In Jin Moon
October 16, 2011
How is everybody this morning? I am delighted to see all of you once again. Two weekends ago we had a wonderful celebration with our True Parents in Las Vegas, celebrating the Registration of God's Kingdom and the Fatherland. All the preparation had to take place in a matter of 24 hours from the moment Father said we needed to do this. But amazingly, the American brothers and sisters and the American families really responded with an overwhelming sense of mission that this was a profound meeting with our True Parents. Many of you drove many miles just to be with our True Parents at that event. So I want to give my heartfelt appreciation and thanks to all of you who made that event incredibly profound and successful.
I think our True Parents were so overwhelmed and inspired in knowing that America truly loves True Parents. They felt it because you literally threw it at them – they caught your love and very much reveled in the love that was shared on that day. Our True Parents gave such a warm prayer before heading back to Korea.
I can see that our American movement is becoming more and more heartistically united with our True Parents, and the response time is becoming quicker and quicker. A couple of years ago when we were thinking about holding an event in Las Vegas, we thought getting 600+ together would be extremely difficult. But then we certainly satisfied the 600. Then we thought satisfying something higher than 800 would be really pushing it. But then we satisfied the 800+. Then we went on to 1,000, and then we went on to 2,000. Now we are nearing the 3,000 capacity every time our True Parents call; we are engaging the American brothers and sisters and families to respond, unite, and work toward building the peaceful, hopeful, and love-infused millennium we've all been waiting for. So thank you once again, brothers and sisters.
Sun Myung Moon and Hak Ja Han, October 7, 2011
True Parents as Providential Figures
Every time I see our True Father and our True Mother in action, I cannot help but look at them not only as my parents but as the providential figures of history and of religion that they are. I am so blessed to be able to call them my biological mom and dad, but at the same time I know they are much bigger than that. I know they don't just belong to me. They belong to the world, and they belong to all of God's children. So whenever I spend time with them, I am asking myself, how would I have felt if I met Jesus Christ 2,000 years ago? How would I have felt if I were one of the Israelites who realized this man was the Son of God, sent to save humanity, to restore humanity from its fallen existence by bringing about the kind of change that can transform fallen children into heavenly sons and daughters of God? I've often asked myself how I would feel to be in the presence of Jesus Christ when he was ministering to his people, his congregation, his fellow brothers and sisters.
I have thought to myself, "I've been incredibly blessed that even though I didn't get that chance 2,000 years ago to experience Jesus, now if I fast-forward 2,000 years I do have the chance not just to experience Jesus Christ, the messiah, again, but to experience the messiah in the completed form, the completed picture in the living manifestation of these wonderful two people that we call True Parents." It's an amazing time to be living. Sometimes I ask myself, "Why am I the lucky one to be anointed at this time, to be living and breathing and working together with our True Parents?" As we all know, Jesus Christ did not come to die. His mission in life was not to die on the cross. Heavenly Parent, who loves his son and daughter, sent Jesus Christ as his son to be the person to find the beautiful woman he could call his wife, so they could stand together in the position of the True Parents, build the ideal family, and bring the world under the concept reality of One Family Under God.
Jesus Christ would have very much done exactly what Reverend Dr. Sun Myung Moon is famous for. Had he found his wife and built his ideal family, he would have started blessing other people. He would have encouraged other people that the whole point of our existence here on earth is to experience the parental heart of God by being a parent ourselves and building the four-position foundation, which will become the cornerstone of any great society, nation, and world. What Jesus would have done is what our True Father and True Mother are famous for doing.
As Jesus would have gone on blessing other people, asking all of humanity to graft onto God's true lineage, he would not have just talked about love. He would not have just been the paradigm of a devout, eternal son, but with a wife by his side he would have been the model of an eternal son coming together with an eternal daughter in holy matrimony, or the Blessing ceremony. Not only would this beautiful couple be inspired by the love of our Heavenly Parent and the life that we've been given, but also they would be encouraging everybody else, just like themselves, to graft onto the heavenly lineage of God.
Inheriting the True Love of God
If somebody were to ask me, "What is your faith all about, in a nutshell?" I would have to answer, "The crux of our faith is inheriting the true love of God. Inheriting it: not just talking about it, teaching about it, feeling good about ourselves, but actually doing the physical work of becoming part of God's lineage." You inherit something from your parents because you are part of your parents' lineage.
Likewise, by experiencing and truly substantiating the process of inheriting the true love of God, we experience for the first time what it feels like to be a parent and we can thereby understand how much God loves us.
We're not just another movement, wanting to share the words of Jesus Christ or the words of Reverend Moon. We are here to do the actual work, the physical work of building that ideal family. That was the mission of Jesus Christ 2,000 years ago. He did not come to die a lonely death on the cross. He came to find his beautiful wife, to establish that first true family that would become the living paradigm of true love, inspiring all of humanity to inherit the true love of God. That first true family was to inspire us to make our faith real, to make our God real as we become part of God's lineage by inheriting the true love of God and making it real in our lives, as we substantiate it by having children of our own and going through the process of building ideal families.
I always say that building ideal families is probably one of the most difficult things that anybody can do. So the messiah comes to show us how. The messiah comes to inspire us to persevere and deal with all the different things that arise in the process of building this incredible cornerstone of a peaceful and harmonious society. The messiah comes to urge us on, maybe sometimes kicking our butts to help us keep going so that we can truly create a beautiful world, one family at a time.
"We Know Who Our True Parents Are"
When I think about the beauty and magnitude of what it means that we are living with our True Parents, I realize that we must not make the same mistake the Israelites made 2,000 years ago. The Israelites' failure lay in being ignorant as to what Jesus Christ was all about because certain providential figures who were prepared to pave the way – to make straight the way of the Lord by teaching and encouraging the people that we have Jesus Christ, the Son of God, with us right now – didn't do their job. The Israelites were supposed to unite with, and work together with, him. The providential figure of John the Baptist was not able to fulfill his responsibility, so the people were left in ignorance. The ignorance of the Israelites prepared the way for Jesus Christ to die a lonely death on the cross.
But unlike the Israelites of 2,000 years ago, we in the Unification movement clearly know who our True Parents are; we experience who our True Parents are, and in working together with them we are building something that is real, substantial, and tangible, and that is going to change the world, one family at a time. Even though Jesus' mission was cut short because of the crucifixion 2,000 years ago, we know that still Jesus was able to claim victory in terms of spiritual salvation because his death and sacrifice on the cross inspired many people to seek a life of faith, to understand what true love and true life is all about that Jesus talked about.
But because Jesus never had a chance to find his beautiful wife, the only understanding that we have, or the Christology that Christianity offered us is this notion of the Trinity, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit was never given a chance to be manifest in the flesh because Jesus never had a chance to find the beautiful wife whom he would call his own and with whom he could build a beautiful family.
We were left with this concept of the Trinity, but because of Jesus' victory in terms of spiritual salvation, the good work of Christianity has continued on for many years. But the big questions of Christianity – how do we have great relationships, how do we build good families, how do we raise great kids – all of these questions were left in abeyance. We didn't have the means to address them. We thought the best way to be a great Christian or to live a life of Christian piety was to live a life of denial – denying marriage, denying having a husband or a wife, dedicating ourselves to God, rejecting the world, isolating ourselves from the world so that we could concentrate on ourselves.
Because we didn't have, in essence, the complete picture, Christianity afforded us a way to find or seek individual salvation, but it did not address the question and problems of how to have family salvation or how to seek world salvation. That question lingered until 1960, when our True Parents came on the scene. And in our True Parents we realize that our understanding of Christology was incomplete in that there was no feminine represented physically because Jesus never had a wife. What about the question of children? There was no presence or representation of a child in the picture of the Trinity.
"Man and Woman Stand on Equal Footing"
So when True Parents come, united vertically and horizontally with our God in heaven, we begin to see that God's ideal for all of humanity is the four-position foundation: God at the helm, God as the control tower, and men and women as his beautiful children, coming together in matrimony. The beautiful thing about this four-position foundation is that it's diamond-shaped. God is on top on the vertical line, and then there's a horizontal line with man on one side and woman on the other. And at the bottom, when men and women come together through that process of the blessing and experience parental love for the first time, they embark on their way to build an ideal family by inviting a child into their lives.
So God, man, woman, and child: This is the completed picture that God wanted for Jesus Christ 2,000 years ago. When we look at the history of Christianity, the value and dignity of a man and a woman is highly skewed. When we look at the four-position foundation we notice that it has the vertical axis and the horizontal axis. The degrees that separate them are all 90 degrees, meaning that the man and woman stand on equal footing. They are different and separate, but in their essential value and dignity they are equal before God.
That's the awesome thing about True Parents. For 2,000 years women were like the Holy Ghost in the Christian church; nobody knew what to do with women. Where should we place women? Many times women were hidden behind curtains. They could not participate in the regular service. They were certainly not given a microphone to share their voice, their expressions, or their feelings. And many times they were relegated to the position of slave or somebody subhuman because they were seen as a temptress, the one who led Adam astray and caused the Fall.
Throughout religious history this question of what to do with women has plagued good men and women for hundreds of years. But in our True Parents we realize that when God created his son and daughter, his original intention did not say, "Dear son, be master over your servant, the woman." That is not his original intention.
God's original intention as a loving father and mother was to encourage his and her children to be the best they can be, to be the kind of people who live up to the eternal worth of who they are and the dignity of who they were meant to be as a great son or daughter of God. That was the true intention of our Heavenly Parent.
I am eternally grateful that for the first time in religious history we have masculine and feminine represented in a holistic picture; we have the yin and yang represented in a holistic picture as True Parents, and that's why they are so extremely precious to all of us.
We have a chance to change history, to set the world right, and our True Parents are going to destroy a lot of the preconceptions that existed before. They are going to make all of us feel very uncomfortable because with True Parents change is in the air, transformation is in the air, growth is in the air. When there's growth, there are usually growing pains.
We can think of ourselves as an eternal son or daughter of God, starting out like a caterpillar, going through a cocooning process in which have a chance to work on ourselves, but our ultimate goal is not to be a captive in the cocoon. Our ultimate goal is to fly free and beautiful, to be the whisper of inspiration to the world. If that's what we were meant to be, then we realize that pain is part of the process of what we need to go through in order to reach our goal.
Making the Antidote From the Venom
I've thought about pain quite often. In fact, I call pain my best friend. I certainly had a great example in my mother. She is somebody so extraordinarily elegant who does not say much, but when she says a little, she says a lot. Our True Father is the Hoon Dok Hae champion; the man can talk for 22 hours without a drop of water, and he is 90 plus. Once he starts, he is totally wild about his mission and about what he needs to do before he departs this world. Whenever he has men and women in front of him, he doesn't want to let them go, so he gives and gives and gives some more.
On this last trip Father was quite a taskmaster. If you go to some rural towns in Korea, you'll see an old grandfather, with a long pipe that he periodically taps on the ashtray and that he uses both to smoke and to spank. When he taps that pipe, he means business. When you don't do your homework, you're going to meet the pipe. And when you don't listen or you're not respectful or you're dishonorable in front of a teacher, you are going to be smacked.
The schoolmaster is a formidable taskmaster, and in the Confucian style of teaching the schoolmaster is always the hardest on the brightest and most promising student. When you're in the classroom of this Confucian-style teacher and you're not getting chastised, maybe you should think twice about working a little bit harder. Usually the brightest student gets spanked the most, reprimanded the most, and chastised the most.
Korean Confucian masters
Father is very much a product of Confucian-style teaching. He is extremely hard on the ones he thinks are going to be incredibly promising. He is extremely hard on some of the leaders that he expects great things from, and he is certainly incredibly difficult when it comes to his own kids because he expects a lot from us.
But probably the most important person that my father gives a lot of Confucian-style teaching and attention to has been and is my mother. Because she symbolizes perfected Eve and she is truly the one who has restored the Fall, together with our True Father, and stands in that position as the True Mother, the true woman of humankind, Father expects a great deal from her, just the way our Heavenly Parent does. Sometimes he singles her out as that example of what true heartistic unity and absolute trust are all about, and he is almost vicious with her. Sometimes I as a daughter, looking at this, wonder, "So much pain this woman has to bear! How does she ever do it? How does she bear the pain of taking all humanity along, to raise humanity up to be that inspired group of men and women? How does she do it?"
I remember, about a decade ago, one of those episodes when Father was using my mother as an example, testing and pushing her, confronting her to see if she could remain steadfast, faithful, and loyal. After one of those sessions I followed Mother back into the room. Only then did she break down and cry. I was there with her and said, "Mother, how do you take this? How do you take all this pain? How do you handle the pain?"
She said something to me I will never forget. She said, "In Jin, you have to understand that I am not just your mother. I am the living example of what a true woman is. I take a lesson from what it says in the Good Book, Romans 12:21, 'Do not be overcome by evil,' meaning things that are not good, not kind, and not the nicest things. It says, Do not be overcome by evil – things that hurt you, or pain you along the way. The Bible says, overcome evil, or the difficult things, with good."
Mother expounded on that passage by telling me, "In Jin, you have to remember that the best antidote comes from the venom itself. The antidote is created from poison itself. The way we find a cure to save somebody from, for instance, a poisonous snake bite is to take the venom itself and create an antidote. The solution resides in the very pain that you are feeling."
She was saying that sometimes the person best prepared to deal with a problem is the kind of person who has also dealt with the problem. Therefore, sometimes the best person to deal with a drug addict is somebody who has been an addict him or herself, somebody who in being restored to a higher consciousness and desire for better living has pulled him- or herself up by the bootstraps and thus stands in the position of learning from his or her mistakes and become counselors at various places that deal with addiction. Through an addict's own suffering, the addict finds a way to create out of the venom of addiction an addiction antidote that can inspire and heal other people.
My mother very much has the understanding that regardless of what difficulty she is going through, she is not just one person. She knows herself to be a providential historical figure who has the responsibility to create something bigger than herself and out of her own suffering and misery create the antidote or a way to heal, inspire, and compel others to be the holistic people that we all need to be.
Letting Go of Pain
When I think about my mother and contemplate the word pain, I view that word the way I often like to look at a word. I take the word apart phonetically and I look at it in terms of etymology – how it is derived, where it comes from, and how it has been translated over the centuries. I also like to consider a word as an acronym, and that is how I'm thinking that this word pain. When we are dealing with pain and looking at our own life, the lives of many people we know, and the lives of many people who walk the streets of New York City every day, we recognize that all of us in one form or another are dealing with pain.
The question of how we can rise above our pain determines whether we are going to be successes in life, or whether we're going to be totally in a quagmire, unable to take ourselves out of the victim mentality. One of the first things that happens to you when you're in this state of pain because somebody hurt you, or you've been misunderstood, or you've been hurt or neglected, is that the pain becomes all-consuming. The pain possesses you. It takes over. It becomes a leviathan that literally gulps you up and swallows you whole.
But when I look at how my mother has dealt with painful situations in her life, I see that she's a master of digesting pain so that it doesn't become a leviathan-like monster that possesses her. She releases the pain. She lets it go. She has the philosophy "Things will pass. All things will pass. Do not let something consume you and hold you petrified in the moment." She encourages all of us to release our pain, to let it go, to let it pass. We should not be possessed by pain, but we should let it pass.
Growing With Pain
When we look at the next letter, A, we see that for people engulfed in pain, the most important thing they want at that moment is for the pain to be absent. They want to avoid the pain. But the interesting thing about my mother is that in understanding that the greatest antidote is derived from the very venom, she knows that instead of feeling or desiring absence of pain, she very much welcomes it. She celebrates the presence of pain; she surrenders to the pain and grows with it.
It's no different from body-builders who spend four or five hours in the gym every day. When they're lifting that incredibly heavy barbell, there's a lot of pain. I still remember seeing many years ago a weight-lifting championship at the Olympics, and a big Russian woman who looked like a polar bear – her thighs were bigger than my waist, and her biceps looked like huge watermelons. But obviously when she was giving that last push to hold that barbell and to win the competition, it was incredibly painful. I've never seen anyone struggle so much. She struggled so much that she peed in her pants. That's how difficult it is. It was incredibly painful.
When you spend that inordinate amount of time at the gym, you're literally breaking your muscles apart to make them bulky. It's a horrifically painful process, but you surrender yourself to the process. You celebrate the burn that these athletes are feeling. If you listen to some of those huge athletes talk, they say to each other, "Hey, feel the burn?" "Hey, Rodney, make it burn." They want to feel the pain. They want the pain present because they know when they accept it, it's going to give them the bulk that they want. It's going to give them what seemingly looks like strength. It's going to make them look like Arnold Schwarzenegger, so they go through extreme pain because they want a certain kind of result.
From Individual Pain to Universal Good
When you come across people in excruciating pain, you realize it's really only about you, the letter I in pain. The person standing next to you really does not experience your pain. Pain is very focused, very individual. When we are engulfed in our individual pain, it can totally possess us.
That reminds me of going to the emergency room a while back because I cut myself. There was a really nice African American woman who was there with her neighbor, a Spanish gentleman. When they first came in she was obviously agitated, but because we had to wait for a long time, every minute that went by she became more and more agitated. She started complaining, her voice got louder and louder, and finally she could no longer take it. Then she started yelling at the nurses, "I'm in pain! I'm in pain! When do I get to see the doctor? I need some meds. I'm in pain." She was getting more and more excited.
I was thinking she had a lot of energy for someone in a lot of pain, but she was really desperate for somebody to hear her. While she was gesticulating, demanding to see a doctor, the Latino neighbor that she came with was looking at the situation, standing against the wall, saying, "You know, you need to calm down bad." Then the woman started yelling at him, "Jesu, I told you I'm in pain! Jesu, get over here this moment." He was leaning against the wall, "I feel for you. I feel for you, but you need to quiet, you know? Silence. You making other people miserable. You need to quiet." She kept yelling, "Jesu, you come here and help me." He would not move and he said, "You need to calm down. You gonna hyperventilate. You cruise into coma. You need to calm down."
Of course the whole emergency room was full of people needing to see a doctor. Some of us were bleeding, waiting for sutures and in pain. But it was like something out of The Comedy Store. We just could not stop laughing. A couple of other forthright gentlemen said, "You need to listen to Jesu. Calm down." Then Jesu looked over, "That's right. That's right. Calm down." That experience for me was very much a picture of somebody in a great deal of pain who was so consumed in her own pain that she did not realize or care what she was doing to other people.
The amazing thing about our True Mother is that she has had to go through untold suffering and difficulty throughout her life, but she always takes herself out of being focused on me, myself, and I. It's never about her. She's sacrificed the ideal of the individual because she's thinking, "How can I use whatever I'm going through to pull myself out of this individualistic pain and be the healing force of universal love?" She takes the individual pain and transforms it into the focused attention toward how the pain can serve for the universal good. How can I not be overcome by something that is evil, something that is bad, something that really hurts by thinking about how to transform this venom into an antidote for all of humanity?" This is the beauty of our True Mother.
Rising Above Noxious Fumes
And looking at the letter N, we realize that when we're engulfed in thinking about me, myself, and I because we're in pain, what we're doing is like sniffing noxious fumes. The negativity becomes focused on thinking only about ourselves, wanting everything to go away. Then, we are not dealing with the pain, we are letting it possess us. Such a response to pain is almost like breathing noxious fumes like carbon monoxide, which can't be seen or smelled, but if you sleep while carbon monoxide is leaking into your bedroom, you will die.
Likewise, if you allow pain to be a noxious fume that chokes you, sooner or later you are going to die from your own pain. I don't know how many times I've seen healthy young men and women be consumed with pain of one kind or another. Sometimes the pain is from losing somebody they love, perhaps a bad breakup, or from not getting into the college that they wanted. And then the person can be consumed by the noxious fumes of negativity and despair, allowing him- or her-self to slowly wither away and actually develop diseases and die.
The amazing thing about our True Mother is that she takes painful situations and transforms the pain from something noxious into something precious. She accepts the pain. She invites it, knowing that she is going to suffer, but at the same time knowing that she has the power within to create the precious antidote that is going to help other people.
Challenging Accepted Ways of Thinking
Sometimes when I meet people for the first time and they've read a lot of things on the Internet and heard different things about my parents, they ask me, "How can your father be the messiah? He's been divorced." Or, "How can your mother be the True Mother? She comes from a broken home." I would answer, "Antidote is created from venom." We have to understand that God works with the ones he wants to work with, even though it may not necessarily fit our understanding of who the perfect messiah is. Obviously 2,000 years ago Jesus, as the illegitimate son of Joseph and Mary, was not really seen as the most likely candidate to be the Messiah – especially when he was born in a barn.
The nativity scene that we often see at Christmas is a very cozy barn with angels singing and stars above, but 2,000 years ago a barn was full of dung. Jesus was born in a dung heap in the middle of nowhere, with no relatives whatsoever and the question of illegitimacy lingering all throughout his life. He was not the best candidate to be the messiah. I'm sure that's why a lot of people had a problem in accepting that he was the Son of God.
Likewise, we have to be careful not to be so arrogant in thinking that just because somebody doesn't fit our notion of what the messiah should be, that's why he's not the messiah. How do we know? For instance, Moses was not the most articulate or charismatic leader that God could have prepared for the Israelites. In fact, his right-hand person, Aaron, was much more articulate, much more charismatic. If you had to choose between the two, if there was an election, I'm sure Aaron would have won. But God worked through Moses, though he was not the most charismatic figure. That's not what God was looking for. God was looking for somebody that would be obedient, united, and absolutely loyal to him.
Likewise, the fact that my mom came from a broken home and she grew up without a father in a time when that was seriously looked down upon, prepared her for the role she would play as the True Mother of humankind. We can only try to imagine the amount of internal struggle and suffering that she had to bear: "Who's your father?" "Where is your father?" "Why don't you have a father?"
Just as our True Father's birth was prepared and providentially foretold in his family, before my father was born, the same thing happened to our True Mother. There were three great ministers in North Korea in my parents' time, and one of the ministers received a revelation from God, telling him, "You need to encourage these two people in your congregation to get married." This minister called on my Grandmother Hong and my Grandfather Han and said, "I just had a revelation. God told me that both of you need to be married. God is preparing the land of Korea to receive the messiah, and if you two wed and have a child, that child will be the messiah."
That was the reason why my mother's father and mother came together. But God works in mysterious ways. God always challenges our accepted ways of thinking, and I think that's one reason why my Grandfather Han was not prepared for that. God promised a messiah to be born from their union, and God delivered what he promised. But my mother's father totally freaked out because a messiah is supposed to be a man. A messiah is supposed to be born as a boy. When my mother's father realized that his child was born as a girl, that is, my mother was born, he eventually left my grandmother and my mother because he thought the revelation was not true, that God promised but did not deliver.
My grandfather Han didn't realize that the messiah comes to find a bride, that the ultimate goal of the messiah is to find that woman who can be his bride. Messiah is actually just half the picture. My grandfather didn't realize that God wanted the "person" standing in the position to save and restore the world to be both a man and a woman. He didn't realize that my mother, our True Mother, was to be that secret ingredient that makes the messiah the True Parents. It does not matter how great Father is: If he doesn't find that perfect woman, then he cannot be the True Parents. That's how incredibly precious our True Mother is.
Providence Continually Unfolds
We have to understand that just as history and the providence are constantly unfolding through the guidance and teachings of our True Father and True Mother, the teachings and the providential unfolding never really stops. I remember when I was growing up, my mother was silent. She always walked behind my father, and it was many years before they started walking together publicly. I remember for many years my father doing most of the talking. I remember my mother never saying anything. So people's understanding of what a true woman should be was that you don't say anything, you sit quietly in support of your husband, and you have lots of children.
Because God is unfolding the providence, what our True Mother had to go through was to indemnify and restore the course of women. So she placed herself to be in the position of representing fallen women and bringing them up along with her to this place where she can stand in the position as the perfected Eve, after going through all the trials and tribulations but ultimately becoming victorious. In that way, our True Mother is giving all the women of the world a chance to reclaim our dignity and worth as eternal daughters of God.
Now we can realize that that's what our True Mother is and has been doing. And when she was ready, when our Heavenly Parent realized that she had gone through all the trials and tribulations required to restore the position of women so that she can truly stand as that perfected Eve, then in 1992, Father said, "Now you need to start speaking."
I remember in our church that was a great shock for a lot of the male leadership, and I think for a lot of brothers. "What does this mean? We thought Father was teaching subject and object. It was very clear. We thought subject and object was only like this. We're not sure how we're going to deal with a woman speaking now, a woman going in front." But the providence continually unfolds.
We have to be careful not to be petrified in a certain time or phase that we've gone through as a movement in the course of providential history. We have to realize that providential history is constantly unfolding, like a fan. Some of us might want to stick to the early 1970s' understanding of what a woman should be like – quiet to support the husband, don't say anything and don't do anything. But if we fast-forward to 1992, when Father created the Women's Federation for World Peace and encouraged our True Mother to speak, that's a very different Unification movement.
We need to realize that it's not just 1992. Here we are in 2011, looking forward to 2012 and so on and so forth. So if we are going to truly experience the fullest extent of the providential fan unfolding, we have to be with our True Parents every step of the way.
So brothers and sisters, when our Father is encouraging the women to come to the forefront and lead the way, don't be frightened, brothers, in thinking, "We are going to become a movement of femi-nazis – women taking over. They're going to abuse us like the way we did." I think the women in this new millennium would like to do a little better. So the great thing about our True Parents is that they encourage both men and women to be their best, to fulfill their destinies.
America, the Landing Site of the Messiah
One of my favorite books is God's Will and the World, one of those rare books that collects a lot of speeches given over the years that really touch my heart. I like to refer back to it from time to time. In all his great wisdom, Father is always cajoling us, teaching us, but at the same time telling us very important things about providential history. He talked a lot about America and how significant America is in the providential role of uniting with the True Parents to bring about a worldwide change and to help all of humanity become one family under God.
Father refers to America as the landing site of the messiah. He says the messiah is always going to look to America to be the landing site because America represents Christianity. Father is very much looking at America as the providential country that has been blessed over the years to be the land of plenty and abundance, the superpower of the world Father is hoping that America can exercise its true ability to influence the world in the heavenly way.
When Father mentioned in one of his speeches that America is the landing site for the messiah, I thought, that's interesting because Jesus comes with the mission to marry, the mission to build that ideal family, the four-position foundation. How incredibly interesting that A-meri-ca, ah-marry-ka, and "ka" in Korean means "go." Smack in the middle of America, there's a hint. The most important thing about the messiah, he comes to marry and to build that family. When Father calls America the landing site for the messiah, I would have to say, "Yes, that's kind of obvious, isn't it?"
Just as Jesus' mother's name was Mary, it was Mary's responsibility to make sure that her son found that beautiful wife. Not only was her name Mary, but she was supposed to do just that: help marry her son, help find his beautiful wife. And the person that Jesus was supposed to be blessed with was also Mary, Mary Magdalene. There is the overwhelming sense that this man was surrounded by Mary's. He came to marry. He came to be blessed. He came to build a family.
When Father and Mother are saying America is the landing site for the messiah, this is the country that really needs to wake up to the breaking news that the True Parents are here. And guess what? They would like to share the heavenly lineage with all of us. They would like all of us to be married, to be blessed, to be united into each other's families through the Blessing. How else do you become one family and learn how to truly love each other?
The most vicious wars are fought by those who actually care about each other – between spouses, between parents and children, and between siblings. But if we can use the family as the textbook of true love, we can learn to overcome pain and understand it as just part of the process. Then, instead of being possessed by pain and wanting it to be absent from our lives, instead of just concentrating on the individual and being overcome by the noxious fumes of our own suffering, if we can follow our True Mother's example we can take the pain and release it. We have the power; we have the decision; we have the ability to utilize our five-percent responsibility to say to ourselves, "You know what? We're not going to be possessed by pain. We're just going to release it. We're going to let it go."
We have the power not only to avoid pain all the time but actually to be present in it, to welcome it, to welcome the burn, because it will make us deeper, wider, and stronger as a person.
Instead of just focusing on the individual, if we can, with the help of a Latino gentleman leaning his head against the wall, calm down and concentrate not with the arrow inward on the pain, but with the arrow facing outward on helping others think about the universal reason why we exist, then we can realize that this is a great way to deal with pain.
Instead of being overcome with the noxious fumes of our own individual painful existence, we need to rise above them and realize that the greatest antidote is created from the venom and that we can turn something incredibly suffocating into something precious and beautiful. We can create healing out of our own suffering, and we can also create a way to help others out of our own suffering. When we realize these things, then we also realize that the growing pains in one sense can be understood as a gift in that they help us think about living for the sake of others. The greatest way to heal myself is by helping other people.
Brothers and sisters, we need to be so grateful that our True Parents are in our lives, and America should be a happy country. We should be happy people, grateful for the lives that we've been given. We really need to be loving life and not always be consumed in a painful or miserable existence. Even if we are in the pits of hell, we need to remind ourselves of the example of our True Mother, that sometimes the greatest ministries are born from miserable situations.
When the people who have suffered and gone through difficulty decide to be agents of change, they can be the healers who help and inspire thousands of people.
So, brothers and sisters, continue the breaking news. We are incredibly fortunate to have our True Parents with us every day. Please have a great week, and God bless.
Notes:
Romans, chapter 12
1: I appeal to you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.
2: Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.
3: For by the grace given to me I bid every one among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith which God has assigned him.
4: For as in one body we have many members, and all the members do not have the same function,
5: so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another.
6: Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith;
7: if service, in our serving; he who teaches, in his teaching;
8: he who exhorts, in his exhortation; he who contributes, in liberality; he who gives aid, with zeal; he who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness.
9: Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good;
10: love one another with brotherly affection; outdo one another in showing honor.
11: Never flag in zeal, be aglow with the Spirit, serve the Lord.
12: Rejoice in your hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer.
13: Contribute to the needs of the saints, practice hospitality.
14: Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them.
15: Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.
16: Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; never be conceited.
17: Repay no one evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all.
18: If possible, so far as it depends upon you, live peaceably with all.
19: Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God; for it is written, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord."
20: No, "if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals upon his head."
21: Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
Etymology of Pain
pain (n.)
c.1300, "punishment," especially for a crime; also "condition one feels when hurt, opposite of pleasure," from Old French peine, from Latin poena "punishment, penalty" (in Late.Latin also "torment, hardship, suffering"), from Greek poine "punishment," from PIE kwei "to pay, atone, compensate".
The earliest sense in English survives in phrase on pain of death. The verb meaning "to inflict pain" is first recorded c.1300. Phrase to give (someone) a pain "be annoying and irritating" is from 1908; localized as pain in the neck (1924) and pain in the ass (1934), though this last may be the original, unrecorded sense and the others euphemisms. Pains "great care taken (for some purpose)" is first recorded 1520s (in the singular in this sense, it is attested from c.1300). First record of pain-killer is from 1853.