Realized who we are

In Jin Moon
June 28, 2009
Lovin' Life Ministry
Manhattan Center, New York

Good morning, brothers and sisters. Welcome to Lovin’ Life Ministry on this beautiful Sunday morning. I’m delighted to see all of you once again. I hope you had a great week. I’m sure all of you have heard some of the breaking news in the last week of the passing of Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett. These two people were truly icons of American pop culture, media, and entertainment. When I think about Michael Jackson, I think about what an incredible genius and talent he was, truly a gift from God. From the tender age of five years old, he was thrust upon the stage together with the fabulous Jackson Five, his siblings. He gave so much joy and happiness to a lot of us here.

I know that a lot of the young entertainers in my industry were truly inspired by his example, and I know that the Thriller album, which sold millions and millions, inspired not only some of the big singers and songwriters in the industry but also continually the up-and-coming young artists and fresh new talent of this new generation.

When I see his life, I can relate to him a little. He was a public person. That is one facet of his life that we in the audience know about. But we also know that wherever there’s a public side, there’s the private side as well. Watching this great talent go through the journey of his life, coming to a realization of who he is and what he wants to be, going through the process of self-discovery that we all know is not an easy one, we saw how he transformed himself many times and became what he thought he needed to be at that point.

This sense of dissatisfaction at who you are, always wanting to be better, always trying to make improvements in yourself is something that every public person goes through. I’m no different; I was born to a very public family. I was thrust upon the stage from the moment I was born, and I’ve been watched ever since I was a little girl. Here I am at what I like to think of as the ripe old age of forty-something, and I’m still being watched and looked upon with a great deal of curiosity. I’m sure I fall short of many people’s expectations, but hopefully I’m doing a good enough job to maybe not be the inspiration but just the reminder behind the inspiration.

Truly all of us, having divinity within us, have a secret key to our own happiness and well-being, and empowerment that I am only reminding you of. Of course, in the 1980s I was a great fan of Michael Jackson, too. In the late 1970s, when Farrah Fawcett was the face of the gorgeous American blonde, I myself tried out her hairstyle, maybe not to the effect that I wanted, but I tried, as well as a lot of young ladies in the audience.

These people have almost become part of our family, part of our life experience. Even though we don’t know them, we feel like we do know them and that they’ve become part of our lives. When I look at Michael Jackson now that I’m a little older and have worn out my Thriller album from the 1980s, I come to look at him from a mother’s point of view. I see his own pain, his struggle, and his desperation to find who he is.

We know, as fans of Michael Jackson or as his critics, what he was. We know that he was the King of Pop. We know that he was a fabulous dancer. We know that he did a lot of good work trying to help children. But we also know that he was known for the scandals and child molestation issues, was in and out of court battles, was severely in debt, $500 million; he was just in the process of remaking himself and looking forward to the world tour he was planning.

Here was Michael Jackson, a fabulous success at what he was in terms of his career as a singer and entertainer. Many of us in this room are fabulous at what we are -- meaning in our chosen area of expertise or profession. I’m sure some of you are fabulous lawyers and others are incredible doctors. I know some of you are intuitive psychiatrists. And I know that some of you are incredible entertainers and artists yourselves. We just witnessed a great performance by the band here.

The world teaches us to think in terms of what we need to be, what we can be, and what we are as human beings. But many times the world and our parents have forgotten to teach us about who we are as individuals. Many people can be fabulous lawyers and doctors, and yet they could still be troubled, puzzled, and conflicted about who they really are.

The wonderful thing about True Parents, and the wonderful thing about coming to know God, our Heavenly Parent, is that we realize one awesome, incredible fact. Who are we? We are our Heavenly Parent’s children. We are our Heavenly Parent’s sons or daughters. That’s a profound and important starting point because when you know yourself, when you know who you are, then your life and your line to your destiny become very clear.

A great ancient Stoic philosopher named Epictetus said, “Know first who you are.” That’s the starting point to becoming a great man or a great woman. When we revel in the fact that first and foremost we are God’s sons and daughters, we realize that we have an incredible opportunity and ability to commune with our Lord, to commune with our Father and Mother in such a way that we can experience and actualize this incredible thing called true love: Love that is not fickle, love that is not temperamental, love that is not forever changing. This is true love, meaning the eternal love of God that is absolute, unique, and unchanging. This is something that we can enjoy eternally, not just for this brief moment in time.

When I heard on the news that Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett passed away, huge icons in our pop, media, and cultural world, I asked myself if Michael Jackson knew who he was. Maybe if he truly knew who he was, he might not have suffered as much as he did in trying to figure out, “What am I? Am I black or white? Am I supposed to look this way or that way? Am I supposed to be more like this or more like that?”

If you know who you are, then you become comfortable in your own skin. You become a very sound and grounded person because you know you’re not supposed to be something else. You know that you’re a good person. You know that, as a child of God, you want to live your life fulfilling the three blessings that God has given us -- to be fruitful, multiply, and have dominion over creation -- to reach for the things that are beyond ourselves. We as human beings have a duty, an obligation, and an incredible blessing and privilege to live lives in which we can become the perfect embodiments of this quality called true love. Therefore, we become absolute sons or daughters, become unchanging, unwavering sons or daughters, and therefore become eternal sons or daughters, truly celebrating life each and every day.

Here at the Manhattan Center we call our ministry Lovin’ Life because it’s a constant reminder that we are incredibly blessed to be given this opportunity to really leave our imprint, our signature upon the world, and to do it with a joyful, grateful heart, with a spirit of sharing, cooperation, and love.

Each human being is like God’s signature. Each and every one of us has been hand-crafted and signed by God. My father always told the children in the family, “Not only are you sons and daughters of God, but God has given you very special names.” My name in Korean means march of virtue. In an Oriental family, we often share a common Chinese character. So the second generation in my family, my siblings and I, all share the character Jin, meaning march of. My eldest sister’s name is Ye Jin, Ye meaning honor. And my older brother’s name was Hyo Jin, Hyo meaning filial piety. So my elder sister’s name is march of honor and nobility; my older brother’s name means march of filial piety. My name happens to be march of virtue. My younger brother Heung Jin’s name means march to arise or to ascend, and Un Jin means march of grace. Her name means beautiful, elegant grace. And so on.

My father always stressed to us, “You have to fulfill your destiny.” When God gives you a name through your parents, he is giving you his signature. It will be your signature upon the world, and it is up to you as a divine being how you want that signature to look. As a divine son or daughter, you have a magical thing called creativity. Through your own individual creativity expressed in an art form, perhaps in music, you’re going to leave memorable recordings of your work. Or if you’re a painter, you’re going become someone like Picasso, Kandinsky, Rembrandt, or Monet, and leave your signature to the world so that people can really share how incredible you are.

My father said that all of us as human beings have this gift, which is almost lying dormant. So it is our duty to practice applying the arts of true love by living a joyful life, a sacrificial life, living a life thinking about others more than ourselves every day. It means always leaving the room better than how you found it. These are the little lessons that my parents have taught us over the years. That’s something I carry with me all the time.

Usually when I get up in the morning, there’s a time during my meditation when I remember all the names of my siblings, and I wish them well. I remind myself of my name, and remind myself to march forward in virtue, to live a good life, and in such a way make every day worthwhile. Each day becomes a step closer to heaven and closer to God, our Heavenly Parent.

When I think about the question of who I am, especially who I am as God’s daughter, I’m often reminded of a fabulous Korean folk tale that is told over and over again. But the interesting thing about this folk tale is that it’s true. I’ve told this story in many different settings because it has such a profound meaning, with different layers and different metaphors that can be analyzed over and over again, depending on what issue I’d like to talk about. When we’re thinking about who we are, this is an incredibly profound tale.

This is a story about a king long ago who had a beautiful daughter. She brought much joy to the king and queen. She was such a precious child in that the little things made her cry, like the beauty of the sunrise, the beauty of a raindrop. She was a very sensitive and artistic soul, and as she got older the king realized that when she started to cry, she would not stop until she literally cried herself to sleep.

Perhaps the king had late-night talks with his queen about how they were going to get their daughter to stop crying. “Should we give her candy?” Maybe the queen said, “If you give her candy every time she cries, she might think that it’s a good thing to cry, that she’s being rewarded for crying, and maybe she’ll cry more. But worse than that, maybe she’ll come to rely on that candy as understanding it to mean comfort. Then maybe she’ll be a very big princess in the future. So maybe we should not give her candy.”

Or maybe the queen thought, “Should we give her something soft to hold and carry around?” Maybe the queen tried and hoped it could be the princess’ security teddy bear. But the story goes that anything the queen tried was not successful.

Finally the king decided that his last resort was to scare his daughter: “If you don’t stop crying, I’m going to marry you off to the village idiot,” (whose name was Pa-bo Undol, meaning the idiot Undol). So every time the princess cried, the king threatened her, “If you don’t stop crying, I’m going to marry you to the village idiot.” To his absolute amazement, she stopped! So whenever she started crying, the king spoke these words, “If you don’t stop crying, I’m going to marry you to the village idiot.”

After years passed, the beautiful princess reached the tender age of 16. The king thought, it’s time to find her a wonderful husband. The king searched high and low and found an awesome young man that he thought was fitting for a princess -- a highly educated man from a prominent family, well mannered and well cultured.

The king said, “My dear princess, I would like you to marry this man whom I have chosen for you.” Then the princess looked at her father with puzzled eyes and said, “Father, what are you talking about? I am already betrothed to somebody. How can you marry me to another man?” The king asked, “What are you talking about? Have you gone in the night and secretly married some scoundrel?” She said, “No, Father. Don’t you realize that you always promised to marry me off to the village idiot? I cannot marry this other man.” There was a bit of an altercation between the king and his daughter, and the princess said, “No, you’ve told me my whole life that the village idiot is going to be my husband.”

I’m sure at this time the king was thinking, “Holy cow! I really should have been careful of what I said. I never knew my daughter would take it literally.”

To the parents in the room it’s a good lesson in realizing the power of our words upon our children, whether they are in the form of love and grace or in the form of threat. The princess said, “No, father, you’ve already married me to the village idiot, so I will go and find my husband.”

Of course, the king was brokenhearted, but she took her belongings and went. Being a princess who grew up in a palace, she was an extremely educated woman and well versed in the esoteric martial arts. She was like a ninja. She knew how to jump through hoops and fly above the rooftops. She knew how to shoot an arrow smack into the target. She knew how to drive a horse and to have it become a means of whatever she wanted to do. She was almost like a superhero, but she gave all that up because she wanted to live up to the words that her father threatened her with: “You’re going to marry the village idiot.”

The king didn’t realize that his words of threat would become a self-fulfilling prophecy. I’m sure the king was brokenhearted when the daughter finally left the palace. But she was confident in knowing who she was, that she was the daughter of God and the daughter of the country of Korea before she was the daughter of the king. She knew that, even maybe unbeknownst to the king, her Heavenly Parent had a special role for her to play. So she left the palace with an incredible amount of confidence and pride that she was going to find the village idiot and turn him into an incredible husband.

She left the palace and searched different parts of town and finally came upon Pa-bo Undol’s house. You really could not call it a house. It was more like a mud hut, where he lived with his mother. When the princess knocked on the gate, the mother came out to greet her. The mother was so overtaken by the beauty of the young princess that she thought she was seeing a ghost, so she cried out, “Be gone, you witch. What are you trying to do to me?” She feared some apparition had come to tempt her, so she tried to chase her away.

The princess said, “No, I am a princess, and I was promised to your son many years ago. Now that I’m 16 years old, I’m here to marry your son and become his bride, so you are my mother-in-law.” She gave a big bow.

The mother was flabbergasted and wondered, how could this be? She kept looking around, thinking that it had to be a trick. But she looked and looked, and the beautiful princess just stood there with the respect and honor that one would give to a mother-in-law. The mother-in-law was won over and invited the princess into the household. Thus began the married life of the princess and the village idiot.

Many years went by, and the king started hearing about a man who did incredible things for his community and his people, an erudite scholar who knew the art of calligraphy, who knew the Chinese characters like the back of his hand. He would write poetry that almost floated down the stream, it was so beautiful to behold and listen to. And at the same time he was an incredible warrior. He could out shoot anybody. If Robin Hood’s arrow would hit the target, the village idiot’s arrow would then split Robin Hood’s arrow in two. He could ride a horse like no one else. He knew how to command the troops with his charisma, but more than that, with his spirit because he knew that he was the son of God.

The thing about this story is that before meeting the princess, Pa-bo Undol was the village idiot. He was poor. Maybe he had huge pimples on his face; maybe he was dirty, so people spat on him and kicked him around like a dirty dog and treated him like a worthless human being. But the princess, knowing who she was as God’s daughter, immediately saw the village idiot not as an idiot but as God’s son. So she cleaned him up. Maybe she ordered medication for his pimples. Maybe she got him some fabulous aroma therapy so he smelled wonderful; maybe she bought an Armani cologne or a version from that era, maybe something made of bamboo shoots and early morning dew, to make him smell wonderful.

But more important than that, she knew he had a divinity that was lying dormant, waiting for the hand of love to comfort and take care of it and nurture it. She believed, knowing that he was a son of God, that he could be a great son of not just God but of his community and of his country, as well as a great husband to her. It was through this incredible love and learning who he was that Pa-bo Undol became one of Korea’s greatest generals and scholars.

His story is told over and over throughout the centuries because it’s a true story. There was a stubborn 16-year-old princess hundreds of years ago who believed in herself, who believed in the power of love, and who believed that her husband was not a village idiot but rather a gift from God. With her own knowledge of calligraphy, poetry, and the martial arts, she taught her husband to be the greatest warrior, the greatest scholar, and the greatest husband who ever lived.

We read in Galatians that God knows “Neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor master, or male or female.” These are distinctions that society puts on what we are. But when you are totally united in the spirit of God, you begin to concentrate on who you are and you realize that, just like Pa-bo Undol, it doesn’t matter whether you are a village idiot, a janitor working at Manhattan Center, or the CEO of Manhattan Center, you all have equal value as human beings.

When I see Lynette, the person who cleans up the Manhattan Center and keeps it beautiful for all of you, going about her day with a bucket of cleanser and paper towels, a mop and a vacuum cleaner, I am so thankful for what she does, and when she looks at me, she’s thankful for what I do. But we both know that it’s not what we do that defines us. Lynette knows that I’m her sister, and I know that she’s my sister.

Muslim, Christian, Protestant, Buddhist -- that is what society sees us as. But what we need to concentrate on is who we are. When we realize that we are the sons and daughters of God, we know that we’re part of one family under God and we are brothers and sisters. You know the long historical debate about what is the worth of a woman compared with that of a man? Our Heavenly Parent, who has both masculine and feminine qualities within him and (that’s why we call him the Heavenly Parent), tells us that women and men have equal value as human beings.

Yes, we are different. Thank God we are different. But in terms of our divinity, in terms of our value and worth, we are equal. We have equal value as the children of God.

Nowadays when I take a walk outside and see young people, many times I see them engaged in things that maybe they should not be doing. They’re always looking, and fundamentally they’re searching because they don’t know who they are. I like to look at words. I shared with you earlier about how I wanted to be a wise mother and came to understand the word wise in terms of an acronym, W-I-S-E. My life’s motto has become loving the Word, with Integrity, Service, and Excellence. That is what I hope to accomplish in my lifetime.

When you look at the word lost, there’s so much in the word itself. We feel lost at sea when we have no anchor. For many of us, when we’re feeling like nobody understands us we wonder when we will be loved. When we feel lonely, we feel like orphans. L for loneliness; O for orphans. Because we’re orphans, we’re always looking for our parents: S for seeking, searching, never being satisfied. What are we seeking? We’re seeking some understanding of ourselves, some understanding of our reality, of the Truth in our life. When you’re lost, you’re like a lonely orphan caught in perpetually seeking for something true.

Many times it’s in the process of going through loneliness that we come to search out our Heavenly Parent. Then we realize that this is just God’s way of letting us find him ourselves. If God were truly a God that just wanted his children to obey, then as an omniscient God he could have programmed his children like robots. Sometimes I think we as parents wish we could have a programmed teenager in the house, right? But if they were robots, they would just be obeying what we tell them to do; as parents we would never experience the joy that comes from a child volunteering to help and willingly loving us.

Sometimes when we feel lost, we feel like God has left us. But no. This is God’s way of saying, “Find me, come to me, exercise your free will, exercise your 5-percent responsibility and come back to my loving embrace; understanding how incredible it is to truly love each other.” When you do, you realize that instead of being a lonely orphan constantly seeking for truth, you are embraced in the arms of love and you can experience divine oneness with our Heavenly Parent. Instead of seeking and searching, you have incredible security. Instead of always seeking and searching for the truth in your life, you have a Heavenly Parent whom you can entrust your heart to. You can trust, you can rest, you can be comforted in knowing that you will be loved unconditionally, absolutely, unchangingly, and eternally. This is what God, our Heavenly Parent, is hoping that we will come to realize in our own lifetime.

Recently there was an interesting article in The Atlantic magazine about the three keys to happiness. This was a compilation of a study started in 1937. Researchers chose 268 sophomores at Harvard University and asked them to participate in a study of what they called a good life, wanting to understand what makes people happy. The study continues to this day.

These sophomores from 1937 are in their 80s now. When the psychiatrists and researchers studied these 268 students and followed their lives, they realized some common themes, what they have come to call the three keys to happiness. The study concluded that the main thing that most people who have lived “a good life” or a seemingly happy life have is a healthy outlet: They have a sense of humor; they knew how to laugh. And they have a tendency to think about other people: They practice altruism, doing things for other people. That brings incredible joy.

The second point that this study has revealed is that people tend to be happy when they do not take themselves too seriously. Sometimes when we concentrate on what we do our whole life, and we think that we’re really fabulous at it, we tend to think we’re the master of the universe, there’s nothing above us, and that we ought to control everything. But the study is basically saying, “Look, it doesn’t matter how great you are. We all have our weaknesses. We all have our good days and our bad days. So exercise a bit of humility. Living a life of engaged humility is what the study recommends.

The third point is that true happiness is happiness that is shared. The article mentioned a documentary called Into the Wild, about a young man in the 1990s who left his college, left his home, sold all his belongings, and trekked into the Alaskan wilderness to find himself, to live his life as he thought fit. He was turned off by the commercialism and sensationalism that plagues society today. While in Alaska he passed away from starvation. But he took a picture of himself before he passed, and the film was developed after somebody found him.

In one of his journals he wrote that happiness is real only when it is shared. He thought that by going away from it all, isolating himself in pristine nature, he would be extremely happy because he saw so many things that were not pretty in the world. But in his last moments, he realized that it’s only in sharing with somebody that you become happy.

When you think about that, this must be the realization that God had about why he wanted children in the first place. He wanted to experience love and happiness, and he wanted to do that with his children, who are those of us sitting in the audience.

Proverbs 37:3-5 says to us, “Trust in the Lord, delight in the Lord, commit yourself to the Lord.” This means that you don’t have to be lost at sea any more. You have a home to come to. You can trust your heart in the Lord and revel in the security that he will give you.

Everyone here who attended Day of All Things may remember how we did “dunk the leaders.” As my husband said, when you’re sitting up there ready to be dunked, it’s not the fear of falling into the water but actually the fear that arises from uncertainty, from not knowing which ball is going to be the one that dunks you in the water. So every ball that comes your way makes you anxious because you don’t know which ball is going to dunk you.

When you commit yourself to the Lord, you can be at peace because no matter what comes your way, you know God is there with you. You know that he has always been with you. If we’re lost at sea, that is our doing; He is always there, hoping that we will exercise our free will, that we will exercise our own choice to come find Him again, to revel and delight in him, realizing that our life should not be a life of suffering. Suffering is just a way to make us grow; it’s not an end in itself. Our destiny is to become incredible human beings. What I want for my children is for them to experience love, for them to experience joy and happiness. That’s what our Heavenly Parent wants us all to have. He wants us to be happy, to be prosperous, to be successful. He wants us to live a life of excellence, not just externally in what we do, but internally in knowing who we are as his true sons and daughters.

Brothers and sisters, this Sunday morning I would like to leave you with a quote by William White, an American journalist at the turn of the 20th century. He said something that I have remembered quite often throughout my journey of self-discovery. He said, “I am not afraid of tomorrow. I have seen yesterday, and I love today.” When you are totally one and secure in the love of our Heavenly Parent, there is nothing to be afraid of. And whatever you went through yesterday is yesterday. But today is today, and we can exercise our choice and our free will to be happy today and every day of our lives.

So brothers and sisters, I wish you a beautiful Sunday morning. Have a great week, and God bless. 

Father's Day

In Jin Moon
June 21, 2009

Good morning, brothers and sisters. Welcome to Lovin’ Life Ministry. We’re delighted to have you here. Wasn’t the band incredible? And wasn’t Il Hwa Yokpore incredible? There’s a lot of woman power in the house, brothers and sisters. But we know that today is a very special Sunday because we are celebrating Father’s Day. Happy Father’s Day to all the men in the room.

Here at Lovin’ Life Ministry we have lots of exciting things going on all the time. This last weekend was no exception. On Friday we had an open mike night at headquarters at 43rd Street, where a whole group of young people got together. My husband said to me, “I never knew there was so much talent in one room.” He said the drummers were fantastic, the singers were fantastic. But more important than the talent that was congregating in the room was the spirit of truly sharing this precious time with one another and sharing in the joy that artistic expression can bring to one another. My husband had a wonderful time.

That’s one of the advantages of being married to Rev. In Jin Moon because while I have to attend to matters of faith and take care of a lot of things that concern headquarters or our congregation, my husband gets to go and attend open mike night with the young people. He had a fantastic time. Whenever he comes back from a meeting like that, his eyes are glowing, and he’s so excited. And even though he is well known in my family for not being able to even carry a note, he starts singing and humming. I say to myself, “I guess the spirit is really moving in my husband tonight.”

When I think about fathers, my thoughts always turn to my father, who is the Reverend Sun Myung Moon. He’s a very special person in my life. He’s a wonderful man and a very compelling man. He’s also a very funny man; he loves to crack jokes all the time. One of the things that I’ve noticed from a very young age is that he is really an absolute man in the sense that he’s a real human being. He can be sitting across a table, talking to Mikhail Gorbachev, or he can be sitting in the room talking to Margaret Thatcher or sitting next to a homeless person. The man, his integrity, and his character are always the same. He is absolute, no matter what the environment or where the situation takes him.

It’s so unusual for a man to be so real and so comfortable in his own skin. I remember one time he was meeting with a group of scientists, and one scientist got up and asked, “Reverend Moon, what’s your favorite color?” Then my father said, “I see no color. I see light.” But then the scientist pressed further and said, “Yes, but Reverend Moon, there are so many wonderful crayons in the crayon box to choose from. Which color would you choose?”

My father gave such an interesting answer -- from a woman’s point of view one I thought was incredibly delicious. He said, “My favorite color is pink.” I kid you not! You could have heard a pin drop. And the scientist had to ask my father again, “Reverend Moon, what is your favorite color?” My father said so confidently and with so much pride, “My favorite color is pink.” Then the scientist pressed a little further and asked, “Why is your favorite color pink?” My father gave what I thought was an incredibly profound answer, one that I remember to this day. It is the reason why I love to buy my husband pink shirts, pink socks, pink underwear, and pink neckties. Anything in the men’s store that I can find in pink, you can be sure that my husband has in his closet.

The answer that my father gave is, “Pink is the color of love. It is like the color on the skin when a man first spots a beautiful woman and in her beauty is so overtaken by her light and who she is that he blushes when she gazes upon his face. It’s the color of first love.”

This is a beautiful, beautiful answer. I’ve thought about it from time to time. That is a true man, a man who can get up in front of a room full of scientists and declare to the whole room that his favorite color is pink because it is the color of true love. He is so real with himself and with all of us and so absolute in knowing who he is, especially in understanding that he is God’s son, that no matter where this man goes, he brings the gift of true love. He brings the gift of service, he brings the gift of excellence, and he shares with us the gift of his integrity and character.

One of the things I’ve noticed about my father was that he is forever unchanging and uncompromising. When he turned 16 and was praying on Easter Sunday morning, Jesus Christ came to him and said, “I need you to fulfill my mission.” Jesus told him the story of how he did not come to die but came to fulfill the true love of God, to inherit the true love of God, and become the true olive branch through which all humanity can engraft themselves and find true life, true love, and true lineage. Jesus Christ asked my father, “Please, fulfill my mission in perfecting yourself as an individual, and then find a perfect Eve, a perfect woman. Together please stand in the position as the True Parents of humankind, representing the feminine and the masculine qualities of our Heavenly Parent, God. Help everyone graft onto the true olive tree and bring this world into God’s family, one family under God.”

Ever since that time, when my father responded yes, he has never wavered. Here he is at the ripe old age of 90, and he is still going strong. He is forever unchanging. Once this man commits, he commits for life. And once this man devotes his life to a cause, to bringing world peace, he will not stop until his last breath. This is the kind of man that my father is.

Here is a man who is unchanging, uncompromising, and unwavering, smack in the middle of our lives, where everything is changing and in flux. Many times our relationships are going through difficulties, so it’s incredibly wonderful to know that you have a secure man in the room who will always be unchanging, uncompromising, and unwavering. He becomes an anchor not just for my life but also in yours when you accept him as your father.

In this way my father has helped a lot of us overcome our individual difficulties. Whenever we’re going through difficult times, we think about our True Parents. But, more importantly, we think about our Heavenly Parent, who is God.

My father is a man who has been in and out of prison six times in his life. I read an interview that he gave a long time ago about his experiences in Hungnam prison, which was the notorious concentration camp of North Korea. He was thrown into jail for speaking the word of God in a communist country, for wanting to teach the people, for gathering them in Bible study. Most recently he was thrown into prison in Danbury, Connecticut, and served over a year there. But probably the most difficult prison that my father had to survive was Hungnam prison, where he was for over three years.

My father told the story about how there were so many people in Hungnam and so much work to be done, moving 40 or 50-pound sacks of lime on their backs each and every day for a fertilizer factory. And depending on how many sacks they were able to move to a particular storage area, they would be allotted a certain amount of food and water. But there was very little. They got only one meal a day, and it would be a very salty soup. My father likes to call it water with a bit of salt. That was the soup. And a rice ball the size of a tennis ball. That was all they had to eat.

In a place like that, where you have very little but you are so tired and you’re always hoping that they would feed you more, my father said that the sense of hunger becomes so acute, the only thing that people think about is when they’re going to be fed. In Hungnam, when the rice balls came around, human beings literally turned into a pack of wolves, diving upon the person bringing the rice balls, trying to take them from other people, literally clawing another person’s eyes. Or if a poor exhausted soul happened to fall down, choking on his rice ball because he ate it too quickly, then the other prisoners would scoop the remainder of that rice ball out of his mouth, as if this man were a limp carcass. This was the kind of environment that my father survived for over three years.

He explained how he survived. He said, “The only reason I survived is because I had an absolute faith in God, and because I was practicing putting my mind over my body, over the desires of the flesh for that rice ball.” My father trained his mind to think of that rice ball as a huge feast such as what you have at the beginning of the year or at a family celebration. He imagined that every grain of rice symbolized a fantastic dish. One grain of rice became hot and sour soup, stir-fried rice, orange beef, Buddha’s delight. This was how he ate and appreciated each grain of rice. He said another way that he was able to constantly keep his spirit was, after receiving that rice ball in his hand, immediately cutting it in half and sharing the other half with other prisoners. He would eat only one half of the ration allotted a prisoner. But when he ate this half, he said to himself, “I’m eating more than that other person. I gave only a spoonful of my rice ball to him, but I get half a rice ball. I gave another person another spoonful, but I still have half. And I gave the sick man sitting over there against the wall another spoonful, but I have half a rice ball.”

He taught himself how to be grateful. He taught himself to take less, to give himself a little less, but to reward himself spiritually in exercising his creativity to say he’s enjoying an incredible feast.

As time wore on and the work got more and more difficult, my father would add that one tablespoon of rice that he used to give another person onto his own rice. Then that became a feast upon a feast. As the years wore on and he became weak and tired, he would take that other tablespoon of rice and eat it along with his half ration, and he would feel another reward, another blessing. In this way he was able to keep on going.

He said that his eternal spirit, his absolute belief in God, his unchanging commitment and his loyalty to what he believed he was given this life for were the reason he survived. When he was released from Hungnam prison because of the Allied forces and Gen. Douglas MacArthur, he gave the greatest thanks to Heavenly Father by truly honoring Him with his life.

He decided to come to this country and give his life for America. He brought all of us here together with him. I’ve seen my father over the last three decades go through a lot of difficult situations and deal with a lot of challenging issues that arise from leading a worldwide movement such as ours. But one thing I have always known is that my father is an incredibly grounded and solid man.

I still remember an instance when he was giving a speech, I believe in California, and there was a heckler in the audience. Because my father is a public man, whenever he gives a public speech there is usually a security person standing on the side of the stage and in the back. In this instance, the heckler starting verbally attacking my father, calling him a brainwasher. He rushed onto the stage, and we saw the security men rushing to grab him, tackling him. All the while my father was serene, still at the pulpit, very much himself, very real, very solid. He reminded me of an Indian chief who basically said to the white man, “No move.” There was nothing that could push my father around because he was so complete in knowing that he was God’s son, that he had every right to be there, and that he had every right to share our Heavenly Parent’s glory to the world.

That left a visual imprint for me as to how I need to live my life. Being a mother, raising five kids, dealing with all the things that go on in my house, I visualize this image of my no-move father, who has such conviction, dignity, and the pride that he is God’s son. When I visualize this, I realize that I am my father’s daughter, that I am God’s daughter.

I think if you were to take a moment and visualize this image of my father, you would come to realize that you are God’s son or God’s daughter and that you are an absolutely incredible human being. As a daughter, I marvel at this man who has been in and out of prison six times. In his recent autobiography, he describes himself as the fullest man, meaning he is so full. If you eat a big meal, you are the fullest person in the room, right? But what he means by this is he is the most full in the world in that he has been the most persecuted, the most misunderstood, and the most accused.

He said in his autobiography that they say in Asia that when you receive a pouch full of persecution and accusation, it should last you a lifetime, meaning that it takes a lifetime to digest so much accusation, misunderstanding, and persecution. But my father said, “I am so full of that misunderstanding and persecution, it would probably take one hundred lifetimes to digest all the persecution and accusation that I received over the years”.

When I read this, I asked myself, “What drives this incredible man to do what he does, when he is the fullest man in the world?” You know what it is? Jesus asked my father to fulfill his responsibility because Jesus was not able to finish it because he was crucified, and Heavenly Father is asking my father to substantiate one true family on earth. What my father is doing is what is inside his heart, going through his life of faith, going through these difficulties. He has come to realize this through many hours and years of prayer, getting callused elbows and knees. He realized that God is our parent; he is just like us in that he needs love. He wants love. He wants to experience happiness. But my father has come to realize that because of the human Fall, God lost his children and has become the God of suffering.

When my father first said this to us children, that our Heavenly Parent is a God of suffering, that profoundly moved me. I started to visualize God and asked myself, “If God could truly express what he was feeling through music, how would he express himself?” I thought, if God were a musician, he would play the blues. I very much saw God as somebody like Duke Ellington or like B. B. King, who takes an old, lean guitar, speaks to it, and plays it with all his soul, singing about how his heart is gone, how he’s suffering because he lost his children, “My child is gone.” This is what I heard in my mind, set to the beat of the blues. This is what God has been playing for the last 6,000 years because he lost his children to the Fall.

God, as a Heavenly Parent, is creating the world because he wants to realize true love, and he creates men and women, sons and daughters, because he wants to realize and actualize true love, wants to have an object through which he can experience the joys of fatherhood, the joys of motherhood. As great as God is, as omniscient and omnipotent as he might be, and as beautiful and as handsome as you might be, it doesn’t matter if you’re all alone in the world, sitting on a throne all by yourself, saying “I’m so powerful, I’m so all-knowing, am I not magnificent?” You can’t even ask a question without it coming back to you. “Yes, you are, Mommy; yes, you are, Daddy.”

It doesn’t matter how beautiful or handsome you are. If you have nobody to share that beauty or handsomeness with, you can stand in front of a mirror for all of eternity but you will never feel love. You will never feel satisfied; you will never feel full.

When children become teens, they spend a great deal of time in front of a mirror. Sometimes I would be passing through my kids’ rooms and I would see my lovely daughter Arianna brushing her hair. Looking at her face, such a beautiful face, I would say to myself, “I have this beautiful daughter whom I adore. As a mother, what do I want for her? I don’t want her to be beautiful forever in front of a mirror, enjoying her beauty herself. I want her to share that beauty with an absolutely handsome, exciting man, so that she can experience how it feels to be loved, how it feels to be embraced, how it feels to be kissed, how it feels to be told, ‘I love you more than life itself.’ This is what I want for my child.”

That’s the heart of a parent. When each of you young ones become older and wiser and mature in love and you are ready for this wonderful thing called marriage, it means that you have prepared your life for that special day, for that special someone. This is when you can really practice and experience the life of true love that God wanted his first son and daughter, Adam and Eve, to experience so much.

Why is God brokenhearted? When God thought about his children, he wanted to give them the three blessings of being fruitful, multiplying, and having dominion over creation. These are kind of archaic words, but if you really think about it, what God wanted for Adam and Eve is no different from what we as parents today want for our sons and daughters. We want them to be fruitful -- to perfect themselves individually, to become the perfect embodiment of this quality called true love so they can properly mature enough to be a fruit that’s ripe enough to be eaten.

The most damaging thing, the thing we want least for our children, is for them to be brokenhearted, to be broken people. There is nothing in the universe more powerful than love. Love has the power to create, but it also has the power to destroy. That’s why when God told Adam and Eve to be fruitful then multiply, and then have dominion, he was talking to his children about the process that a child, a son or daughter, would naturally go through in the stages of life.

Nowadays when we talk about teenagers, the notions of keeping pure, waiting, and abstinence are almost dirty words. But if you really think about it and if you really think about what your parents are asking you to do, it’s not a denial but simply preparation, waiting and growing yourself, finding out who you are before you take on the responsibility to love another human being. You’ve got to know who you are before you can extend yourself and love another person.

You see, this didn’t happen with Adam and Eve. They were supposed to grow up and be fruitful, work on themselves, work on putting their mind over their body, work on how to subjugate and overcome the desires of the flesh with the power of the spirit. They were meant to work on that on a daily basis, practice, and apply the principles of true love by sacrificing, by living for the sake of others, by learning how to understand the importance of delayed gratification. These are the things that God wanted Adam and Eve to do in their individual stage. The Heavenly Parent wanted Adam and Eve to be a perfect man and a perfect woman in becoming mature in love.

But we know that God gave Adam and Eve another commandment, “Eat of any fruit in the garden, but do not eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.” Many people have had theological debates about what the fruit actually was. Some people have understood it to be an apple. When I was a little girl I had a debate with my younger sister, trying to figure out what fruit Adam and Eve bit into. I was giving my reasons why it should be a peach, not an apple. My sister was saying no, it’s got to be a banana. We had this debate in front of my father and mother, and then my little brother chimed in and said, “No, it’s got to be a pineapple because a pineapple has all these cones and it really, really hurts. So that’s why God told Adam and Eve not to bite into a pineapple.”

We were all just elementary school age, trying to figure out what this fruit was. In the corner of the room my parents were watching with a bit of curiosity and smiling. My father said, “So you think it’s a pineapple, eh? And you think it’s a peach?” I gave my reasons why it would be a peach, which is so beautiful and even has protective fur around it. It almost looks like God is giving it extra special attention. An apple just has a skin, but a peach has fur.

My younger sister said, “But it’s got to be a banana because it comes in a pack. It doesn’t come alone; and it has all these pieces, representing the different days of the week.” The banana she had that day came from a bunch of seven bananas on a little vine. She said, “See, it’s like seven days of the week, so it’s providential. It’s got to be a banana.”

My father let this conversation continue and did not tell us for a long time exactly what the fruit was. But when we learn the Divine Principle and realize that the greatest power in the universe is love, which God wanted to actualize through the form of a man and a woman, Adam and Eve, we can begin to understand why the fruit must symbolize sexual love. The sexual love that’s not misused, that’s properly prepared, that’s properly eaten, and that’s properly enjoyed gives the greatest satisfaction and a feeling of fulfillment to a man and a woman as a couple as they start their family life.

When God was asking Adam and Eve to wait a while, what God was saying was, “Eve, look, you’re developing into a beautiful woman. You’re no longer a child. You’re developing breasts, you’re developing hips, you’re developing a gleam in your eye. Your eyelashes are becoming longer to attract that special someone every time you blink.” God was saying, “Look, Adam, how incredible you are.” Maybe Adam was working out with a five-pound rock in the garden. You never know. I know that my boys and a lot others out there spend an inordinate amount of time with barbells. Maybe our first ancestor didn’t have a barbell, but I’m sure he had a rock. Maybe God saw with great delight Adam working on his biceps, working on his legs, working on his abs. Maybe he was doing abdominal crunches.

God was basically saying, “Look, just as much as you work on your biceps, and just as much as Eve, you are preparing physically to give birth as a mother, you need to understand that the most important thing that you can do as a man and a woman is to come together as husband and wife, and to take part in a creative expression of love that can result in a beautiful family.” That’s what God wanted for Adam and Eve.

God asked them to please not eat of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil because God wanted them to wait for the proper time when they could fully experience the glory of being one with God, of being one with each other.

We know that this did not happen, and we know that there was a misuse of love. Adam and Eve bit into the apple, they “ate” sexual love before God said that they were ready to be husband and wife. That is the reason why the heavenly lineage that our Heavenly Parent wanted to pass down through Adam and Eve was lost forever. That’s why God has been a suffering God, playing the blues for 6,000 years, because he lost his children to the satanic realm. He’s been waiting all this time. He’s raised up great champions along the way -- Abraham, Noah, Isaac, and especially Jesus Christ.

God waited 2,000 years for his son, Jesus. But God did not have the pleasure of seeing that son build an ideal family of his own. So God had to wait another 2,000 years for this opportunity that we have now, when we have our True Parents here, the first man and first woman who have restored providential history and can absolutely stand in the position as the first True Parents. That’s why our True Parents are so important; they represent the true lineage through which we ourselves can have and share in the true lineage of God and thereby literally become one family under God.

When your parents are asking you to wait a little, to please work on yourself, they’re not taking anything away from you by saying, “Please don’t have a boyfriend. Please don’t have a broken heart. Please don’t be a broken person.” Nothing destroys a person like the wounds of love that happen when you are broken in love, when you date one man and another, when you have casual relationships.

Men start looking at women as a composite of body parts. When you start serial dating, you’re not treating each and every girl you meet as the daughter of God, as a daughter who has absolute divinity in her and will become a wonderful wife and wonderful mother some day. You’re not looking at that woman as a specimen of true love that comes from God, our Heavenly Parent. You’re looking at her in terms of her body parts. You’re looking at those gorgeous eyes, at the breasts, or, as my sisters call them, the kajungas. You’re looking at the kajungas and not realizing that this is a daughter of God. Or you’re looking at the bun-buns and not realizing that she is a daughter of God.

The reason why my father and your parents are asking you to wait is because we don’t want you to be just another object that a person uses and throws out. This is because you are an incredible person. You are an incredible daughter. You are an incredible specimen of a human being that deserves to be honored, loved, and appreciated as God’s daughter, not somebody who is to be used for immediate gratification and then tossed aside like garbage. This is what our Heavenly Parent doesn’t want

The Heavenly Parent, your parents, or my father and mother are asking the gentlemen in the audience to wait. The problem is, if you don’t wait and start dating and go through women like a Rolodex file, then you don’t realize that you’re denying yourself the pleasure of having a truly transcendent experience. No matter how great sex might be for young people, it’s just mechanical if you don’t have love. Then we are no different from animals. If you don’t have love, you cannot feel this incredible power that comes from knowing that you’re loving somebody who is going to be there, committed to you for eternity, whether you’re having a bad hair day or a good one, whether you’re sick or whether you’re happy because this person made a commitment to God. And he made a commitment to live his life to honor and appreciate you as the true daughter that you really are.

When a man waits, then he learns to value a woman as something other than the body parts. The man learns that just as he loves his sister, he sees a woman as someone who might be a sister of someone else. Or she could be a mother of a child or the wife of a future husband. When you start seeing human beings in the proper roles that they are meant to play, then they’re no longer objects. They become the incredibly gifted, talented, and awesome human beings that we all are. That’s the gift that our parents and your parents want for you.

It took a tremendous amount of work just to get to where we are. Your parents sacrificed so much to give you this opportunity to graft onto the true olive branch and to be a part of this worldwide community. This precious time is not going to come again. This is a great opportunity for us to share with the world that we are not meant to waste our lives in casual relationships, in relationships where we use and abuse each other. The meaning and the mission of our lives is to perfect ourselves individually, to be fruitful, and to multiply, finding that special someone who has the same commitment as you do to God, our Heavenly Parent. This means that the qualities of God, such as being absolute, unchanging, and eternal, are the very qualities that you will have in your marriage. And this will give you security so that you will have the strength and the anchor with which you can go through life as a proud son or daughter of God.

Brothers and sisters, when I speak to my children, I say to them, “You need to work on yourself. That’s going to take a little time. Then you’ll meet this really awesome person who’s going to honor, love, and cherish you for the rest of your life. And you know what? It’s not going to be easy, but if you work on yourself, then you will know how difficult it is to become a perfect embodiment of true love. So when you meet another person, you will see it as an opportunity to grow as a couple, an opportunity to grow as a family, and not just something that you receive.”

I always tell my children, “We want to have a marriage that lasts forever, but in order to have a marriage that lasts forever, you’ve got to practice the meaning of absolute, unchanging, and eternal. Do you want just fast food and not the gorgeous restaurant with candlelight, violins serenading in the background, a delectable six-course full meal?” This is the difference that God is asking you to look at. Do you want sex, do you want the mechanics? Or do you want love? Do you want to experience true love and create something wonderful like these munchkins that I call my kids, who are absolutely the joy of my life? They are so delicious; it’s like biting into a peach, a banana, a grapefruit, and a pineapple all in one.

This is what our Heavenly Parent wants. And those children become great people, great in their chosen area, for instance a swimmer like Michael Phelps, who won all those gold medals. Not only will they bring pride and honor to their families but to the community, and not just to the community but to the world. And in this natural way of growth and prosperity, they will come to own their own world and not be controlling people but take ownership of their lives, communities, country, and the world by truly taking care of it, nurturing it, and serving it.

If everybody does this, brothers and sisters, the world peace that we’re waiting for will be just around the bend. It is truly within our hands.

When we gaze into the beautiful eyes of our children, we’re always teaching them, “Look, you guys are awesome kids. You are so talented -- reach for the moon and beyond.” But those of you sitting in the audience have already touched the moon. Have you not met Reverend Moon? Are you not in the room with another Reverend Moon? You’ve not only reached the moon, you’ve touched the moon, and you’ve harvested on the moon.

So think about what you can do in your life. The sky’s the limit. The kind of people that your children can be, the sky’s the limit. Here we are in the middle of New York City. The Italians have it right. They have a beautiful song that is sung everywhere. When I go to the Italian section of New York, I always hear someone singing it somewhere. The words go something like this: “When the moon hits your eye, like a big pizza pie, that’s amore.” It’s true love time.

When the moon hits your eye like the big pizza pie, what my father is throwing at you is saying, it’s amore. It’s love, and it’s true love, which is the most important thing. It is something worth waiting for.

So young people in the audience, reach for the moon, go beyond, and become the great sons and daughters that you are and that you were meant to be. Have a blessed Sunday. God bless. God bless. 

Job Opportunity At HSA-UWC

In Jin Moon
June 17, 2009

Dear District Directors / State Leaders, Please send to members in your district or anyone else you think could fill this position.

Job Description: Financial Analyst for HSA

SUMMARY

HSA UWC is looking for a financial analyst to play a key role in developing the organization’s financial analysis capability and to improve processes and procedures. Additional job activities include ad-hoc reporting, business analysis, metric management, and project support. The position will review both for profit and nonprofit activities of the organization and report to senior management.

RESPONSIBILITIES include, but are not limited to the following:

Compile and analyze financial and operational information

Plan and conduct studies to improve operational and financial effectiveness throughout the organization

Assist in the development of budgets and report on budget to actual variances on a monthly basis

Conduct market and business analysis

Assist in establishment of KPIs and support and drive continuous process improvement in the organization and subsidiaries

Assist in execution of special projects as assigned

May require some travel

Other duties may be assigned.

QUALIFICATIONS

Business accounting or related university degree

2 - 5 years of relevant experience

Strong financial acumen and ability to conduct financial modeling in Excel

Strong ability to work collaboratively with other employees with a wide range of abilities and styles in a diverse community; ability to foster and maintain a spirit of unity, teamwork and cooperation.

Ability to work independently, to track and manage multiple projects simultaneously and to meet deadlines. Ability to work under pressure with diplomacy and professionalism.

A deep commitment to the overall mission of the organization, its programs, and an approach consistent with the Founder’s guiding principles.

Efficient and persistent; meticulous attention to detail.

Ability to exercise complete discretion when working with confidential and sensitive information.

Salary is commensurate with experience.

To apply, please submit a copy of your resume to hr@familyfed.org. For questions, please email hr@familyfed.org. 

Patience and Persistence

In Jin Moon
June 14, 2009

The following is a transcription of Rev. In Jin Moon’s sermon at Lovin' Life Ministries held at the Manhattan Center in New York City on June 14, 2009.

It’s a lovely Sunday, and I’m delighted to be sharing this Sunday worship with all of you. I’m sure, like many of you, when we go through the change of seasons, I like to look through old photographs and think about the memories that have been encapsulated into them. Last week was no exception. There I was in my library, going through some old photographs and old letters. I came across one photograph in particular, a picture of my youngest son, Paxton, when he was four years old. He had a habit of becoming our alarm clock in the morning. He would come into the room. He would not quietly knock and not quietly open our bedroom door. You would hear this “pow,” almost like a gunshot. Then the bedroom door would fling open, and there stood this tiny child, but looking very much like a little Napoleon, shouting the words, “Open the light. Open the light. Open the light.” Five o’clock, or sometimes four o’clock in the morning.

Of course we as parents love this little bundle of delight that we call Paxton, but at four or five in the morning? This little tiny voice would yell out into the void, “Open the light,” meaning he wanted us to turn on the light. But he didn’t know how to say, “Turn on the light.” So he said, “Open the light!” As if with a snap of the finger the whole universe would come alive and awake.

I remember in moments like that, when I was so tired and I really wanted that extra five or ten minutes of rest, I would look toward my husband and say, “Honey, open the light.” Then my husband would look at the child and then look at me and say, “Honey, could you open the light?”

Of course being a loving wife, or at least trying to be a loving wife early in the morning, I would go and open the lights. I would pick him up. The first thing the child would say to me once he got what he wanted (which was light in the room, which meant my husband also had to get up), was, “Oo-yoo, oo-yoo, oo-yoo, oo-yoo.” For those of you who don’t know Korean, oo-yoo means milk. But he also used to “yoo-oo” to refer to water.

So when he was quickly saying “oo-yoo, oo-yoo, oo-yoo, oo-yoo,” you had to figure out what the first syllable was. Was it oo, or was it yoo? When it’s four or five o’clock in the morning, it’s very difficult to distinguish the difference. So we had a very unhappy child if we couldn’t respond perfectly, because maybe that morning I understood the oo to be yoo. Sometimes I would get it right and sometimes I would get it wrong.

At moments like that I would have to close my eyes and remember a wonderful saying of the great thinker Reinhold Niebuhr, “Oh, Lord, grant me the serenity to accept what I cannot change, the courage to change what I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” This is how I usually started my day, when the little Napoleon Paxton came into the room.

In the course of the day, thinking how I can be a wise mother, a really good mother, a wonderful, loving mother, I’ve often thought about what Reinhold Niebuhr had said. As my father said in his speech that I shared with you on the monitor just a while back, the wonderful thing about the family is that we don’t really have a part in it, unless one goes through the process of adopting a child. Most of the time our families are picked for us by God. So this little Napoleon that came into my life came from God. And in our community, unlike most communities, we have arranged marriages, don’t we? So not only are our children arranged by God, but, for many of us, our spouses were picked by God as well.

I thought it was kind of interesting that Fox News sent out a News Alert awhile back that it is thinking about creating another reality program, something like Lost or Survivor, but a little bit more interesting, with a bit of a twist. They are talking about doing a show on arranged marriages. Basically there’s a woman who is blindfolded, and she has to pick the man, with the help of her family members, that she’s going to walk down the aisle with, still blindfolded. Then she can take a look at the man she chose only after she’s married.

Because I was looking at the pictures and reminiscing about the old days, I thought of the 1970s and the 1980s, when my father invited people from all over the world to come and join in this wonderful thing called the blessing, and encouraged individuals representing different cultures to enter into a cross-cultural marriage, bringing the cultures into a union sanctified and blessed by God. A lot of Americans thought that was weird.

As beautiful as the ritual and ceremony of the blessing is the media sensationally captured the scene of thousands and thousands of members getting blessed by Reverend Moon, the mystical figure that had all these couples stand up and say something really loud. They presented the image of everyone saying Mansei, which literally means 10,000 years of peace. So here we were as a community wishing each other 10,000 years of peace, while the rest of the world thought we were a bunch of crazies, pledging allegiance to our great leader, this strange man.

How interesting it is that here we are after several decades, and many of you young beautiful and handsome Americans have families of your own. Here are the American media wanting to tap into the topic of arranged marriages. It’s also interesting that our religion has been called a cult for many years. To this day, I know on many college campuses the freshman packets contain a list of groups that you must be careful of, and there we are, the Moonies, something to be afraid of and avoided. But then there I am walking somewhere in Times Square, and I see a little sign that says, “What’s your cult?” That’s something we’ve been called for many years, a pejorative term that’s not a wonderful thing to say to a member of our movement. But here is some advertising company taking this negative word and putting a new spin on it for the young people, asking them, “What’s your cult?” That means, brothers and sisters, your kids must be the hippest bunch in America.

When we look on our own families, we as parents want so much for our children, the things we never had. My father was imprisoned in North Korea; on the day of his scheduled execution the allied forces came and liberated him. So my father said, “I have to thank this country of America. It was the American soldiers that saved my life.” So when he brought his children over to America, one of the first things that he said to us was, “I cannot speak English. Please learn to speak English better than the American people so that you can truly feel the way they do, so you can truly understand them. Therefore, you can truly love and serve them.” This was what my father wanted for his children because it was an opportunity that he did not have.

I know that when a lot of immigrant families come to America, this land of dreams and opportunity, that is exactly the kind of heart those parents have for their children. Maybe some of them will come from Mexico only speaking Spanish, but the father and mother will drop the child off at school, praying and hoping that the child will learn to become a true American, really learning the language, really speaking the language from the heart, and also growing up to be someone who’s not only going to do wonderful things for his native country of Mexico but wonderful things as a citizen of this great country of America.

I as a parent am no different. I want my children to be better than me. I want them to have everything that I don’t have, and I want them to become ultimately great sons and daughters of God. So when I think about my own feelings for my children, and about my father’s wonderful feeling of love and care for all of us, for me, my mind always goes to God, our Heavenly Parent, and how much He must love us as His sons and daughters.

We ask ourselves the question, why did God create the universe? Why did God create us? Adam and Eve, sons and daughters. It’s because as great as God is, as omniscient and omnipresent and as all-powerful and all-knowing as He is, He also needed to feel love. He as the great subject, in order to feel love, needed a true object. Therefore He created the universe and all of us, His sons and daughters. Through us, His hope was not just to feel love but to realize love, to actualize love, to substantiate love.

So we have this incredible opportunity to build what I call an ideal family -- meaning “I deal” with my parents, “I deal” with my friends. Or maybe from a child’s point of view -- “I deal” with my sister, “I deal” with my brother. But all of this dealing, so to speak, is a way that we can truly learn to love each other, by practicing true love in the family. It’s only through understanding the true nature of the parent -- child relationship, understanding the true nature of the brother -- sister relationship, or the different relationships with aunts and uncles in the family that we become a polished, complete, perfect, or flawless individual.

As I’ve said often times, human beings are like pieces of coal. That coal, after many thousands of years of pressure deep in the earth’s core in the darkness, over time is transformed by the mystery of God into a beautiful, rough-cut diamond. Each and every human being is like a rough-cut diamond with an incredible potential for divinity.

So what are we given when we’re given a family? It’s given to us. The child has no choice of who his father or mother is. I have no choice of who my sister will be. And you have no choice of who your brother will be. Many times even within the same family everybody is so different. One person might be tall. Another person might be small. One person might take more space horizontally, and another person might be vertically not taking so much space. Some people are artistic, and others are intellectual. Some people are so heartistic, and some people are as cold as ice, logical like a computer.

In my family there are seven: my husband, me, and five children. Each of us is like a rough-cut diamond. God has put seven rough-cut diamonds into this wonderful group that is my family. As we practice creating harmony among each other, as we practice achieving a peaceful environment in the family, what we’re doing is actually practicing true love. As Reverend Sudo used to say, “tlue rub-uh,” [true love] with a Japanese accent.

In a family, what we’re doing in practicing true love, we are “tlue rubbing” each other. We are literally rubbing against each other. The logical against the heartistic, the intellectual against the spiritual, the angry versus the serene, the volcanic eruption (me) versus the placid lake (my mother). Rubbing each other in the context of this God-given family truly shapes us into good human beings.

As we work our way to becoming a perfect son or daughter of God so we can be the embodiment of perfection, or the perfect embodiment of the quality of true love, then we as mature human beings can one day have families of our own. When they’re perfected as embodiments of love, then one day my daughter will be a great mom and my sons will be great dads -- even though whenever I mention the word marriage to Paxton, he makes a face and says to me, “Mom, I’m never getting married.” I always remind him, “Do you know that in the Eastern world where mommy comes from there’s a saying, ‘It’s the one who says I never want to get married who always goes first’”? It would not surprise me if Paxton is the first one to marry in my family.

But it’s this constant rubbing against each other. Sometimes it’s difficult, right? It’s difficult even when we’re trying simple things as a child of God, even before we have families of our own, when we’re trying to perfect our character by practicing give-and-take relationships, learning how to be a giver and also a receiver, trying to overcome this very difficult task of mind over body, learning the importance of delayed gratification.

When I was a young girl, I was no exception. I remember one summer together with my mother. Usually in the summer my father, loving the ocean, would take the family to Gloucester or Provincetown and spend the whole summer on a boat with many of you. I’m sure you remember. We would be fishing for different types of fish, but my favorite and my dad’s favorite to catch was tuna. Many times I would stay home with my mother. But when my father got up at 4:30 to get ready to hit the open sea, it meant my mom had to get up at 4:30 in the morning, too.

In the late 1970s blow dryers and feathered haircuts were in vogue. As young teens, 12, 13, we tried the new hairstyles and the blow-dryers. My mother said, “You’re doing such a great job with your hair. Can you come and do my hair?” At first I felt complimented, so I said, “I would love to do that.” But because she got up at 4:30 in the morning that meant that I had to get up slightly earlier than 4:30 in the morning. So very quickly my enthusiasm turned into resentment. The first day I took my mother’s hair and diligently tried my best. But then the second day the diligence was wearing off.

By the third day I was thinking, “I have the whole summer ahead of me, I don’t know if I can get up at 4 in the morning every day to do my mother’s hair.” Being a precocious little thing, or so I thought, I didn’t want to be disrespectful to my mother. I didn’t want to say to her, “Mom, I don’t want to do your hair. I would like a little more rest.” I thought I was taking the more deferential approach, which was not saying anything. But perhaps I thought, maybe I can show through my body language that I wasn’t too keen on doing this.

So on the fifth day I said to myself, “Tomorrow when my mom asks me, I’m not going to say anything. I’m going to go to her room and start blow-drying her hair. But I wonder what she would do if I started pulling on it a little vigorously?” I thought, maybe this would be a nice way for her to get the idea and say, “Okay, you’re off the hook.”

So on the sixth day I showed up and quietly started drying her hair. Then I thought, this is getting really tedious, so I started brushing a little bit harder. I started pulling my mother’s hair harder, so much so that her head was going to the left, to the right. I thought, am I making my point clear? The amazing thing about my mother was, here she was watching me in the mirror, with her head being pulled back and forth, but she did not say a word. I finished and went back to my room and said, “What happened? I wasn’t successful. She didn’t say a word.”

My mom always says persistence is the way to go. So on the seventh day, there I was, and I thought, maybe a little more vigorous. Maybe a little bit harder on this side of the head. And the same thing happened. My mom was very quiet, intently looking at the mirror, but her head was being pulled back and forth. Once I pulled her hair so hard that the brush went, twang, and I had to go pick up the brush. But she did not say a word. I was not successful that day, either.

On the third day of my vigorous brushing I thought, maybe I need to do more than just the brushing. Maybe I should try bumping on the chair a little. I thought I was being deferential, finding another way to avoid the issue but show in different ways that I did not like to do this. On the third day I started brushing and also kneeing the chair my mother sat on. So not only was she being pulled this and that way, but you could see her jerking because I was kneeing the chair. It might seem funny, but I was deadly serious because I had a message to deliver and I was not being successful. I had a hard time practicing this mind over body thing because I could not overcome my sleepiness and tiredness, so I was looking for another way out.

The next day my mom didn’t say a word. But I felt so bad. Before I went back to my room I saw a silent film in my mind of my mom’s head bobbing to the left, to the right, to the back with a bit of a jerk. I was seeing my mother’s face, not saying a word. She didn’t say, “In Jin, what’s going on?”

Then I saw what I was doing and said to myself, “What are you doing, In Jin? Maybe if you don’t want to do this, it would be much better to go to your mother and say ‘I’m sorry, but I’m really tired.’” But then better yet, here was my mom always teaching me mind over body: “You want to play but you have responsibilities. You want to play but you have your studies to do. You want to play, but you also need to clean. So do the cleaning, do your responsibilities, do your studies, and then play.”

I was a young girl, hearing this constantly, trying my best to apply true love in my daily life, this understanding of delayed gratification. But when I was confronted with this task of doing my mother’s hair every morning, I just could not believe what I was becoming. I was becoming so blunt and so disrespectful with my actions.

On the fourth day I went back and said to myself, “I can’t do this any longer. I love my mom, I want to make her look beautiful for the day. It’s a great opportunity for me to have a part in my mom’s daily beauty regimen.” So instead of approaching the job resentfully or grudgingly, I decided to change the way I thought about it. Instead of it being a detriment to my life, I began to see it as something that could be a contribution not just to my life but also to my mom because when my mom is happy, I’m happy. When she’s beautiful, then I’m beautiful. If I can truly serve her in this simple way by sleeping a little bit less, then it’s my way of letting her know that I truly love her.

So I came into the room and started to do her hair. This time I did it better than the first day. I gave her all my love, all my attention to the little details. I wanted to show her by my body language that I was sorry for what I had done. The interesting thing about my mom was she did not say a word. So not only was I unsuccessful in trying to convey what I initially felt, but I thought maybe I was unsuccessful in truly conveying to my mother how much I loved her.

The next day I woke up: “Here we go, persistence. Let’s try a little bit longer.” The next day I tried my best. I even did a better job, I thought. But my mother didn’t say one word. Then the next day I did it again, and my mother didn’t say one word. And so on. I think we did like three weeks’ worth.

As a mother now, I understand my mother’s wisdom. She waited to see how I would do the first three weeks. She didn’t tell me that I did a good job after the first day of having a renewed understanding of my responsibilities as my mother’s caretaker. She waited for the providential number 21 days to finish. Then she looked at me and said, “Thank you, In Jin. You’re well on your way to becoming a mature young adult. I’m so proud of you.”

That just made my day and made my summer. The little challenge I faced, this difficulty of mind and body unity, was something that she wanted me to work out myself. As much as she loved me, as much as I love my children, there are things that they have to work out on their own, instead of the mother helping them to walk, if you will. Sooner or later the child has to walk by herself. In this instance my mom was teaching me to walk by myself, in seeing the adversity before me, this difficulty of getting up and doing my mother’s hair, but developing a profound enough heart to say, “I’m going to have mind and body unity and I’m going to do the right thing.”

Instead of my mom quickly rewarding me after a job well done, she taught me to be persistent. So I did not receive that immediate gratification of receiving that carrot or praise; she wanted me to walk alone to become somebody who embodies the quality of true love.

When I think about that little scuffle I had with my mother a long time go, I realize how incredibly wise she is. She knew all along that I needed some work done, but she had enough trust and faith in me to let me work it out. We do the most important job in the home, and I think my mom and dad have done a phenomenal job of teaching the children basic moral concepts -- the difference between right and wrong, the difference between good and bad. But if we really want our children to grow up and be responsible, take ownership of their own life, sometimes the parent also has to allow the child to walk alone in the belief that the child, who has been cared for and educated in the best way they know how, will do right.

It’s something that we as parents should think about because many times we think that being a parent means exercising control over our children. Sometimes, yes, it is discipline. I believe there’s a great deal of difference between control and discipline. But also there has to be a time when you as a parent realize that the child is growing up. You want the child to grow up into an independent human being, an independently thinking, walking, and talking human being. So the parent slowly recedes into more of a supportive role but so clear in the faith of having laid a good foundation of teaching what is proper and what is not so that the child will ultimately work things out.

So that was one way I was “tlue rubbing” with my mother, and in that way she helped polish the rough-cut diamond that I was. This was a relationship between a parent and child. But just as important is the relationship among sisters and brothers. I shared with you a while back a story about my younger sister [Un Jin Moon] that I grew up with, who was almost like a twin sister for me. When I was little, I had a great deal of difficulty when our father and mother asked us to do everything together. My sister had such mastery of cleaning the room into a museum-esque vision that my parents so loved to see that I always felt I fell short in comparison.

She could vacuum the carpet with no streaks, but somehow I always managed to vacuum with some parts dark and some parts light. She always managed to make the glass in her room sparkle like crystals. I always fell a little short. She had a knack of knowing exactly when our mother would come into the room to check, so she was prepared, whereas many times I wasn’t. When she was cleaning our shared room, all the cleaning agents ended up on my side of the room. So her side of the room was magnificent, and my side of the room was a pile of mess.

Whenever my sister started cleaning and vacuuming early in the morning, I would turn to look at her, and it was almost like seeing the opening scene of Sound of Music, when Julie Andrews comes out to the hills with her arms outstretched, ready to belt out, “The hills are alive.” See, my sister, knowing exactly when my mother would come, would start her cleaning session with her arms outstretched. It looked to me like she was going to belt out “The hills are alive” any moment. Because she had a history of getting me in trouble because my part of the room was always the dirtier of the two, I looked at her in not the best way, but in a sarcastic way. “Here she goes, putting on her wonderful apron and doing her Cinderella role, making the magic appear. Poof the dust would be gone, poof, the bed would be done, poof, the laundry would be folded and put away.” She was almost like an animated creature. All the while this vision of Julie Andrews would transform in my sarcastic vision into, “My ears are alive with the sound of Windex,” instead of “The hills are alive with the sound of music.”

I would hear the squeak, squeak, squeak of the Windex and would be so irritated. In my mind the song continued, “With happiness and joy she will clear the mess. It’s sensory overload with the sound of Hoover,” the vacuum cleaner. “Will she ever let me rest?” These were the words running through my mind.

I remember that my sister and I had really difficult times, and in a couple of instances I voiced my anger at her. I did not behave properly. But I had a sister like her and I had the mother that I did, who was always emphasizing patience, the virtue in letting this one pass -- “Whatever happened between the two of you, let this one pass. Is it so bad to ignore what just happened for the sake of love, for the sake of loving your sister? Just as you required some time to come to your own senses and walk the road as a mature young adult, can’t you give your sister that space, that time?”

As difficult as it was “tlue rubbing” with my sister, she was polishing my rough-cut diamond, too. She taught me the importance of patience, the importance of letting this one pass. She taught me the importance of not taking things too seriously. These are the lessons that can come only in a family.

There was another instance with my older brother [Hyo Jin Moon], a young teenager and an avid guitar player. My difficulty was that he always required an audience when he practiced, so he would call me, and it didn’t matter what I was doing. I had to come and kneel before him and be there for him when he was practicing. After he practiced he said, clap. After he finished a song, he would say, “Clap.” So there I was, doing what my brother asked me to do. In the beginning you do what your brother asks you to do, but over time you develop resentment, like, “What am I? A dog? A dog gets a biscuit. What do I get? I clap and I don’t get a biscuit.” You start feeling and thinking these things. What starts as a vision of unity, a younger sister supporting an older brother so he can go on to be a world-class guitarist -- which he became ultimately -- has you thinking, “Why is he taking away my time, my space? Why is he making me kneel? Why is he humiliating me?”

But again, because I was given this opportunity to rub against my brother, to have this experience, and to work out what I was feeling, watching my brother and clapping without getting a biscuit, I found that he was becoming phenomenally good. I started to realize that in order to become really good requires so much practice. It really takes dedication.

In one instance we were starting at 6 o’clock at night, and he proclaimed to me, the only audience in the room, that he was going to practice until midnight. I wondered to myself, can he really pull it off; can he really practice until midnight? But he did, with blood, sweat and tears. By the fifth or sixth hour, his fingers were bleeding but he just kept on going. That’s when I realized that in order to be a true virtuoso in anything, it does require blood, sweat and tears. It does require devotion, persistence, consistency. Instead of being resentful that my brother made me kneel and clap, I could think the other way around. I had a hand in my brother’s becoming a virtuoso. I had a hand in him being able to play music like the way we speak English or Korean, or whatever language we were born into. I had a hand in him being able to share this universal language of music with the world.

This family that I was given, this strange group of characters that I call my brothers and sisters and my father and mother, helped me become what I am. I’m hoping that I can help them become what they are. When you really think about it in that way, you realize the incredible wisdom of God, our Heavenly Parent, and our True Parents, Reverend and Mrs. Moon, who are constantly encouraging all of us to embrace different cultures, different races, different religions, because we are ultimately one family under God -- meaning we are all sons and daughters of God. We are all divine beings who are meant to manifest a brilliant light of divinity in the world with great confidence, dignity, and a spirit of truly loving each other as brothers and sisters.

This is the lesson that our Heavenly Parent wants us to learn. There is great wisdom in my father and mother inviting the different religions and races to come together in the holy matrimony of the blessing. When you invite all these different cultures and customs -- and the best part, the different foods -- into one family, then you have literally a small universe within your family. As you come to rub up against maybe an African American father with maybe a Finnish mother, both with their own set of customs, the children in their home will grow up seeing no color but the color of true love. They will not see black and white in a family that is joined in holy matrimony through the blessing. Someone coming from a Jewish tradition together with a spouse from the Islamic tradition will have children who will grow up seeing no religion. They will grow up seeing only love in their parents.

When this magic of two rubbing against each other takes place, each child as a magnificent vessel of God has the opportunity to work things out in order to become a perfect son and daughter. Perfect doesn’t mean you don’t make mistakes. When we use the word perfection, we’re talking about the perfect embodiment of a quality, which is love. People ask me, “If Reverend Moon is a True Father and Mrs. Moon is a True Mother, do they ever slip and fall on the ice?” Absolutely. But does that mean that their perfect embodiment of a quality, which is true love, is any less? Absolutely not. That never changes; their quality as True Father and True Mother never changes.

It’s not the perfect little things we do, like entering a semicolon instead of a period when writing an essay. It’s not like that. It’s the quality of the person that makes him or her perfect. That’s what we see in our True Parents. They invite us into this wonderful thing called a family that we had no hand in, and God is giving us opportunities to work things out, to deal with the things that arise in the family. When we are successful in these issues in the family, then we will undoubtedly be ready for the world.

A child who grows up seeing no color will see no color once he or she goes outside the family to join society or the larger world. A child who grows up knowing no religion other than the virtues of true love and the importance of recognizing every human being as a true vessel of our Heavenly Parent will treat the worldwide family as his brothers and sisters. And children growing up in a multicultural home will not only learn to appreciate kimchi and maybe mix it together with spaghetti but, who knows, might become fantastic fusion cooks in the future. They will have an appreciation for the differences that color every aspect of our human experience and truly make it exciting.

Some have called this great country of America a salad bowl; others have called it a melting pot. I like to think of it as a family, a worldwide family. Where else in the world can you walk down the street, get a shot of double espresso at Starbucks, walk a little further and pick up an enchilada at a Mexican restaurant, then walk a little longer into the Italian section and get a gelato? Where else can you do that? Not very many places. But you can here in America, the country that God prepared to be the symbol of what God’s country should be, a country that truly lives up to its Founding Fathers’ belief in principles of honoring God, our Heavenly Parent. Where else in the world do you have “In God We Trust” printed on the money? Nowhere.

God is everywhere in America. So even as we’re spending that money, there should be an inner voice asking us, “How are you spending your money? What are you buying?” It’s in all these little ways that God reminds us to be responsible citizens: but not just citizens of this great country but also responsible people.

We’re given what I call the ultimate gift, a family. Then we have to ask ourselves, how should a family operate? I very much like to think of my immediate family, my five kids and my husband, as a team. A family should really operate like a team in that it should have a spirit of cooperation and a set of ground rules (a sports team cannot play in a game without a set of rules). And it should have a commitment to practice and a pledge to play fair. These qualities make a sports team -- football team, soccer team, field hockey team -- into a successful one. Every member of the family is crucial to the success of that team, meaning it doesn’t matter if you’re the left hand or the right hand; it doesn’t matter if you’re the left foot or the right foot; it doesn’t matter if you’re the mouth speaking out. It doesn’t matter if you represent the backbone. It’s what comes together as a whole that makes it truly unique; it’s how the team comes together that truly makes it effective.

We are trying to build men and women of character, or what I think of as men and women of integrity. Let’s think about the word integrity a little bit. If you study the root of the word, it comes from the Latin integrare, which means to make whole. When somebody is successfully integrated in society, that person has the ability to multitask, being extremely efficient and effective in managing his or her life to achieve that desired career success.

When we say somebody is a man and woman of integrity, what we are saying essentially is that he or she helps to make whole. In the context of a family you’re talking about making the family whole, or making it effective, or making it balanced. You’re talking about a family that is truly functioning, or in the youthful language, a team that’s “in the flow.” It just has that special vibe, that special something. The end goal is, how do we cooperate, how do we unite, how do we work together so Reverend Moon’s team or Reverend Anderson’s team out there can be effective.

I always believed that I’ve been given an incredible blessing. The blessing starts with the fact that I’m alive. When I think about how many people do not have the chance to enjoy life, I can’t help but be grateful. On top of that, I was given a wonderful family and wonderful brothers and sisters that helped me “tlue rub,” and helped me polish and make me into the person that I am today. I am not what I am today without my family.

When my husband thinks about the family and the team, his thoughts immediately go to Starship Enterprise. I think kids who have ability in math and science often end up being Trekkies. They love Captain Kirk, and my husband is no different. He knows every episode; he knows every line. When I got married I had to watch it too, meaning out of my love for him I had to try my best to understand the significance of Styrofoam rocks coming down the cliff. The props are not the most thrilling thing, but it’s the message. He was just so enthralled. He said, “Look, this is a starship representing all different races. Look at Sulu. You have not just races and cultures; you’re talking intergalactic. He went on and on. Every time there’s s Star Trek event anywhere remotely near our home, he knows about it. He’s trying all these different ways to take me. As politely as possible, I say, “You can take the kids, honey. I did watch the show with you.”

It’s amazing to see how much he loves Captain Kirk. I’ve thought about it, and now I understand why. He is a charismatic leader. He is very smart in that he provides the vision and the charisma, but he doesn’t do all the work. He has Spock, Dr. McCoy, Scott, Sulu, and all these other people working with him. It’s a great team. He knows how to delegate and how to give everyone space so they can effectively do their thing and come back to him with a report.

I think the real reason why my husband is such an avid fan of Captain Kirk is that he has the rare ability to woo women from every galaxy. All these alien beings wearing boots and miniskirts, with fantastic hairdos and perfect make-up. He has the ability to woo these women and have them fall head over heels in love with him. To my husband, growing up with his protractor, his pen capsule, his high-water pants, and his button-down oxfords, going to class with his really big, big glasses when he was 14 or 15, Captain Kirk must have looked really hot. It’s definitely something to aspire to, that man who can woo every alien in the galaxy. For me, watching it from a mother’s perspective, I’m thinking, “That’s a great team. I wish I could operate my family like that.”

Working here at the Manhattan Center, we meet a lot of celebrities. The ultimate icing on the cake for my husband was finally meeting not Captain Kirk but a new, improved version, a female version. Her name is Denise Crosby [Tasha Yar in Star Trek the Next Generation], and she plays the new captain. He had an opportunity to have dinner with her. He’s always wanted to say something to this captain, and she’s a very attractive person. Here we were at dinner, and I was wondering, will my husband have the nerve to actually ask Denise Crosby this question? I was waiting and waiting. There he is, enjoying his supper, talking about the Manhattan Center and different things.

He turned to her and said, “Denise, do you want to see my phaser?” He sat there for the longest time, and Denise just cracked up. She could not believe that he had the audacity to say, “Do you want to see my phaser? And not only did he not end it there, but he said, after she cracked up, “It’s set to stun.” That’s the first time I actually saw my husband as somebody courageous. That was just awesome. He won huge brownie points.

It’s interesting to see a Trekkie meet a star of the show that he grew up on and loved. He always tells me it was much more fun asking Denise, “Do you want to see my phaser?” as opposed to Captain Kirk. She was such a great sport and took it all in stride and laughed up a storm with him.

Captain Kirk and the Enterprise are a wonderful team because there’s a whole universe in there. It’s a functioning universe where everyone has a place and nobody is saying, “You’re better than me,” or “You’re worse than me.” Nobody is acting conceited.

How many times do we see young people with their family at a play or a movie theater? Rarely do you see a family come together. The young people are mostly with their friends. But sometimes when you see a family together, you see the father ask, “Do you want some popcorn,” instead of the kids asking, “Dad, can I get you something?” The father is the one asking. Sometimes the young kids stick their nose up and look the other way. I asked my husband, “What is that? Is that a yes? Is that a no? What is that? Why would a child do that to a parent?”

In the Eastern world you would never see that because the concepts of tradition, duty, and honor are so strict, almost to the point of being overbearing. But here you see it from time to time.

That’s why our community is unique and special. Here we have the whole world, meaning we have the best of the Western world but we also have the best qualities of the Eastern world. The fact that my father came from the East means that he’s naturally going to infuse our movement with some of the great qualities that come with the Eastern way of thinking.

The Disney animated film Mulan is my favorite because it has a heroine, and Mulan is just awesome. Not only can she fight, but she can ride, she can run with the best of them. But the most inspiring thing for me is that she was willing to risk her life to save her father, to preserve the honor in her family.

At the end of the story, she chases away the Huns, brings great honor to her family, and even finds true love in the process. I love the ending scene, when Mulan asks the young gentleman, “Can you stay for dinner? And it’s the grandma who says, “Can you stay forever?” That’s the wonderful thing about an Eastern family. Many times you have the grandparents there as well.

When my father speaks of three generations -- the grandparents, the parents and the children -- he means the three generations truly rubbing up against each other. How wonderful to have a grandmother who is going to ask the question for you that maybe you don’t have the confidence to say to a wonderful man. It’s interesting how in Korean halmoni means grandmother, and when you say halmoni in English, it sounds like harmony. So it’s truly the grandparents that help to create the harmonious environment of a wonderful family. Just as the harmony gives depth and profundity to a melodic line by adding different layers of feeling and intonation, following the line makes it a more rich and powerful experience. That’s what a grandparent does.

When my father is talking about three generations, he has some wisdom and a reason for saying those things. That’s because he wants to see each family become an effective team like the Enterprise, or like a good soccer team or field hockey team that is going to win many medals, not just for that team in particular but for the sake of the nation.

My father is thinking that if we can build a family of harmony by practicing true love, by rubbing up against each other, by polishing each other, not just siblings but different generations even, then it’s helping to create a family that will be a successful foundation or the cornerstone of a successful, family, world, and universe. In so doing, world peace will be achieved.

Many times when we say we want world peace, we want it out there somewhere, but the true secret is that world peace starts from each and every one of us, and it starts in the building block of the family and in the great team that we can build.

Ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, I wish you a wonderful Sunday morning and hope that you can spend this week thinking about how awesome your family is, how awesome your spouse, your children, and your grandparents are. And if you haven’t given your mom and dad a call, or your grandfather and grandmother a call, please do so. Continue to “tlue rub” against each other and become the brilliant diamonds that you all were meant to be. Thank you. 

Generation of Peace Starts in the Home

In Jin Moon
June 14, 2009
To Women's Federation for World Peace

The following is a transcription of the speech from Rev. In Jin Moon to over 450 women from around the country who accepted an invitation to join her for lunch following the Lovin’ Life Ministries service on June 14, 2009. After an introduction from Rev. Kevin Thompson as well as her husband, Rev. In Jin Moon spoke to each woman with encouragement that each had the power to create world peace starting in their homes.

I must say in all honesty, it’s not easy for my husband to play the supporting role of being Number Two in the family. He has been a Chief Executive Officer and a Chairman of his own company for many years. So just as this is a new experience for me, to be put in charge of HSA-UWC, the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, it’s also a novel experience for my husband. I must really thank him for being a wonderful partner and for truly trying his best to be humble and supportive of what his wife is doing. I sometimes joke with him, saying, “How is Mr. In Jin Moon today?” And he so lovingly replies, “You were Mrs. James Park for a long time, so perhaps now it’s your turn.”

Women have come a long way, haven’t we? [Yes] Seeing the proclamation of the Pacific Rim Era and the time when our True Mother can truly stand on an equal footing with our True Father to play a leadership role in our movement, those of you who have been in the movement for some years know that it took a long time for our movement to make it that far. I believe we got that far because of your persistence, dedication, and devotion over the years.

I know that when my Father thinks of America and its providential role, he very much thinks about American women and all the women who came here from around the world to do great mission work for God. He’s always thinking about these mother figures in America, a nation that represents the elder son nation. For more than three decades, the Eve-nation of Japan has been supporting the American movement financially, spiritually, and emotionally. The Japanese have given up so much of themselves to the worldwide movement. At this time, when Father is asking America to step up to the plate and learn how to live, independent of the mother figure, it is a wonderful time for all the women here to come together and take a moment to reassess where we have been and think about where we want to go.

Being a mother and having raised five kids, I’m always somewhat reluctant when Reverend Thompson or my husband wants to share about my family with everybody. I feel like the job that I did, although necessary, was nothing out of the ordinary. In fact, many of you, had you been given the chance to be a home-schooling mother, you would have produced as phenomenal kids as I would have produced, and I’m absolutely confident about that. Having been given an incredible opportunity to be a mother and to spend time with my kids gives me cause to believe that the best investment that I can make in the future, not just for my own immediate family but for our movement, is to create great kids. I know that every woman in the audience knows that raising a family and learning how to grow together in love, with a husband are not simple things. These things are sometimes incredibly difficult and painful, but at the same time, they are incredibly illuminating if we manage to overcome the obstacles that are put upon us.

The American sisters over the years have literally been hanging on for their chance to shine. Based upon your loyalty and commitment to our Heavenly Father, you’ve just been so courageous, walking the road of faith and trying to be united with our True Parents, trying to be great moms over the years. This is the time when the mothers, daughters, and sisters of our movement have a chance to play leadership roles in many different areas.

As you know, one of the first things I did when I came to the Manhattan Center was to restructure and reorganize it. I let a lot of people go, and I brought in a lot of people. Because of some things that we’ve had to experience here at the Family Federation over the course of this last year, I was not able to accomplish as much as I would have liked. But because of our persistence and our commitment, and because of the support of our True Parents and our Heavenly Parent, here we are. We have a chance to make great changes, not just in our individual lives and families. We have a chance to make great changes in our movement and in America.

Many of you have been wondering, “When will my time come?” In those harsh years, my father gave the American sisters such a tough time because he knew you were hand-picked, were prepared. You were so beautiful, so educated, and had so much potential. Father could feel it, he could sense it, he knew it. That’s why he challenged you to choose yourself or God. Many times he said, “American women, pht, pht, pht.” When he spit on you, he spit on the daughters, too. Over the years, I watched you grow as I saw myself grow over the years.

My sisters and I, we were right there with you every step of the way. Whatever you were experiencing out in the field, you know what? The daughters and the sisters in the True Family were experiencing exactly the same things, back in East Garden. So it’s been a difficult process for a lot of us and sometimes a very painful one. I’ve always been a firm believer that it’s been my mother’s persistence and her tenacity that have helped her to never give up. She knew she was playing a part in the providential history of restoration, restoring the position of fallen Eve, claiming the position of true Eve, and, therefore, determining, the proper role of women in every aspect of life, but especially our life of faith.

I know that she shed many tears; the Kleenex company is near and dear to the hearts of women in the True Family. We’ve been its best clients. I’ve seen my mother quietly cry but never, ever complain. I never, ever saw her give up. That taught me that I have to be tenacious, just like her. My mother was tenacious not only because she was restoring the position of fallen Eve, but also because she was paving the way for her daughters to stand as confident daughters of God. And I feel that if I can do my part in continuing the way that my mother went, then I can pave the way for my daughter and my grand-daughters to have glorious and awesome lives, confident and proud lives as women and daughters of God.

When Father first created the Women’s Federation for World Peace I was its most enthusiastic supporter behind the scenes. I watched in awe as my mother took the podium day after day, visiting different countries, finally seeing her claim her true position and giving me a vision of what I can do and of what all of the women in this audience can be. And as incredible as is the kind of work that my mother has done, I feel that her greatest victory over the years has been keeping the family together, despite the difficulties and obstacles.

I know that when the Women’s Federation was launched we did a lot of great projects in different parts of the world -- fundraising, sending aid, the moving bridge ceremonies -- these are all beautiful things. But over the years we were so intent on doing goodwill outside of our home that many of us did not pay attention to the goodwill that needed to be done inside the home. As a mother myself, I know for a fact that I am only effective as a leader if I continue to be an effective mother. So as important as my new position is I know that my primary position is to continue raising my children, finish home schooling them, and make sure they are not just spiritually and physically healthy but also emotionally healthy.

Many of the mothers in our movement have used church work to perhaps shunt their responsibility to the husband, who themselves were not at home. A lot of the Second Generation grew up alone. Many of them spent the majority of their time with people other than their family members. I’m a firm believer that you pretty much become who you are depending on the kind of people you surround yourself with. That’s why the fertile soil of the family, is so important.

So a lot of your youth grew up on their own, and they began to explore different things. When I look around, I see pockets of different types of blessed children. We have some who are very dedicated, and then we have some who are in a state of indecision, and we have some who have decided to go their own way. As a mother, that probably has got to be the most painful group to look at.

If we as mothers put ourselves out there to save the world but at the same time are not in a position to save our own children, then what good are we? If we are losing our children as fast as we are bringing new people in, what good are we?

In this incredible time when our Heavenly Parent is urging the women to play a new type of role, to be leaders, it is a good idea to reassess, recheck, and look within to see if we are really solid inside. What you think and what you say pretty much determine the kind of children you’re going to have. Every child is different. All children will go through different stages in their life and will have their own path, but when they’re in a family that is loving, communicative, and supportive, regardless of what they are going through, they will work it out together with such a family and go on to become incredible human beings. Some children might need a little more time than others, but they will get there in this type of environment.

But I’ve seen another kind of family in which the mother and father are not communicative. There are no discussions around the dinner table; in fact everybody eats separately. In some cases, you have couples who have been blessed for a long time basically acting like two strangers in the home. Sometimes the children see so much fighting that they just don’t know what to do and they start to rebel. When I met these types of families as I traveled across America, an interesting conversation that I had with a good friend of mine came to mind. This person has worked with delinquents, young people who killed their parents, who kill whomever they want on the street, who have robbed people’s houses, who rape, maim, and murder people. His job as a social worker is to work with these kids.

Something that he said to me surprised me. The common perception when we think about delinquents is that they come from broken homes with divorced parents. Well he told me something that was really quite shocking. He said that the most extreme and most violent delinquents tend to come from families that are still intact, meaning that there is still a mother and a father in the home living together with the children. But when you look into that household, you see that the father and the mother are always screaming at each other. There is so much verbal abuse between the spouses that it spills out in frustration toward the children. And year after year, if raised in a family like this, the children have nowhere to go and do not understand how to express themselves emotionally and spiritually. They are hurting so much inside but they don’t know how to constructively channel the anger within, so it shows up in violence.

When my friend told this to me, I had to think about it for a while. The common understanding in our society is that it’s only when the parents break up, and the children feel lost because they have become orphans overnight, that children become violent. But the fact is that a great many criminals become extremely violent in an intact family. Many times when I went around the country and met with different Second Generation, I came to know that a lot of them who are struggling and who are in a very violent state of mind tend to come from intact families, where the mother and father are still together, but because they don’t know how to constructively channel their anger, it comes out in a really vicious way.

There’s an old proverb in Asia that is repeated over and over again through the generations that says, when you kill a person you’re causing them physical harm, you’re taking away a life, but when you verbally abuse somebody, you are killing the soul. The words that are spoken within a family setting between the spouses and in the parent and child relationship are what determines what kind soul the child is going to have. When children hear negative words like, ‘I wanna kill you because you are so…, “I’m gonna throw this at you; get out of my life,” negativity permeates the household. When you say these kinds of words over and over and you’re speaking these words because you are thinking these words, the minute you start saying them, you start acting on them.

As mothers, have you noticed that when kids go through the process of adolescence, sometimes they want to try out something cool and new? Sometimes the children will take it a little further and try different degrees of being defiant. They want to act a little bit cool and say “no” to the parents in a bit of a defiant manner. They want to try out, “What’s the matter with you?” just to see how you would react. We need to react properly and say “What are you talking about? That kind of language is unacceptable in my home. In this home you will respect God; you will respect your grandparents. You will respect me.” As long as the parents very clearly state the rules of the household, the children will test them from time to time but rarely surpass them.

But here in the West I feel that many mothers and fathers are so busy trying to be their children’s friend that they forget to be their parents. Our children will be the first ones to tell us, “I don’t want you as a friend, Mom. I want you as a mom.” Meaning, “Mom, can I sometimes use you as an excuse when my friends are trying to pull me out to a party but I don’t want to go? Can I use you as an excuse and say, ‘This is the rule of the house. This is my mom’s rule, I can’t go.” And the mother would of course, gladly say, “Yes, of course. Do that.” And in that way, the child’s friends can also respect the rules of the house.

The interesting thing about the power of the spoken word is that you can think a lot of things, but, once something is spoken, it has a power in and of itself. When you start saying negative things -- maybe you want to hang out with the cool crowd at school and maybe these cool crowds are the ones that always complain about the parents. I’ve known some kids who complain about their parents to make a friend because they become friends in their commiseration of each other’s situation. So they start complaining, “Oh, my mother is this, my mother is that. Can you believe it?” “Oh, yeah, my mother is like that, too.” And then they become the best of friends but not the most constructive because they become friends on the basis of negativity. Once they start spewing out these powerful words in a negative way, the attitude of children changes, their behavior, their body language, changes. When we are busy trying to be our children’s friend, then we stop being the disciplinarian. We stop being the conscience because we want our children to love us so much that we’re actually leaving our position to commiserate together with them.

Many times the child starts gaining more authority in terms of expressing something negative. By the time you arrive at a relationship in which your child is literally yelling at you, it’s a little bit too late. And then something drastic has to occur before that family’s sanctity can be maintained and reclaimed.

I know all of you want to do great work for the world and America and are so eager to ride this new band-wagon of change that’s sweeping us. I know a lot of you are smart and capable and can contribute much, but at the same time, we have to be wary not to leave our positions as mothers because that’s an ongoing job for the rest of our life. Again, think of the kind of words that we speak to our spouse. If I were to say to my husband, “Yo, get me some coffee,” that would totally change the environment in my household. And if my husband said, “Hey, get my laundry,” that would totally change the atmosphere in my family. But if my husband says, “Yobo (Honey), I have to leave in a couple of hours for a trip. Do you think you could have the laundry ready for me?” Then I will say, “Yes of course. It will be ready.” Children are always observing our simple dialogue and conversation, so I always emphasize natural witnessing when I’m talking to members all across the country.

One of my favorite guitarists, Jimmy Hendrix, said something that was quite profound. He said, “Knowledge speaks; wisdom listens.” My addendum to that would be, “Knowledge speaks; wisdom listens; children observe.” The things that children observe and take in with their five sensory perceptions are the kinds of things that feed their soul that feed the inner quality of how they feel about who they are, what they belong to, what kind of people they want to be. In our household, words are very precious.

One of the things that my outside friends notice when they come to my household is that although we’re very free with our children and love doing things with them, there is a very clear understanding that adults must be respected, parents must be respected, and guests must be respected and honored. Respect for the elderly is something that just has to be. This is very clear and has to be maintained. And these are the kinds of things that outside people are kind of surprised at. But its’ really nothing to be surprised about, really.

I think many of us may have felt that we weren’t good enough to be mothers to sinless children. I know that a lot of my friends sometimes make the mistake of thinking that sinless children will grow up miraculously into sinless adults without our help; we need to just bow down before them, and they’re just going to be magnificent. Well, anyone who has children knows that that’s not the case. Sometimes the sinless children take more care because they tend to be more sensitive, more tuned in to the vibe, or the feelings, or the unspoken language of the universe. That’s why the words that are spoken in the home are so powerful to these young eyes, young ears, and young minds.

When a wife complains to the children about the father, “Why is your father like this? Why is he always late?”, then what ends up happening is, by the sheer power of the mother’s words, the mother ends up dividing the children in half. The child is the product of the father and the mother; when the mother is verbally complaining about the father, it cuts the child in half. And the same thing happens when a father complains about the mother: “Oh, when I got matched to your mother, she was beautiful. What happened to her? Why did she let herself go?” When a child hears this, again, it’s cutting the child in half.

There is a wonderful story from the Korean version of Aesop’s Fables, a collection of many cultural stories that have been passed down orally over generations and were finally put in book form in the latter part of the 20th century. The story is about a beautiful princess. She was so wonderful but when she started to cry, no one could stop her from crying. Many tried giving her candy, or giving her gifts, or coaxing her to stop crying, but once the princess started crying, she would not stop until she literally cried herself to sleep.

The king, in his effort to try to reconcile with this traumatic situation, said, “Daughter, you need to stop crying. If you don’t stop crying, I’m going to marry you to the village idiot, the village fool.” The fool’s name was Ondol. Pah-bo means stupid and Ondol was his name, so he was Pah-bo Ondol, Stupid Ondol.

So every time the king would say, “If you don’t stop crying I’m going to marry you to Pah-bo Ondol,” the princess would stop.

When the princess finally turned the tender age of sixteen, the king turned to the daughter and said, “You know, my daughter, it’s time to find you a husband. I have a wonderful man that I’m thinking about and I want to engage you to this man.” And then the princess said to her father, “Father, but you always told me that I was going to marry the village idiot. You always told me that my husband was going to be Pah-bo Ondol.”

So she packed up her bags, took some of her valuable belongings from the palace and left the palace to the dismay of her father to find the village idiot named Ondol. She came across his house and knocked on the door. His mother answered the door and here was this beautiful, young princess. She was so beautiful that the mother thought she was dreaming. She came and said, “I’m here to marry your son.”

Stupid Ondol’s mother thought she was having some kind of vision, or that this was some kind of trick. She asked, “Why would anyone so beautiful as you want to marry my son? Don’t you know my son is the village idiot, Ondol?” And the princess said, “Yes, I know. My father the king has always told me that I would marry your son, so here I am.”

The mother was just jubilant. She could not believe her luck. So of course she welcomed her in, and the princess started her new life as the village idiot’s wife. Having come from such an educated background, being a princess and all, she started to not just love him as a spouse but also educate him. She taught him all the Chinese characters. She taught him the art of calligraphy. She taught him how to ride a horse. She taught him how to shoot a bow. She taught him how to ride the wind and become like a ninja in the night. She taught him the esoteric art of some martial arts.

As a result, Stupid Ondol became a great general. And he was so exceptional that the king finally had to take notice of this general. During one of the battles Ondol brought a great victory for the king. The king said, “I’ve heard so much about you. Who are you?” The former village idiot said to the king, “I am Pah-bo Ondol, the one that you gave your precious daughter to.” And the king looked at him and said, “How can you possibly be Pah-bo Ondol? He was a village idiot but you are an erudite scholar! You are an incredible martial artist! How did this happen?” And Ondol said, “It was the magic of your daughter’s love, her persistence, and devotion. She made me into what I am but I have you to thank because she would never have been my spouse had it not been for the words that you spoke.”

We can understand this story in many different ways because various layers are interwoven. But one thing that parents can learn from this story is the power of the word. When you tell your child something, the child will tend to believe it, cling to it, and make it his or her life. In the story, because she was a princess, she practiced the art of true love and living for the sake of others. She took this rough-cut diamond of a village idiot and turned him into one of Korea’s most honored and glorified generals. If that’s not the power of true love, I don’t know what is.

Sometimes we might feel like we married the village idiot, right? Or different permutations of that. But what we can learn from this story is the power of true love. The power that’s within us can transform the person we call our spouse. And that comes not by preaching, not by shoving it down somebody’s throat, but by example, maybe by naturally creating scenarios so that your husband will think that your best idea is actually his.

I don’t know how many times when my husband and I are having discussions when he was the CEO of his own company, running hedge funds here in New York, I would give him my opinion and advice. He would listen, but he would be like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” But then he would meet someone else in the industry who would give him the same assessment that I did and he would come rushing home, saying, “Yobo! You know what? I just heard about this incredible idea. I think it’s awesome!” And I would say, “Yes, I said the same thing myself.” But it’s just amazing how once you become somebody’s wife, the cotton balls go in the ears. I’m still trying to figure it out.

The most amazing thing! How did I wage the Battle of the Cotton Balls? I said to myself, “Hmm, okay. He’s not going to take me or my word seriously because as much as he respects my opinion, there’s this ‘my wife’ thing that clouds over what I say so he can’t give it as much weight as if he were to have heard it from somebody else.” I found out in my twenty-five years of marriage that the most effective way to get my husband to do what I would really like him to do is to bring him an idea when we’re doing something, maybe walking to the park or picking up groceries, something unimportant, so that I know that he’s hearing me.

The minute I say, “Husband, I want to talk,” all his defenses go up, but as long as we’re moving along in some kind of an activity, it’s all right. The defenses are down. So I float the idea, and then several days later, I ask, “Oh, do you remember hearing that novel idea of possibly providing this kind of an education for the children?” He would vaguely remember and say, “Yeah, we talked about that before, right?” and I would tell him, “Yes, your idea was absolutely phenomenal.” And then he would say, “Yeah, it is a good idea, isn’t it?”

Its really amazing how even in the Battle of the Cotton Balls, there are different ways for us as women to work our mysterious logic and still get our husband to where we would like him to be. The women in the family are really the ones that steer the stagecoach, if you will. We can direct and help our children with how they should be. We have an incredible responsibility and power within us.

I know that some of us are simply tired of raising our children; dealing with teenagers and young adults is not an easy thing to do. But we need to be persistent and vigilant to create families in which daughters are raised to be just as special as our sons. In the Asian culture, it’s the mothers who perpetuate male chauvinism more than the fathers. So if I’m going to take my family to a whole new level, one where my daughter feels just as special as a child of God as the rest of her brothers, that’s going to require that I work behind the scenes to make that happen.

We as women need to create a kind of environment where our spouses feel special, where they feel empowered that they’re making all the important decisions. And yet at the same time we need to create an environment where our future daughters and grand-daughters know that, of course, men and women are biologically different, thank goodness, but they’re just as precious to God as men in their value and divinity as human beings.

I have a journalist friend who came back from Afghanistan and told me the ghastly story of how he’s bringing aid to underground schools where thousands of young, bright, and beautiful Afghani girls are gathered, trying to study so they can seek a better job and have a better future. He told me of one incident when he was there to bring aid, to help fix up the school and bring different supplies. A group of boys in their late teens came rushing in, took off the girls’ headdresses, and poured acid in their faces. I don’t know how you feel as women but I know how I felt as a mother. If that kind of incident is still occurring in this world today, how can we sit still as mothers and allow this to continue?

Here we are in this incredible country of America. Our children are exposed to some of the best educational institutions in the world. Women have come a long way in terms of gaining the right to have a decent education, but there are certain parts of the world where acid is being thrown into a girl’s face, disfiguring the girl forever just because she wants a right to an education. This is something that we as members of the Women’s Federation must highlight. We must talk about this and encourage each other to seek equal rights and equal opportunity for our sisters all around the world.

I feel the best way to do that is to start in our homes with our sons and daughters. When a son makes the comment, “Oh you’re just a stupid girl. Why would you want to do karate?”, it should be the mother that takes him aside and says, “Son, what are you saying? Your sister can be a black belt just as much as you can. She’s a person just as special as you are.” It’s these special, life-changing conversations that are going to create a generation of young men and women who are going to change the world, ushering in a world of true peace. If you cannot have a decent respect for each other in the home, how are we going to have it out in the world? And if brothers cannot respect sisters in the home, how can women achieve equal rights in the world?

I feel as mothers we have a responsibility that comes with this incredible opportunity to shine and do something new. The greatest difference we can make today as women is to make sure our home is a place where our daughters and grand-daughters are safe-guarded, empowered, and encouraged to shine as true daughters of God. In our homes where our daughter’s are encouraged to seek, and support and empower their brother’s to be the true son of God that they can be. So instead of imitating an extreme women’s movement that resorts to belittling men or stepping on them because they’ve done us so much harm, we can be a better movement, a whole new movement of women, of sisters and of daughters, when we realize that it’s our divine right to be special. It’s our divine right to shed and share our brilliance together with our brothers. Instead of disparaging our brothers for the past sins of mankind, we are going to raise our brothers to shine just as brilliantly as we are going to shine.

So mothers, please think about the power of the word, the power of saying to your daughter, “I don’t think you should do this because you’re a girl,” and what that will do to your daughter. Or think about the things that you can say to a son to help him realize the importance of women because if a boy grows up in family disparaging women, he will continue to disparage women, in his career, and even in his marriage. If we don’t educate our sons and daughters properly, we will deny them lives of fulfillment. If our son grows up to be the kind of man who disparages his female coworkers, who disparages his beloved spouse, he will never experience what true love really is. Everybody knows that if you want to receive passionate love, then you have to give passionate love. In so doing, you can feel one with God and you can feel one with your spouse. It’s in giving, it’s in the magic of empowering and supporting, that allows us to receive the greatest fulfillment.

I’m hoping that all of us together can see what an incredible opportunity this is for us. Regardless of whether you are asked to work with me in a leadership position or not, the most important job that we have is creating the environment that we call our home. And when we have children, it is our duty as mothers to create a home where the children can feel empowered, where they can feel and experience peace so that when they grow up they will want to be and to call themselves the Generation of Peace. This is what I’m working so hard to accomplish.

Thank you for joining with me this afternoon. I’m delighted to see a lot of old faces, and I’m very happy to meet a lot of new faces as well. Our most important work is the work we need to do in our homes. The responsibility of the spoken word, especially the ramifications that it has on our spouse, on our children, and in our environment, is something that we must really take to heart and practice in our daily lives. This is a great time for women. I encourage you to get involved. Please see me as your sister who is working right along with you. Let’s change this world. Let’s change America! 

The Path to Perfection

In Jin Moon
June 7, 2009

The following is a transcription of Rev. In Jin Moon’s sermon at Lovin' Life Ministries held at the Manhattan Center in New York City on June 7, 2009.

Welcome to Lovin’ Life Ministries this morning. We also welcome those of you who are joining us at the New Jerusalem and West Rock communities. It’s good to be back. I just came back from Korea, where I spent some time with my parents in celebration of the autobiography that was published and now is climbing the charts. It’s up to Number Two in the country; it’s Number Two in all genres of writing.

My father had a big book-signing party, where he invited dignitaries from around the world to come and celebrate the victory of his autobiography. He also invited all his family to come and spend this incredible time with him. In front of perhaps 3,000 people, my father was asked to give a 12-minute speech. For those of you who know my father, you know that he’s not very good at sticking to a text. So my mother prepared him, saying, “There are a lot of people here. There’s a celebration and also a dinner and entertainment, so you have 12 minutes.”

Of course, “My father said, “Okay, okay, yobo (honey), don’t worry, don’t worry.” Then he went on stage with the help of my younger brother and an assistant. When he started greeting everybody, my mother knew right away it was not going to be a 12-minute speech. He was so inspired, seeing so many people seated in the audience, that he could not help but share his heart with them. In typical fashion of my Father, he challenged and provoked the audience, all the while inspiring them with a vision of an incredible 90-year-old man who is still so strong.

It’s interesting that when he goes up on stage he needs the help of my younger brother and an assistant. He looks like a feeble man climbing up to the podium. But once he is infused with the Holy Spirit, this man whom I call my father whizzes from one end of the stage to the other, poking fun at the audience and calling them out by name.

In particular there was the second daughter of former President Park, who was assassinated. She met a man recently whom she’s thinking of marrying, but he is 14 years younger than her. In Korea, such a thing is quite scandalous and a lot of people have been talking about this union. But she wants to be blessed by Father, so she’s been coming to various events and hoping to get an audience with him.

My father picked her out of the audience, yelled at her by name, and then yelled at her husband-to-be by name. Because my father is 90 years old and because he really sees himself as the True Father of humankind, he was talking to this woman as if she were his daughter, out of concern but also being very blunt and to the point. So my father yelled out to this gentleman, “Are you marrying her for the money?” The whole audience was aghast. But then he went on to say, “If you are seeking my blessing, you have to realize that the blessing is forever, and it’s a commitment to love and dedicate yourself to your spouse for all of eternity. So if you’re going to marry her for her money, I will not bless you to her. But if you pledge to love and honor her, then I’ll think about it.” The audience broke into nervous laughter, feeling some sympathy for this young couple.

But, you see, my father is such a genuine person that he’s not afraid to blurt out what everyone is thinking anyway and just get right to the point. Even though he’s 90 years old, he has an incredible energy and charisma that come from being an authentic person, which makes him so compelling and so attractive.

As we were walking out of the celebration, I heard a couple walking alone together near me, talking to each other. The woman was saying, “You know, I’m not really sure I understood what Reverend Moon was talking about. He’s quite unique. Has there ever been a man who’s so honest, so blunt, and so real? This is so refreshing. Here we are, coming to this high-class event where everyone is dressed up, prim and proper, with their knives and forks. And here is this man who cuts right through the etiquette of it all and goes straight to your heart.” She said, “They refer to Reverend Moon as a perfect man. I guess I just met a perfect man today.”

I listened to this couple with great interest. As they went on their way, I was thinking on this concept. What is a perfect man? What does that mean? When we understand the Principle, we know that Father is a perfected man in that he has completed the providential history of restoration and for the first time can stand in the position as the perfected Adam, or the perfected son of God.

But when you check a dictionary, you see that it defines perfect in a very interesting way. It says perfect means something excellent, something that is pure, flawless. It also says perfect refers to something that is complete. Here we are, wanting to become perfect men and women of God, perfect sons and daughters of God. We’re striving toward perfection, and the dictionary defines perfection as the perfect embodiment of a quality.

I’ve often thought that if there is a quality that needs a perfect embodiment, that quality must be love. When you look at my father and mother and the things that they do, you realize that my father stands in the position as a perfect man and my mother stands in the position as a perfect woman because they’ve worked up to it. It’s a process they went through, a process of restoration, if you will.

When I’m inspiring and encouraging my children to be great people, to live up to being perfect, excellent, flawless, or complete human beings, what I’m asking them to do is to take ownership of their lives, to apply time, discipline, and practice in their daily lives to help them on their journey to become something as great as my father and mother are.

My children say with great flattery to me, “Mom, your Sunday pot roast is excellent.” Whenever I make it for them, they’re just so happy because they can feel my love, especially a certain sense of comfort and being taken care of. I say to them, “You know why the Sunday pot roast is so good? Because after you sear the beef to make sure that the juices remain inside, what do you do? You put it in a Dutch oven on very low heat and let it cook for 8, 10 hours. It’s the slow-cooking process that makes a pot roast incredibly tender, succulent, and satisfying.

It’s no different from looking at something that’s flawless in clarity, like a diamond beautifully set on a ring. Where did that flawlessness come from? The diamond was originally coal, deep in the earth, but through many years of pressure and of God working His mysterious magic, we have an incredible thing called a diamond, which is later cut, polished, and finished by a jeweler so that we can truly experience its flawless quality. A diamond is something that takes time and a great deal of effort in order to truly be brilliant.

I love to bake. Making the primary ingredients into the final product means having to go through many different steps with care and dedication, and making sure that it’s cooked to the right time so that it comes out finished -- wonderful and satisfying. Again, this whole process takes an incredible amount of time and dedication.

When talking to my children, I encourage them by saying, “Everything wonderful in life, everything truly satisfying in life, takes time.” My father says that individual perfection results from the give-and-take action between the mind and body based upon the foundation of love. When someone has this give-and-take action between the mind and body, it’s this give-and-take action that allows the person to grow into the perfected being that all of us are striving to be.

When we’re talking about mind-body unity and we’re honest about it with ourselves, we have to admit that we deal with it every day, right? Our body wants immediate satisfaction. But the mind is thinking about something loftier, something grander that we can achieve only with time.

I’ve seen that many times my children want to do good, but at the same time because they have so many temptations in their lives, they experience a struggle. “I have to prepare for an exam tomorrow. I have to outline many chapters and memorize certain sections, so maybe I cannot go out to a movie and be with my friends. But I really want to be with my friends, so what should I do?” I can see this struggle in the eyes of my children.

When we practice putting mind over body by setting schedules, by promising each other to overcome bodily desires for immediate gratification and listen to our minds, we can go on to become great people. I say to my children, “When you overcome your mind-body struggle, then we can do something wonderful. We can celebrate your victory each and every day. In so doing, you will develop a wonderful habit, something that will become a part of you when you become an adult.”

When we push our children toward perfection, we as parents are encouraging them with our love and care to just hold on and substantiate mind-body unity so that step by step, day by day we can help our children have these little victories become a habit so that they can feel a sense of accomplishment. “I really was able to overcome my mind and body struggle. Because I studied, I got a good grade.” Then they can set the next goal, and so on.

We can see this mind-body struggle in many facets of a young person’s life. When a child reaches adolescence, the hormones start raging, and they want to be independent and do things on their own apart from the family, with their own friends, trying out different things. Without parental supervision, this mind-body unity can go off in its own direction, and that’s when trouble starts.

Young people here in the audience, when your parents are encouraging you to strive for mind-body unity, it’s not just because your parents are weird. Society expects this of you. There are certain responsibilities put upon you as citizens of America and of your county, town, or district that you have to uphold. As much as my 16-year-old boy here, Truston (whose Korean name is Shin Yul, meaning faith and heavenly patriot), wants to drive a car, and as much as he wants to disappear with his friends, there’s a certain protocol we must adhere to as American citizens and as part of a community. He cannot drive a car without a license. It’s as simple as that. You have to go through classes, learning about the car and how to be responsible behind the wheel. If you’re irresponsible, not only can a car harm you, it can also be a deadly weapon that can harm another human being.

God is giving us an incredible opportunity. Young people might not want to think about it, but responsibility is inherent in every opportunity that is presented to us. It’s not just a car. My 16-year-old son wants love, wants a beautiful woman by his side, and wants to have romantic, candle-lit dinners. I’m thinking, whoever marries this boy is really lucky because Shin Yul is a fantastic cook. The care that he puts into a special dinner we have as a family is amazing. It extends to not just the preparation but also the placement of the food. Even more importantly, he creates the ambience that women so desire in our lives. We wish our husbands would give us some ambience, a romantic, candle-lit dinner. That’s what he wants now.

I said to him, “This is an incredible time for you to work on yourself. All these wonderful things that you’re doing in the hope of pleasing this beautiful person that will one day be your wife are wonderful. But just as you need a license to drive, you can be an effective medium to help your family operate better if you can drive a car by taking your children to piano lessons, art lessons, and so on, but when you are behind the wheel you have to be responsible for a deadly weapon that could harm other people and might actually take another person’s life.”

I also said to him, “It’s no different in the art of love. God has to give you the license to love. Look at that incredible Sunday pot roast that you love that takes dedication, care, and exactly the right amount of heat over a long period of time to produce something truly satisfying and succulent. Love is something like that. You have to work on yourself, perfect yourself as a wonderful son of God so that God can give you the license to love.”

Why do you need God’s license to love? Because being able to love somebody is a responsibility and blessing in that in loving somebody you can truly understand and experience God in what He felt when He created all of us, His children. We become parents ourselves so we can come to understand in the process of creating our own children how much God loves us. But at the same time, love, if it’s premature, ill-prepared, and not properly understood, can become like a deadly weapon. It can cause incredible harm, not just to you but to other people as well.

Just as a car cannot only harm but kill, love abused or used in a wrong way can also harm and also kill a person. Think about how many young people are taking their own lives today, brothers and sisters, because their boyfriend or girlfriend dumped them. They’re going through the throes of suffering and deep pain when they don’t even realize who they are. This uncertainty of not knowing who you are and then having someone totally destroy your self-confidence and self-esteem causes young people to not know what to do.

Here are these young people, so eager to enter into a game of love, not realizing that it can be an incredible blessing or an incredible responsibility. Young people are pressuring my son to date if he wants to be cool, asking how come he doesn’t have a girlfriend. At sports camp, some of his coaches say, who’s your girlfriend? When he says, “I don’t have a girlfriend,” they want to know why not.

Why do we ask our children to wait when it’s so difficult to wait and when society is pushing them to want to date, to have sex, to have relationships with many different people? It’s because we want our children to grow up to become perfect men and women of God, to work on themselves by practicing the give-and-take action between their mind and body, developing good habits along the way. By the time they are mature human beings and they live in that state of perfection embodying a quality of love, then they can have a license to love. Truly we see the ultimate blessing, which is the license to build an ideal family with a spouse.

So the things that your parents are asking you to do might sound kind of silly: Wait, delay gratification, take small steps, set goals, have a schedule, set aside time to discipline yourself, to practice this thing we call true love. I think that love is like creating a masterpiece. It takes a great deal of time, sacrifice, and discipline to truly call yourself an artist, and much more to be on a level with someone like Picasso. When we strive to actualize true love in our lives, we can’t do it immediately. We can do it only by practicing day in and day out.

What Father and Mother teach is so right on. I hope all of you are reminding your children that the reason why it’s such a difficult process but so worthwhile is because when we can think the right way, we can live our lives the right way. It’s what we think that determines what we do; it’s what we do that shapes the kind of person we are, the character that we have.

Whether the person will be a man or woman of integrity, of character, depends on what he or she does each and every day -- like practicing mind-body unity and overcoming obstacles. What we do is determined by what we think, who we understand ourselves to be, knowing that we’re not just a grain of dust floating around. We are precious vessels of God, with a touch of the divine in all of us. It’s our life’s purpose to really, truly make our divinity shine. That’s what we are doing when we’re striving to become perfect man and perfect woman.

When I look at my father and mother, that’s what I see. These two people have successfully substantiated mind-body unity, practicing day in and day out the give-and-take action of living for the sake of others. In so doing, after each day, week, month, and year they find themselves well on their way to becoming the perfected man and woman that we see, the two people we call our True Parents.

When I’m sitting with my husband discussing the events of the day and planning for the next day, sometimes I have a habit of drifting off. Even though I’m listening, I’m also thinking. My mind runs off, and I think about my father and mother, wondering what they must be doing. Or now that I’m a mother, I’m always concerned about what my children are doing. I know that my mother is always thinking about what I’m doing. I’m always trying to consider what I should be thinking or doing, or how I can be a better person, better wife, and better mother.

Sometimes my husband says, “Yobo (honey), hello in there.” He redirects me to the seat in front of him. I say to him, “That was a nice little journey that I took with my parents.” So he’s used to this by now. It’s this constant longing and desire to be connected with my parents that makes me feel so special regarding who I am as a person. I’m hoping that if I do my job in raising my children now, one day when they have children with that special someone that they waited so long for and that God gave them a license to love, that they will sometimes think about me, no matter where they are, and want to be connected to my thoughts, my heart, thinking, and caring.

No matter where we are in this universe, we always feel part of the whole. When I’m thinking how I want to live my life, not only do I peruse the Divine Principle from time to time, but I like to read a lot of books. There’s a wonderful gem of a book called The Alchemist. I’m sure many of you have read it; it was written 20 years ago by a Brazilian author, Paulo Coelho. It’s a phenomenal story about an Andalusian shepherd boy named Santiago who leaves his homeland of Spain and goes to Egypt in search of the treasures hidden beneath the pyramids.

He embarks on a great adventure, encountering many mystical things along the way, including people -- a gypsy woman, a mystical king, an alchemist, and an Englishman. Along the way he learns about himself. This is a story of the process of self-discovery. Here is a boy who leaves his homeland, looking outward to find a hidden treasure that is going to revolutionize his life and give him fulfillment and satisfaction. But at the end of his journey he is surprised to discover the treasure in the very spot that he left. He comes to know that this treasure is not something without but something within. In fact, that treasure comes in his realizing his own destiny, or following the path of what Coelho calls personal legend, something that he’s had all along.

It’s very much like all of us sitting here. Many times we want something far away, hoping that we’re going to find that treasure or win that jackpot that’s going to change our lives and bring us satisfaction. But as we live our lives, we realize that just as the mystical king and the gypsy woman said to Santiago, it’s to realize one’s destiny that is our obligation. In realizing the destiny, Santiago comes to realize the divinity within himself.

Many times we’re looking for something other than ourselves, thinking the grass is greener on the other side. We want to find something that’s going to change us. But Santiago recognizes that the agent of change really is within his grasp, and he’s been holding it all along. That’s the power of love. It’s the divinity within that can transform us into the true treasure that we seek to find.

Every man’s and woman’s purpose is to fulfill our destiny in the life that God has given us. My father explains that this destiny is to become perfect men and women of God, in preparation for the ideal family that we need to establish as the building block, the cornerstone, of the community and society. This is something that Santiago finally learns at the end of his trip. But it’s something that we are all involved in. Coelho goes on further to say that when someone wants something very much, the universe conspires to help make it happen.

How many of us have dreamt of that ultimate love, that special someone whom we will live our eternity with, whom we will build our ideal family with? Brothers and sisters, look no further if you who have gone through the blessing. We have our ideal person; we have our ideal family. And it’s in working through building this family that we’re going to realize the true treasure within, our divinity within, the gift that God has given us, asking us to become those agents of change who are going to help create ideal families.

I wanted to share with you a poem by the Sufi mystic Rumi. It’s a wonderful poem. The meaning that it highlights is that one can become a collective, how one represents a multitude. In the poem the minister says to the king, ignore the singularity, ignore the fact that any person that he sees is just one man. See him with your wisdom, and when you see him with your wisdom, you realize that he is not just one man but he is a multitude of stars. He is all the things in the universe that are represented in this one man. He represents the universe. The universe is within him. The one is the collective; the collective is one.

Young people like to see themselves as islands in that they want to do their own thing, not caring what Mom and Dad want or what Grandpa or Grandma might want. But the universe is flowing with us and through us each and every day. We represent the multitude of stars and the multitude of generations and ancestors. It’s not just us, brothers and sisters. We are the focal point of a full universe behind us.

What we do with our lives affects our universe, our multitude of stars. What we decide to do in terms of whether we’re going to choose wisely or not is going to affect the collective, and not just one. For young people who want to do their own thing, do their partying or rebelling and not listen to their parents, that’s something to think about. We need to realize that we are all children of God and we all belong to this incredible tapestry called humanity. What one thread does affects another; what we do with our lives today affects another.

When God gives us an incredible blessing, like this five-percent responsibility, and says, “Daughter, now you have a choice; son, now you have a choice,” how should we approach this choice? Be mindful of the fact that we are one, but we are also a collective. And, yes, we represent the collective in the body of who we are. There’s a whole universe behind us. There are many ancestors, and there are future children to come. We have to listen to our inner voice, our conscience, or, in my case, my mother’s voice. It’s the voice that’s constantly urging us to love, to serve, to be a daughter or a son of character and integrity, to be that excellent human being, to be that complete human being, to be that flawless human being that is truly awesome and brilliant.

Psalm 127, which I shared with you this morning, talks about how blessed a man is when his quiver is full of arrows. Now is the first time that arrows are understood as a gift representing God’s gift of children. Children are a gift of God. It’s a wonderful point to think about. The boys in the audience, maybe you want to become an incredible martial artist or an incredible warrior, like a gladiator. What needs to take place before you can call yourself a gladiator, put on that sword, and go into the arena to fight? You need to go through a process of intense, arduous training, mind over body, each and every day. It’s not just the physical. It’s also what you take in as nourishment. Strict diet, strict schedule, strict practice, strict conditioning. It’s this arduous process that turns you into a true warrior, or a perfect man or woman.

What’s the purpose of becoming a great warrior or martial artist? It’s in preparing to defend your country, to fight for something awesome. When warriors go to the fight, what are they thinking? They’re fighting for their country. They’re fighting to preserve their country against an enemy and in so doing safeguarding their country so that they in the future can have families and children of their own.

The arrows in a full quiver are a metaphor for everything that God wants to give to us. These arrows represent the potential of what the warrior will do in confronting the battlefield. If we strive each day to become strong and perfect men and women of God, what we are preparing ourselves to do is not wield swords but to become incredible parents who can enjoy a whole quiver of arrows, who can enjoy a vibrant family of children whom we in return will educate, nurture, take care of, and love, so they can grow up to be incredible men and women of God who can one day enjoy a quiver of arrows themselves, and so on to posterity.

Brothers and sisters, we have an incredible blessed thing called life. It’s really a gift, but this gift comes with a significant responsibility. If we can truly accept this responsibility with a grateful heart and understand it as God’s gift to us so that we can experience what He as a parent experienced when He had us as children, then it’s really something very profound and beautiful.

It would be my wish and desire that every day when we wake up, men and women seated here in this congregation, we realize that we have something precious given to us. The gift is to enjoy and celebrate our lives but at the same time recognize that whatever we go through in terms of difficulty, adversity, and suffering is just a way of getting us to realize the full potential of our destiny.

Brothers and sisters, thank you very much on this beautiful Sunday morning. I hope that we can truly glorify our Heavenly Parent, amplifying and magnifying the love that He so generously has shared with us. I hope that we can go forward as His proud children and realize that we are our own agent of change. Changing the world starts by changing ourselves.

I say to my staff and to my children, in order to become big, we’ve got to think small. We’ve got to specialize. We’ve got to do what we’re really good at, and in so doing we will become magnificent beings. So concentrate on the small things, the little things. Practice with time and discipline, and work on your mind and body unity. Practice your give-and-take action with your parents, your siblings, your friends, and your relatives. In so doing, become the magnificent, incredible human beings that you and I and all of us are meant to be. So God bless. 

To STF Participants

In Jin Moon
June 7, 2009

The following is a message from Rev. In Jin Moon to STF participants spoken at a small gathering together after Lovin’ Life Ministries service on June 7, 2009.

I’m sure you’ve done a lot of growing in the last year, and for those of you in your second or third year it has been the last couple of years. I would like to encourage you to have a great experience while you are on STF. Find yourself, find your relationship with our Heavenly Parent, and figure out who you are. When you are done with STF, go back to your communities and your families. I am a big believer in external excellence. While you are on STF, you concentrate on internal excellence, but when you leave STF I hope that you concentrate on both the external and the internal.

I’m a mom, but I’m also a career woman. I’m always looking for great young people to work for me in different capacities. I would love to hire a Second Generation more than somebody who I might find in the outside world. I very much believe in promoting our own community. So take the same kind of spirit and dedication that you’ve experienced on STF in trying to really strengthen your internal excellence and then when you leave, commit yourself to school or to a passion that you happen to be really great at. If you give it the same kind of dedication and effort, there is no reason why you cannot be externally excellent; there is no reason why you should not be going to the best universities in America.

I very much envision, in the next ten or twenty years, Second Generation flooding Ivy League campuses around the country, assisted by scholarships and great recommendations from your teachers. The sky is the limit for what you can accomplish in your lifetime. You are so bright and so talented; your spirit is just awesome.

One of the things that employers like myself always look for in the people we hire is a great attitude. Of course we want the best grades and good recommendations in terms of your character, but the single most important thing that we always look for is attitude. To have a really great attitude in working with people, you have to be fun loving. I don’t like hiring people who are just boring; I like to hire people who have a lot of energy, who are fun to be with. Such people tend to be the stars in the workforce, regardless of the field. So work on yourself, but please concentrate in school.

In this economic recession, even the best students who are graduating from Harvard Law School who would normally be guaranteed a six-figure salary from the get-go are getting deferred a year because it’s just so tough. So college-level graduation is the bare minimum, and then it would be a good idea to have a little bit more in terms of graduate studies. And if you happen to be really bright, then I would definitely encourage you to get a PhD in the area of your choice.

It is really quite competitive out there. I don’t want the really talented pool of Second Generation to think that the only thing that is important in life is to be spiritually excellent, and that’s all that’s needed. That’s a very important thing. But when you start walking down the aisle headed towards the Blessing, you will start thinking about how you can support your family and how you can raise decent kids. All of these things, if you want to do them properly, take money and some sort of financial foundation. In preparing yourself by trying your best in school, you are preparing yourself for an excellent life when you become a Blessed couple and a family.

So please take the time that you need, maybe gap year. A lot of European students take a gap year in between high school and college to find themselves. STF is like a gap year, extended up to three years for a lot of people. The single most important thing is knowing who you are. If you know who you are, then there is a lot of good work you can do in putting yourself out there to interface with the world and be an ambassador of God, True Parents, and our community. Sometimes staying within the fold for one, two, or three years with the same type of people is comfortable, but we as a movement need to get ourselves out there and let people know how awesome we really are.

So for those of you who will be staying on, I wish you the best. But for those of you who are going back, please try your best at school. There is no reason why you should not be getting straight A’s. The only reason I can think of is maybe you want to dance a little bit more, or maybe you just want to have a little fun or spend time with your friends. But studying is very important. I’m sure the men in this room understand the importance of weight lifting. You want strength, so you condition. But the brain is a muscle, too. Just as we exercise our heart in practicing the application of living for the sake of others, we have to exercise the brain in order to become capable, and effective people. Don’t neglect your mind.

The mind is probably one of the greatest gifts that God has given us, and we need to develop it. Just like pumping iron, we need to pump our brains by doing well at school, becoming star students, and learning how to work with our peers, even getting elected as the school president. There are a lot of good things that the outside offers that I don’t want our community to throw out. Just because we want to be spiritually excellent doesn’t mean we have to throw out everything that is good that the outside world offers. We have to learn how to integrate the best of the internal and the external and truly become the incredible people that all of us will be, can be, and should be.

After Rev. In Jin Moon spoke, she asked each attendee to share with her and the rest of the room about who they were and what they wanted to do in the future. Each participant received a wonderful opportunity to greet her as well as express themselves with sharings of their passions. By the end, many were in tears and thankful for the time they were able to share. 

A Woman's Touch in a House of God - A look behind the scenes at the Lovin' Life Ministries in New York

Kevin Thompson
June 2009

Rev. In-jin Moon launched the Lovin' Life Ministries on April 12, Easter Sunday, to correspond with True Father's initial meeting with Jesus Christ at Easter time in 1935. Honoring Jesus' life and victory on a day commemorating his resurrection, In-jin nim spoke openly and candidly about her father, his mission as the returning Lord and how he has tried so hard to fulfill the calling entrusted to him at that primary encounter with Jesus. As she expressed it: Jesus brought us the good news, but you know what? True Parents brought us the breaking news. It's breaking news time, brothers and sisters. This breaking news is a message of hope, a message of love. It is an invitation to live our lives filled with gratitude and happiness, in celebration and appreciation of each other, not being the kind of religious people who judge but instead the kind of religious people who have an incredible capacity to love, who can raise not only beautiful children but inspire our young people to become a generation worthy of the name Generation Peace.

The key reason for beginning Lovin' Life is to inspire our existing membership of all ages, to raise the quality of our worship and then to be able to reach out to bring new members to our church. If we are alive and excited about church then it is not so difficult to invite our friends to something we love. In-jin nim calls this "natural witnessing." So far many guests have come to the service and loved it.

In her sermons, In-jin nim covers a broad range of topics that include testimony of her personal experiences with True Parents and insights from her (and her husband Jin-sung nim's) experience of raising a family.

Moreover, the Manhattan Center, which True Parents bought a long time ago as a center for our cultural endeavors and into which Hyo-jin nim invested so much of his heart, is the right place to start a new kind of service that incorporates all of the exciting elements Father brought to America in the 1970s.

Consolidation and broadcast

The small churches in the New York boroughs have merged into the Manhattan Center main service. The former local church pastors serve as assistant pastors, caring for the congregations that live in their areas. Lovin' Life Ministries also has youth pastors, educational pastors and music ministers.

A few weeks after Easter, the ministry began an internet broadcast of the service to the Belvedere (rural New York State) New Jerusalem (New Jersey State) and Forty-Third Street (New York City) churches, which continue their services, but receive the broadcast of In-jin nim's message live during their worship service. Of course, this has brought some upheaval into their church world, but I think most people agree that it has been a wonderful shake up and the results are good for everyone.

Members and guests have been coming from as far afield as Washington DC, Boston and Ohio, and church leaders from around the country come to New York to experience Lovin' Life for themselves. Some are now asking In-jin nim if they can turn their own church service into a Lovin' Life service. The average size of the congregation is about one thousand four hundred members and guests.

Inspired to reach out

In-jin nim is not just delivering her message from the podium. After each Sunday service, she meets and greets every single person who would like to say hello. This can take a long time and is the highlight for many people. She then has lunch with different church groups or ministries, for example, the Young Adult Ministers or a teen group making a purity pledge. Those who have been privileged to participate in these gatherings testify to the intimacy they can feel with In-jin nim representing True Parents.

In-jin nim is aiming to reach all kinds of people, young and old, members and non-members, resting and inspired. She believes she can speak to members of all ages and levels and at the same time make her message relevant to non-members who attend; so far she is dong a great job, as the testimonies let us know.

In-jin nim's own children were worried about the impact on their lives when their mom was appointed to the position she now holds. They were not fully happy at first. No however, her son and daughter are witnessing constantly to bring people. Ariana brings a friend or two each week from Harvard, and Preston has brought guests whom he met near the Manhattan Center. Many members who had never liked church before are really enjoying Lovin' Life; increasingly they bring their friends and family.

Religions as one family

In-jin nim was also adamant from the beginning that she wanted to invite other religious leaders to pray at the service. She wants to be connected in heart with all religions and to show them what the Unification Church has to offer. So far, we have had mostly Christian ministers participate, although an imam came and gave an impromptu testimony where he praised our members and especially our second generation as the hope of the world. This coming Sunday we will have a woman rabbi pray.

The clergy are mostly connected with our True Parents through the American Clergy Leadership Conference foundation. They are so excited to have the daughter of Rev. Moon stepping forward in America and they want to support her 100 percent. In-jin nim also wants to show to our second generation that we are an interfaith movement with respect for all religions.

Music

In-jin nim is hands on with all musical aspects of the Lovin' Life service. She has Dr. Brian Saunders as her music minister and they have a talented group of instrumentalists and vocalists, who are all members except for the drummer, who is a close friend. They rehearse continuously.

In-jin nim helps choose the songs and the lead vocalists, and often she is involved in the rehearsals for long hours. In-jin nim knew that the vision of her older brother Hyo-jin nim was to influence the world through music. One of the reasons she chose the Manhattan Center as the venue of Sunday service was because she had at her disposal such a premier facility to put on a fantastic event each week for a fraction of the cost others would have to pay.

Revival of witnessing

When In-jin nim's ministry was being launched, some wonderful first and second generation members dedicated themselves to support in any way they could. As things progress, In-jin nim is inspiring more and more people, and they are catching her vision and stepping forward. She has taken on Heather Thalheimer as Education Director for the American movement and Sheri Reuter as Witnessing Director and will fill in other important roles step by step. Mostly she is looking for people who will not be looking to do "business as usual" but rather those who can embrace a new paradigm of ministry, and who want to work together.

Our church headquarters on Forty-Third Street, where Lovin' Life Ministry runs the Learning Center during the week, is again buzzing with activities. I have been tasked, along with wonderful people such as Rev. Phillip Schanker, David Hunter, Jonathan Gullery, Pastor Juan Morales and others to create Principle-based I learning opportunities. Every day we have introductory lectures at 12:30 and 6:00 PM as well as interest-based programs including marriage education classes, presentations by professional people who have utilized the Principle in their careers, martial arts programs, "open-mic" nights, and so forth.

One guest, Maristella Rodgers, commented, "I have been passing by this building for months wondering what kind of place it was. Now I see that it is a place of love and shining light." •

We have a one-day seminar each Saturday. This features updated methods of teaching Divine Principle for today's audience. We also have two- and seven- day workshop retreats in the traditional style. Supporting these programs, Lovin' Life Ministries has a full time outreach team and a Special Task Force (STF) team in training.

Working with In-jin nim

Personally I am inspired by In-jin nim's vision and was happy to be asked to be a part of helping launch her ministry. As with all things, there is far more to do than there are hours in a day to do them. However it has been a delight to work with In-jin nim, as she values the divinity in each person and encourages rather than intimidates. She is not demanding or pushy, but clear and determined. These are qualities I find easy to work with. She loves and appreciates the sacrificial lives of the first generation, but she also knows that the True Children can take the second generation much further than their own parents can.

Building on the incredible foundation True Parents have prepared in America, and especially in New York, In-jin nim is setting out to revive the spirit with which True Parents first touched America. If we unite with and support the True Children then the future will be bright for our movement.

Rev. Thompson serves as In-jin nim's direct assistant pastor for ministry.