Dying on PLA

This next post is written by a former BC who questioned an authority figure on PLA and experience life-threatening consequences.I’ll start with this: the moment I was dying was when I felt my soul sinking into the ground during the PLA 2000 tour, in a lavish town house owned by The Unification Church in Kensington, one of the most expensive neighborhoods in London, UK. I was 16 when this all happened. For some reason, my soul wasn’t rising as you might imagine when people die, probably because it was too tired, instead, it sank. I was in a sleeping bag and surrounded by 300 other kids all in sleeping bags, lined up like goods in the grocery store with little room to walk. Asleep, I slowly realized that I was sinking through my sleeping bag, past my body, into the oriental rug and through hardwood floor, deep into the ground, creeping further and further below the foundation of the building. So I knew I was dying—but I didn’t feel the least bit sad or upset. In fact I was relieved—even ecstatic. It meant that the torment from my supposed fellow BCs would be over, that this pain from the infection raging through my body that left my neck, arms, wrists wrapped in puss filled bandages, and my body so fatigued (so. fatigued.) would be over. The ground felt cool, and was getting colder, and it was really actually quite refreshing.

How great would that be to not have to wake up? Who cares if these people found a dead girl in her sleeping bag in the morning. Good for them. They might be surprised but they’d get to spin some fantastic story about my soul paying indemnity for the crimes that my Japanese ancestors committed against the Koreans; that’s apparently how they were explaining my mysterious illness to friends— an illness that had my upper body oozing a relentless and embarrassing flow of thick yellow puss, that had me changing my bandages every hour if I had the energy and a clean bandage on me. I found out that this story was making the rounds through the 300 or so BCs who were also on that tour. Before that, someone who I went to summer camp with for years, actually asked nonplussed, if I was currently struggling with Satan. Another story that others hinted to was that I was fallen. Writer’s note: At that point in time, like many of you, I had not so much as held a boy’s hand, let alone kissed anyone, made out and definitely never lost my virginity. I was precocious, spirited, ballsy—like any teenager trying to find humor in strange places. Most things I did was for the sake of a good laugh. But I was in my heart a total straight arrow, and I believed in the church, seriously, like the best or worst of them.

On this trip, there were also elders who took me aside from the group dinners and recounted the amazing stories about my dad and what a great guy he was at the religious seminary, the New Yorker hotel, Belvedere, etc. And then they would say; Why would you disappoint him so horribly?

I wouldn’t know exactly how much I was disappointing him because I was never allowed to call him or my mom, or make any phone calls for that matter. I was being guarded 24/7, my passport was locked up, I wasn’t allowed to sleep much (I would be kept up later and woken up earlier than the others), nor take showers, which caused, what I would later find to be a trio of life-threatening infections coursing through my body. I had a very different experience from other BCs who were free to eat, shower, and sleep.

When I felt like my soul must have been half a mile below ground. I stopped, because this was it. Then I felt something big—bigger than me, bigger than everything and everyone around me, pulling me up with the utmost urgency, and I knew that this big thing gave a damn— even if I didn’t. I snapped back to my body with a whiplash that woke me up, panting, freaking out. Even if I didn’t care to live (and I really didn’t), even if these 300 other people around me, even if my religion didn’t care, God, the universe, this force, without a doubt, cared violently. This is when I realized that God did not move exclusively through organized religion, he/it moves and vibrates in anything, in everything. So my direct relationship with this force was felt for the first time under those floorboards, separate from and despite the machinations of my religion.

I immediately woke up and saw in the reflection of this gigantic ornate gold mirror on the wall opposite me, what looked like at least 20-30 white, blue glowing shadows, all very tall, standing around me and the dozens of sleeping BCs around me. Who they were, I’m not sure, I was delirious, and more importantly I was terrified that I had almost died, and so willingly. I couldn’t go back to sleep. But now I had a fire in my stomach, to get through this alive and a rabid indignity against those who’d put me in this position, including myself. I would do right by the universe, by God, by surviving this.

I got here by making the mistake of questioning the director of the PLA on the modus operandi of the Pure Love Alliance, Day 1 of the tour. My fellow BCS didn’t make the mistake of vocalizing the inconsistencies in the logic of posing as a non-denominational group when we were 99% BCs, they didn’t stand up for the not even 1 percent non-BC kids who didn’t have a choice but to read the DP and join our prayers. If you are too precocious with too many rhetorical questions for elders, you’ll see just how nasty and how quickly the machine will mobilize against you.

Why. During the previous PLA tour of 1999 I remember lying about our religious association when being interviewed by the local news in Birmingham, AL. We were vetted and instructed to withhold our association with the Unification Church so when a reporter asked me what I was, I responded “Lutheran"— my father’s previous religion before joining the church.

I hate lying about something as grand and dumb as my religion. I didn’t think that we needed to constantly lie, it frustrated me always having to hide the church from my school friends and I wanted to do away with the smoke and mirrors and live openly about this. So at the beginning of the 2000 tour that would be marching through the US in July and then marching through Europe in August, I went up to the director and I asked him: why can’t we be forthright about who we are, if we’re truly non-denominational?

I didn’t immediately realize what a total coward he was, I just thought he was an adult, he must have some good answers. But he pandered with half answers, trotted me around the ring with half baked logic all while getting increasingly upset and dismissive: you just don’t understand; this is much too complicated for you to understand (more upset); this is God’s will; do you want to go against God’s will? And I responded with: I think it’s pretty simple, God doesn’t need us to lie. We should be honest to the press and other churches about being associated with the UC. Otherwise we should stop calling ourselves non-denominational, right? The conversation went no where and I eventually walked away.

I was probably earmarked as being a troublemaker but it wasn’t that bad. At least in the beginning, I hung out with my BC friends, some of whom I’d been growing up with and all was well during the tour through the US.

It was when I noticed that there were 3 or 4 non-BC kids on the tour—how they were roped in to hang out with us nutjobs for two weeks, I’m not sure, but I know everyone looked at them with a special wonder. They were special to us because we were showing them that there was this great camaraderie and communal life that we had together amongst ourselves and we really believed that we were letting them in on something special.

I noticed that while we were reading the divine principle and praying in circles, they were expected to do the same with us, without any opportunity to decide for themselves whether or not they wanted to in the first place. This would be a small but important gesture to extend for any organization that called itself non-denominational to the outside world; to accept and respect people of other faiths; to let them have the opportunity to pray in their own way if they needed to. It really bothered me because it seemed wildly disrespectful and a bit dishonest. If I were traveling with a Christian youth group, wouldn’t I want the right to read the DP and pray my way at 5 am in the morning on Sundays?

It became a breaking point when late one night on a tour bus in Europe, I brought up the issue again during a bus reading of the DP, and I got pissed. I openly pointed out to the bus leaders the hypocrisy of a so-called non-denominational youth group posing as such to the press, all while not respecting the faiths of others on the tour.They said that this is how it’s done, that everyone does the same thing so that they can stick to the strict schedule to get through the tour. This is the will and mission of the PLA, this is God’s will, and we need to see it through. Then I said: If they aren’t allowed to choose, than I refuse to read the DP and refuse to join prayers until they do have the choice.

I’m not really sure why I cared so much but it was because I could see my bus leaders acknowledging my logic, I could see behind their eyes that they did. But they towed the line and refused to acknowledge that there was any right. But my refusal to pray or read DP, they took very, very seriously—yet in my mind, I wasn’t doing anything drastic, I wasn’t leaving the church. That would be crazy! I was just taking a stand.

These non-BC kids were, at least outwardly, complacent. But let’s be honest we were all 14, 15, 16 years old and expected to do everything en masse, but why shouldn’t they/we have the choice to read the DP or not? What was faith if it wasn’t a deliberate, and educated choice? Shouldn’t anyone be allowed the right to question things, if only to return with stronger answers?

As soon as I had this fight on the bus, that was when the horrible things really began. I was always being shaken awake on long rides when everyone else was allowed to fall asleep, even if only for an hour or two. Lack of sleep breaks you quickly. I wasn’t allowed to sleep with my friends, instead I always had sometimes two unnis sleeping and walking with me. I could mingle with others, but I was always being watched by them close by. I was escorted to bathrooms but never allowed to take a shower, they said I could take one later, but later never came until it was too late, after my infections had become so severe they couldn’t exactly ignore it.

It was 3 in the morning when the buses filled with BC teenagers and our wranglers parked on the curve of the fucking German audubon to let us out. We were released into the cold night by our demented but well-meaning leaders, searching along the curve of the freeway in the wet grass and mud trying to find our suitcases. Let me repeat, 3 am, 300+ teenagers trudging in the dark along a sharp curve of the German audubon before entering what, in my mind, was the Black Forest.

I don’t even remember who was in charge of me at that point but it seemed to be predetermined that one sister became my handler in Germany. She came out of the blue, barking at me to move out, and personally marched me into that forest, literally behind me nipping at my heels, always on the assumption that I would flee sideways, off the trail, deeper into the forest, to what, I don’t know. I had no desire to leave, I was just hungry and exhausted. When we reached the top it was a huge building that wasn’t even fully constructed with insulation hanging out and utility lights haphazardly nailed and dangling from the ceilings. It was in a huge large barn like space where we convened in a long line to finally get some split pea soup as dinner, and by the time I finally got some, someone knocked it out of my hand, on purpose? Who the fuck knows. I would have cried but I was too tired and I don’t need sympathy. Some other BCs said that was too bad, but my handler wouldn’t let me go back in line to get more. Instead, we had to pitch our tents in the mud incline below the barn, my tent mate was of course my ever-watchful unni/handler.

I’m not exactly sure how the tent stood up, it was lopsided because of the mud and the wet grass, and the incline, but once that was done I went to go brush my teeth, and saw behind the barn, a bunch of white statues staggered in a terrifying symmetry along the hill; literally, I don’t think I’d ever seen anything as frightening as those statues in the moonlight. They were the true family, ghostly white and with their arms outstretched like they were dancing, I went up to them unsure as to what they were. They were smooth and so white but when I touched them, they weren’t marble, just hollow and plastic—creepy, empty lawn furniture. And for the first time in my life I saw them as this insidious, careless force who either had no idea, or simply had no compassion for the ramifications of their will and franchise. That was the night when my perspective on everything started to shift.

I wasn’t allowed to shower the next day even though I could see my other friends lining up with their towels. And I was always ferried away from communal meals, to have a one on one with some important elder who would shame me for an hour. And it worked. I remember one guy telling me with beady eyes, rather emphatically, how disappointing this will be for my father, who’s such a good guy, everyone loves him, I don’t know him, but everyone loves him— when he finds out how I’ve been working against the mission. I really tried hard to imagine if my dad would be proud or disappointed in me for taking a stand but my thoughts fizzled into a murky question mark while I stared at the white statues now in daylight. I didn’t know the answer and I was so tired, exhausted and hungry, and I was beginning to slowly not care as much.

But I also began to resent these elders for believing that I was working against them, I wasn’t! I was only asking good questions! I was on their side, and I believed I was still a good person.

Instead of not really being able to hang out with my friends, I sensed they were also avoiding me. I remember incredulous looks. It got super lonely fast.

It was when one elder oppa along with a whole slew of younger oppas in training crowded around me in a circle in front of everyone after one march to give me a talk. "Stop setting a bad example to the other sisters, this is your last warning.” Their vague warning was made abundantly clear. Even if it wasn’t true, my generation believed that I was fallen and that’s why I was acting out…

At that point I didn’t even consider the sheer stupidity in this non-linear logic, clearly, I ruined my chances of a good match! That was the end for me. No one would want to be blessed to me and that was when I began to really lose it because it never occurred to me that I wouldn’t have an arranged marriage, that my trajectory would be anything less than what was expected of me, or any different from anyone else. Even when I was asking these people seemingly simple rhetorical questions, it didn’t mean that I wanted to leave. But I was beginning to realize that it would be impossible to have a happily ever after ending in the church.

I don’t remember France, France was a blur, I just felt sluggish and horrible, light sensitive the entire time, still wasn’t allowed to sleep much and was barred from the showers. I was hiding a nasty rash that was breaking out all over my skin by wearing a cardigan, the only cardigan that I had brought on the trip.

My illness was getting bad when we arrived in the posh neighborhood of Kensington, London. The buses unloaded this shocking fire hazard number of teenagers into one townhouse that strangely appeared to have a bullet proof vestibule and a security camera at the entrance which only added to my feeling that I was being held captive. Meanwhile, nobody else seemed to care about this detail, the fact that we were in a fucking compound. You wouldn’t know it from the unassuming white exterior that blended in with the row of townhouses exactly like all the others in the neighborhood.

I remember after marching through Leicester square, my subgroup broke off to Trafalgar Square where we shouted our testimonies at one of the fountains and anyone else who would care to stop, but no one did. My leader wasn’t really convinced by my conviction to Pure Love. It was a bit hard, being exhausted, with a fever, to be shouting about Pure Love all while being slut shamed by my generation for no good reason at all. I didn’t really feel like shouting, I just wanted rest and to be alone.

My illness was getting from bad to worse quickly, I had a fever, felt hot, then clammy cold, sweating bullets, in addition to huge open sores spreading on my neck and arms, but whenever I asked to see a Dr. they wouldn’t allow it, I later realized it wasn’t because of money, even after I offered to pay myself, it was because they were afraid that I would talk about everything happening on the tour. It hadn’t even occurred to me to go public with any of this. With what? I didn’t know that there was a story, how bad it really was until afterward.

I did finally get to take a shower in London, I think because that was more reasonable than covering up a dead girl, probably. But the shower didn’t help at that point. Whatever was happening with the sores, it was also in my blood, I felt exhausted, jumpy, crazy, sensitive to light, miserable. When they wouldn’t let me see a doctor, when the pus was spilling out of my bandages and running down my neck, running down my arms, like in some horror film, I begged them to at least let me go to a pharmacy to buy bandages, Neosporin and hydrogen peroxide. They agreed so long as a brother escorted me, a tall one who could easily outrun me if it came to it.

Maybe it was because they were making such a huge deal to keep me on watch that I began to fantasize about getting away. Not to tell on anyone or anything, with no agenda in mind, I just wanted to go home. I asked if I could get my passport and my ticket to try and go home early but that was not possible. I just wanted to get away and so on our way to one rally, I had this brilliant idea and I jumped out of a subway train and onto the platform, I only ran 5 steps before I was yanked back into the train by my unni. After that everyone thought I was totally nuts and definitely pure evil. I had no idea where I was planning to go, I think I was just going to ask directions to a hospital— at that point my sores on my upper body were just getting bigger and were oozing, no amount of soaking the sores in hydrogen peroxide or neosporin would help. It was embarrassing because it was pus and blood soaking through my bandages and into my shirts that I could only rotate so many times. People on the subway and in public were furtively staring at me, they probably smelled the disease on me, but I couldn’t ask for their help.

In my mind today, my older self rewrites the history of that trip. In my older self’s version: I’m unstoppable even though I’m sick. In a fit of manic strength, I jump out of the train, out run my guard, and I don’t stop running until I get to a doctor or to a police station, whichever happens first — then I seek protection at the US embassy despite not having a passport or money on me, and then I get to all major news outlets and I expose this youth group for their psychological and physical abuse, and for misleading the public on the PLA. By doing so, I set a chain of events on an international scale that would bring to light all of the questionable things we’ve had to quietly endure. I put a small chink in the church’s armor and it all comes crashing down. I save my fellow BCs from a life without an educated choice to believe or not, from the waste of time spent fundraising for a thankless institution while their families struggle to get by, in questionable matchings, in a sad, vicious cycle.

In actuality, after nearly dying in a sleeping bag, I’m too tired but crazy alert and a day and a half later I’m somehow on my way to Heathrow airport via the subway. On the way there I fall asleep hugging my backpack, only to wake up to find that other passengers are just looking at me horrified; my bandages had soaked through again, I was pouring pus onto my backpack. I’m so embarrassed for alarming these strangers but there’s nothing I can do, I had changed my bandages only an hour before hand, right before leaving the townhouse. All I can do is zip up my anorak and hope I can rinse these out later. Finally at Heathrow, I’m handed my plane ticket and finally, my passport and it turns out that the tour is over. I can’t even believe it but the elders, including my handler, are walking away to catch their own planes. I curb my hysteria and get to a pay phone where I finally call my parents in Seattle on a collect call, and I’m freaking out, I’m worried that someone will come out from nowhere and cut the line, capture me, throw me in a white van, what with my luck.

My parents are so happy to hear from me! How are you kiddo? I have to fight to keep from sobbing, I’m shattering and yelling, focusing on just one thing: that they have to get me to a doctor as soon as I land, I keep repeating this until my dad promises and repeats this to me. I’m scared I just might drop dead right then and there. Once I’m appeased, I take deep breaths to cool down and I ask my mom if anyone in her family did anything to the Koreans during the occupation. She doesn’t understand the question until I explain to her the theory behind one of these rumors.

The line went quiet. My dad doesn’t know what to say, but my mom blew her top, she was furious.

In my mother’s adorable, hot headed Japanese mom fashion, she emphatically starts yelling into the phone about how my ancestors did nothing. No one in my family served, and in fact, my family was socially ostracized for years for accepting a Korean family who were on hard times into their farming community in Shizuoka prefecture. She was furious and I think stormed away from the phone but I was happy to know, without a doubt, that this dark age posturing was completely ridiculous. My sense of what was reality and what wasn’t was a bit diminished in my daze the past few days, I was glad to have my intellect reinforced.

My parents collect me at the airport and are stunned by the shape I’m in. The doctor explains that I have several severe infections, a staph infection and impetigo— a highly contagious bacterial infection on my skin, but it was progressing as an infection in my blood—septicemia. which would have killed me in 48 hours without medical attention. I’m given a heavy flow of an antibiotic cocktail and I’m closely monitored. When I do get home, I can hardly move, and if I’m not sleeping or sitting in a mineral bath, I’m taking antibiotics and trying to heal my skin in time for the new school that I’m transferring to. But in every waking moment, I’m trying to make sense of the previous two weeks. I tell my parents that I’m no longer in the church and they don’t even put up a fight. We don’t talk about it but they can hardly believe what happened to me.

From that point on, I’ve kept my distance from every BC. I partially hold it against them for being complacent, for not chiming in with me, for not seeing the fatal flaws that were so obvious to me. I hold it against them for not standing up for me when they saw the quiet abuse that I went through. For not speaking up for me when people were effectively spreading lies about me. But I realize they didn’t really know me enough, or really even know what was going on all around us at the time, or themselves for that matter. And if I were them instead of me, would I do it any differently?

I hold it against the church for breeding ignorance and stupidity in its members and families; encouraging them to have upwards 10 kids before they can even think about what it means to really take care of them, giving them a real, true education and a fulfilling life; for grinding these families into poverty, a life partially lived on food stamps, for what exactly, I’m still not sure; for collectively instilling this insidious belief that it’s women who are always at fault/responsible in all situations and who carry the onus of Eve’s imprint on the Fall; that men are never to blame/never responsible and therefore unaccountable creatures save for their purpose of begetting a blessed family; that if you’re about to be raped, it’s your duty to kill yourself—not defend yourself and your right to live—before it gets to that; that you are anything less in God’s eyes if you are raped; that our sexuality is a fixed binary without room to account for a full spectrum within ourselves that acknowledges and respects humanity in its entirety—homosexuality and all. I hold the Church responsible for the deaths of BCs I knew, but that’s a longer, separate story.

When and where it all went bad for the Unification Church, I don’t know. I know it was a beautiful thing when my parents joined, I truly believe that they were meant to be together. It was something that I believed in with my whole heart when I was little. I do in fact believe that I’m a blessed child— I have no doubt that there’s a divinity in me, but I know there’s a divinity in everyone, BC or not. Our lives should be lived acknowledging and honoring that little spark, that bit of magic in each of us. It’s that simple.

My only regret in leaving the church at 16 was leaving behind my fellow BCs, especially the younger ones who have no one to advocate for their choice to question. I know they’re struggling or have struggled against parents and elders who are even more forceful and too scared to ask the same questions themselves. I know their questions are harder because they haven’t seen what I have in such crazy, sharp relief. It was made almost too clear to me but for them their experience is slower, blurred and more broken. I have dreams where I’m fighting for them, but I have to leave them behind to fight my own battles. I can hardly think about the church for very long without feeling the most violent, extreme emotions, mostly on behalf of my fellow BCs. It’s part of the reason why I’ve kept away for as long as I have, I’ve forgotten names and faces, and while I’ve forgiven the church for what it’s done to me, I will never forgive what it’s done to the thousands of individuals and families raised in almost poverty because of it. In my heart, it’s not hate, it’s justice, it’s right and wrong, clean. In my heart, I am a fucking vigilante, and part of what propels me is to vindicate them. I fantasize about doing well enough in life, to have enough money so that I can buy up each of the church’s properties so that I can burn them all down to the ground, in the name of all my fellow BCs. If there is one thing that I can thank the church, it’s for making me a fiercely passionate person. To this day, I don’t think anyone can hold a candle to the flames that burn in our hearts.

Life outside of the church is hard, reprogramming the way you consider everything never ends. Dating still feels impossible even after 10 years at it. But it’s so beautiful, it’s so varied and complex and breathtaking— the multitudes, the possibilities that I’ve experienced and are still at my feet. It’s always up to me, every mistake, triumph, difficulty and opportunity is up to me, and I’m so grateful that my conclusions are my conclusions even if it’s a process. As stupid or sad as this story is, I’m grateful for it because now I have a tenacity that rivals most anything. Now, almost 14 years later, I am a fucking panther and I don’t let anyone or anything take me down. Nothing fools me, no situation happens without my consent, and I live life fully, authentically, deliberately and always on my terms. And I want that for every single BC, in the church or not.



