In Jin Moon
1. Good morning brothers and sisters. How is everyone this morning? Happy lunar new year to all of you.
2. Our HSA team just returned from Korea after celebrating God's day and True Parents' birthday and our True Mothers 70th birthday with our True Parents and the Korean people.
3. I was so proud of the American team, because they really made me feel like a good momma. They know that they went there representing this country and all of you and all the great work that we've been doing over the course of the last couple of years, and to share the breaking news with the rest of our world community. I know that Joshua Cotter and Heather Thalheimer did a fantastic job of co-representing all the work that we have been doing here at Lovin' Life (Lovin' Life Ministries). We created packets, binders, for everybody to let them know and share how we go about our business here – really building a family ministry, sharing with our world community how to not just talk the talk, but to really live and make it our flesh and blood in terms of our daily lives. And so I really want to thank the GPA for tugging a couple of suitcases of those binders to Korea.
4. There was a fantastic spirit there – and they really represented the future of America, but not just America – all of our movement. They did such a fantastic job of representing this country. I really awarded them with a very, very difficult task. Mrs. Kubo, as the choir director, did a fantastic job in taking a group of young men and women, all meaning well, but never really having gone through basic lessons – she jokingly said to me, "the first couple of days were incredibly depressing, because nobody could hit the note on pitch." All the exercises she had to do in order to put together a choir that was not just sufficient but inspiring, was really quite a monumental task. She, together in cooperation with the kids, who really wanted to represent the best of this country and share it, with not just God and our True Parents, but with the rest of our movement – did a fantastic job. And they did not just when the gold prize, but they won the grand prize!
5. There were choirs from many, many different parts of the world, but I feel so inspired when I see the GPA Choir because it's not just made up of black haired people or representatives of a particular country, but in America we represent the whole world. So all the colors were represented.
6. The beautiful thing, I was thinking how to we really give the gift of love to our True Parents, especially to our True Mother who turned 70 years old. In Korea, 60th and 70th, 80th and 90th birthdays are considered huge milestones in one's life and therefore it was an incredibly important birthday for my mother. So I thought, what can we do as children to really give thanks and to share our love with the True Mother of humankind? It's in the tradition of Korea, that when you attend the birthday of Kohee, that you come in traditional wardrobe – meaning traditional Hambok. And so the girls were beautifully outfitted in the Korean traditional gowns and the boys looked so handsome and dashing – they were all wearing suits outfitted, thanks to Preston and Krista. They looked, not just handsome and beautiful, but the spirit with which they came was so inspiring that my younger brother said, "They've won already, when they first came onto the stage." So I want to thank GPA for doing such a fantastic job. And accompanying the GPA choir and under the direction and leadership of Mrs. Cubo, was also Joe Young of the great Sonic Cult. And I really want to thank the band as well, for being such a great support together with the choir. We brought a lot of music, and a lot of beauty, and a lot of culture to Korea. And I said to the kids, "It really doesn't matter what you come back with. Of course if you come back with the grand prize that would be fantastic. But the most important thing is to try your best. And if you, all of you, are satisfied that the performance that you gave is your best, then I will be satisfied as a national momma." But not only did they do their best, but they brought back to this country and to all of you the grand prize! So congratulations to all of you!
7. This year of the Dragon is a very exciting year, because I am well into my 40's and I'm looking forward to my 50s, perhaps one day becoming a grandmother of my own. But I really want to congratulate my elder sister's family, Ye Jin-Unni, because she has finally become a grandmother! Her lovely daughter and her wonderful husband Alex, they gave birth to the next generation of the True Family. It's a beautiful girl and Father named her Shim Mi.
8. This is an incredible year and I feel so many wonderful things are going to unfold as we continue on in our good works in sharing the breaking news with the rest of the world. I'm sure all of you have heard that Father gave a very, very profound motto for this year of the Dragon. The motto for this year is the "Era of the Complete Victorious Liberation of True Parents of Heaven, Earth, and Humankind."
9. You know that Father has been really living his whole life as the Messiah, come to really find that beautiful woman that he can call his own, raise up this perfect Eve so that they together can stand as the True Parents for all of mankind. But you know, they have been doing many, many wonderful works throughout their years, with the ultimate goal of truly liberating God from his life of suffering, because He has lost his son and daughter many, many thousands of biblical years ago.
10. It was really the coming of our True Parents and their work, in terms of substantiating and establishing the ideal family and creating ideal society, nation, and world, that really allowed them to stand in the position to proclaim a victorious liberation of God from many, many years of suffering – by indemnifying the Fall, by standing together as the true perfected man and a woman standing together and working together as a True Parents of humankind, really encouraging and igniting the spark of hope for all of humanity to come and graft onto the heavenly lineage of God. In a way the work our True Parents have been doing is incredibly profound. And that gave them the foundation to really be the son and the daughter to liberate God from their suffering.
11. But here our True Parents are proclaiming, now that we have liberated God, this is time of the complete victorious liberation of the True Parents of Heaven, Earth, and humankind. What is our True Parents saying to all of us? In a way our True Parents, by bequeathing to us the baton, are telling us, just as our True Parents came to liberate God it is high time that we, as a beautiful and perfect child of God, should take it upon ourselves to perfect ourselves and be in that position to really liberate our True Parents.
12. When you think about going about the business of the actual liberating of our True Parents, we have to ask ourselves, "How do we do that? How do we liberate True Parents? And what does that mean?" What are the True Parents? Why do they call them true? Why do they call them our parents? We call them our True Parents because they are perfected man and a woman, standing together in the position as a beautiful couple – they are doing the glorious work of God.
Sun Myung Moon and Hak Ja Han January 25, 2012
13. So if we are to call these two people True Parents, because they have victoriously accomplished the work of perfecting themselves so that they can stand in the position as a perfect man and woman, what does perfect mean? If we consult our good friend, the Webster's dictionary and ask, "What does perfect mean, how would you define perfect?" It says a couple of things. It says perfect means something that is complete, something that is absolute, something that is pure. And when we refer to the Bible, it says in Matthew 5:48, it says, "you therefore must be perfect – you, you and me, all of us, -- you must be perfect as Heavenly Father is."
14. Our True Father explains what the Bible is trying to say – when he shares with us that the meaning of this phrase, or this sentence, "you therefore must be perfect, just as God is, or just as Heavenly Father is," Father says that what the Bible is trying to say is that our standard of value is the perfection of God. In other words, God created all of us as His object – meaning, just as God is perfect, likewise the object also needs to be perfect to have a give-and-take relationship with God.
15. Implicit in our original desire is the fact that perfection is within our grasp. In a way the Bible goes on further in 1 Corinthians 3:16, it says, "do you not know, do you not know you are the temple of God and that God's Spirit dwells in you." In a way what the Bible is saying is, because God created all of us as God's object, knowing that all of us through our 5% responsibility have, and will have, that chance to grasp what perfection is all about – because that's what God intended for all of us. Then, if we can truly unite with our True Parents, if we can truly unite with God, then becoming perfect doesn't mean – you don't do anything wrong. It doesn't mean that you might not fall and trip and nick your knees. It doesn't mean that a perfect human being never has a bloody nose or never has a migraine headache. But what perfection means, and what the Bible is saying, when it says, "you therefore must be perfect just as God your Heavenly Father is." It's talking about the spirit that dwells in each and every one of us. The ability to really embody, to imbue, to inherit God's Spirit dwells in each and every one of us. In a way, we are meant (to be), as that divine son and a daughter of God, that eternal son and a daughter of God.
16. The Bible, and our True Father is reminding us that we're not just dust in the wind, and we're not just these sinful pathetic helpless children that have to live a miserable life, because we are just not worthy. But what Father in the Bible is teaching all of us is that we are a divine and a prepared human being, eternal sons and daughters of God that are worthy of being in the position as God's object. Because if we work on ourselves through our 5% responsibility we can attain this spiritual perfection, like the way our True Parents have, and really stand in the position of being that True Parents for all of mankind.
17. When we asked ourselves, "Okay, this is the Era of the liberation of True Parents." How do we actually go about doing that? We want to liberate our parents. How do we as children really be in the position to liberate our parents?
18. Having spent a great deal of my time and years and dedication to the world of academia – I want to give you an example of a student. When you are teaching in the classroom in front of many, many bright eyed bushy-tailed and talented and smart kids – what we want as a teacher is for that student to really, not just learn the knowledge of what you are about to partake with them or share with them, but we as a teacher really want them to be the kind of people that can develop the tools to be that academically superior and brilliant scholar that will contribute something back to the community that they will invest in, in other words, the world of academia. So, when we really look in the classroom and we think – what is a perfect student? What is a perfect student in my class? What we are hoping for is not just somebody who knows how to memorize and get straight A's on a multiple-choice type of exam, but we as teachers want that kind of a student who will take in the facts, who will, of course, taken the knowledge that you are sharing, but be in this situation where the child, not just memorizes and regurgitates what they've learned, but they take in and they digest what they've learned and offer a new insight into that field of knowledge, or that field of scholarship. That is what we as teachers want when we think about who is a perfect student.
19. Likewise when we're thinking about – how do we become this perfect child of God, so that we can really be in a position to liberate our True Parents – a couple of things come to mind. One of the things I like to remind myself is – there's this great thing called the 5% responsibility.
20. No matter how well-meaning I am as the national pastor, if the kids, the GPA kids, just did not want to practice – that required many, many hours practicing those scales, doing those arpeggios, doing those weird exercises – then they would never have accomplished what they did. In a way, I can give them the vision or the direction, but I also need the cooperation of GPA to work together with me, and together with Mrs. Kubo, together with the band, to bring the kind of a performance that will yield the highest award at a competition. Likewise, as well meaning as we all are, if we don't understand, or if we don't feel the importance of, not just thinking about what we know, and how we need to live our lives, we can never really become that successful or that complete child of God.
21. For me, when I think or ask myself, "how do I go about becoming a perfect child of God?" I remind myself of a couple things. First I tell myself, "don't just think about what you know or what I know, but think about how I'm going to live." In that, I think most of us, by the time we reach adulthood, have gone through different workshops, we've read the Divine Principle from front to back many, many times. We know this stuff. We know the Principle. We understand and we have been taught well, in terms of our knowledge of the Principle.
22. But being a perfect child of God doesn't mean that the only thing we need to do is to know the Principle. In a way, what we need to do is not just concentrate on what we know, thinking, "We know the truth. We know the greatest truth." And therefore feel really good about ourselves. We need to think about, not just what we know, but how we are living."
23. And this reminds me of something that I've experienced when I worked with the kids. Two of my kids are musical progenies. They have been invited all around the world to perform at different venues including Carnegie Hall, the Rachmaninoff Hall in Moscow. My second son Rexton, when he was 10 years old, he accomplished a very, very great victory – he entered an adult competition. You had in this competition – he was definitely one of the youngest ones, although I think there was a nine-year-old child there, the age went as high as 35. These were people who spent their whole lives in music schools and in conservatories, and had performed throughout the world. This was a huge international piano competition in Italy. To make a long story short, Rexton went through many, many different rounds. He ended up coming home with a grand prize. Performed a piece by Franz Liszt called the Bells of Geneva. Because he was 10 years old, and of course his Russian music (teacher) prepared him very, very well, he played beautifully, but he missed one note. When you hit the piano sometimes your finger lands on two notes as opposed to one. In one part he touched two keys as if they were one. Unless you are well versed in the music it goes unnoticed, but the judges, who know the piece quite well, they were well aware that you cannot say it was 100% perfect.
24. There at the competition you had fantastic pianist from all over the world. Especially the Asian pianist, they are really, really great when it comes to perfection. Especially Japanese pianist, all these ladies who've gone to the best conservatories, came to America to attend Juilliard School, these woman are like machines, they never make a mistake. He was competing with these types of people. And I remember when finally the awards were announced to everybody in the hall, this one Japanese Mother came up to me, she was really, really upset, "do you know my daughter played perfectly. Your son touched two keys. My daughter missed nothing. This competition is rigged. I won't ever come again!" She was very upset at me, saying, "They favored your son because he was young."
25. It was the first real big competition that I attended with Rexton so I was really quite shocked at how vicious and hostile the environment is. Everybody comes to win. When they do not win, and many come to represent their schools, Juilliard, Curtis, Moscow Conservatory, the best in the world, so when they do not win they really get angry. And they let me know it.
26. I was having a conversation with, not just my piano teacher – they call it the Russian mafia when it comes to classical music, whenever Russian teachers come to a location they huddle together and they all talk about their students -- and I asked them, "I had this incident where this Japanese Mother was really, really upset, because her daughter played without any mistake, and I know, I could hear, that Rexton touched two keys instead of one note. What would you say to someone like that?" A couple of the professors that were from the Moscow Conservatory, they were sitting around Rexton's piano teacher, and they said, "Music is not technique. Music is not perfection of what notes you can't or do not hit. Music is something living, something breathing. It doesn't matter how perfect you play. That's just sheer mechanics. Here at the international competition we are not judging people on their technical or mechanical ability, we're judging their ability to really be the vessel, or the temple through which the spirit or the power of the Divine is felt. If you close your eyes and do not look at this child who is standing on stage, I swear, that this was not a 10-year-old child playing the piano. This sounded like somebody who's been a maestro his whole life. That's why, when you take away the visual, the fact that he is a 10-year-old kid, and everybody expects the best mechanics and technique, but what we are trying to determine is who is truly a vessel, like the temple of God, that allows this universal language of love to be translated or transmuted, so that we could feel something. That's what music is. That's why, without any second thoughts, that kid is the grand prize winner."
27. I learned something incredibly important that day. We as children of God, are not always going to be perfect in terms of our mechanics, in terms of our technique. Maybe every now and then in the course of our life, in the odyssey that we call our life, we might step on two notes instead of one, in that we might not do everything perfect, the way that it is written in the music sheets, but it's not what you know – meaning, what you know in terms of your knowledge, the mechanics, and techniques of the piece, but it's how, how you live, how you perform. It's how you live, in being that true vessel of God, in being that true temple of God, that allows the unadulterated unpolluted music, for the love of God, to flow through your veins and inspire others with that power of true love. That's what it's all about.
28. That piano competition taught me a very, very important lesson – it's not what you know, it doesn't matter whether you went to Juilliard or Curtis. It Doesn't matter if you have a PhD. It's how you live, how you are, that temple of God that allows you to transfer that love, that divine love to others. And so when I look at GPA and I see the work that Mrs. Kubo has done – you know, she's not a PhD from Juilliard or Curtis. She is a well-meaning musical student. Yes, she did attend a musical conservatory, but she is approaching the GPA choir with a mother's heart. It's not what she knows, but it's how she has led the choir to become that impressive choir that came back with the grand prize.
29. So again I realized, being that perfect child of God doesn't mean you're not going to sometimes step on two notes versus one, but it's how we carry ourselves, how we live our lives, how we approach others in our daily dealings, that really gives us the blessing that we can call ourselves that perfect child or that the eternal son and a daughter of God.
30. Another thing that I realized in our efforts, in our work to become that perfect child of God – I remind myself, "don't just obey, but inherit." We as a movement are so good at obeying. The command comes and we obey. We are so good. It's almost like when you are talking to a computer. You give a computer command and it obeys. It does exactly what you want. It's fantastic. I love my Mac. I tell it to do something and it does it.
31. But the relationship that I have with my Mac is very, very different from the relationship that I have with God, without your parents, or with all of you – and that it's not satisfying for me as a human being, just to know that my Mac is an awesome creation, because it really obeys quite well. It obeys perfectly most of the time. But what we want, or what God wants from his children, what True Parents want from all of us is not to be that beautiful shiny Mac (although Macs are fantastic) they want us to be eternal sons and daughters of God.
32. Yes, we really know how to obey quite well in the church. In a way our True Parents and our leaders have done us a great deal of good in teaching this how to obey and unite and work together. But what God, what True Parents want is something a little more, something a little more satisfying, something a little more for filling. They don't want the children to just obey. What they are hoping for is for us to inherit everything that they are imparting upon us, sharing with us – and make it our own. Really make it our own by exercising that 5% of responsibility.
33. In a way faith – it doesn't matter how well-meaning your parents are or I am towards my kids. I want them to have a life of faith. And they can obey me, they can come to church, they can tithe regularly, they can work for headquarters, but that will not be satisfying or me as a mom, to just raise kids who are so good at obeying. What I want for my children is not just to know how to obey, not just know how to be a great Mac computer, but to actually inherit the tradition, inherit the love, inherit the teaching – make it their own. Make faith their own, not something borrowed and followed, from mommy and daddy, but make it their own. That's how you really become a perfect child of God or a perfect child of the True Parents.
34. I'm reminded when I think about not just obeying. Obeying is good, and we should obey. But our end goal is not, should not just be obeying, it really should be inheriting. When I think about this I am reminded again of my two classical pianists, and my family. Being a home school mom, and at the same time making sure that they do their practicing so they can continue to go to different competitions and build their musical resume so that they have the ability and know how to perform with all the different orchestras around the world – it's really quite a monumental task. But I felt that, regardless of what I do with my life – I could continue on and become a college professor and teach multitudes of students, continue in my academic research and write fantastic papers, but I felt that, at the end of the day, if I could not raise beautiful children that are independent, that are empowered, inspired young men and women of God, then I feel that, regardless of whatever I did in my life, it would not be satisfying. But in the time that I did really invest in the home schooling process – I was there 24-seven with my kids.
35. We had a pretty rigid and disciplined life. Every eight o'clock – we would get up and have our breakfast – but 8:00 meant practice time, sharp. Not a minute late and not a minute too soon. We had two pianos in two different parts of the house. And they would usually practice three or four hours in the morning and do their home schooling in the afternoon.
36. So the mornings were an incredibly difficult time for me because the Russian teacher told me, "it doesn't matter what a great teacher I am if you, mother, do not take responsibility to make sure your child does exactly what I ask them to do before the next lesson – or it's a waste of my time, it's a waste of your time, and we should not continue." She was very, very strict in that sense. She expected a lot, because she knew that they were very, very talented – which meant that from eight to around lunch time – it was intense, intense practicing time. You know these are eight, nine, 10-year-old kids having to practice three or four hours every morning. It's not the most easy thing to do. So you can start them at eight o'clock, and they are really, really good kids and so they try their best. They obey their Mother. So "okay, 8:00 on your benches and when the clock hits eight you start." They always start with their scales. They have many, many different types of scales they have to go through. That usually takes about 30 to 40 minutes before they start working on their pieces.
37. My job is to know their pieces well enough so that, from the second floor, in my room where I'm taking care of bills and other things for the house, I can hear their mistakes and make sure they fix it. So, I'm doing my paperwork and at the same time taking care of different things while both my ears are on two pianos at different ends of the house. So, talk about stressful – this was actually great preparation for my job here at HSA. But, they were so good that when you get to a place where you know the piece and you've memorized it and you know it by heart, the fingers are pretty much doing their thing – then you start working on the musicality, the breathing of the music. That's when you give musical life.
38. The Russian teacher did a lot of work, after they laid the foundation with good mechanics, good techniques, and then it's all about making the music live. And so, they would have to play pieces at excruciatingly slow speeds. A beautiful piece like "Clair de Lune," everyone knows it and can hum it, but think about practicing it as if you lost electricity. It would sound (speaks in slow motion) it would sound this slow. But the Russian teacher would make them practice all the pieces that slow. And then she would slowly raise up the tempo so that by the time they're supposed to be playing their tempo, they can play not just that tempo but two or three times faster, whatever was needed in order to make the music breathe. And so these kids got to a point where they could play without looking. They could pretty much close their eyes and play. And of course I would continue to ask them to play slow. And I know the music so I know what they're doing. But because they are so talented, it was double the effort for me, because what they ended up doing is – they knew they had a set amount of hours of practice and they already knew the piece, so what they would do is, while their hands are going and the bottom part of the brain is working on music – Rexton, who loves video games, he would play videogames while he was practicing. So if you are not paying attention you would not know that he's not playing. Because he was playing all the right notes and he's playing the piece, but the only way you would know he's not doing it with his total concentration is by knowing the music has stopped breathing – because he's doing something else. Or like my daughter Ariana, she told me many years later, "When you asked us to practice I was reading a book." She was confessing it to me after all these years. She thought it was safe, now that she was in college and no longer bound to the piano as much as she used to be. And I said, "Yeah I knew that." And she said, "You did!" And I said, "Yes, your fingers are going. You're very smart. You memorize all your pieces. But the music was not breathing. That's when mommy knew you were doing something else." She said, "Yes, it's kind of weird how you always came into the room when I was doing something else, even though I was still making noise."
39. And that's what I mean. But as they got older, instead of just simply obeying, they started enjoying the process of performing and playing. My need to be there, to supervise them 24-seven, became less and less necessary. And as a mother, nothing is more fulfilling than to sit back and let your child be responsible, because they have inherited the desire to really practice and really give the gift of music and share it with the world. So I realize that, when I worked with my kids all of those years ago that, in a way, it taught me a good lesson – when we see ourselves wanting to be that great child of God or that great child of our True Parents, that is really in the position to liberate them victoriously and completely, then we need to concentrate not just on obeying, but actually inheriting everything that they have given to us or shared with us by making it ours, by making it our faith, our desire, our life, our life that we can give as a gift to God and True Parents.
40. Another thing I think about when I think about how do I go about becoming a child of God. I say to myself, "do not just follow, but think about contributing and being proactive." So here at Lovin' Life Ministries we've created a national ministry, a united ministry where we can reach over 10,000 brothers and sisters for a couple of hours on Sunday morning. And it's really brought this country together in terms of a common vision and in terms of what we need to do to work as a community, to really bring the breaking news to the rest of the world and make America as great as we possibly can and to make the world into that peaceful world that we so desire.
41. One of the first things that I said to the different people that work with me is, "Lovin' Life Ministries is not like any other mega-church. What I am trying to do, here, with Lovin' Life Ministries, is not to create another mega-church that centers around a charismatic figure like Joel Olsteen or any other mega-church leader, but what Lovin' Life Ministries is, it's not about Rev. In Jin Moon. It's a means through which we can create a community of faith, community that will be responsible together, for ourselves, and work in conjunction with the different Districts to bring about the desired results – like the way the GPA choir successfully, competed victoriously by winning the grand prize. In a way, this is not about In Jin Moon being the next mega-church leader. Lovin' Life Ministries is a medium through which we will serve the community and raise the community to be the best it can be. And therefore my job as the senior pastor is not just to lead all of you, my job is to inspire, support, and nurture all of you so that all of you can become incredible future leaders. And by working together create and accomplish and establish the kind of world that we would like to see.
42. So when I remind myself, that it's not just about following, and we do that really well, we obey and follow so well, but in my mind that is part of the survival mentality of our time in the wilderness. We are now in the era of the settlement. We need to think more about how we live, how we inherit, how we become proactive eternal sons and daughters of God and therefore contribute back to our community. And in so doing create a better world.
43. When I sent my team, our team to Korea, I was so proud of them as a national mom because I was not there. But they did beautifully. And they performed admirably, and they represented God, True Parents, and America inspiringly. And that's what our Heavenly Father and our True Parents want.
44. So if we only obey and we only follow and if we only come to church because my parents come to church, or because senior pastor happens to be talking, then we are not really inheriting, we are not really being that eternal son and a daughter of God that complete absolute pure human being that continues on regardless.
45. Think about it brothers and sisters. I know that a lot of us are so worried because Father is now 93 years old. And everybody is thinking, "What happens after True Father?" Well, True Father, many of us saw him as that charismatic leader. Many of us were so busy following, so busy obeying, many of us did not take the time to work on ourselves, to become that mature, independent thinking, eternal son and a daughter of God. And that's why we are suffering, because if you really think about it, what Father wants us, as his children, is not to be so confused and decidedly miserable, because he wants to retire or because he wants to ascend to be with our Heavenly Father and Mother. What he wants us to do is to be the kind of children that are living the Principle, that have inherited everything that our True Parents have done, that are proactive in contributing to the community, to help raise everybody up along with us. They want to know that their good work continues. And therefore, I as a senior pastor, wants to raise up, not just our community, but a healthy generation of peace that is capable of continuing the good work that our True Parents have started and that my family, my brothers and sisters, have continued with. That's really the only way we're going to have a future.
46. The fact that our American team did so well, independent of me, makes me feel like everything is a pure offering to God and Heavenly Father. And it bodes well for the American movement if we can continue to think this way.
47. You know a lot of people, when I first came on board thought, "Okay, Lovin' Life Ministries, she is building herself up. She is building a united ministry -- to turn herself into a mega, a mega-preacher." No, that's not what it's about. It's about building communities. It's about you and me working together. It's about us coming together as a movement and as a community in the second year, in this year of the dragon before we hit 2013, wherein we can be in the place and position to celebrate together with our True Parents.
48. You know there is a countdown to the foundation day, right? Everybody's counting. Well what are we counting towards? Are we just counting towards the next millennium of simply just obey and follow, where we are continually just children. No! Every father and mother that has a child does not want their children to be the kind of people that are forever dependent on the parents. They want the child to do well in life, to get an education, get a great career, build a fantastic family, be that independent successful family, and therefore be a great model for the rest of the world. We want all our children to grow up.
49. So if you really think about it, the way we can truly liberate our True Parents is to become a capable, that independent – not in a negative way, meaning you don't have anything to do with anybody – but really taking the burdens off of our True Father and our True Mother and making them feel we were in good hands, and now we are strong enough, we are mature enough, we are old enough to really take care of our own families, work together to build our own communities, and really honor your memory with our lives. And hopefully, by doing a great job, our children will do the same. This is how we liberate our True Parents, completely and victoriously – brothers and sisters!
Dave Hunter speaking at Lovin' Life Sunday Service January 8, 2012
50. Whether I speak at the pulpit or not. It should not make a difference in your life of faith. It doesn't matter if Joshua Cotter is speaking, or Heather is speaking, or Ariana is speaking, or maybe in the future Jaga or Dave Hunter is speaking. We are all from this community and we are building this ministry together. We are a family. And we need to start acting like a family, brothers and sisters!.
51. So last year we did a great deal of work in creating a successful united ministry in that everyone tunes in on Sunday morning and we worship together. This year we have to work on building a family spirit. This is not just about the In Jin Moon pulpit. This is about loving life. This is about you and me. This is about America. This is about our future.
52. So brothers and sisters, one of the things I would really like to do is to encourage all the District Pastors at the beginning of this year to come together and share the pulpit with me. And I don't want them to tell me, at the beginning of the year, "In Jin Nim, I am all in." I want them to live it. And I want them to live it by coming and sharing the pulpit with me in an effort to be that united family, working together to raise great kids, to raise healthy families, to raise successful communities that can truly stand as the paradigm of true love. And if we can do that, brothers and sisters, that is how we liberate our True Parents.
53. Don't you think our True Father has done enough for all of us? Does he really need to continue on every morning and every evening and every day preaching? Don't you think he deserves to rest? Don't you think our True Mother deserves to rest? Well then this is the time when we must start exercising our 5% responsibility by being that perfect child of God that is mature, that is confident, that is competent – because we have taken the time to work on ourselves. And that's why coming together as a movement, and as a community, is incredibly important. Don't just come, because you want to show your face to me. Do it because it's good for you and it's good for the others, and it's good for your neighbors.
54. And do it because you're not just living the know. Not just knowing the principle, but you want to build it, you want to contribute, you want to participate – because we want to inherit. That's what our life is all about. We need to inherit and make it ours – not wait for the horns of destiny to be steered by somebody else. It's ours to steer. We need to steer the course of our destiny. So don't you think we should do that? Don't you think that it's high time that we liberate our True Parents from all the responsibility and all the worries and all the tasks and burdens that they've had to bear along the way?
55. I think it's high time. And I think that's what our True Parents are talking about when they proclaimed the era of the complete victorious liberation of our True Parents. This is really a call for all of us to not just obey and follow, and to be that immature child that always needs to be supervised and reined in. We need to be that competent, inspired, empowered young adult, that eternal son and a daughter of God that is going to say, "Father and Mother." Just like the way our True Parents eased the suffering and the painful heart of our Heavenly Father and Mother up in heaven. It's our time to do the same for our True Parents. It's our time to come together and work together to create something that is real and lasting. That's what we need to do.
56. And I've always told my team, "If Lovin' Life Ministries can do its job, it doesn't matter – 20, 40, or 50 years later our good works will continue." And that's the kind of ministry, that's the kind of community, that's the kind of world that I would like to build. And I certainly would hope that you would like to build it with me.
57. Brothers and sisters, every now and then I still hear the conversation, the debate, are we a church or a movement? We started out as a church, then for the last 20 years all we emphasized was movement, and that is the reason why many of our second-generation are no longer here. In a way, the way I see it, united ministry is fundamental to all the work that we want to do because the united ministry, or the church, is like the vertebrate, it's like the bones that give form to the flesh. And if you don't have that strong inner core, it doesn't matter how great service-work we do, nobody knows what we're all about. For the last 20 years we were really afraid to say, "We are the Unification Church. We are proud to be Unificationist. True Parents are the Messiah and guess what, it's time to go to the Blessing and graft onto the heavenly lineage.
58. I remember when I first started the ministry, several people said to me, "you can't preach that True Father is Messiah. You can't say that so openly." I said, "why not? Do we not live it? Do we not breath it? The only thing we need to do is know it and keep it in some kind of a bunker or a secret safe somewhere?" No! The job of the breaking news is to share it and proclaim it and partake of it and celebrate the fact that our True Parents are here with us!
59. In a way for the last 20 years our movement has been like this huge amorphous amoeba. It was huge in terms of its ability to cover things. We've touched a lot of things. We've spent lots of money. But because we lost that strong foundation of who we are, our identity as that proud Unificationist, that identity in knowing we come from great parents, our True Parents. We didn't have a backbone. We weren't proud of who we were. We were hiding in the shadows, wondering whether we should say we are Unificationists or not.
60. The answer is, the church is the inner core. Yes we are a church, but yes we are also a movement. But if we only emphasize the good works, the service projects, without bringing it back to God and True Parents and our tradition – then all the work we do is meaningless. Because, how are we different from any other service organization or movement out there. We are profoundly different in that we have our True Parents, we have our inner core, and that's why the united ministry in the church is essential to the work that we need to do – to share in the breaking news.
61. So brothers and sisters, at the beginning of this year, the year of the Dragon, and the dragon is a mythological creature, floating and roaming the heavens. This is the year when we need to, kind of, make flesh all the wonderful aspirations and substantiate them here on earth. And in order to do that, I cannot do it alone. I need you. I need all the District pastors. I need all the national state leaders, to work together under a common vision towards a specific and a unified goal. And this is what Lovin' Life Ministries is all about.
62. So brothers and sisters as we unfold into the year and as our brothers and sisters, our precious District pastors, come through New York unto the pulpit, I want all of you to give them the same appreciation and respect and honor that you have afforded me and awarded me.
63. Because, our life of faith is not just the importance of vertical. We have to remember the horizontal. It's not just our relationship with God and True Parents but it's also how we treat each other, how we serve each other. So if you are only serving God and True Parents because that's the only thing that matters to you, well then you're not really being a perfect or complete and an absolute child of God in that you are neglecting the horizontal. We have to attend God and True Parents vertically, but we also have to attend each other and support each other. That's how we create a beautiful family and the beautiful culture.
64. So brothers and sisters, aren't we proud as American members? (cheers) aren't we so lucky and blessed in that we really started this year with a roaring bang! And GPA when they come back, they will share with all of you the grand prize. So let's be proud of what we've accomplished thus far and think about how much more we can accomplish when all of us, not just simply obey and follow, and just concentrate on what we know, but imagine what we can be as a community, as the movement, as a family – if we start thinking about how … if we start thinking about inheriting, making our destination our own, making our faith our own. And if we really start thinking about, not just following along what everyone else is doing, but being proactive and contribute. Look around you and see how you can volunteer, see how you can help, see how you can inspire others with your creativity that's given uniquely to you by God, in your divinity.
65. So here we are talking about … something truthful, something genuine, something real – not something superficial that looks good, but doesn't yield anything. Like that perfect performance, mechanically, that has no life. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about living a life of real love – and living the kind of life, exercising living for the sake of others, so that we can make God feel how much we truly love Him and Her, so that we can make our True Parents feel how much we love him and her. And so we can help each other to feel how much we really love each other, and want to be there for each other. And if we do that, with everything – that makes us who we are as human beings, as the great eternal son and a daughter of God, there is nothing that we cannot accomplish as long as we're willing to do the work.
66. So brothers and sisters, happy year of the Dragon. God bless you and thank you so much!