The hook that snagged Arti Rose, into what the media would later dub the Moonies, was a yellow flyer a nice young man had handed her mom downtown. After a hard day’s work at The News, Sue Cronkite emptied the outside flap of her purse atop a pile of junk-mail, Jesus tracts, and popular inspirational books like Jonathan Livingston Seagull which graced her coffee table. A college student home for the summer of 1972, Arti Rose read the relevant topics outlined inside the pamphlet, and called the number on back. Gabe Dane said he was from San Francisco (mecca of flower children still looking for the Summer of Love).
Soon Arti Rose and her friends and family were all falling in and out of love with Gabe Dane. Attending his New Life Lecture Series, she and her Jesus freak brother, Davie, and their friends and lovers agreed with some of The Divine Principles but argued about whether the source of this revelation , Sun Myung Moon, could be the messiah of the New Age. Moon’s story was that Jesus had spoken to him at the age of sixteen, on a Korean mountaintop, asking young Moon to fulfill His thwarted mission of unifying God’s children in love.
Whether or not Moon was the new messiah, change was clearly in the air. Arti Rose had grown up in the 1960s, hearing songs about love and peace. In the ‘70s songs and symbols announced the Age of Aquarius, and two of the Beatles were leading the Eastern-religion trend. Sun Myung Moon’s Divine Principle mixed yin-yangs with an interpretation of Judeo-Christianity (making it easier for someone raised in the Southern Bible Belt to swallow).
Soon after finishing the six-part lecture series, Arti Rose insisted on moving into the Unification Church Center with Gabe. She was in love, but Gabe was pledged to save himself for the blessing (a mass wedding of couples paired by Moon). The Center filled up with college students who spent their spare time studying and teaching Moon’s principles. Within months most were quitting school and jobs to sell candles and flowers full-time.
After a successful fund-raising drive, the national Unification Church bought a foreclosed estate in NY, and Moon’s family moved in. He began his New Hope for America speaking tour. But the media image of him in that estate, while American youth panhandled for him, began to eclipse his message.
In spring of 1973, Arti Rose left town with a caravan of Moon’s multinational and multiracial One World Crusade. She would meet someone who would further frame her future.
Arti Rose’s mother, missing her daughter, stopped by the local Center after work sometimes, taking meat and vegetables to supplement their starchy diet. She sometimes cooked and ate with them and was comforted by their warmth, positivity, considerate manners, cleanliness, and rules. No intoxicants; no premarital sex…
As relationships and fundraising on the road got more difficult, Arti Rose started calling her mother from pay phones. Their friendship paved a very different path for Arti Rose’s way out of what was being called a cult , at a time when some parents were having their own children kidnapped.
The book, follow the Sun; become the Moon, delves deep and raw, as the author, her mother, and their authentic characters both celebrate and mourn a generation.
