My first exposure to Falun Gong was through my ex-mother-in-law, a Naval officer’s widow living in San Diego, a woman with a history of heroic meddlesomeness going back to the early sixties when she helped smuggle people out of Cuba to the US via Mexico. In the seventies she came down with cancer, and for the next thirty years or so she fought the good fight against death, serving salads full of odd weeds fresh picked from the yard, quaffing supplements, and seeking, ever seeking. Occasionally she had relapses but she always battled back, and eventually about a year ago she passed away.  She was eighty or so, and she had been a chee gong practitioner for the last ten years of her life.  I never quite understood the attraction of this specific discipline, nor quite grasped how she had been brought into the fold, but in a world where the Reverend Sun Myung Moon can influence the foreign policy of the United States I don’t suppose it’s any surprise that a group of Chinese dissidents would find support on Point Loma.
At Friends Meeting yesterday a fellow stood up after worship and told a story about a relative who has been imprisoned by the Chinese for her association with the Falun Gong movement. He was full of fear and he told a story about organ harvesting (it seems that the Falun Gong practioners are so healthy that they are just ripe for organ harvesting and the Chinese Government are the next thing to baby eaters). I was reminded of stories about Iraqis killing the babies in nurseries at Kuwaiti hospitals. I was reminded of stories about the prototypical enemy’s tendency to eat babies, and how god is really on our side. I was skeptical.
Today I am more skeptical. I had to research the organ harvesting story. I couldn’t just let it go. I found that it has been making the rounds for the last eight years or so and there is no proof (that I could find) for it. But I also found that the Mayor of Madison, a nice progressive fellow in so many ways, has proclaimed May 2007 to be Falun Dafa month. And I wonder, who’s zooming whom?
Reading the proclamation, I’m a little baffled about what the extent of the movement in New York has to do with Madison, but that’s just the way I am. I also wonder about the extent of CIA involvement in promoting the sect.
Sadly, I have little doubt that the non-conformist chee gong movement members in China are exposed to horrible repression, internment, and cruel punishment. But, rather than move diplomatically in concert with the Chinese to find a way to end the strife, we in the west are up to our old failed political tricks, polarizing and capitalizing on sectarian strife.
[tags]Falun Gong, Falun Dafa, Qi Gong, chee gong[/tags]
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