Cultic Studies Review, Vol. 2, No. 3, 2003, Page 26
If my ―mission‖ (that is, my assigned role in the church) had been anything other than the
Seminary, I would have been compelled by my church superiors to repress my feelings
again. However, because I was at the Seminary, where Unificationists were expected to
wrestle with intellectual questions, I was not compelled.
At first, I was so euphoric about the rediscovery of my own real feelings that I set out to
spread the word to the entire Seminary. So I wrote a heartfelt, poetic sermon titled
―Seeking the Oasis,‖ which I gave first to my Homiletics class, and then to the entire
Seminary. I still have a copy of this sermon, and I will quote from the last page because this
is probably the first piece of writing I produced since joining the Unification Church that
proceeded from my own authentic thoughts and feelings:
No one had ever penetrated to touch that depth of my heart before, and I
cried in gratitude to God that He had taken such special interest in me as to
even find a way to look after me I hadn‘t realized I needed. My tears were
like a small rivulet from the great, broad river flowing from the heart of God.
If we can open our hearts to it, then this river of love can wash over the roots
of our being, bringing forth even the Tree of Life from out of the desert sands.
All we need to do is to find the time and take the risk to bare our hearts to
our brothers and sisters. Our hearts may be as dry and thirsting as the most
barren ground without our even knowing it. Replenish them with the
nourishing water of your tears, and from the seed of your liberation will
sprout the sturdiest tree to give shade and comfort to all who come after you
there, with sunbaked, parching lips, seeking the oasis.
For the next six years, the more I tried to remain loyal to these ideas, the more I found
myself being pushed to the fringes of the church, and eventually out. Yet, throughout this
entire time, I continued to fear that I was straying from the straight and narrow, and I
struggled with the question of whether I should force my feelings back down again. (At one
point, I even considered voluntarily returning to the M.F.T.).
In the summer of 1980, I started a diary, which in my book I called the Boston Diary,
because I started it while I was in Boston as part of a contingent of seminarians in the new
three-year Divinity program who were expecting to return to their studies in the fall.
The Boston Diary demonstrates very clearly my divided state of mind, as I swung back and
forth between my authentic self and my cult self. This is how I describe the Boston Diary in
my new book:
I still have this diary, the only one of the many diaries I kept during my
Unification Church years that I did not later destroy in a fit of self-reforming
zeal. This one was special to me because the entries in it are so heart-
rending, so full of lacerating pain and desperate questioning, that I could not
bring myself to repudiate it. It is a small book with cream-colored pages,
covered with brown cloth, in which I wrote in ball point pen, my handwriting
sometimes scrawling and expansive, sometimes cramped and mechanical, as
I vacillated between the two sides of myself. (Neufeld, 111)
My inability during that summer in Boston to voluntarily repress my feelings made it almost
inevitable that, upon my return to the Seminary, I would be swiftly shown the door.
However, because of the high regard that Sun Myung Moon had for the Seminary during
that era, I received different treatment than I might have received if I had been an ordinary
member. The usual way to handle members who are having problems is to send them to a
Divine Principle workshop if that doesn‘t work, they may be placed in a demanding mission
such as the M.F.T. or, if all else fails, they are sent home to their parents. But instead of
If my ―mission‖ (that is, my assigned role in the church) had been anything other than the
Seminary, I would have been compelled by my church superiors to repress my feelings
again. However, because I was at the Seminary, where Unificationists were expected to
wrestle with intellectual questions, I was not compelled.
At first, I was so euphoric about the rediscovery of my own real feelings that I set out to
spread the word to the entire Seminary. So I wrote a heartfelt, poetic sermon titled
―Seeking the Oasis,‖ which I gave first to my Homiletics class, and then to the entire
Seminary. I still have a copy of this sermon, and I will quote from the last page because this
is probably the first piece of writing I produced since joining the Unification Church that
proceeded from my own authentic thoughts and feelings:
No one had ever penetrated to touch that depth of my heart before, and I
cried in gratitude to God that He had taken such special interest in me as to
even find a way to look after me I hadn‘t realized I needed. My tears were
like a small rivulet from the great, broad river flowing from the heart of God.
If we can open our hearts to it, then this river of love can wash over the roots
of our being, bringing forth even the Tree of Life from out of the desert sands.
All we need to do is to find the time and take the risk to bare our hearts to
our brothers and sisters. Our hearts may be as dry and thirsting as the most
barren ground without our even knowing it. Replenish them with the
nourishing water of your tears, and from the seed of your liberation will
sprout the sturdiest tree to give shade and comfort to all who come after you
there, with sunbaked, parching lips, seeking the oasis.
For the next six years, the more I tried to remain loyal to these ideas, the more I found
myself being pushed to the fringes of the church, and eventually out. Yet, throughout this
entire time, I continued to fear that I was straying from the straight and narrow, and I
struggled with the question of whether I should force my feelings back down again. (At one
point, I even considered voluntarily returning to the M.F.T.).
In the summer of 1980, I started a diary, which in my book I called the Boston Diary,
because I started it while I was in Boston as part of a contingent of seminarians in the new
three-year Divinity program who were expecting to return to their studies in the fall.
The Boston Diary demonstrates very clearly my divided state of mind, as I swung back and
forth between my authentic self and my cult self. This is how I describe the Boston Diary in
my new book:
I still have this diary, the only one of the many diaries I kept during my
Unification Church years that I did not later destroy in a fit of self-reforming
zeal. This one was special to me because the entries in it are so heart-
rending, so full of lacerating pain and desperate questioning, that I could not
bring myself to repudiate it. It is a small book with cream-colored pages,
covered with brown cloth, in which I wrote in ball point pen, my handwriting
sometimes scrawling and expansive, sometimes cramped and mechanical, as
I vacillated between the two sides of myself. (Neufeld, 111)
My inability during that summer in Boston to voluntarily repress my feelings made it almost
inevitable that, upon my return to the Seminary, I would be swiftly shown the door.
However, because of the high regard that Sun Myung Moon had for the Seminary during
that era, I received different treatment than I might have received if I had been an ordinary
member. The usual way to handle members who are having problems is to send them to a
Divine Principle workshop if that doesn‘t work, they may be placed in a demanding mission
such as the M.F.T. or, if all else fails, they are sent home to their parents. But instead of
