Visiting the Center

I went to the "center" with the Japanese man (that's what they called their churches - they were located in homes, not church buildings) and listened to 2 lectures given by a black guy named Reggie. The first lecture described what an ideal world would be like, and from their point of view, what it was meant to be from the very beginning of history. The second lecture focused on what went wrong in the beginning and why we're living in this messed up world instead of in the ideal. It was based on stuff from the Bible, so most of it went over my head. However, I was at least familiar with the characters they mentioned - Adam, Eve, Satan and of course, God.

After the lectures we had our meal. This was my first experience with Japanese cuisine. They prepared something called chicken curry, which I had never heard of or had before. It was a spicy, flavorful sauce with chicken and vegetables served over rice and very tasty. It was especially delicious since I had had nothing to eat since breakfast, and by now it was late in the afternoon. After the dinner a lot of attention was paid to me, with various people coming up to me to talk. Two things struck me about these people. One was that they were dressed very conservatively. The guys wore slacks and button-up shirts with ties. The girls wore dresses, skirts or nice pant suits. All the guys had crew cuts and the women kept their hair relatively short as well. I felt out of place since most of the people I associated with were the hippie types. This was the early 70s with the hippie movement in full-force and I completely identified with it. Both males and females kept their hair long, wore jeans or cut-offs, and t-shirts. Also, I had given up wearing a bra awhile back (too sexist) and usually wore a halter top. I went barefoot most of the time as well. So these people seemed very strange to me.

The other thing that struck me about the people was their diversity. There were people from all over the world such as Austria, Italy, Japan, Israel, Honduras, and France to name a few, along with some Americans. And they were all living together, communal style, in this large center (house). They said that they believed in the unity of all people and I could see that they really practiced it.

Somehow these folks managed to convince me to stay with them for a few more days instead of going to Pensacola. They said that the following weekend the entire lecture series would be presented, so then I would get a more complete picture of what their ideology was all about and could decide whether or not this was for me. Since I was not completely set on going to Pensacola and was still searching for answers, I decided to stay. That few days turned into years.