Following is Rev. In Jin Moon's sermon given in Dallas, Texas on February 22, 2009.
Thank you, brothers and sisters. Thank you very much. George always has a way of bowling me over with his energy. Isn’t it great? If only we had a hundred Georges to clone around the world, it would be absolutely amazing. I am honored to have such a wonderful brother on my team. And I have quite a few other people who work with me as well, whom I will introduce later.
This weekend has been truly a wonderful weekend for me. It’s just wonderful getting to know your children and all of you. I’m hoping that Texas, where everything is big, can be the state that can bring really great results for our True Parents and for America.
Every time I give a Sunday sermon, I have a moment of silence beforehand when I like to spend time with my Heavenly Father. I always like to ask him, “How can I convey to your children how much you love them?” If I can be worthy enough to convey that love, then it will be a job well done.
This morning I was thinking about a lot of things, in particular, my journey, together with my husband, of building a family and learning how to work as a team. When Father and Mother asked me to take on the role of a mother for America, I had a lot of reflecting to do. I’ve often thought that the American people have incredible potential and that the First Generation, who stormed into our workshops and our centers many decades ago, were the best. You were the prepared cream of the crop. People like Rev. Jenkins and Rev. Hernandez were prepared. People like Ken Owens were prepared to take historical pictures with his “Kimchi,” and “One, two, three,” and “Aboji, mansei.” All these wonderful people were prepared by our Heavenly Father.
I’ve watched you grow over the years; I’ve watched you grow into parents and, some of you, into grandparents. I’ve very much enjoyed following different people’s lives, especially the security brothers at East Garden, whom I love dearly, and some of the difficulties they went through as couples and as families. You young people, you capable, handsome, beautiful young Americans who joined the movement, 200 or 300 per week (can you imagine?) back then! You were so charged up. You were sparkling with your newfound inspiration that “Oh my goodness, here is a message of God that’s going to teach me how to experience true love and how to build an ideal family. I want to build the first ideal family. Sign me up!” You had that spirit. And that’s why you came and gave up everything: your careers, your education, your whole lives in the pursuit of something wonderful, something new.
Sometimes I wonder, where did that inspiration or the excitement go? Now I’m sharing with you that God gave us everything that we asked for. We asked for the opportunity to build an ideal family. We asked for an ideal spouse and ideal children, and we got that. We just didn’t know that in the word ideal we were literally asking for dealing with these things. So I deal with my spouse, I deal with my children, and, in my case, I deal with my in-laws. It takes on a whole new meaning for me. And then we deal with the different aspects of life that we wanted so badly and that Heavenly Father obligingly gave to us, wholeheartedly.
I often think God must have a sense of humor because he inspires, but, at the same time, he challenges. He pokes fun at us for asking him for the things that he gives us, but then at the same time he weeps with us for the suffering or for the moments of loneliness that we go through. I think our Heavenly Parent is a pretty cool mom and dad, don’t you think?
On top of that, God gave us a physical manifestation in the body of True Parents, and these are two people whom I dearly adore, whom my children say are really, really cute. My daughter always likes to say, “Oh, Omma, your father is so cute.” In Korean, its key-oh-wa, and I say, “You don’t use that kind of word to describe your grandpa in Korean. You don’t say your grandpa is cute, but I know what you mean.” Especially when the kids see Grandpa whistling and dancing, they are utterly amazed because although Father is 90 years old, he has a vigorous body and a great constitution. If you notice, it’s difficult for him to walk without the support of a hand or a cane, but when Father is filled with the Holy Spirit, that man can boogie!
My father can put young people to shame. And you thought you saw a great performance at Hoon Dok Hae! What the True Family saw up on the 30th floor would put Soul Train to shame. My eldest son is like, “Oh my gosh! Grandpa can move!” He was just staring at Grandpa because that was the first time in his life that he saw my father boogie. We all bowed and thanked Father for a wonderful Hoon Dok Dae and wonderful morning, thanking him for the weekend. He was getting ready to leave and then the grandsons, my son and Shin Chul, Hoon Sook’s eldest son, started singing one more “Happy Birthday” before he left. They started singing, and then Father got up and started boogying.
We said, “Mother, you really have to join in now.” We pushed her toward Father, so she started to move. It was one of those moments that I wish, Toshi, you were there to capture on video. It’s so precious; I wish I could share it with all of you.
When I think about how incredibly precious our True Parents are and I think about all the great Christian ministers whom I just got to know recently and all of my friends of different faiths, I often wonder, what would Christians give to have five minutes’ real time with Jesus Christ? Maybe to have Starbucks coffee with him or share French fries at McDonald’s, or maybe better yet, walk down the street with him, enjoying a beautiful, sunny day?
What they’re yearning for is to have their teacher with them now. And the amazing thing about our movement, brothers and sisters, is that the teacher, physically manifested in the body of Father and Mother, is with us now. We see them. They are teaching us. They are throwing cakes at us, they are boogying with us, they are laughing with us, they are poking fun at us, they are urging us to be better people. We are living, breathing, and working in an incredibly important providential time that’s not going to come again. When Father talks about how he’s going to leave us in 2013, I’m hoping that he means that it will just be a simple retirement because I want to have him with us for much longer.
But if we’re really thinking in terms of having True Father with us for only the next couple of years, the time that we’re living in is an incredible, extraordinary time. Your children and your grandchildren, 100, 200, 300, 1,000 years from now, will be thinking, “I wish I were Rev. Jenkins back then; I wish I were Peace Kim. I wonder what it felt like to be scolded by True Father. I wonder what it would have been like to sing a glorious gospel song for our True Father. (He has a good voice, by the way.) And I wonder what it would be like if I were Rev. Hernandez, to be a district leader in this big state of Texas, when Father was alive.” These are the kinds of things that our future generations will be thinking about; they will be looking back at your life and wanting to study you. They will Google you, research you, write papers about you. Your memoirs will be best-sellers.
This is an incredible moment in history that will not be repeated. So when I say that all of you are so blessed, you truly are. You were born in a blessed time. Compared with all the millions of people who have gone before and will come after, we are chosen people.
When I use the words chosen people, I say it with a bit of caution. The concept of chosen people has been misused by many different types of religions and organizations and misunderstood even in our own life of faith. The way I like to think of the chosen people is the way Dr. Young Oon Kim defined the phrase when she said, “The chosen people means when you understand yourself to be a chosen person, you are chosen to serve.” It’s not that you’re so great and special that everyone is worthless compared with you but that you have been given a special opportunity and a blessing to serve.
So what I like to say to the Korean brothers and sisters in the community who feel so inspired, energized, and special that they come from the same cultural stock of our True Parents, “Because you come from the same country as our True Parents and you think of yourself as the chosen people, then it’s your duty to serve better than anybody else.” It’s the duty of Koreans in America to serve America, above and beyond any other races or any other nationalities represented in this country. And if we feel called by God to represent Korea in a wonderful way, then we need to do that with a loving heart and see whatever we can do to make America better.
Yesterday there was a wonderful Korean sister who was helping me prepare food and drinks in the hotel. I found out she is daughter of a Korean Evangelical Association (KEA) leader, and I heard a little of her testimony. She talked about how as a Sunday School teacher she felt that worshiping separately was kind of weird. I listened carefully, and I said, “I like what you’re saying because as a mother, when I look at my children, I don’t want my children to see a church divided because one person is Korean and the other is American, Japanese, or European.
I want my children to experience one family under God. We are a unification movement, and if we cannot worship as a community together in one setting, then what are we teaching the world?” It was very wonderful to hear this from a Second Generation member raised and educated in this country; she had seen how much her father sacrificed and dedicated himself to the providence, and yet she could see that maybe we can do things better. Maybe, going forward, it’s crucial to emphasize worshiping together as a family and doing projects, picnics, celebrations as a family. As a mother, that’s what I want for my children; as a mother herself, that’s what she wants for her children, too.
If Korea is chosen, then how wonderful would it be for Koreans to worship with us so we can see the incredible depth and the heart that they can share and teach us during our Sunday Service and fellowship. Otherwise, we may never enjoy the blessing of having Korean elder brothers and sisters. So how wonderful would it be if we can do it together! When I was listening to her story, I was realizing once again that the Second Generation spirit is a little bit different.
I’ve been going around the country talking about the importance of natural witnessing. We’ve spent many years trying to teach people the importance of Divine Principle, but we were so busy teaching that many of us weren’t living what we were teaching. When we preach the phrase “living for the sake of others,” remember that living for the sake of others starts with living. If we are living for the sake of others in such a way that we are literally dying for the sake of others, dying for the sake of our spouse, dying for the sake of our children, dying for the sake of our elder leaders, and we’re not thriving, prospering, or even breathing, then we don’t have very much to teach, do we? So what I would like to emphasize is the importance of really living what we want to teach.
The thing that I love about what I call natural witnessing is the power of attraction. It’s something that you cannot deny. There is something wonderful and special about the blessed children that is undeniable; there is something uniquely different about the blessed children that you cannot find in the outside world. I don’t know how many times people have come up to me and said, “Tatiana, why are your children different? They’re just so respectful. They say ‘Thank you.’” Just simple, common human courtesies like that, which the young people of America and the world have forgotten in pursuing a life of money, power, and knowledge.
That’s the reason why Father has criticized the pursuit of money, power, and knowledge so much. And he did so, so much with the First Generation, because he wasn’t saying those things are bad; he was saying, if those things are a choice that you are making over and above a life of faith and a life dedicated to God and the world, then those things are nothing. But if the Second Generation can truly inherit the heartistic connection and maintain the great spiritual heritage that were given to them by their parents, then it’s our duty to use power, money, and knowledge for wonderful things.
I still remember to this day the first Political Science class that I attended. The professor was a very distinguished gentleman who had written numerous books. The first class was about defining power. He went around the class and asked, “Can you define power for me? What is it? Define it. Explain it. How would you apply it?” After listening to everyone, he said, “Let me close with my definition of power. Power is the ability to influence.”
And so when I think about America, I believe that Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother blessed this country for a reason. America is a superpower not because it’s so great in and of itself but because God prepared America for greater things. God chose America for its ability to influence. The way I understand that is, it is the ability to serve. America has everything. It’s the land of opportunity; it’s the land of dreams. It’s the only country in the world that people are literally dying to get into. It’s a symbol of freedom. It’s where somebody like Senator Obama, coming from a single-parent home, can dream of becoming the president, actually be elected, sit in a house that was built by the hands of slaves, and represent African Americans in a whole new way.
When I talk about the Senator Obama phenomenon, it’s not because I’m such a fan of his policies. I have some differences of opinion when it comes to his economic policies. But one can’t deny the fact that a Black man being elected as president of the United States is a miracle that Martin Luther King dreamed about years ago, that people like Rosa Parks lived for but never thought they would see it in their lifetime. It’s the impossible becoming a possibility, but more than a possibility, a reality.
When I look out into the audience and I envision all the grand things that Texas brothers and sisters can do, I’m thinking, if Obama can do it, I would like to see in my lifetime a member of our community being elected as the president of the United States. And why not? This is the land of dreams. This is the land where impossibility can become a reality. We’ve seen it happen.
Martin Luther King shared with the world that he had a dream, and after his assassination people like Dr. Lowery carried on the civil rights movement for that dream. The fulfillment of the civil rights movement is really seen in Senator Obama sitting in the White House. That was the purpose of the civil rights movement, and they have accomplished it. Often I say to Dr. Lowery, “What’s next? You’re 90 years old.”
You’ve done great things in your life First Generation, my dear brothers and sisters. You’ve sacrificed so much. But now is the time when the baton must be passed.
The civil rights movement must continue in the form of a whole new movement that people like Dr. Lowery, Rev. Fauntroy, and the ACLC clergy need to initiate and make sure it turns into a huge movement that can effectuate a change in our world. Again, power is the ability to influence. God gave America power so that it could exercise rightful influence in the world and usher it into a whole new era of peace. Isn’t that what we’re all about?
When I was at the coronation ceremony and saw my father and mother, and my younger brother’s couple following so humbly behind them, I was filled with incredible pride because here was my father passing on the baton to a whole new generation. How wise and how wonderful it is for Father to raise up the youngest son, who has dedicated the last seven years of his life to a life of ministry.
Even before he started his ministry in Korea, he was preparing every single day by bowing 1,000 times every single day. Can you imagine? And now on top of the 1,000 bows every single day, as Rev. Jenkins mentioned, he gets up at 3:00 o’clock every morning. Rain, snow, sunshine; it doesn’t matter. Every morning he goes up to the mountain to pray, and then he visits different hospitals and institutions, setting the spiritual groundwork for God to work miracles. He has led an exemplary life, which no one can deny. It’s astounding.
I always joke to Hyung Jin, “I guess there was a reason why we nicknamed you Lovey in the family.” When he was born, he was just so cute, just unbelievably cute. Even though he was just an infant, there was a natural attraction, something that drew people to him. I remember many grannies and even teenagers coming up and saying, “Oh, he’s so adorable, so cute.” So we started calling him “Lovey.” Even though he’s a father of five now and he’s married and a spiritual head, when I see him, he’s still Lovey.
It’s wonderful to have a dynamic in the family that’s like a natural subjugation: All the older ones can acknowledge that there is something wonderful in the younger brother. I feel that it is an incredible blessing that Father is raising him up to be the spiritual head of our movement.
For those of you who are confused about the future, Father’s making it very clear. Not only did he have the coronation on January 15 in Korea, but, to emphasize the point, he did it again for us in America. I think that it was incredibly profound, moving, and wonderful. It gives us a sense of clarity. We as a movement know where the baton is passing; we know where we need to go.
In the meantime, my job as the elder sister is to work for my younger brother. Whenever I call him, I say, “This is America checking in, boss.” I always get a laugh out of him. It’s just a wonderful feeling that we’re really working together for the same thing, wanting to help this incredible community of men and women who have given so much to the movement.
Really, I feel that as a member of the Second Generation, it’s my honor and duty to remind my fellow Second Generation how incredibly important the First Generation were, to let you know that everything that you have gone through for the sake of the providence, giving up your careers, your education, and your lives, was not in vain because now it’s the time for the Second Generation to reap the harvest.
I like to portray the scene as something analogous to building a foundation of a house. When you want to build a grand mansion or a huge skyscraper, what’s the first thing you have to do? You have to dig a hole. So as high as the building is up above, that’s how deep the hole needs to be. The First Generation members were the ones digging out the basement and preparing the foundation. Many of you, in the dark and grunginess of digging holes might have felt lost or might have questioned, “What am I here for? Why am I digging day after day?” But what you have dug over the years is a wonderful, strong foundation that the Second Generation can now build upon. If we do our job right, we’re going to build an incredible mansion for God, America, and the world.
So how fitting it is that one of the first big projects that “Lovey” has initiated as the spiritual head of our community is the building of an interfaith temple. Not only are we going to be preaching interfaith, but we’re actually going to be building it in Korea. We will have different services in this building, representing unity: Catholic services, Jewish services, Islamic services. This is something that religious people have talked and dreamed about for centuries. Now the fulfillment is being made into reality.
When I get excited about a project, as my husband knows, I really get excited about it. But for me, as a student of religion, I see this temple project as incredibly important and profound. I know that there are a lot of nay-sayers, but if you look at the temple from a religious and historical context, it symbolizes what the future of religion should be, clearly manifesting in a physical form the concept of one family under God. To build that in Korea, after Father proclaimed the liberation of the Heavenly Parent as King of Kings, is just absolutely amazing to me.
I’m working hard in America to restructure HSA, just as I’ve done with the Manhattan Center. Even during this severe economic recession, at the Manhattan Center, we were able to make a significant profit. Not only did we save the company from bankruptcy, not only did we bring it into the black, but we’ve actually been making money, and it’s poised for many wonderful things. As my husband shared with you, just a couple of days ago we signed a contract with a major American network to produce many different shows. That’s ongoing, and that’s just one of the many deals that I’m working on.
The real tour of Manhattan Center takes 45 minutes. It’s great exercise, but if you’re doing 10 or 11 tours a day, as well as meeting with different clients and all the lunches and dinners you have to go through, you just literally turn into candle wax. So I wanted to create this promo video as something very short, very compact that could convey what the Manhattan Center is all about.
What I want to remind the young people in the room today is that the Manhattan Center is only one example in our community that Father and Mother have prepared for the young people of America. There was a young brother who got up on stage yesterday and said, “Becoming a CEO of Manhattan Center sounds pretty good to me. I would love that.” I encourage that attitude, and I would challenge that brother to get the best education, get the best job experience, work for my competitors, and then come and see me. I’d be the proud mother to say, “Dude, you make this mama proud!” I would love to do that for all the young men and women in the audience today.
There’s just no limit to what you can accomplish, as long as you decide that you want to do it. We have the Washington Times. There was a young lady introduced who is very interested in journalism and writing. Why not train ourselves as the editor-in-chief of the high school newspaper and then go on to college to become editor-in-chief of the college newspaper? And then maybe work for the Boston Globe or the New York Times, and then become the publisher of the Washington Times? How incredibly awesome would that be?
And then if you’re interested in ballet, we have a joint program with the Kirov Academy, the best ballet academy in Moscow. There are just so many things that our True Parents have touched, so many things that are just waiting to be harvested so that we as a community can exercise our power, or our ability to influence the world in a good way.
As a young person growing up in this country, I remember my father telling all my brothers and sisters, “In Jin, Ye Jin, Hyo Jin, all of you, I brought you to America to learn how to love the American people.” I remember very clearly when I was eight years old, the first thing he said to the family in the family meeting after our greeting to our True Parents was, “You have to know how to love the American people. And in order to truly love the American people, you have to be able to understand them. And in order to understand them, you have to speak their language.” He said, “You must learn English, and you must speak it better than the American people so you can understand their heart. And by understanding their heart, you can truly love them as brothers and sisters.” That has stayed with my brothers and sisters and me for many years.
Part of the reason why I believe my older brother had such a passion to want to exert his influence in the world of media and entertainment is because he knew how much it affected him. Growing up as a teenager, he knew that rock music was changing the lives of a lot of people in a very powerful and profound way, but not always in the best way. So he wanted to take the power of rock and use it for God. Back in the late 1970s or early 1980s, that was a novel idea, not just for our movement but for Christian churches, too. But now if you fast-forward several decades later, you cannot find a successful Christian service without a music ministry being a huge part of it. I am a big believer in a music ministry and I’m a big believer in my brother’s vision of harnessing the power of the media and entertainment to influence the world in a good way.
When Levi’s jeans were created, within a week or two they were copied in Japan. When Beyonce wears something at a Grammy show in America, within a day somebody will be wearing the same thing across the planet. The cult of celebrity has replaced God altogether in many instances. We need to bring God back to the young people by using the very same media that took them away from God to begin with. And how wonderful would it be if through many types of media, including music and interesting visual art forms, we could inspire people and remind them of the great Creator, the great Parent who made us who we are.
I often think, if we can really bring back God into these young people’s lives and give them meaning in an exciting and in a modern form, similar to the way our True Parents gave the First Generation meaning and that spark of life because you realized that the dream of experiencing true love was a reality -- how wonderful that would be.?
There are really great attempts in our Sunday Services at creating bands to make them a little bit more fun, a little bit more modern, a little bit more edgy. I think those things are wonderful. But I’d be the first one to say, change is great, but let’s not forget tradition. We need to have something that is passed on from generation to generation. I know that a lot of young people are trying something totally new, which means doing everything differently, but it is wonderful to honor an elder. There is a wonderful thing in, for instance, getting up at the podium and bowing to the audience before you speak, or bowing to the True Parents, that I think needs to continue.
But in other aspects, such as in our ability to boogie, just like Father and Mother do, when we sing holy songs, or when we can feel inspired enough to interject “hallelujah,” that’s okay, too. Let’s think of different ways we can interconnect with each other as men and women, as brothers and sisters, as a family. Then we will be going a whole new way.
As we clean up the house to prepare for our guests, we should also be thinking about how we are representing True Parents in the way we carry ourselves. I know that a lot of you are tired. I know that a lot of you have suffered quite a bit, and maybe you fine gentlemen might not have as much hair as you once had, or maybe you’ve grown a little bit wider than you were before. The Unification movement is really wonderful because we have an eternal mate, somebody that we can call our own forever. But the flip side is that we may take our mate for granted. So because we have an eternal mate who isn’t going anywhere, then we can be a slob. Maybe I don’t have to take a shower today because I’m not feeling like walking into the shower. Or maybe I don’t have to take care of how I look; maybe I don’t need to go to the gym because no matter how big I get, my husband won’t go anywhere.
But I would like to caution the sisters -- and I say this to myself, too. There’s a thing called the Pillsbury dough effect that a lot of sisters go through. You know those biscuits that come in a canister in the freezer at the grocery. They are wonderful with a Sunday pot roast, and my kids just love waiting for me to turn the canister until it goes “pop”. What happens to the Pillsbury biscuit when it pops is that the dough suddenly inflates, and what was initially one size turns into another in a matter of a minute.
Wonderful brothers and sisters, young and handsome and tall, have gone through this Pillsbury popping effect. They were young, beautiful and so inspired, and then they got married with an eternal mate. The years go by, and you take the mate for granted, and “pop” goes the Pillsbury biscuit. I’ve heard quite a few popping over the years. If we as a community take care of ourselves because we love our children and because we love our spouse, I think that will go a long way. When God gives you an eternal mate, that means you’ve got to love your spouse and treat him or her like a king or a queen for the rest of your life.
One of the things I’ve been encouraging blessed couples to do is, no matter how long you’ve been married to each other, every night before you go to bed, why don’t you bow to each other? It’s a simple reminder that this person was chosen for you by God. It’s a great privilege to have this person love you for the rest of your lives. So you honor your spouse by being the best that you can be.
When we walk around in public, we need to be the best that we can be because we are representing our True Parents. We are representing our community; we are representing our Heavenly Parent. When we get ready to invite guests to our home, the first thing we do is clean house. The second thing we do is put on something nice. So in the same manner, how wonderful would it be if we could clean house and also at the same time put on something nice for each other?
Prepare the inner, but also the outer aspect as well. The doors to the blessing are opening up, and Father and Mother are allowing more and more people to be blessed, including those who choose their own spouse. That was a foreign concept when I got married. You can be introduced to each other through your parents or even initiate the idea by yourselves. It’s a wonderful, wonderful time. But with greater freedom comes greater responsibility.
The more the blessing opens up, if you keep on taking your husband for granted, one of these days your husband is going to look at you and will be scratching his head and thinking, “Do I really want to be married to this person for another day?” With greater freedom comes greater responsibility. So living for the sake of others means living first. Love your spouse by taking care of yourself and making sure you smell nice, making sure you smile, and making sure that your spouse knows that you’re not taking him or her for granted.
I remember quite a few instances when I felt like, “I really wish I could help this person.” One blessed child came up to me and said, “In Jin Nim, I really love the movement, but I have to tell you that I’m so embarrassed when my parents come and pick me up at school.” I said, “Why is that?” Then this child said, “I know that I can’t judge my parents externally, but my father never takes a shower, and my mother looks like she’s caught in the hippie time warp. I just feel so embarrassed when they come and pick me up.”
I said, “Instead of being embarrassed, what about the idea of you becoming an agent of change? Instead of feeling like you’re a victim of these parents that you’re embarrassed about, what about changing your environment by changing yourself? What about owning your parents as your own? Be grateful to have them as your parents, first of all, because not everyone has parents. But second of all, ask yourself what you can do to make things better for them? Maybe you can buy your dad some Head ‘N Shoulders if he has dandruff. If you don’t like your mother’s sense of fashion, then maybe you can take her to a wonderful hair-cutting salon or give her a day off with the money that you’ve raised through different jobs to give her an incredible day at the spa. And what about going and taking your mom to these fine sales at TJ Maxx and Marshall’s that they have all the time? You don’t need a lot of money to look good. You just a need a little care and love.”
When I shared that with her, of course there were a lot of tears, but she felt incredibly empowered because she could make the difference. So I know that you might feel, “Why did I get stuck with this? I’m embarrassed. I don’t want to deal with it.” But by becoming an agent of change and by dealing with it in a proactive way, this blessed child changed her own relationship with her parents. She realized, “Wow, my mom’s really beautiful. Underneath all that hair, she’s really beautiful. And my dad looks pretty snappy himself.” Then she could feel pride. And she’s allowing the parents to interact in her life. It’s the start of something beautiful. And it’s because that child decided that she wasn’t going to be a victim but rather an agent of change.
So when I go around the country and I meet different young people and their parents, I feel like there’s an incredible opportunity for growth here. You are the best kept secret but are so secret that you never came out of the closet, so to speak. So it’s time to clean house and open our doors and show the world how wonderful our children are. I don’t know how many times I’ve met people who have met our Second Generation and then say to me, “Your kids are really incredible. Kids from your community are really different.” I love telling them, “Those kids are the product of those mass weddings. And the manseis actually mean 10,000 years of peace.” They say, “I never knew that.” I say, “Can you imagine cheering 10,000 years of peace with thousands of couples wanting to dedicate their lives to God and to this concept of one family under God? That’s pretty profound, and that’s pretty cool.”
The true rebels of our time are True Parents, and 2,000 years ago a true rebel of his time was Jesus Christ. I’m challenging the young people to be rebels with a cause. Don’t be a rebel without a cause, doing drugs, just rebelling against your parents because you feel like it. If you’re going to rebel, have a purpose. Why not have a reason? Why not have a cause? And why not rebel against society, saying, “You know what? This isn’t right.” When you see a show like the CNN interview with the 22-year-old college graduate who wants to put together the money for graduate school by selling her virginity on the Internet, why don’t you say, “I want to be a rebel with a cause. I want to rebel against things like that.” Because selling yourself on the Internet for the sake of money has got to be pretty low.
That young woman is a vessel of God, too, and she deserves to be loved and respected just like every one of us in this room. Why can’t we inspire such young people to rebel against a society that puts money, power, and knowledge above all else? The most important thing at the end of the day is love, and that’s what our True Parents have been teaching over the years. That’s the essence of God. That’s why God is an incredibly wonderful, loving person whom we can experience. I’ve had many special moments with God in my life, and I know that many of you have, also, over the years.
I feel like we’re standing in an incredible, providential time when so much has been prepared and is ready to take off. I had the privilege of hosting Senator Obama at the Manhattan Center for a Democratic fund-raiser where each seat went for $25,000. The Who’s Who of New York and the East Coast were there. I met both Barack Obama and Michelle, along with a string of entertainers who were there to celebrate in the concert of the decade: Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel, John Legend, Indira. And there were all the fashionistas, all the newspaper editors-in-chief that you can think of. It was one of those nights for the Democrats to remember for their whole life.
I felt that Obama coming to Manhattan Center, especially my being able to shake his hand and say a couple of words that my father wanted me to say to him before he was elected, was my father’s way of blessing an African American to be the president of the United States. He foresaw it. He predicted it in October 1975. That speech was given in Chicago, believe it or not. He talked about how a child of African-American heritage with a white mother and black father would one day be the president of the United States. How profound is that?
So it’s not really about whether I’m a Democrat or a Republican. It’s just a fact that an impossibility became a reality. And just as Father predicted that this man from Chicago would be the president of the United States, Father predicted many great things that have happened recently in our world. The fall of communism; the fall of the Berlin Wall. In fact, my father sent my elder brother, who was the international president of CARP back then, to preach against Gorbachev. He banged the wall down; shortly thereafter, the Berlin Wall came down.
Think about it. My family name, the Korean names of all the True Children, they are ridiculously difficult to pronounce. So here we were in a new country, making new friends with people who couldn’t pronounce our names. Then on top of that, Father said to all of his daughters, “You are all going to be given Russian names.” This is at the height of the Soviet empire. It was just unthinkable that Father’s daughters would be going to Russia. But Father said, during all those speeches, “We must go to Moscow.” Do you remember? So on top of our friends trying to figure out our names, Ye Jin, Un Jin, In Jin, Sun Jin, now they had to learn new Russian names -- Nina, Tatiana, Natasha, and so on and so forth.
At that time, I still remember that I said, “Tatiana, that’s kind of long and weird.” There was a time when I didn’t really want to use it because it was just such a difficult name to pronounce. But my father said to me, “One day you’re going to go to Moscow and because your name is Tatiana, people are going to feel immediately attracted and connected to you.” And lo and behold, I ended up having these two child prodigies who are classical pianists, and we did end up in Moscow. We’ve been to Moscow almost every year since the year 2000. Because my name is Tatiana, immediately I became Tanichka to one professor. It’s a loving form of Tatiana that you say only to your children or other loved ones. But immediately I was Tanichka. There’s a connectedness that would not exist if I were merely In Jin. So Father predicted and foresaw this.
As difficult as my married life has been with my fine husband here, my father predicted that I would have great children. I must say, if I had to do it all over again and I could have these five fine children, I’d definitely do it again. So we have an incredible teacher, an incredible Father and Mother, an incredible wise man who knows what is going to happen in the course of human history. He can predict things before they happen.
When he started talking about the Pacific Rim Ea and I first got wind of it, I said, “This is to my mother’s credit.” All those years of being silent behind my father, she was the model for the Unification ladies for a long time. True Mother didn’t speak, so women had to be quiet. We very much followed the paradigm of the biblical story of Mary and Martha in which Mary is hailed as displaying the true virtue of Christian womanhood because she was silent. But I want to understand that story to mean that Jesus wants to teach us the importance of listening to him as opposed to doing busywork like Martha was.
So when I think about my True Mother’s suffering and the course that she’s had to go through, I think about the course that American sisters had to go. I’ve sat through many speeches where Father was admonishing you, right? “You American sisters, you think you’re so smart, you think you’re so beautiful, and you think you’re so educated.” He was chastising the American sisters and really giving them a hard time.
When my father was doing that, you know what was happening in the True Family? My brothers were quite young, and you know how cruel boys can be to girls, right? And brothers can be really cruel to sisters, especially the ones that they love more. I don’t know how many speeches my sisters and I sat through where our brothers were needling us, saying, “Did you hear that? Women are evil. Women are bad. You should never say anything. You should just obey, obey, obey.”
I remember sitting there as a young girl thinking, “God, are you there? Are you listening? You didn’t send me down to this earth and give me this life to be poked fun at by my brothers through all these woman-hating speeches.” My sisters and I wondered, “When is this time going to end?” But our True Mother was restoring the process of the Fall, and she was absolutely victorious. Not only did Mother start to speak, but she has a voice! Not only does she have a voice, but she has started to lead. She started the Women’s Federation and did many speeches around the country on behalf of my father. To see a loving husband so giddy about his wife giving a sermon, if that isn’t true love, brothers and sisters, I don’t know what is!
As difficult as it is for an Asian man [In Jin’s husband] to be Number Two to this woman here, I know that my father takes great delight in the fact that he’s supporting me. As difficult as our life has been, he’s turning out to be a very wonderful partner and advisor. I think that’s where Father and Mother’s wisdom comes in. So whenever my father turns to me and says, “See, In Jin, it’s because you listened, and I chose the right man for you,” I always say, “Yes, Father, you chose the man, but I did the living.” (Laughter) To his credit, he did the living, too.
We as a community have gone through the school of hard knocks; we’ve weathered the storm, and those were mighty fine storms, some of them. We’re still on our course. Fresh winds are blowing, and those fresh winds are blowing from the inspiration and excitement of the Second Generation. I feel that America is being prepared and poised to exert power to influence the world in the correct way, so that it can really honor God as our Heavenly Parent and Heavenly Grandparent, and substantiate the ideal families that we wanted so badly (which we got).
I want to leave Texas with True Parents’ love, which they want me to convey to all of you. They truly love all of you, and you are the great heroes, the First Generation. And we have many Second Generation who are future heroes in the making. I feel that this Sunday and this month will be a good one, and I hope that you can go forward realizing how special and how important everybody is. So God bless you, and thank you very much.
