous.
 
How ironic that I was eventually resisting expulsion and finally left the Church of my own volition when we consider the fact that there was a mainstream- media assumption that Unification Church members were being held against their will.  It would have been laughable had it not been so tragic. Some members’ families seemed to think that it was necessary to kidnap and deprogram their “brainwashed” child, and extraordinary efforts were made on the part of Church leadership to recover such Church members.  There had been one such person living in the World Mission Center, a young woman who was kidnapped regularly by her family.  She received an extravagant amount of attention and sympathy.  I admit I was suspicious and always hoped those incidents were something more than just family psychosis and theatrics we were forced to endure, only to be used later as fodder by local tabloids and the New York Times.
 
Reconciling the everyday, earnest activities of sincere Church members with such incongruous episodes was nearly impossible; I cannot understand to this day how any of it related to the Providence, especially kicking members out of the Church.  I can say, however, that I managed to survive the godless world that lay outside the Unification Church for the next 40 years. I found it mind-bending to have landed back in the world, “the world” as St. Paul defined it, the world where loneliness and chasing love in whatever form it might take were the rule.
 
Over the years, I had serious thoughts of reconnecting to the Church again, particularly because finding a relationship that led to marriage had become a crucible of cultural and national proportion and thusly my own.  I aged out of childbearing, but the longing for close companionship could be possible, however remote and hopeless it seemed. I watched in awe as gay and lesbian persons rushed into the once-Christian rite of marriage previously denied to them and wondered, of course, how long before their free-styled living engendered divorce rates to match. 
 
The years rolled by.  There were glitches opening in the socio-political matrix, a dribble at first, and then a glimpse of something terrible approaching us that people could sense but not see clearly.  A stunning contradiction in the rhetoric here.  A clear anomaly over there.  The pieces began to add up and mystifyingly link with other elements to create a story that no one on earth could possibly have created because, by now, it seemed ancient and out of human control.  Everyone was an actor in the story; everyone had a part, however unconscious they might be that they had taken up a role.  In some cases, there was no fighting it, either, as I discovered early in 2020 when every effort I made to inform others that complicity in “Covid” was dangerous, that it was a hoax and would lead to death.  I had never been ignored nor excoriated so furiously.
 
One evening in the midst of the national derangement foisted upon us all, I was surveying a few of my favorite personae non gratae online – Brook Jackson, the vaxxine clinical-trial whistleblower, whose criminal-fraud lawsuit against Pfizer was hanging in the balance over the highly-suggestive technicality that the government in high places, not Pfizer, was the responsible party; Edward Dowd, the BlackRock portfolio manager, whose data analyses pointed to vaxxines (1) as the cause of “Covid” deaths; and Naomi Wolf, the famous feminist-turned-investigative reporter who put together a team of experts to pore over Pfizer’s flawed clinical-trial reports – when the recognition of the phenomenon I was witnessing, and which lay heavily upon my heart, struck me as biblical.  Dowd publicly proclaimed his faith in the Lord Jesus Christ as his way of coping with the madness; and Wolf, asked in an interview what she thought might be the answer to such horrifying corruption, stated her belief that there was a war raging that was much larger than ourselves and that she had returned to the faith of her forebears. The daring, honesty, and humility of these people touched me deeply as the events of my life suddenly lined up:  we were in the midst of the “Last Days,” and I felt compelled now to return to my own faith, the Lord of the Second Advent and the Unification Church.
 
There was a striking lack of information online when I attempted to find “Unification Church.” All I saw initially were old news stories and disconcerting photos of Moonies in masks. One link redirected to the “Family Federation for World Peace and Unification,” where a perusal of the website revealed a new-fashioned, diluted version of the Church I once knew, a Church that seemed now to be “of the world,” not just in it.  The language at the website was assuring and normalizing, and nothing extraordinary was going on in the world. The website had everything but a crossword puzzle.
 
As depressing as this reintroduction to the Church was, I continued my search locally to find a “Family Federation” near me.  I emailed and left phone messages and then was invited to visit Sunday service.  I was greeted with the warmth of Father’s love, which thankfully endures past all our personal and collective sin.  I am ever grateful for the pervasiveness of that eternal love.
 
Nonetheless, there was a notable lack of urgency, which had been a hallmark of the Unification Church, now in times I considered to be more urgent than ever: we were in the midst of a global genocide and unprecedented unconstitutionality and lawlessness in government at every level.  The gist of the sermon offered by the local Family Federation leader had not changed much since the 1970’s – it was warmed-over, Mose Durst-styled optimism (2) -- and the general atmosphere was one of contentment. 
 
Lunching together after service, we had conversations that ranged from the old days in the Church to the latest exploits of Elon Musk and other mass-media “heroes.” I was curious, of course, about what had seemed to be Church compliance with Covid mandates and vaxxing.  My questions had apparently never been considered, were too bewildering, and perforce politely ignored. There would not be a discussion of the terror of a psychological operation having broadsided the American people via television programming.  They loved television. 
 
While being back in the fold of some semblance of the Unification Church offered a modicum of relief from the troubling events occurring in the world, I also felt a growing resistance welling up to being lulled into complacency: the church center was more like a retirement home than the cutting-edge Christianity that ought to have been the Church of Reverend Sun Myung Moon.  This Church was comfortably asleep and believed in the narratives and orchestrated events they were fed by the media.  One Sunday over lunch, talk turned to Sean Moon, the miscreant True Child who had his own church.  Though all the True Children had been spoiled brats, according to one Church brother, this one was flagrantly, scandalously so.  This one had GUNS, and, as that logic played out, “what could possibly go wrong.”
 
As I mentioned earlier, I had no experience of the True Children and never expected to meet one.  I knew nothing about them, except that the MFT was reprimanded over fundraising on the grounds of a campus where one attended school.  I truly had no interest whatsoever, except that the brother sitting next to me at lunch turned to me directly: “Whatever you do,” he said, “stay away from Sean Moon.” 
 
That clinched it.
 
I was now in hot pursuit of what I hoped was the true Unification Church, what ought to be a Church “up in arms” over the impossible evil in the world, an evil so evil it had to be the work of Satan and his minions in the final battle between Good and Evil.  I wanted to be on the front line.  I excused myself from lunch, said my good-byes to the Family Federation, and raced home to do an online search for Sean Moon.
 
I found the young Reverend Moon in video after video of Sunday sermons. He was fearless and wasted no time, minced no words, in his condemnation of the abominations occurring around us. It was clear that he was experiencing the world in the same raw, unfiltered way I was.  It both substantiated and humbled me to know that God was still on earth.
 
I am not sure how I discovered that Hak Ja Han was not True Mother -- I do not remember those details, but the emotional shock and deep sorrow were earth-shattering.  I could not get the images out of my mind of Father and Hak Ja Han together -- and there had been many iconic images of the True Parents -- photographs that had been prizes for top fundraisers or gifts given from one church member to another.  I could not trick my mind into believing that it was possible for True Parents to “divorce” if that were even the appropriate word for it.
 
I was aware that there was another woman, a saintly one who had met True Father in the beginning of his ministry in Seoul, Korea.  That was not particularly troubling; it was just the idea that the cherished concept of True Parents could be torn asunder like everything else in the world.  My own mother had just died the year before I found Sanctuary Church without the reconciliation I had hoped to make with her. It was a difficult matter that I had put off until it was too late.  My mother’s death was complicated by the fact that she had taken the Covid vaxxine a few months earlier, and it was my belief that she had died of it.  The rest of my family thought differently, and so another profound rift opened up.  I was now more alone than ever.
 
The west coast is sunny most of the time. I had moved across the border from San Diego to reside in Baja California, Mexico.  Despite blue skies and mild temperatures, the ocean was tossing up waves that inundated and buried the once-wide and walkable beach and crashed into the first floor of my neighbors’ waterfront homes.  This was the second year the water had risen, and now the beach was utterly gone.  It was paradise lost, another reminder that the world was changing rapidly and the reality I had always known was disappearing, taking all sense of stability and normalcy with it. There was no theology, either, to explain how the exalted precept of True Parents could be broken and disappear like so much sand on a beach. How there was any hope without True Parents was imponderable. I simply cried myself to sleep night after night.
 
In a dream one evening, I felt a presence I recognized as feminine, the warmth of which began to surround me; then I felt the touch of a hand at my right shoulder.  I knew instantly and naturally -- the way we do in such dreams or trance states – that the presence was that of the saint whom Father had once called “the Mother of the Unification Church,” the one who had become True Mother, Hyun Shil Kang.  I fell into a deep sleep and awoke the next morning refreshed, calm, and clear-headed.  I never again experienced sorrow over the loss of Hak Ja Han. It had been wiped clean as suddenly as a desert rain storm crashes through and clears the badland. In fact, I rejoiced in the knowledge that there was a Christ-like entity now in the spirit world who was looking after me, a mother who would appear at critical junctures just as Jesus did to comfort and offer words of encouragement.
 
A few years back, Jesus had made me laugh in the midst of a deep round of crying over the horror of government terrorism and mass-media programming that put people in a hypnotic state of zombie-like obedience.  My crying out was interrupted by softly-spoken words, “There is always something to cry about,” which sent me into wails of laughter because of its suddenness and knowing that if anyone ever had something to cry about, it would be Jesus whose suffering was far beyond anything I would ever know.  In my adult years, I had always experienced Jesus as witty and humorous in a way that led me to deeper understanding and certainty.
 
True Mother’s visitations have been equal and different from those of Jesus, and it is my contention that the Unification Church has sorely needed the love of a mother who was just as real as her masculine counterpart. True Mother is a reassuring presence; she initiated in me a newfound love of reading the Bible and has guided my instruction in it. Moreover, many of us never had a consistent experience of a mother’s love in our lives.  Now it seems that Hak Ja Han existed merely as a placeholder until the ultimate revealing of the True Mother. Praise God. Our theology should take us back to the truth of the womb, the container of true love prepared for us by Christ, the provision He made for our safety through time, through the generations, until we could meet the Second Coming.
 
Perhaps it is an individual matter; perhaps one must have a personal experience as indelible as what I had.  Yet, I invite all of you to be open to our True Mother, Hyun Shil Kang, and to pray that she be revealed to you as intimately as she was to me.  I invite all of you to break from Hak Ja Han, no matter the degree of your indignation against her, no matter how badly she broke your heart in its innocent belief in True Parents.  I suggest turning away from her, forgetting all about her, and directing your focus upon the one True Mother who knows how to comfort you and educate you.  In fact, I dare say there was never a True Mother before Hyun Shil Kang.  I truly believe Hak Ja Han’s fate is in God’s hands and that we need not concern ourselves about her or her heretical teachings. That is my faith.
 
(1) Vaxx and vaxxine are alternative spellings of the word, vaccine, intended to acknowledge the presence of genetically-engineered and non-biological ingredients discovered in them, as well as substances known to be poisonous to human beings. X’s on bottles were once used by distillers to indicate the level of alcoholic content and came to symbolize “poison” to the abstinent.
 
(2) Mose Durst was the director of the Unification Church on the west coast, also known as the Creative Community Project in Oakland, California, where he was noted for his syncretic, upbeat lectures.  He became president of the American Unification Church in 1980. The Dursts were central to my joining and leaving the Unification Church.  They remain members of Family Federation.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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