Last week, I wrote an elegy to the vacant lot I walk past every day. Today, I found out that the vacant lot is going to be taken over by Mormons. Here is a picture of the construction site (a bit blurry). It says it will be a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints – in English and Korean and something Chinese off to the right side, which I find quite puzzling.
I sometimes have expressed that I feel a certain fascination for Mormonism – a kind of fatal attraction. It may be because I grew up in a house across the street from a fairly large Mormon Church. It may be because in middle school and high school, I had several close friends who were Mormon. One friend, Wade, used to evangelize me on a fairly regular basis, though he was always quite respectful and polite. The consequence is that my own emerging atheist “faith” came to be defined, in part, as the outcome of a dialogue with Mormonism. Even at that age (or because of it?), I took that dialogue quite seriously. I suppose I was somewhat attracted to social aspects of the Church, even if I found the cosmology absurd.
And then there’s my name, which has meant that when Mormons meet me, they assume I’m an apostate – because Jared is a very common Mormon name, whereas it is not so common in the broader culture. One of the proto-Mormon groups in the Book of Mormon is even called the “Jaredites.” I had a teacher in high school who was Mormon (there were a lot of Mormons in my hometown, although not a majority), who even asked me once why my parents didn’t send me to the Mormon Church. He just jumped to the conclusion on the basis of my name that I must be Mormon in background.
So the fact that they’re building a church a few blocks from my home in Ilsan feels weird to me. Like they’re following me around.
[daily log: walking, 6.5km]