In Jin Moon
Unofficial notes: Andrew Compton
1) In Jin Nim greeted everyone wishing us happy New Year!
2) Last week Ariana, In Jin Nim's daughter, started our new year off with a wonderful time with our congregation. In Jin Nim wanted to set the tone for this year as the year in which we can concentrate on the importance of family and raising up a wonderful and beautiful generation of peace.
3) What better way to do so than to have her daughter start the year, dedicating the year to God, True Parents, and to our community.
4) As In Jin Nim was thinking back over the past year, she could not help but laugh and cry. In a moment of meditation she was thinking about all the things we've accomplished and are now working through, and all the things we will accomplish in the coming year.
5) In such a short amount of time, especially with the launch of the national broadcast that took place last year, In Jin Nim thanked all the states and district directors, from the bottom of their (the Lovin Life Team) hearts. And the Lovin Life team thanks the more than 10,000 of us who are joining in through the internet -- and to say that they are so grateful that they have this opportunity to worship together. Without our support, they would not be here. If we can continue to work really hard we can truly build something beautiful.
6) In Jin Nim feels that we have taken the first step in unifying the country under this one ministry. This is the time, every Sunday, when all of America can come together and worship together as a family. Building on that foundation if we can do, and continue all the good work that is taking place at headquarters, with our trust they can do many, many things this year.
7) In Jin Nim is especially honored to have True Parents with us. They are now in Las Vegas. Their hearts and prayers are always with every brother and sister in this country. When they pray about the younger generation they are truly hoping that we can raise up great young men and woman in this country, to really understand the importance of life and the profundity of the opportunity we've been given.
8) In light of what just occurred yesterday, the horrific act of the 22-year-old man who took a pistol in his hand and gunned down the US Representative, we have to think about what kind of society we are living in and what kind of children we are raising up in this great country of America.
9) Why is it that horrific acts of violence continue? This 22-year-old young man should be a representative of the generation of peace, he should be looking forward to his life, thinking about all the great things he can accomplish, and the beautiful family that he will build and all the wonderful ways of service that he could serve his community, his family, and the world. These are the kinds of things that our young people need to be thinking about, not taking a gun into your hands and deciding to shoot a representative of our country -- because you disagree with their policies.
10) As In Jin Nim thought about what took place -- she thought, here we are in the middle of Manhattan, and when she starts her day she is faced with the insanity of it all. She uses the word insanity with a touch of humor, because of the New Year's gift she received from her eldest son before he returned to London where he is continuing his graduate studies in economics. He told her, "I want to put you on the insanity program to help you with the insanity that you deal with on a daily basis." She asked him what he meant by that. "Do you want to give me another insanity?"
11) He said, yes. He and his wife have been thinking about New Year's resolutions and they wanted to invite her into their insanity program. In Jin Nim found out that this is actually a one-month work-out program. It contains terms she has never heard before. She is to religiously apply herself 45 minutes every day for one month, after which she will be healthy, fit, and hopefully insanity free. And so she promised her son she would do her best. When In Jin Nim is confronted with the insanity of New York City and her work at hand, at least she will have a smile on her face -- she'll be reminded that she has a torturous workout that her son set out for her.
12) Here at headquarters where they are constantly trying to figure out new and better ways of doing things, better serve the community, better serve America, and raise up this great generation of peace, they are constantly in conversation with themselves, with True Parents, and with God their Heavenly Parent in heaven.
13) When In Jin Nim thought about what took place, a young man casting his life away (he will spend the rest of his life in prison). The potential of what could have been was cut short. It reminded In Jin Nim why America and the world needs our True Parents. The young people of this country need to understand what it means to live a life for the sake of others.
14) This man could have been touched by the beauty of God and the teachings of our True Parents, he could have understood just as our True Father spoke (Feb 9, 1974) to a group of brothers and sisters -- he said "We must be able to love our neighbor's children, their parents, and their grandparents as if they were our own. We must love them as our own. And in so doing we will go through the process of loving front and back, left and right, above and below, and in so doing develop a vertical heart of God. And by developing this vertical standard part of God we can express ourselves in a heavenly way, in a way that is infused with this thing called true love. A love that is eternal, unchanging, and absolute."
15) In Jin Nim's father wanted to teach all of us to look at the other person as if they are a part of our family. If a young man, regardless of how upset he might be at another person, when he is looking at this 40-year-old representative as his neighbor's mom, or as his neighbor's sister, then he could not commit what he did. You cannot take a gun to your own family if you truly love your family.
16) The importance of understanding what it is to love another person as your own. What it is to love another human being as your child, as your parent, as your brothers and sisters, as your grandparents -- this is the philosophy through which the world can come to understand what it means to live harmoniously and to live peacefully. But In Jin Nim would be the first one to say, that when our True Father speaks to us about the family being the textbook of true love -- it is not an easy process. In fact some of the most difficult relationships tend to be family relationships. It is incredibly difficult to overcome the different opinions, misunderstandings, and arguments that take place.
17) But if we can understand that the family is the textbook through which we can learn to grow in depth, and meaning, and in stature -- then you realize that this thing called our desire, in wanting to build the ideal families, (and In Jin Nim always jokingly says) is an invitation to a lot of hard work.
18) Just as In Jin Nim's son commanded her to start the insanity program, she feels that now she has been immersed in a new family, all these people working out with her in this insanity program. The true rubbing that must take place, the amount of sweating and effort to complete the one-month is kind of like what we go through in the context of the family. If you want to create ideal families we have to deal with our brothers and sisters, we have to deal with our spouses, we have to deal with our parents. But we do so understanding that we belong to one family and the purpose of every human being, every divine son and daughter of God, is to love and be loved, to move and to be moved by each other.
19) Then we realize, that it is seemingly so difficult, and sometimes seemingly insurmountable -- it is like God put a Mount Everest right in front of our eyes. We realize that it is really God saying to us "Dear daughter, dear son, climb, start to climb. It will not be easy but continue climbing one step at a time and see how high you can go. Reach for the stars. Stand at the top. Take in the majesty of the creation which I have given to you."
20) Understand how incredible life is -- just the fact that we are breathing 20,000 L of air each day and night, it's a beautiful opportunity for us to be in tune with the universe and realize we can be something awesome if we apply ourselves.
21) Just as In Jin Nim must apply herself in the next month, learning how to love another is not an easy thing. But what does the good book, the Bible, teach us? In Acts 16:31 it says "believe." In Jin Nim likes to say our Lord and our Heavenly Parent and our True Parents. It says "believe." Then it asks us to take yourself "out of your keeping." Take yourself out of your keeping.
22) Last Sunday In Jin Nim's daughter shared with us words on the concept of entitlement, the concept of position, people thinking that they are entitled to something -- a person's spouse, a possession, or a position. The Bible is asking us to take ourselves out of our keeping.
23) Many times we don't realize that we are suffering because we have become petrified, we are so busy trying to keep what really doesn't belong to any of us. Our life is an opportunity to give. It's not an opportunity to take or to keep. And sometimes, by desperately trying to keep hold of something, we don't realize that we are being petrified in the process. We become so petrified in our habits, our opinions, the way we see a particular member of our family, that we deny that member of the family room to grow. We deny ourselves our room to grow. We deny the family the room to work things out and become deeper and the relationships and in the love that we can experience.
24) The Bible is asking us not to be so preoccupied with ourselves. When we come before Jesus Christ, before our True Parents, before our Heavenly Parent -- we must believe. We must know that they are always there, beside us. We must know when to let ourselves go and to take ourselves out of our keeping. Because the person or the being that keeps us, is our Heavenly Parent. Let our Heavenly Parent keep us. Let our True Parents keep us. Let Jesus Christ keep us. We have to allow our hearts to be open.
25) What else does the Bible say? Not only does it say believe in Jesus Christ -- it says take yourself out of your keeping, and it also asks us to trust in His being -- so that we will be saved. The Bible says entrust in His being, or entrust in Her being, our Heavenly Parent, our True Parents, their being.
26) We must open up our hearts. And smack in the middle of all the insanity that takes place sometimes in the course of our lives, the more insane something gets the more petrified we tend to get in our own opinions, desires, and positions. But what the Bible is asking us to do -- it asks us to entrust, it is asking us to surrender. It is asking us to let go of our own keeping and allow God to flow in and work His and Her mysterious ways in our lives. And if we do, we will realize that God loves us as his sons and daughters. God desires all of us to find, to discover, our divinity and become that beautiful person, become that beautiful dancer (like we saw just a minute ago -- Ariana and her dance partner danced for everyone just before In Jin Nim's sermon) become that great singer, become that great teacher, great minister, great professor, maybe a great doctor. Become all that you can be. Be passionate about your life. Don't waste your life away as if it were something meaningless, dust in the wind. We are not. We are divine creations of God, each and every one of us handcrafted by God and incredibly precious.
27) We listen to the Bible, and we listened to the encouragement that our True Father gives to all of us -- to learn to love the other as our own. In that way our True Father is hoping that by giving of ourselves and learning to live for the sake of others -- we can truly experience the parental heart of God.
28) One of the most beautiful things about our church, our teachings, our True Parents' teachings, is that for the first time in history we have a man and a woman standing in the position of True Parents. As a dignified and honorable man and woman coming together before God in matrimony, holding God at the center of their hearts and their lives, and together with God's blessing have beautiful children -- this is what we call in our church, the four position foundation.
29) The incredible thing about the four position foundation is that it is the fulfillment of what Jesus Christ wanted to accomplish 2000 years ago. 2000 years ago Jesus Christ did not come to die. He came to live and to love life. He came to inherit the lineage of God so that his brothers and sisters and his family, his parents and grandparents could understand what it means to live a life inheriting this true love of God, having true love, true life, and also true lineage -- to be a part of God's lineage in their lives. This is what Jesus meant to accomplish. He was not meant to go the way of the cross. He was meant to find that beautiful woman. He was meant to create a beautiful family and by establishing the first perfected family, that Adam and Eve should have accomplished many, many years ago -- it would have given the foundation for Jesus Christ as the True Parents of mankind to share with the rest of the world this true lineage of God through the process of the blessing. So that every child, every man and woman, could be grafted into God's lineage and become one family under God.
30) When we talk about the beauty of our teachings -- this is what it is in a nutshell -- the ability to experience for ourselves the four position foundation, centered on God, able to come together, man and woman, in this process called matrimony and create beautiful children -- thereby as parents ourselves we can experience how much love there is.
31) In Jin Nim thought she loved her family until she had children of her own. Until she had children of her own she did not know the depth of her love, the capacity of her love. But when you have a child you can see this 'living for the sake of others' starting with the first cry that the baby utters when he enters the world. You are thinking of this person. You want this child to be better than you, to be happier than you, to experience incredible love that you perhaps have never experienced. You want the child to be great, greater than you. That is what it means to love and live for the sake of others. That is when In Jin Nim realized for the first time, "Good Lord!, This is how much God must love me as his daughter." Then you realize we are truly, truly one family and that God is our parent, giving us this opportunity to experience for ourselves what it feels like to be like God gazing into our faces.
32) That is the beauty of the four position foundation -- and if we could have touched this young man, through the insanity of it all that drove him to commit the horrific act that he did -- if he could have been touched by the message of true love, touched by the philosophy of living for the sake of others -- living and loving and living with another human being as if they were your own -- then he could not have committed what he did.
33) Here we are in this great country of America, having survived the horrors of 9/11, having survived horrors of religious factions hating one another. But if we understand the concept, or if we can taste what true love is all about, what it means to belong to one family, to rise beyond and go beyond the barriers of race -- so that in our community we have beautiful international couples representing the different countries coming together in holy matrimony -- desiring not to love just each other, but the countries each other comes from and the traditions that each other brings to that marriage -- wanting to bring honor to the other. That is a beautiful thing
34) And not only do we have international marriages in our movement, but our father teaches the importance of overcoming our religious differences. So, we have Catholics being blessed to Muslims. We have Jewish people being married to Christians. We have Buddhists monks who have been matched to international brothers and sisters around the world. In a way, in our community the world comes together, shedding away all the different "keepings" that we have, that we kept ourselves in -- just as the Bible said.
35) In our community it is an invitation to take ourselves out of our keeping, whatever it might have been. To concentrate on the important thing at hand which is understanding God as our Heavenly Parent, understanding True Parents as our example to follow and through whom we can experience this four position foundation ourselves. And then learning and practicing this philosophy of living for the sake of others we can encourage all brothers and sisters, coming from all different countries around the world, to live and breathe and work as a family. And that is a beautiful thing.
36) When we see the beautiful dancers dancing before us, what we experience is incredible joy. Dance and music and the arts speak the language of love. They speak to all of us. It is universal in the sense that it does not matter if you speak English or not -- you can look at the dancers performance and say -- that is sublime. It is divine. When you listen to a great rock band, or the great band that performed here -- you understand that you experience that your heart is moved.
37) When Dave Hunter comes up and says that Lovin Life Ministry is a music ministry -- it is a ministry that hopes to express and speak this language of love so that we can be moved, we can be in tune with the language that the universe is speaking to us through the different forms of the arts so that we can celebrate who we are as human beings and that we can celebrate in this incredible opportunity which God has given to us, and instead of throwing it away, in the end the potential yet to be realized, to be fulfilled -- we can harness the potential within ourselves and develop it through the different programs. For In Jin Nim, the insanity program -- through the sweating, the practicing, the disciplining, hopefully she will come out in the end as a beautiful butterfly.
38) When In Jin Nim watched the beautiful dancers move, she knows that behind the grace and elegance of movement there is a whole lot of hours of sweat in the dance hall, disciplining their bodies, practicing their movements, falling down and getting back up and doing it again, and again, and again. But as long as we can believe. As long as we are willing to take ourselves out of our keeping and keep an open mind -- that maybe God has another plan for us. As long as we can entrust ourselves in our Heavenly Parent there are endless possibilities of things that we can do and become.
39) In Jin Nim's father told his children many years ago, he said to In Jin Nim -- "I want you to be a great woman of God. I want you to stand tall. I want you to accomplish many great things. But just remember that in order to go high you must learn first how to go low." Back then, when In Jin Nim was a young girl, she thought her father was talking about just the importance of being humble -- that before you can accomplish great things -- for example if you want to be a karate expert, a black belt, you have to surrender yourself to the Master's torturous program that he or she has outlined before you. In Jin Nim thought, when her father said, that in order for you to go high you have to go low, he was simply speaking about humbleness.
40) But as In Jin Nim saw the dancers perform, she was reminded of her ballet dance teacher she had when she was attending the Little Angels art school. She had wanted to study painting, but her mother asked her to study ballet for one year. Unlike the programs in the United States, the program in the Little Angels school was what she called torture time. They did not take it slowly, it was more like a concentration camp. From the first day, they drilled her for hours. It was three or four hours of torture a day. But one of the things the ballet teacher taught them when teaching them how to jump, how to jump very high and look graceful at the same time, one of the principles she taught all of them (she was trained in Russia), "In order to jump higher you have to ground yourself lower." She was saying the higher you want to go the lower you need to bend. You need to take yourself down and then, like a spring, you can jump up into the air.
41) Conceptually this sounded easy, but to do it in reality with a physical body was not easy. And In Jin Nim realized that when her father taught that if you want to go high you must go low -- that this is exactly what our True Father was talking about. This is exactly what you must do in the arts -- in order to be that Maestro, to be that ballet performer, to be that great ballroom dancer, to achieve the highest heights in any field of the arts you have to humble yourself, you have to go down, you have to grind it out, you have to sweat, and you have to be willing to submit to this discipline. And that is what will give you the power to spring and achieve that height that we so desire.
42) In a way, when True Father was saying -- in order to go high you must go low, In Jin Nim was again reminded of the Good Scripture, Acts 16:31 when it says simply believe, you can do it. Believe in Jesus Christ, you can do it. And you know you are meant for greatness. You are meant to express and manifested Divinity unto the world. But in order to do that we must be humble, we must go down, be willing to be the servant of servants, going through the darkness, going through the sweat, through the discipline of it all -- in order to bounce high into the air.
43) Just as In Jin Nim's ballet teacher stressed the importance of stretching -- don't forget you have a beautiful physical form through which you will express the universe. She told them to stretch your limbs, take in the universe. Stretch your legs. Stretch your arms, your neck -- so that you will be graceful. She was asking them to basically take themselves out of their keeping, out of their petrified forms -- at that time, be it a tree -- they must have looked like a row of tree trunks -- and she told them to stretch, not just to be flexible -- but flexing strengthens your body and limbs. Stretching yields strength.
44) Being able to be open, able to stretch beyond ourselves, in the words of her father "going beyond the call of duty." Doing things, not just up to what you have to do, but taking it a step further. In In Jin Nim's insanity program it's called "make it burn" make it hurt. Don't stop when it starts burning -- make the burn hotter by increasing the speed or doing it more vigorously. It's not stopping when you think you should stop, but going beyond simply stretching, beyond the call of duty.
45) If you are a young girl or young teenage boy, stretch a little bit when it comes to your parents. Go beyond the call of duty. Maybe it's your turn to take out the garbage, but what about if you were to also vacuum the house, what about putting the foyer neatly in order. What if you volunteered to pick up the groceries on the way home -- go beyond the call of duty and that will give you strength of character. In dance that will give you strength to bounce up higher from where you are.
46) One of the other things In Jin Nim's dance teacher taught her is turning. Some people can do it naturally, almost instinctively, and others look awkward. But one thing the teacher taught her was to use your own momentum, the momentum of your body, and pull it into the core. By pulling into the core, by bringing the body closer to the core as you turn -- that is how you turn faster.
47) This reminds In Jin Nim of the Good Scripture when it says "entrust in His being." When you pull in closer to the core of our teachings -- if we want to go faster, if we want to turn faster, what we need to do is to pull in closer to the core of our teachings. What is the most important thing, the most simple things -- it's God, True Parents, and family. Remember that. Turn on that as the core. And the dancer, as they quickly pulled in and start to turn, the sheer momentum of their mass (their body) will help them turn faster.
48) Likewise, the faster we want to turn, there has to be a pulling in and there also has to be a letting go. There has to be a pulling in, but also a surrendering. This is what the Bible is talking about when it asks us to entrust in the Lord. We may think we have everything under control, but we must not forget that God is always with us, watching over us. Sometimes in our effort to control everything, we lose everything. We have to be willing to pull in, to remind ourselves of the most important things in our lives, and then to let go. Let the sheer momentum of our bodies take is faster and faster. Let that mysterious hand of God take us faster to where we want to go.
49) These are the simple concepts and teachings of dance, but they can be applied to every area of our life. Just as the Bible tells us to believe in Jesus Christ, to take ourselves out of our keeping, to entrust ourselves in him, in the Lord, in God, in our True Parents. If we could do that in dance, that would be like going down, reaching down deep before we spring up, stretching so that we can go beyond the limits of where we are, constantly growing, and by turning, in a way you are surrendering yourself. A true artist is somebody who is not confined by their art, but somehow in the surrendering of it all becomes one with the art, becomes art itself. In a way that is what every artist aspires to do. And even if we are not engaged in the performing arts -- becoming a professor or a doctor is an art of sorts. We are there to participate in helping, touching, and moving other people.
50) If we can keep this simple philosophy, that her Russian dance teacher taught long time ago, but also remember that all these applications, all the ways we can apply to love, is so that we can practice what it means, or experience what it means to love another as our own.
51) In Jin Nim hopes, as she says a prayer for this young man -- perhaps he is thinking his life is worthless and there's nothing for him in this life -- therefore he has to do what he has to do and he will contend with his maker when he gets up there. But those who understand God and understand the importance of our lives and who our True Parents are. We will be the ones to say to our Heavenly Parent, "We are not going to wait for the kingdom of heaven up in heaven, we are going to start building the kingdom of heaven on earth -- starting with our families!" So heaven can wait! Because we have lots of good work to do and we have a wonderful life to celebrate each and every day.
52) Just as our Heavenly Father is always waiting, watching, and guiding -- it is high time that we as the children decide today, and every day, to make our father/mother proud, to make our Heavenly Parent proud by becoming those great eternal sons and daughters of God.
53) In Jin Nim wished us all beauty, health, and happiness in the New Year. She knows we are going to do many great things.
54) She thanked us for our continued support and she prayed for a beautiful Sunday and a beautiful week.