Some of the earliest memories I have of growing up in the northern Virginia area include my many wanderings about old church grounds. The dusty, wooden playground with the two swings and monkey bars were a favorite haunt of mine; that, and the small storage space behind the sanctuary where all the choir uniforms hung loosely on wire hangers, and cardboard boxes were stacked high with costumes and crafts from Sunday school plays. I would wander about because my parents would leave for home without me, assuming that if no one else gave me a ride to my house, then I could just make the mile and half trek back home on foot.
I suppose my mom and dad just felt that secure about leaving me in the care of random Korean church folk, but I couldn't help thinking that they were too generous with their confidence every time I mounted the sidewalk home. The building itself was affectionately nicknamed "the warehouse" for its large, essentially box-like shape; it had a giant, gold-painted cross stuck on the side of it that kids would pass as they ran and screamed in a fury of energy and exhilaration. I remember the church in summer time, how pink and white flowers popped out of well-trimmed bushes and hedges, and grandmothers would sing Korean hymnals as they set the wooden picnic tables for lunch.
I made fast friends with a couple of the other children in Sunday school at church, and it must have been everyday for a year that I ran up to my parents during lunch time to ask if I could sleep over at Mina's house or Grace's place. My dad would shrug and tell me to ask my mom, and she in turn would sigh and tell me what a headache it will be to have to go home to get extra clothes and toiletries. Normally I was able to get my way during the summer time, since convincing her was only a matter of time and persistent whining (and I had no shortage of either); but if homework came up then I knew there was no chance. I had an unfortunate habit formed out of my early years of schooling of never getting my homework done before Sunday night, and my mom was done-do, not done-do nothing policy.
Sleepover or no, it was fun darting through the legs of adults in the cafeteria and having dangerous contests like, who could jump the furthest off of the swings; every once in a while I’d check on the flower petals I was pressing underneath the large church sports trophies. To mellow out in the afternoons, the girls hung out in the old bathroom with the huge mirror and slightly broken heater. By far, my favorite activity was to interrupt whatever the children’s pastor, Peter Suh, was working on and chatter away nonsensically until he couldn’t work anymore. It was towards the end of 6th grade that I began to notice that the adults liked to play games of their own as well.
“No. You can’t sleep over at Mina’s house.”
“Aw but why? It’s summer!”
“It’s better if you come home tonight, I’m sure Mina’s parents would agree. Come on, get in the car. Let’s go home now.”
“Can’t I at least hang out for a little bit longer? I’ll get a ride with Joanne or Daniel.”
“Your sister and brother are at home already. We have to go, say goodbye.”
I was pouting but my mom wasn’t budging, so I turned to Mina, slapped hands with her and promised that I’d have our club pledge memorized by the next week. I got into the car but noticed as I shut the car door that the church was a lot quieter than usual.
I didn’t have the pledge memorized by the following week but it didn’t really matter because I didn’t see Mina the next week. Somewhat relieved, I breathed easy and determined that I would memorize it by the time I saw Mina again. I actually never memorized that pledge and things quickly went downhill from then on. It was as though a large, dark storm cloud settled itself over my church, and instead of bringing rain (which you could run around in and have fun making a mess of yourself) it brought misery. A permanent misery rain cloud. I was so annoyed.
Everyone got to be in such bad moods. I was walking to leave through the front doors of the church one day and one of the less friendly grandmas that I had seen around church was passing by. Well-trained by my mom to bow courteously anytime there were old people present, I bobbed my head and greeted her in formal Korean speech. She glared at me. I saw her squinty little eyes get still squintier and she stared at me with eyes that meant to offend. I was stopped; mentally scanning through the movements I’d made play-by-play, I concluded with thinking, ‘What- did- I- DO?’ So not right.
I had this knack for walking into situations at the wrong time. While stepping out to go to the bathroom during the Youth Group Sunday service, I came out to see a thin old man trying to take a swing at the senior pastor. My first thought was, ‘There’s no way he could take him. The pastor is at least 20 years younger than him.’ It was weirder to watch than watching Scott, a boy living up the street from me, cry and whine about his older brother Justin not letting him have the bamboo stick in his hand. Another example would be when I found all the doors in the church locked after service. I walked round to the front to find fully grown men and women with arms linked and blocking the only entrance that was open. I asked them to let me through so that I could get my bible and go home but they didn’t seem to hear me. ‘What is up with these adults?’
My mom later explained to me that no, the adults were not playing an intense game of Red Rover when they were standing at the entrance and that the old man trying to swing at the pastor was much more serious than a schoolyard fight.
“This is all because of that man,” she seethed.
“What man?”
She pointed at her arm which was in a sling at that time, attributing its needle for a cradle to a terrible, horrible, no-good monster. It was the monster that was wreaking havoc on church; tearing up relationships and scattering people from the church with every word that fell from his mouth. I pictured green scales, red eyes, curled lips and sharp teeth; there were laser beams flying out of eyes and a big mouth as a giant, spiked tail flew about and stubby, clawed arms swung at a short, box-like building; I imagined loud, piercing roars of triumph and exaggerated dread on the faces of black and white people who pointed and yelled as a giant shadow swept over them.
Yes. I pictured Godzilla.
Who else could cause this much destruction in so short a time?!
I could almost see it: Swipe! There goes a pastor’s credibility. Swipe! My mother needs a sling!
This imagination carried on far longer than it should have, but since I had no face or name to recognize him by, Godzilla’s stayed crystal in my mind. Even as I neared the end of high school, I found myself able to recognize symptoms of Godzilla’s touch in people my age; his radioactive footprint was stamped into people’s eyes. He wasn’t openly talked about and neither was church; he was like a whispered nightmare and continued to have his ghoulish form in my mind until I sat down to dinner with my dad one day.
“Dad, who was that man? What did he do? And why did he do it?”
My dad’s long salt- and pepper-colored eyebrows wriggled up and down a bit as he chewed thoughtfully, like an old wise-man, searching memory to find an appropriate beginning to a terrible tale. I was eagerly waiting, sitting up a bit straighter in anticipation of gory details and a shocking story. What came out instead was quite normal; almost boring by story-telling standards.
There was a man and he wanted money. He conspired to get that money by convincing church people to sell their land to a certain company that he’d discovered (and made a private deal with). People were opposed and he tried to discredit those people with rumors and bullying others into taking his side. The twist about his being involved in a popular cult in Korea sounded promising. He was just a young man, my dad said. The scales fell away and I pictured light skin, and a head of black hair.
“Did you know him when we first went to that church?”
My dad shook his head slowly. Apparently he was in China when we came to that particular church on a business trip. A blue suit replaced claws and a sharp jaw line took the place of a gaping mouth full of jagged teeth.
“Why did he do all those things?”
Dad scratched his head and selected some vegetable side dishes to place on his rice. He was asked to do this sort of thing by the cult leader in Korea. I guess he thought he was doing the right thing.
Later, I looked at a picture of a smiling, round-faced old man who had been the leader of a people group nicknamed The Moonies. He would have seemed a kindly sort of man to me if he hadn’t been the cause for an embarrassing, enraging, stupefying church split on this side of the world. He had a wife and children, a normal man by all accounts, except for the fact that he declared himself to be the Second incarnation of Christ and crowned himself savior of the entire world. I imagine Charles Kim, the man who’d been the catalyst for the chaos in church, to be a family man as well, maybe a bit more stooped and with some gray in his hair now. I wonder what his children must think of their father and whether his wife was proud of him.
One man thought he was Jesus, another man believed him; look what came of it. I had prayed a few times, wondering why it was that God could allow for such ridiculous men to be able to inflict so much pain on His people. I took comfort in a passage in the bible one day:
Jesus told them another parable: "The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared.
"The owner's servants came to him and said, 'Sir, didn't you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?'
" 'An enemy did this,' he replied.
"The servants asked him, 'Do you want us to go and pull them up?'
"The servants asked him, 'Do you want us to go and pull them up?'
" 'No,' he answered, 'because while you are pulling the weeds, you may root up the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.' "
“Dad, what is Charles Kim doing now?”
“I think he’s at another church.”
