Rev. In Jin Moon and Lovin’ Life Team Make Goodwill Visit to Beijing

Rev. In Jin Moon and Lovin’ Life Team Make Goodwill Visit to Beijing

Sermon Notes, October 16, 2011

In Jin Moon

1. In Jin Nim greeted everyone. She was happy to see us again.

2. Two weekends ago we had a wonderful celebration with our True Parents in Las Vegas – celebrating the registration of God's Kingdom and Fatherland. All the preparation had to take place within 24 hours, from the moment that Father said it should be done. Amazingly the American brothers and sisters and the American families really responded with an overwhelming sense of mission, that this is a profound meeting with our True Parents. Many of you drove many, many miles just to be with our True Parents at that event. In Jin Nim gave her heartfelt appreciation and thanks to everyone who made the event successful.

3. In Jin Nim thanked our True Parents who are overwhelmed with inspiration that America loves True Parents. They felt it because you literally threw it at them, but they caught your love and a reveled in the love that was shared on that day. Before our True Parents left they gave a warm prayer before they headed back to Korea.

4. For In Jin Nim every time she is called to be with our True Parents – she can see that our American movement is becoming more and more heartistically united with our True Parents and the response time is becoming quicker and quicker and quicker. A couple of years ago when we were thinking about holding events in Las Vegas we thought that 600+ would be difficult. But we satisfied the 600. Then we thought satisfying more than 800 would be really pushing it, but then we satisfied 800+. Then we went on to 1000 and then 2000, and now we are nearing 3000 capacity every time our True Parents call and engage the American brothers and sisters and families – to respond and to unite and to work toward building that peaceful, hopeful, and love infused millennium that we have all been waiting for. "Thank you brothers and sisters!"

5. Every time In Jin Nim sees our True Father and True Mother in action, she cannot help but look at them, not only as her parents, but as the providential figures of history and of religion that they are. She is so blessed to be able to call them her biological mom and dad, but at the same time she knows that they are much bigger than that. They don't just belong to her, they belong to the world and to all of God's children. Whenever she spends time with them she is asking herself, "You know, how would I have felt if I met Jesus Christ 2000 years ago and I was there as one of the Israelites – with the son of God sent to this world to save humanity, to restore humanity from its fallen existence and bring about the kind of change that can transform the fallen children into that heavenly eternal sons and daughters of God."

6. In Jin Nim has often asked herself how she would feel to be in the presence of Jesus Christ when he was administering to his people, to his congregation, or to his fellow brothers and sisters. She thought to herself, "In a way, I have been incredibly blessed, in that, yes I did not get that chance 2000 years ago to experience Jesus, but fast-forward 2000 years later and I have this experience, to not just experience Jesus Christ again, the Messiah again, but to experience the Messiah in the completed form or in the completed picture – in the living manifestation of these wonderful two people whom we call True Parents." It is an incredible time to be living. Sometimes In Jin Nim asks herself, "why am I the lucky one to be anointed at this time, to be living and breathing and working together with our True Parents?"

7. As we all know, Jesus Christ was not meant to die on the cross. He did not come to die. His mission in life was not to come and die on the cross. But the Heavenly Parent who loves his son and daughter, sent Jesus Christ as His son to be that person to find that beautiful woman that he can call his wife and stand together in the position of the True Parents, build that ideal family, and bring the world under this concept and under the reality of this thing called 'one family under God.'

8. Jesus Christ would have done exactly what Dr. Sun Myung Moon is famous for. Had he found his wife and had he found and built his ideal family he would have started to bless other people. He would have started encouraging other people. The whole point of our existence here on earth is to experience the parental heart of God, to be that parent ourselves and to build the four position foundation which will become the building block, or cornerstone, of any great society, nation, and world.

9. What Jesus would have done, our True Father, our True Mother, our True Parents, that is what they are famous for. Just as Jesus would have blessed other people, asking all of humanity to graft onto God's lineage – Jesus would not have just talked about love, he would not have just been the paradigm of what a true life, or what a devout and eternal son would be all about – but with a wife by his side he would have been a model of an eternal son and daughter, coming together in this beautiful thing called the holy matrimony or the Blessing Ceremony – so not only are they wanting, or experiencing, or inspired by the love of our Heavenly Parent and the life that we have been given, that they would be encouraging everybody else, just like themselves, to graft onto the heavenly lineage of God.

10. Because, if someone were to ask In Jin Nim, "What is your faith all about, in a nutshell?" She would have to answer, "The crux of our faith is to inherit the love of God." Inheriting, in that we are not just talking about it or teaching people about it, we are not just feeling good about ourselves, but we are actually doing the physical work of becoming part of God's lineage.

11. You inherit something from your parents, because you are part of your parent's lineage. Likewise we inherit this true love of God and experienced for the first time what it feels to be a parent and thereby understanding how much God truly loves us, by experiencing and by truly substantiating this process of inheriting the true love of God.

12. So we are not just another movement, just to share the words of Jesus Christ or to share the words of Rev. Moon, we are here to do the actual work, the physical work, of building that ideal family. And that was the mission of Jesus Christ 2000 years ago. He did not come to die on the cross. He did not come to die a lonely death. He came to find his beautiful wife and establish that ideal family that would be the living paradigm of true love and would inspire all of humanity to inherit the true love of God and to make real our faith, to make real our God, by truly being part of God's lineage, inheriting the love of God and making it real in our lives – substantiating, by having children of our own and by going through the process of building ideal families.

13. In Jin Nim always says, "Building ideal families is one of the most difficult things anyone can do." And so the Messiah comes to show us how, to inspire us to persevere and deal with all the things that arise in the process of building this incredible cornerstone for a peaceful and harmonious society. He comes to urge us on, sometimes to kick us in our butts, to help us keep going so that we can truly create a beautiful world, one family at a time.

14. When In Jin Nim thinks about the beauty and the magnitude of what it is to be living with our True Parents, she realizes that we must not make the same mistake that the Israelites made 2000 years ago. In a way, the Israelites failure was in being ignorant as to who Jesus Christ was all about, because certain providential figures who were prepared to pave the way, make straight the way of the Lord, to really tell and teach and encourage the people – that we have Jesus Christ, the son of God, with us right now and we must unite and work together with him. That providential figure, John the Baptist, was not able to fulfill his responsibility.

15. And so the people were left ignorant. The ignorance of the Israelites prepared the way for Jesus to die a lonely death on the cross. But unlike the Israelites of 2000 years ago, we in the Unification Movement, we clearly know who our True Parents are. We experienced who our True Parents are. In working together with them we are building something that is real, that is substantial and tangible, something that is going to change the world one family at a time.

16. Even though Jesus' mission was cut short because of the crucifixion 2000 years ago, we know that Jesus was still able to claim spiritual salvation – victory in terms of spiritual salvation. His death and sacrifice on the cross inspired many people to seek a life of faith, to understand what true love and true life is all about. But in a sense, because Jesus could never find that beautiful wife, the only understanding that we have, or the Christology that Christianity offered us, is this notion of the Trinity – the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit was never given a chance to be manifested in the flesh because Jesus never had a chance to find that beautiful wife that he would call his own – and build a beautiful family with.

17. We were left with this concept of the Trinity, but because of Jesus' victory, in terms of the spiritual salvation, the good work of Christianity has continued on for many, many years. But the big question for Christianity is – how do we have great relationships? How do we build great families? How do we raise great kids? All of these questions were left up in abeyance. We didn't have a means to address them. We thought that the best way to be a great Christian, or live a life of Christian piety, was to live a life of denial – denying marriage, deny a husband and a wife, dedicate yourself to God, reject the world, isolate yourself from the world so that you can concentrate on yourself. Because we didn't have the completed picture, Christianity afforded us a way to find or seek individuals salvation, but it did not address the questions and problems of how do we have family salvation? How do we seek world salvation? This question has lingered until 1960 when our True Parents hit the scene.

18. In our True Parents we realize that the concept, or our understanding of Christology, was incomplete – in that there was no feminine truly represented physically – because Jesus never had a wife. And what about the question of children? There was no picture, or presence, or representation of a child in the picture of the Trinity.

19. And so, when True Parents come, truly united vertically and horizontally with our True Parents or God up in heaven, we begin to see that God's ideal for all humanity is this thing called the four position foundation. God at the helm, the control tower, and men and women as his children, beautiful children coming together in matrimony – and the beautiful thing about this four position foundation is that it's diamond shaped. God is at the top, the vertical line, and then the horizontal line with man on one side and woman on the other – and at the bottom when men and women come together through that process of the blessing – experience parental love for the first time, embark on their way to build that ideal family – they do so by inviting a child into their life. And so, God, a man and a woman, and child – this is the complete picture that God wanted for Jesus Christ 2000 years ago.

20. This is why, we have in our True Parents a man and a woman… but when you look at the history of Christianity the value or the dignity of a man and a woman is incredibly skewed. When you look at the four position foundation you realize that you have the vertical access and the horizontal axis. The degrees that separate these axis are 90° -- meaning that the man and the woman stand on equal footing. They are different and separate, but in their essential value and dignity they are equal before God.

21. And this is the incredible thing about True Parents, because for 2000 years women were like the Holy Ghost in the Christian church. Nobody knew what to do with woman. "Where should we place woman?" Many times women were hidden behind curtains – they could not partake of the regular service. They were certainly not given a microphone to share their voice or their expression or feelings. And many times they were relegated to the position of a slave, of someone who is sub-human because they were seen as the seductress, or the temptress, the one who led Adam astray, the one who caused the fall.

22. All throughout religious history – this question, "what do we do with women?" has plagued good men and women for many, many hundreds of years. But in our True Parents we realize that the ideal intention, or the original intention that God had when he created His son and His daughter – his original intention did not say, "Dear son, be master over your servant the woman." That was not God's original intention. His original intention as a loving father and mother was to encourage his children to be the best that they can be, to truly be the kind of people that can live up to the eternal worth of who they are, live up to the dignity of who they were meant to be and be that great son and daughter of God. That was the true intention of our Heavenly Parent.

23. In Jin Nim is eternally grateful that for the first time in religious history the masculine and feminine are presented in a holistic picture, Yin and Yang represented in a holistic picture as True Parents. And that is why they are incredibly precious to all of us.

24. When In Jin Nim realized that, in a way we have a chance to really change history, to set the world right – and in our True Parents, she realized that they are going to destroy a lot of the preconceptions that existed before. They are going to make all of us feel very uncomfortable because change is in the air, transformation is in the air, growth is in the air, and when there is growth there is usually pain, growing pains.

25. And so, as we go forward, and if we truly think of ourselves as that eternal son and daughter of God, starting out as a caterpillar, but going through a cocooning process we really have a chance to work out ourselves – but our ultimate goal is not to be captive in the cocoon but to fly free, fly beautiful, be that inspiration, that whisper of inspiration to the world. If that is what we were meant to be, then we realize that… pain is part of the process of what we need to go through in order to reach our goal.

26. In Jin Nim has thought about pain quite often. In fact she calls pain her best friend. She certainly had a great example in her mother. She is somebody who is so extraordinarily elegant. She does not say much, but when she says a little – she says a lot.

27. The last time In Jin Nim was in Las Vegas – our True Father is the Hoon Dok Hae champion. The man can speak for 22 hours without a drop of water and he is 90 something. But once he starts, he is a man who is almost possessed, totally wild about his mission and about what he needs to do before he departs from this world. And so whenever he has a group of men and woman, or ministers in front of him he doesn't want to let them go. He gives and gives and gives of himself.

Sun Myung Moon and Hak Ja Han, October 2, 2011

28. But in the last trip Father was really hard, like an old Confucian schoolmaster. He is quite a task master… if you have visited the rural towns in Korea and if you go to these places where there is usually an old grandfather – he has a long pipe that he taps on the ashtray, and he uses that pipe to smoke and to spank. And when he taps on that pipe he means business. If you don't do your homework you are going to meet the pipe. If you don't listen, or not respectful, or you are dishonorable in front of the teacher you are going to be smacked.

29. The schoolmaster is an incredible task master, and in the Confucian style of teaching you are always hardest on the brightest and most promising student. So when you are in the classroom of this Confucian style teaching and you are not getting chastised you may have to think twice about working harder. But, usually the brightest students get smacked and reprimanded and chastised the most.

30. Father is very much a product of the Confucius style teaching – and so he is incredibly hard and vicious to the ones that he thinks are going to be incredibly promising. And so he is incredibly hard on some of the leaders from whom he expects great things. He is certainly incredibly difficult when it comes to his own kids, because he expects a lot from them. But probably the most important person that In Jin Nim's father gives a lot of Confucian style teaching attention to, has been and is her mother. Because, she symbolizes perfected Eve. She is truly the one who has restored the fall of man together with our True Father and stands in that position as the True Mother or True woman of humankind. Father expects a great deal from her just as our heavenly parent does.

31. And sometimes he singles her out as that example of what true heartistic unity and absolute trust is all about – and he just grills into her, he is almost vicious with her.

32. Sometimes as a daughter, In Jin Nim is looking at this and she thinks, "so much pain this woman has to bear – how does she ever do it? How does she bear the growing pains of taking all of humanity along, to raise humanity up to be that inspired group of men and women – how does our True Mother do it?"

33. In Jin Nim remembers one of those episodes when her father was using her mother as an example – really testing and pushing and confronting her to see if she could still remain steadfast, remain faithful and loyal. After one of those sessions she followed her mother into her room – and only then did she break down and cry. In Jin Nim was there with her and she said, "Mother, how do you take all of this pain? How do you handle the pain?" She said something to In Jin Nim she will never forget. She said, "In Jin, you have to understand your mother is not just your mother, I'm a living paradigm of what a true woman is. Just as it says in the good book, Rom 12:21 -- it says, do not be overcome by evil – meaning things that are not good, that are not kind, that are not the nicest things – it says do not be overcome by evil, things that may hurt you or pain you along the way, but the Bible says, overcome evil, all difficult things with good."

34. And she expounded on that passage telling her, "you know In Jin, you have to remember that the best antidote comes from the venom itself. Antidote is created from poison itself." The way we find a cure to save someone from a poisonous snake bite is to take the venom itself and create an antidote. The solution resides in the very pain that you are feeling.

35. Then In Jin Nim realized what her mother was basically saying – is that sometimes the best person, prepared to deal with a problem, are the kind of people that have dealt with the very problem themselves. Therefore, sometimes the best person to deal with a drug addict is somebody who has gone through the process of having the difficulty of being a drug addict themselves, but being saved and restored to a higher conscience and a desire for a better living have pulled themselves up by their bootstraps, and thus stand in the position to learn from their mistakes and become counselors at the various places that deal with addictions. Through their own suffering they have found a way to create that antidote off of that venom, to inspire and heal other people.

36. In Jin Nim's mother very much had the notion and understanding that regardless of what poison, or what difficulties she was going through, she was not just one person, but she knew herself to be that providential historical figure that had the responsibility to create something bigger other than herself – and out of her own suffering and misery, create the antidote – or a way to heal, inspire, and compel others to be the holistic person that we all need to be.

37. When In Jin Nim thinks about her mother she realizes that when she contemplates on the word pain – many times she likes to look at the word itself, she likes to take it apart sonically, she likes to look at it in terms of etymology, where the word is derived from, where it comes from, how it has been translated over the centuries – but at the same time, many times she thinks – "Wow! Look at his word pain. You can look at it as an acronym."

38. When we're dealing with a thing called pain, and she looks at her own life, and the lives of many people that she knows, and the lives of people who walk the streets of New York every day – all of us in one form or another is dealing with pain. But the question of how we can rise above it determines whether we are going to be successful in life or whether we are going to be a person, a brother or sister who is totally in a quagmire, who is not able to take themselves out of this victim mentality.

39. And so when In Jin Nim thinks of the word pain one of the first things that happens to you when you are in this state of pain – when you are in pain because somebody hurt you, or you were misunderstood, or you are ignored and neglected, or you've been hurt – you realize that pain becomes over consuming. In a way that pain possesses you, it takes over, it becomes this leviathan that literally gulps you up and swallows you whole. Pain Possesses you.

40. When In Jin Nim looks at how her mother has dealt with painful situations or occasions or incidences in her life – she realizes that she is a master of digesting pain so that it doesn't become and continue to be this leviathan like monster that possesses you. But, she releases the pain. She lets it go. In a way, she has this philosophy, "things will pass, all things will pass." Do not let something consume you and possess you and hold you petrified in the moment. She encourages all of us to release our pain, to let it go.

41. When you look at the next letter, the letter 'a', and when you look at someone who is engulfed in pain – the most important thing that they want at that moment is to be Absent. They want the pain to be absent. They want to avoid the pain. But the interesting thing about In Jin Nim's mother is that understanding that the greatest antidote is derived from the very venom itself, that poisons. She understands that instead of feeling or wanting or desiring the absence of pain – she very much welcomes it. She celebrates the presence of pain. She surrenders to the pain and grows with it.

42. It is no different from a bodybuilder who spends four or five hours in the gym every day. When they are lifting that incredibly heavy barbell, there is a lot of pain. In Jin Nim still remembers many years ago – there was the weightlifting championship at the Olympics and there was a great Russian woman who looked like a polar bear. Her thighs were bigger than In Jin Nim's waste and her biceps looked like a huge watermelons. But, obviously when she was trying to make that last push up, holding the barbell, to win the competition – it was incredibly painful. In Jin Nim had never seen anyone struggle so much. She struggled so much she peed in her pants. That is how difficult it is. Pain is incredibly painful, and when you spend that inordinate amount of time at the gym you are literally breaking your muscles apart to make them bulky. That is what is taking place in the body. It is an incredibly painful process. But to go through that, you surrender yourself to the process, you celebrate the burn – if you have gone to the gym and you listen to some of those huge athletes talk they say amongst themselves, (in a deep masculine voice) "hey Scotty, feel the burn. Hey Rodney, make it burn, put another barbell here, make it burn!" They want to feel the pain. They want the pain present, because they know that when they surrender and accept it, it is going to give them the bulk that they want – what seemingly looks like strength. It's going to make them look like Arnold Schwarzenegger. And so they go through incredible pain because they know they want a certain kind of result.

43. When you look at the letter 'I' and you come across people in incredible pain, you realize it is really only about you (I). Because the person who is standing next to you really does not understand or experience your pain. Pain is very focused, it is very individual. And when we are engulfed in our individual pain it can totally possess us.

44. This reminded In Jin Nim – a while back she had to go to the emergency room at the hospital because she had cut herself. She was waiting there and there was a really nice African-American woman and she was there with her neighbor, a Spanish gentleman, and when they first came in she was sitting, obviously she was agitated – but because they had to sit there waiting for a long time, every minute that went by she became more and more agitated, and she began to complain and her voice got louder. Finally she could no longer take it and she started to yell at the nurses, "I'm in pain! I'm in pain! When do I get to see the doctor? When do I get some meds, some drugs? I'm in pain!" She was really, really desperate for someone to hear her. And while she was throwing out obscenities to the nurses, the Latino neighbor that she came with was very laid back, looking at the situation. She was going wild and he was just standing against the wall, "you, you need to calm down. You need to calm down." And the woman began to yell at him, "Jesus, I told you I'm in pain. You get over here this moment!" But he continued to stand against the wall, "I feel for you, but you need to quiet, silence, you're making lots of people miserable, you need to quiet." And she was yelling, "Jesus, Jesus, you come here and help me." But he would not move. And he said, "You need to calm down. You going to hyperventilate, you know? You cruise into a coma, you need to calm down!" (much laughter) In the emergency section they were all in pain waiting for attention, but this was something out of the comedy store and they could not stop laughing. And one of the gentlemen said, "you need to listen to Jesus and calm down." And Jesus looked over and said, "that's right, that's right, calm down."

45. For In Jin Nim this was a picture of someone in a great deal of pain, incredible pain. But she was so consumed in her own pain she did not realize what she was doing to other people. The incredible thing about our True Mother is that she has had to go through untold suffering and incredible difficulty throughout her life, but she always takes herself out of this focus, of being focused on me, myself, and I. It is really never about her. She sacrificed the ideal of the individual because she's thinking, "How can I use whatever I am going through to pull myself out of this individualistic pain and somehow be that healing force of universal love?" She takes the individual and transforms it into the focus attention of what is universally good. How can I turn something, how can I not be overcome by something that is evil, something that is bad, something that really, really hurts us – into something – thinking about how I can transform this venom into an antidote for all of humanity. This is the beauty of our True Mother.

46. And we look at the letter 'n' and you realize that when we are engulfed in this me, myself, and I, I am in pain – we realize that what we are doing is, we're almost sniffing Noxious fumes – this negativity, thinking only about ourselves, wanting everything to go away, not dealing with the pain, letting the pain possess us – these are like noxious fumes and many times we don't realize it.

47. Just like the most lethal noxious fume can be carbon monoxide – you can't see or smell it, but if while you're asleep there is a leak carried forth carbon monoxide into your bedroom you will die. Likewise pain, if you allow it to continue to be that noxious fume that chokes us to death, then sooner or later we are going to die from our own pain. In Jin Nim does not know how many times she has seen good healthy young men and women become consumed with pain of one kind or another – perhaps a really bad breakup, perhaps losing someone they love, perhaps not getting into the college that they wanted, and being consumed by that, by these noxious fumes of all this negativity and the noxious fume of despair and allow themselves to slowly wither away – and develop diseases and die.

48. The incredible thing about someone like our True Mother, is that she takes all this noxious fume-like painful existence or situations and then she turns it, she transforms it, she transforms this pain into something that is noxious into something that is precious. She accepts it, she invites it, knowing that she is going to suffer – but at the same time knowing that she has the power within herself to create that precious antidote that is going to help other people.

49. Sometimes when In Jin Nim meets people for the first time and they have read a lot of things on the Internet and they have heard different things about her father and mother – and some of these people ask her, "how can your father be the Messiah, he has been divorced?" or, "How can your mother be the True Mother? She comes from a broken home?" And In Jin Nim would answer, "The antidote is created from the venom."

50. And so we have to understand that God works with the ones that he wants to work with. It does not necessarily fit our understanding of who the perfect Messiah is. Obviously, 2000 years ago, Jesus, as the illegitimate son of Joseph and Mary, was not really seen as the best likely candidate to be the Messiah. Especially when he was given birth in a barn. It's like the nativity scene that we often see at Christmas – it is a very cozy barn with angels singing and stars above. But 2000 years ago a barn was full of dung. It was a dung hole. Jesus was born in a dung heap in the middle of nowhere with no relatives whatsoever. And the question of his legitimacy lingering throughout all his life. He was not the best candidate to be the Messiah. That is why a lot of people had a problem accepting that he was the son of God. Likewise we have to be careful not to be so arrogant in thinking that just because somebody doesn't fit our notion of what the Messiah should be, that is why he is not the Messiah. How do we know?

51. For instance, Moses was not the most charismatic leader that God could have prepared for the Israelites. In fact his right hand person Aaron, was much more articulate, more charismatic. If you had to choose between the two, if there were an election, Aaron would have won. But God worked through Moses, albeit he could not speak, he was not the most charismatic figure, but that is not what God was looking for. God was looking for someone that would be obedient, united, and absolutely loyal to him.

52. Likewise, the fact that In Jin Nim's mom came from a broken home, and the fact that she grew up without a father – in a time when that was highly looked down upon. The suffering she had to endure when they asked her, "Who is your father? Where is your father? Why do you not have a father?" The kind of internal struggle and suffering that this woman had to bear, in a way prepared her for the kind of role that she would play as the True Mother of mankind.

53. Just as our True Father's birth was prepared and providentially foretold in his family, before he was born – the same thing happened to our True Mother. There were three great ministers in North Korea in her parent's time and one of the ministers received a revelation from God and God told him, "You need to encourage these two people in your congregation to be married." And this minister called upon In Jin Nim's grandmother and grandfather and said, "I just had a revelation and God told me that both of you need to be married. God is preparing the land of Korea to receive the Messiah and if you wed and have a child, that child will be the Messiah." That was the reason why In Jin Nim's mother's father and mother came together.

54. But, God works in mysterious ways. He always challenges our accepted way of thinking. That is one reason why In Jin Nim's grandfather on her mother's side was not prepared for that. God promised the Messiah to be born from that union – and, as God promised – God delivered. But her mother's father freaked out because the Messiah is supposed to be a man, it was supposed to be a boy. And when he realized that it was a girl, when her mother was born, he left her mother because he thought that the revelation was not true. God promised, but God did not deliver. But he didn't realize that the Messiah comes to find a bride. He didn't realize that the ultimate goal of the Messiah is to find that the woman. The Messiah is actually just half the picture. He didn't realize is that who God wanted, to be that person standing in the position to save and restore the world is a man and a woman.

55. He didn't realize that our True Mother was to be that secret ingredient that makes the Messiah the True Parents. It doesn't matter how great our True Father is, if he cannot find that woman he cannot be the True Parents. This is how incredibly precious our True Mother is. We have to understand that just as history and the Providence is constantly unfolding through the guidance and teaching of our True Father and True Mother, we realize that the teachings and the providential unfolding never really stops.

56. In Jin Nim remembers when she was growing up her mother was silent. She always walked behind her father. It was many years before they started walking together publicly. In Jin Nim remembers that it was many, many years that her father did most of the talking. She remembers her mother never saying anything. So the people's understanding of what a true woman should be was – you don't say anything, you sit quiet in support of your husband, and you have lots of children.

57. But we realize that because God is unfolding the Providence, we realize that what our True Mother had to go through is to indemnify and restore the course of woman. So she, in a way, placed herself to be in that position, of somebody who is representing fallen woman – bringing them up to that place where she can stand in the position of the perfected Eve – going through all the trials and tribulations, but ultimately becoming victorious – and therefore giving all the woman of the world the chance to reclaim their dignity and their worth as the eternal daughters of God.

58. You realize that this is what our True Mother is doing and has been doing. And when she was ready, when our Heavenly Parent realized that she has gone through all the trials and tribulations that are required to restore the position of woman, so that she can truly stand as the perfected Eve, then we realize in 1992 – Father said, "Now you need to start speaking." In Jin Nim remembers in our church that was a great shock for a lot of the male leadership and lots of the brothers. What does this mean? We thought that Father was teaching subject and object. "We thought that subject and object was only like this. We are not sure how we're going to deal with a woman speaking now, and woman going in front?" But the Providence continually unfolds.

59. And so, we have to be careful not to be petrified in a certain time or phase that we have gone through as a movement in the course of providential history. We have to realize that providential history is constantly unfolding like a fan. And so some of us might want to stick to the early 70's understanding of what a woman should be like – a woman should be quiet, support the husband, don't say anything, and don't do anything, but fast forward to 1992 when True Father established the WFWP and encouraged True Mother to speak – that is a very different Unification Movement.

60. We need to realize that it is not just 1992. Here we are in 2011 looking towards 2012, and so on and so forth. If we are going to truly experience the fullest extent of the providential fan unfolding we have to be with our True Parents every step of the way.

61. When our Father is encouraging the woman to come to the forefront and lead the way don't be frightened brothers, thinking that we are going to become a movement of feminine Nazis. "Women are taking over, and they are going to abuse us like the way we did." In Jin Nim thinks the woman in this new millennium would like to do a little better. And so the great thing about our True Parents is that they encourage both men and woman to be their best – to fulfill their destinies.

62. A long time ago True Father said – one of In Jin Nim's favorite books is God's Will and the World. It is one of those rare books, a collection of speeches over the years that really touches her heart and she likes to refer back to it from time to time … Father, in all his great wisdom – always laughing at us, cajoling us, teaching us, but at the same time he tells us very, very important things about providential history. He talked a lot about America and how significant America is – to play that providential role of uniting with the Messiah, with the True Parents, to bring about a worldwide change and to help all of humanity become this one family under God … but Father refers to America as the landing site for the Messiah.

63. The Messiah is always going to look to America to be the landing site, because America represents Christianity. And Father is very much looking at America as that providential country that has been blessed over the years to be that land of plenty, land of abundance, the superpower of the world, hoping that it can exercise its true ability to influence, it's true exercise of power – influencing the world in the right way, and the heavenly Way.

64. And so when Father mentioned in one of his speeches that America is the landing site for the Messiah In Jin Nim thought, "wow that is kind of interesting." Because Jesus comes with a mission to marry, to build that ideal family, that 4 position foundation. How incredibly interesting that it is A-meri-ca. Aaaa-meri-ka. and Ka in Korean means go. Smack in the middle of A-meri-ca there is a hint. The most important thing about the Messiah is that he comes to marry (meri) and he comes to build that family. Her Father calls America the landing site for the Messiah – In Jin Nim thinks, "yeah, that's kind of obvious isn't it."

65. Just as Jesus' mother's name was Mary, think about it, it was Mary's responsibility to make sure that her son finds that beautiful wife. And not only was her name Mary, but she was supposed to do just that (marry) help marry her son, help him find that beautiful wife. And the person that Jesus was supposed to be blessed with, was also a Mary, Mary Magdalene. And so there is a sense that this man is surrounded by Mary's. He comes to marry, he comes to be blessed and build a family.

66. And so when Father and Mother are saying that America is the landing site for the Messiah – this is the country that needs to wake up to the breaking news that True Parents are here. And guess what, they would like to share the heavenly lineage with all of us. They would like all of us to be married, to be blessed, to be united into each other's families through the blessing. How else can you become one family and learn how to truly love each other.

67. Because, the most vicious wars are fought by those who actually care about each other. The most vicious wars take place between spouses, between parents and children, and between siblings. But if we can use the family as the textbook of true love and learn how to handle and overcome and understand that pain is just part of the process – and instead of being possessed by it, instead of wanting it absent from our lives, instead of just concentrating on the individual, instead of being overcome by the noxious fumes of our own suffering – if we can follow our True Mother's example we can realize that, "you know what, we can take the pain and release the pain." We have the power, we have the decision, we have the ability to utilize our 5% responsibility to say to ourselves, "we are not going to be possessed by it, we are going to release, we're going to let it go." We realize that we have the power not to just be avoiding pain all the time, but actually be present in it, welcome it, welcome the burn because it will make us deeper, wider, and stronger as a person. And if we can realize, instead of just focusing on the individual, with the help the Latino gentleman, leaning his head against the wall, "calm down!" And if we can concentrate, not with the arrow inward, pain inward, but if we can put our arrows outward and help others think about the universal reason why we exist, then we realize that is a great way to deal with pain. Then instead of being overcome by the noxious fumes of our individual painful existence, if we can rise above it and realize that the greatest antidote is created from the venom and that we can turn something incredibly suffocating into something precious, something beautiful, create healing thoughts of our own suffering, create a way to help others out of our own suffering – then we realize that pain, in one sense, the growing pains, can be understood as a gift, in that it helps us think about living for the sake of others. Because the greatest way to heal yourself is by helping other people.

68. "And so brothers and sisters, we need to be so grateful that our True Parents are in our lives. And America, we should be a happy country, we should be a happy person, being grateful for the life we have been given. We really need to be loving life, and not always be consumed in this painful, miserable existence. But even if we are in the pits of hell, even if we are in the pits of misery, we need to remind ourselves in the example of our True Mother, that sometimes the greatest ministries are born from miserable situations." So it is the people that have suffered, that have gone through the difficulty that realize, "you know what, as long as I decide that I am going to be that agent of change, you can be the healer that can help and inspire thousands and thousands of people.

69. "So brothers and sisters continue the breaking news. We are incredibly fortunate to have our True Parents with us each and every day. So have a great week and God bless!"

Notes:

Romans, chapter 12

1: I appeal to you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.

2: Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

3: For by the grace given to me I bid every one among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith which God has assigned him.

4: For as in one body we have many members, and all the members do not have the same function,

5: so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another.

6: Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith;

7: if service, in our serving; he who teaches, in his teaching;

8: he who exhorts, in his exhortation; he who contributes, in liberality; he who gives aid, with zeal; he who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness.

9: Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good;

10: love one another with brotherly affection; outdo one another in showing honor.

11: Never flag in zeal, be aglow with the Spirit, serve the Lord.

12: Rejoice in your hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer.

13: Contribute to the needs of the saints, practice hospitality.

14: Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them.

15: Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.

16: Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; never be conceited.

17: Repay no one evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all.

18: If possible, so far as it depends upon you, live peaceably with all.

19: Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God; for it is written, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord."

20: No, "if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals upon his head."

21: Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. 

Pain: Creating the Antidote from the Venom

In Jin Moon
October 16, 2011

How is everybody this morning? I am delighted to see all of you once again. Two weekends ago we had a wonderful celebration with our True Parents in Las Vegas, celebrating the Registration of God's Kingdom and the Fatherland. All the preparation had to take place in a matter of 24 hours from the moment Father said we needed to do this. But amazingly, the American brothers and sisters and the American families really responded with an overwhelming sense of mission that this was a profound meeting with our True Parents. Many of you drove many miles just to be with our True Parents at that event. So I want to give my heartfelt appreciation and thanks to all of you who made that event incredibly profound and successful.

I think our True Parents were so overwhelmed and inspired in knowing that America truly loves True Parents. They felt it because you literally threw it at them – they caught your love and very much reveled in the love that was shared on that day. Our True Parents gave such a warm prayer before heading back to Korea.

I can see that our American movement is becoming more and more heartistically united with our True Parents, and the response time is becoming quicker and quicker. A couple of years ago when we were thinking about holding an event in Las Vegas, we thought getting 600+ together would be extremely difficult. But then we certainly satisfied the 600. Then we thought satisfying something higher than 800 would be really pushing it. But then we satisfied the 800+. Then we went on to 1,000, and then we went on to 2,000. Now we are nearing the 3,000 capacity every time our True Parents call; we are engaging the American brothers and sisters and families to respond, unite, and work toward building the peaceful, hopeful, and love-infused millennium we've all been waiting for. So thank you once again, brothers and sisters.

Sun Myung Moon and Hak Ja Han, October 7, 2011

True Parents as Providential Figures

Every time I see our True Father and our True Mother in action, I cannot help but look at them not only as my parents but as the providential figures of history and of religion that they are. I am so blessed to be able to call them my biological mom and dad, but at the same time I know they are much bigger than that. I know they don't just belong to me. They belong to the world, and they belong to all of God's children. So whenever I spend time with them, I am asking myself, how would I have felt if I met Jesus Christ 2,000 years ago? How would I have felt if I were one of the Israelites who realized this man was the Son of God, sent to save humanity, to restore humanity from its fallen existence by bringing about the kind of change that can transform fallen children into heavenly sons and daughters of God? I've often asked myself how I would feel to be in the presence of Jesus Christ when he was ministering to his people, his congregation, his fellow brothers and sisters.

I have thought to myself, "I've been incredibly blessed that even though I didn't get that chance 2,000 years ago to experience Jesus, now if I fast-forward 2,000 years I do have the chance not just to experience Jesus Christ, the messiah, again, but to experience the messiah in the completed form, the completed picture in the living manifestation of these wonderful two people that we call True Parents." It's an amazing time to be living. Sometimes I ask myself, "Why am I the lucky one to be anointed at this time, to be living and breathing and working together with our True Parents?" As we all know, Jesus Christ did not come to die. His mission in life was not to die on the cross. Heavenly Parent, who loves his son and daughter, sent Jesus Christ as his son to be the person to find the beautiful woman he could call his wife, so they could stand together in the position of the True Parents, build the ideal family, and bring the world under the concept reality of One Family Under God.

Jesus Christ would have very much done exactly what Reverend Dr. Sun Myung Moon is famous for. Had he found his wife and built his ideal family, he would have started blessing other people. He would have encouraged other people that the whole point of our existence here on earth is to experience the parental heart of God by being a parent ourselves and building the four-position foundation, which will become the cornerstone of any great society, nation, and world. What Jesus would have done is what our True Father and True Mother are famous for doing.

As Jesus would have gone on blessing other people, asking all of humanity to graft onto God's true lineage, he would not have just talked about love. He would not have just been the paradigm of a devout, eternal son, but with a wife by his side he would have been the model of an eternal son coming together with an eternal daughter in holy matrimony, or the Blessing ceremony. Not only would this beautiful couple be inspired by the love of our Heavenly Parent and the life that we've been given, but also they would be encouraging everybody else, just like themselves, to graft onto the heavenly lineage of God.

Inheriting the True Love of God

If somebody were to ask me, "What is your faith all about, in a nutshell?" I would have to answer, "The crux of our faith is inheriting the true love of God. Inheriting it: not just talking about it, teaching about it, feeling good about ourselves, but actually doing the physical work of becoming part of God's lineage." You inherit something from your parents because you are part of your parents' lineage.

Likewise, by experiencing and truly substantiating the process of inheriting the true love of God, we experience for the first time what it feels like to be a parent and we can thereby understand how much God loves us.

We're not just another movement, wanting to share the words of Jesus Christ or the words of Reverend Moon. We are here to do the actual work, the physical work of building that ideal family. That was the mission of Jesus Christ 2,000 years ago. He did not come to die a lonely death on the cross. He came to find his beautiful wife, to establish that first true family that would become the living paradigm of true love, inspiring all of humanity to inherit the true love of God. That first true family was to inspire us to make our faith real, to make our God real as we become part of God's lineage by inheriting the true love of God and making it real in our lives, as we substantiate it by having children of our own and going through the process of building ideal families.

I always say that building ideal families is probably one of the most difficult things that anybody can do. So the messiah comes to show us how. The messiah comes to inspire us to persevere and deal with all the different things that arise in the process of building this incredible cornerstone of a peaceful and harmonious society. The messiah comes to urge us on, maybe sometimes kicking our butts to help us keep going so that we can truly create a beautiful world, one family at a time.

"We Know Who Our True Parents Are"

When I think about the beauty and magnitude of what it means that we are living with our True Parents, I realize that we must not make the same mistake the Israelites made 2,000 years ago. The Israelites' failure lay in being ignorant as to what Jesus Christ was all about because certain providential figures who were prepared to pave the way – to make straight the way of the Lord by teaching and encouraging the people that we have Jesus Christ, the Son of God, with us right now – didn't do their job. The Israelites were supposed to unite with, and work together with, him. The providential figure of John the Baptist was not able to fulfill his responsibility, so the people were left in ignorance. The ignorance of the Israelites prepared the way for Jesus Christ to die a lonely death on the cross.

But unlike the Israelites of 2,000 years ago, we in the Unification movement clearly know who our True Parents are; we experience who our True Parents are, and in working together with them we are building something that is real, substantial, and tangible, and that is going to change the world, one family at a time. Even though Jesus' mission was cut short because of the crucifixion 2,000 years ago, we know that still Jesus was able to claim victory in terms of spiritual salvation because his death and sacrifice on the cross inspired many people to seek a life of faith, to understand what true love and true life is all about that Jesus talked about.

But because Jesus never had a chance to find his beautiful wife, the only understanding that we have, or the Christology that Christianity offered us is this notion of the Trinity, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit was never given a chance to be manifest in the flesh because Jesus never had a chance to find the beautiful wife whom he would call his own and with whom he could build a beautiful family.

We were left with this concept of the Trinity, but because of Jesus' victory in terms of spiritual salvation, the good work of Christianity has continued on for many years. But the big questions of Christianity – how do we have great relationships, how do we build good families, how do we raise great kids – all of these questions were left in abeyance. We didn't have the means to address them. We thought the best way to be a great Christian or to live a life of Christian piety was to live a life of denial – denying marriage, denying having a husband or a wife, dedicating ourselves to God, rejecting the world, isolating ourselves from the world so that we could concentrate on ourselves.

Because we didn't have, in essence, the complete picture, Christianity afforded us a way to find or seek individual salvation, but it did not address the question and problems of how to have family salvation or how to seek world salvation. That question lingered until 1960, when our True Parents came on the scene. And in our True Parents we realize that our understanding of Christology was incomplete in that there was no feminine represented physically because Jesus never had a wife. What about the question of children? There was no presence or representation of a child in the picture of the Trinity.

"Man and Woman Stand on Equal Footing"

So when True Parents come, united vertically and horizontally with our God in heaven, we begin to see that God's ideal for all of humanity is the four-position foundation: God at the helm, God as the control tower, and men and women as his beautiful children, coming together in matrimony. The beautiful thing about this four-position foundation is that it's diamond-shaped. God is on top on the vertical line, and then there's a horizontal line with man on one side and woman on the other. And at the bottom, when men and women come together through that process of the blessing and experience parental love for the first time, they embark on their way to build an ideal family by inviting a child into their lives.

So God, man, woman, and child: This is the completed picture that God wanted for Jesus Christ 2,000 years ago. When we look at the history of Christianity, the value and dignity of a man and a woman is highly skewed. When we look at the four-position foundation we notice that it has the vertical axis and the horizontal axis. The degrees that separate them are all 90 degrees, meaning that the man and woman stand on equal footing. They are different and separate, but in their essential value and dignity they are equal before God.

That's the awesome thing about True Parents. For 2,000 years women were like the Holy Ghost in the Christian church; nobody knew what to do with women. Where should we place women? Many times women were hidden behind curtains. They could not participate in the regular service. They were certainly not given a microphone to share their voice, their expressions, or their feelings. And many times they were relegated to the position of slave or somebody subhuman because they were seen as a temptress, the one who led Adam astray and caused the Fall.

Throughout religious history this question of what to do with women has plagued good men and women for hundreds of years. But in our True Parents we realize that when God created his son and daughter, his original intention did not say, "Dear son, be master over your servant, the woman." That is not his original intention.

God's original intention as a loving father and mother was to encourage his and her children to be the best they can be, to be the kind of people who live up to the eternal worth of who they are and the dignity of who they were meant to be as a great son or daughter of God. That was the true intention of our Heavenly Parent.

I am eternally grateful that for the first time in religious history we have masculine and feminine represented in a holistic picture; we have the yin and yang represented in a holistic picture as True Parents, and that's why they are so extremely precious to all of us.

We have a chance to change history, to set the world right, and our True Parents are going to destroy a lot of the preconceptions that existed before. They are going to make all of us feel very uncomfortable because with True Parents change is in the air, transformation is in the air, growth is in the air. When there's growth, there are usually growing pains.

We can think of ourselves as an eternal son or daughter of God, starting out like a caterpillar, going through a cocooning process in which have a chance to work on ourselves, but our ultimate goal is not to be a captive in the cocoon. Our ultimate goal is to fly free and beautiful, to be the whisper of inspiration to the world. If that's what we were meant to be, then we realize that pain is part of the process of what we need to go through in order to reach our goal.

Making the Antidote From the Venom

I've thought about pain quite often. In fact, I call pain my best friend. I certainly had a great example in my mother. She is somebody so extraordinarily elegant who does not say much, but when she says a little, she says a lot. Our True Father is the Hoon Dok Hae champion; the man can talk for 22 hours without a drop of water, and he is 90 plus. Once he starts, he is totally wild about his mission and about what he needs to do before he departs this world. Whenever he has men and women in front of him, he doesn't want to let them go, so he gives and gives and gives some more.

On this last trip Father was quite a taskmaster. If you go to some rural towns in Korea, you'll see an old grandfather, with a long pipe that he periodically taps on the ashtray and that he uses both to smoke and to spank. When he taps that pipe, he means business. When you don't do your homework, you're going to meet the pipe. And when you don't listen or you're not respectful or you're dishonorable in front of a teacher, you are going to be smacked.

The schoolmaster is a formidable taskmaster, and in the Confucian style of teaching the schoolmaster is always the hardest on the brightest and most promising student. When you're in the classroom of this Confucian-style teacher and you're not getting chastised, maybe you should think twice about working a little bit harder. Usually the brightest student gets spanked the most, reprimanded the most, and chastised the most.

Korean Confucian masters

Father is very much a product of Confucian-style teaching. He is extremely hard on the ones he thinks are going to be incredibly promising. He is extremely hard on some of the leaders that he expects great things from, and he is certainly incredibly difficult when it comes to his own kids because he expects a lot from us.

But probably the most important person that my father gives a lot of Confucian-style teaching and attention to has been and is my mother. Because she symbolizes perfected Eve and she is truly the one who has restored the Fall, together with our True Father, and stands in that position as the True Mother, the true woman of humankind, Father expects a great deal from her, just the way our Heavenly Parent does. Sometimes he singles her out as that example of what true heartistic unity and absolute trust are all about, and he is almost vicious with her. Sometimes I as a daughter, looking at this, wonder, "So much pain this woman has to bear! How does she ever do it? How does she bear the pain of taking all humanity along, to raise humanity up to be that inspired group of men and women? How does she do it?"

I remember, about a decade ago, one of those episodes when Father was using my mother as an example, testing and pushing her, confronting her to see if she could remain steadfast, faithful, and loyal. After one of those sessions I followed Mother back into the room. Only then did she break down and cry. I was there with her and said, "Mother, how do you take this? How do you take all this pain? How do you handle the pain?"

She said something to me I will never forget. She said, "In Jin, you have to understand that I am not just your mother. I am the living example of what a true woman is. I take a lesson from what it says in the Good Book, Romans 12:21, 'Do not be overcome by evil,' meaning things that are not good, not kind, and not the nicest things. It says, Do not be overcome by evil – things that hurt you, or pain you along the way. The Bible says, overcome evil, or the difficult things, with good."

Mother expounded on that passage by telling me, "In Jin, you have to remember that the best antidote comes from the venom itself. The antidote is created from poison itself. The way we find a cure to save somebody from, for instance, a poisonous snake bite is to take the venom itself and create an antidote. The solution resides in the very pain that you are feeling."

She was saying that sometimes the person best prepared to deal with a problem is the kind of person who has also dealt with the problem. Therefore, sometimes the best person to deal with a drug addict is somebody who has been an addict him or herself, somebody who in being restored to a higher consciousness and desire for better living has pulled him- or herself up by the bootstraps and thus stands in the position of learning from his or her mistakes and become counselors at various places that deal with addiction. Through an addict's own suffering, the addict finds a way to create out of the venom of addiction an addiction antidote that can inspire and heal other people.

My mother very much has the understanding that regardless of what difficulty she is going through, she is not just one person. She knows herself to be a providential historical figure who has the responsibility to create something bigger than herself and out of her own suffering and misery create the antidote or a way to heal, inspire, and compel others to be the holistic people that we all need to be.

Letting Go of Pain

When I think about my mother and contemplate the word pain, I view that word the way I often like to look at a word. I take the word apart phonetically and I look at it in terms of etymology – how it is derived, where it comes from, and how it has been translated over the centuries. I also like to consider a word as an acronym, and that is how I'm thinking that this word pain. When we are dealing with pain and looking at our own life, the lives of many people we know, and the lives of many people who walk the streets of New York City every day, we recognize that all of us in one form or another are dealing with pain.

The question of how we can rise above our pain determines whether we are going to be successes in life, or whether we're going to be totally in a quagmire, unable to take ourselves out of the victim mentality. One of the first things that happens to you when you're in this state of pain because somebody hurt you, or you've been misunderstood, or you've been hurt or neglected, is that the pain becomes all-consuming. The pain possesses you. It takes over. It becomes a leviathan that literally gulps you up and swallows you whole.

But when I look at how my mother has dealt with painful situations in her life, I see that she's a master of digesting pain so that it doesn't become a leviathan-like monster that possesses her. She releases the pain. She lets it go. She has the philosophy "Things will pass. All things will pass. Do not let something consume you and hold you petrified in the moment." She encourages all of us to release our pain, to let it go, to let it pass. We should not be possessed by pain, but we should let it pass.

Growing With Pain

When we look at the next letter, A, we see that for people engulfed in pain, the most important thing they want at that moment is for the pain to be absent. They want to avoid the pain. But the interesting thing about my mother is that in understanding that the greatest antidote is derived from the very venom, she knows that instead of feeling or desiring absence of pain, she very much welcomes it. She celebrates the presence of pain; she surrenders to the pain and grows with it.

It's no different from body-builders who spend four or five hours in the gym every day. When they're lifting that incredibly heavy barbell, there's a lot of pain. I still remember seeing many years ago a weight-lifting championship at the Olympics, and a big Russian woman who looked like a polar bear – her thighs were bigger than my waist, and her biceps looked like huge watermelons. But obviously when she was giving that last push to hold that barbell and to win the competition, it was incredibly painful. I've never seen anyone struggle so much. She struggled so much that she peed in her pants. That's how difficult it is. It was incredibly painful.

When you spend that inordinate amount of time at the gym, you're literally breaking your muscles apart to make them bulky. It's a horrifically painful process, but you surrender yourself to the process. You celebrate the burn that these athletes are feeling. If you listen to some of those huge athletes talk, they say to each other, "Hey, feel the burn?" "Hey, Rodney, make it burn." They want to feel the pain. They want the pain present because they know when they accept it, it's going to give them the bulk that they want. It's going to give them what seemingly looks like strength. It's going to make them look like Arnold Schwarzenegger, so they go through extreme pain because they want a certain kind of result.

From Individual Pain to Universal Good

When you come across people in excruciating pain, you realize it's really only about you, the letter I in pain. The person standing next to you really does not experience your pain. Pain is very focused, very individual. When we are engulfed in our individual pain, it can totally possess us.

That reminds me of going to the emergency room a while back because I cut myself. There was a really nice African American woman who was there with her neighbor, a Spanish gentleman. When they first came in she was obviously agitated, but because we had to wait for a long time, every minute that went by she became more and more agitated. She started complaining, her voice got louder and louder, and finally she could no longer take it. Then she started yelling at the nurses, "I'm in pain! I'm in pain! When do I get to see the doctor? I need some meds. I'm in pain." She was getting more and more excited.

I was thinking she had a lot of energy for someone in a lot of pain, but she was really desperate for somebody to hear her. While she was gesticulating, demanding to see a doctor, the Latino neighbor that she came with was looking at the situation, standing against the wall, saying, "You know, you need to calm down bad." Then the woman started yelling at him, "Jesu, I told you I'm in pain! Jesu, get over here this moment." He was leaning against the wall, "I feel for you. I feel for you, but you need to quiet, you know? Silence. You making other people miserable. You need to quiet." She kept yelling, "Jesu, you come here and help me." He would not move and he said, "You need to calm down. You gonna hyperventilate. You cruise into coma. You need to calm down."

Of course the whole emergency room was full of people needing to see a doctor. Some of us were bleeding, waiting for sutures and in pain. But it was like something out of The Comedy Store. We just could not stop laughing. A couple of other forthright gentlemen said, "You need to listen to Jesu. Calm down." Then Jesu looked over, "That's right. That's right. Calm down." That experience for me was very much a picture of somebody in a great deal of pain who was so consumed in her own pain that she did not realize or care what she was doing to other people.

The amazing thing about our True Mother is that she has had to go through untold suffering and difficulty throughout her life, but she always takes herself out of being focused on me, myself, and I. It's never about her. She's sacrificed the ideal of the individual because she's thinking, "How can I use whatever I'm going through to pull myself out of this individualistic pain and be the healing force of universal love?" She takes the individual pain and transforms it into the focused attention toward how the pain can serve for the universal good. How can I not be overcome by something that is evil, something that is bad, something that really hurts by thinking about how to transform this venom into an antidote for all of humanity?" This is the beauty of our True Mother.

Rising Above Noxious Fumes

And looking at the letter N, we realize that when we're engulfed in thinking about me, myself, and I because we're in pain, what we're doing is like sniffing noxious fumes. The negativity becomes focused on thinking only about ourselves, wanting everything to go away. Then, we are not dealing with the pain, we are letting it possess us. Such a response to pain is almost like breathing noxious fumes like carbon monoxide, which can't be seen or smelled, but if you sleep while carbon monoxide is leaking into your bedroom, you will die.

Likewise, if you allow pain to be a noxious fume that chokes you, sooner or later you are going to die from your own pain. I don't know how many times I've seen healthy young men and women be consumed with pain of one kind or another. Sometimes the pain is from losing somebody they love, perhaps a bad breakup, or from not getting into the college that they wanted. And then the person can be consumed by the noxious fumes of negativity and despair, allowing him- or her-self to slowly wither away and actually develop diseases and die.

The amazing thing about our True Mother is that she takes painful situations and transforms the pain from something noxious into something precious. She accepts the pain. She invites it, knowing that she is going to suffer, but at the same time knowing that she has the power within to create the precious antidote that is going to help other people.

Challenging Accepted Ways of Thinking

Sometimes when I meet people for the first time and they've read a lot of things on the Internet and heard different things about my parents, they ask me, "How can your father be the messiah? He's been divorced." Or, "How can your mother be the True Mother? She comes from a broken home." I would answer, "Antidote is created from venom." We have to understand that God works with the ones he wants to work with, even though it may not necessarily fit our understanding of who the perfect messiah is. Obviously 2,000 years ago Jesus, as the illegitimate son of Joseph and Mary, was not really seen as the most likely candidate to be the Messiah – especially when he was born in a barn.

The nativity scene that we often see at Christmas is a very cozy barn with angels singing and stars above, but 2,000 years ago a barn was full of dung. Jesus was born in a dung heap in the middle of nowhere, with no relatives whatsoever and the question of illegitimacy lingering all throughout his life. He was not the best candidate to be the messiah. I'm sure that's why a lot of people had a problem in accepting that he was the Son of God.

Likewise, we have to be careful not to be so arrogant in thinking that just because somebody doesn't fit our notion of what the messiah should be, that's why he's not the messiah. How do we know? For instance, Moses was not the most articulate or charismatic leader that God could have prepared for the Israelites. In fact, his right-hand person, Aaron, was much more articulate, much more charismatic. If you had to choose between the two, if there was an election, I'm sure Aaron would have won. But God worked through Moses, though he was not the most charismatic figure. That's not what God was looking for. God was looking for somebody that would be obedient, united, and absolutely loyal to him.

Likewise, the fact that my mom came from a broken home and she grew up without a father in a time when that was seriously looked down upon, prepared her for the role she would play as the True Mother of humankind. We can only try to imagine the amount of internal struggle and suffering that she had to bear: "Who's your father?" "Where is your father?" "Why don't you have a father?"

Just as our True Father's birth was prepared and providentially foretold in his family, before my father was born, the same thing happened to our True Mother. There were three great ministers in North Korea in my parents' time, and one of the ministers received a revelation from God, telling him, "You need to encourage these two people in your congregation to get married." This minister called on my Grandmother Hong and my Grandfather Han and said, "I just had a revelation. God told me that both of you need to be married. God is preparing the land of Korea to receive the messiah, and if you two wed and have a child, that child will be the messiah."

That was the reason why my mother's father and mother came together. But God works in mysterious ways. God always challenges our accepted ways of thinking, and I think that's one reason why my Grandfather Han was not prepared for that. God promised a messiah to be born from their union, and God delivered what he promised. But my mother's father totally freaked out because a messiah is supposed to be a man. A messiah is supposed to be born as a boy. When my mother's father realized that his child was born as a girl, that is, my mother was born, he eventually left my grandmother and my mother because he thought the revelation was not true, that God promised but did not deliver.

My grandfather Han didn't realize that the messiah comes to find a bride, that the ultimate goal of the messiah is to find that woman who can be his bride. Messiah is actually just half the picture. My grandfather didn't realize that God wanted the "person" standing in the position to save and restore the world to be both a man and a woman. He didn't realize that my mother, our True Mother, was to be that secret ingredient that makes the messiah the True Parents. It does not matter how great Father is: If he doesn't find that perfect woman, then he cannot be the True Parents. That's how incredibly precious our True Mother is.

Providence Continually Unfolds

We have to understand that just as history and the providence are constantly unfolding through the guidance and teachings of our True Father and True Mother, the teachings and the providential unfolding never really stops. I remember when I was growing up, my mother was silent. She always walked behind my father, and it was many years before they started walking together publicly. I remember for many years my father doing most of the talking. I remember my mother never saying anything. So people's understanding of what a true woman should be was that you don't say anything, you sit quietly in support of your husband, and you have lots of children.

Because God is unfolding the providence, what our True Mother had to go through was to indemnify and restore the course of women. So she placed herself to be in the position of representing fallen women and bringing them up along with her to this place where she can stand in the position as the perfected Eve, after going through all the trials and tribulations but ultimately becoming victorious. In that way, our True Mother is giving all the women of the world a chance to reclaim our dignity and worth as eternal daughters of God.

Now we can realize that that's what our True Mother is and has been doing. And when she was ready, when our Heavenly Parent realized that she had gone through all the trials and tribulations required to restore the position of women so that she can truly stand as that perfected Eve, then in 1992, Father said, "Now you need to start speaking."

I remember in our church that was a great shock for a lot of the male leadership, and I think for a lot of brothers. "What does this mean? We thought Father was teaching subject and object. It was very clear. We thought subject and object was only like this. We're not sure how we're going to deal with a woman speaking now, a woman going in front." But the providence continually unfolds.

We have to be careful not to be petrified in a certain time or phase that we've gone through as a movement in the course of providential history. We have to realize that providential history is constantly unfolding, like a fan. Some of us might want to stick to the early 1970s' understanding of what a woman should be like – quiet to support the husband, don't say anything and don't do anything. But if we fast-forward to 1992, when Father created the Women's Federation for World Peace and encouraged our True Mother to speak, that's a very different Unification movement.

We need to realize that it's not just 1992. Here we are in 2011, looking forward to 2012 and so on and so forth. So if we are going to truly experience the fullest extent of the providential fan unfolding, we have to be with our True Parents every step of the way.

So brothers and sisters, when our Father is encouraging the women to come to the forefront and lead the way, don't be frightened, brothers, in thinking, "We are going to become a movement of femi-nazis – women taking over. They're going to abuse us like the way we did." I think the women in this new millennium would like to do a little better. So the great thing about our True Parents is that they encourage both men and women to be their best, to fulfill their destinies.

America, the Landing Site of the Messiah

One of my favorite books is God's Will and the World, one of those rare books that collects a lot of speeches given over the years that really touch my heart. I like to refer back to it from time to time. In all his great wisdom, Father is always cajoling us, teaching us, but at the same time telling us very important things about providential history. He talked a lot about America and how significant America is in the providential role of uniting with the True Parents to bring about a worldwide change and to help all of humanity become one family under God.

Father refers to America as the landing site of the messiah. He says the messiah is always going to look to America to be the landing site because America represents Christianity. Father is very much looking at America as the providential country that has been blessed over the years to be the land of plenty and abundance, the superpower of the world Father is hoping that America can exercise its true ability to influence the world in the heavenly way.

When Father mentioned in one of his speeches that America is the landing site for the messiah, I thought, that's interesting because Jesus comes with the mission to marry, the mission to build that ideal family, the four-position foundation. How incredibly interesting that A-meri-ca, ah-marry-ka, and "ka" in Korean means "go." Smack in the middle of America, there's a hint. The most important thing about the messiah, he comes to marry and to build that family. When Father calls America the landing site for the messiah, I would have to say, "Yes, that's kind of obvious, isn't it?"

Just as Jesus' mother's name was Mary, it was Mary's responsibility to make sure that her son found that beautiful wife. Not only was her name Mary, but she was supposed to do just that: help marry her son, help find his beautiful wife. And the person that Jesus was supposed to be blessed with was also Mary, Mary Magdalene. There is the overwhelming sense that this man was surrounded by Mary's. He came to marry. He came to be blessed. He came to build a family.

When Father and Mother are saying America is the landing site for the messiah, this is the country that really needs to wake up to the breaking news that the True Parents are here. And guess what? They would like to share the heavenly lineage with all of us. They would like all of us to be married, to be blessed, to be united into each other's families through the Blessing. How else do you become one family and learn how to truly love each other?

The most vicious wars are fought by those who actually care about each other – between spouses, between parents and children, and between siblings. But if we can use the family as the textbook of true love, we can learn to overcome pain and understand it as just part of the process. Then, instead of being possessed by pain and wanting it to be absent from our lives, instead of just concentrating on the individual and being overcome by the noxious fumes of our own suffering, if we can follow our True Mother's example we can take the pain and release it. We have the power; we have the decision; we have the ability to utilize our five-percent responsibility to say to ourselves, "You know what? We're not going to be possessed by pain. We're just going to release it. We're going to let it go."

We have the power not only to avoid pain all the time but actually to be present in it, to welcome it, to welcome the burn, because it will make us deeper, wider, and stronger as a person.

Instead of just focusing on the individual, if we can, with the help of a Latino gentleman leaning his head against the wall, calm down and concentrate not with the arrow inward on the pain, but with the arrow facing outward on helping others think about the universal reason why we exist, then we can realize that this is a great way to deal with pain.

Instead of being overcome with the noxious fumes of our own individual painful existence, we need to rise above them and realize that the greatest antidote is created from the venom and that we can turn something incredibly suffocating into something precious and beautiful. We can create healing out of our own suffering, and we can also create a way to help others out of our own suffering. When we realize these things, then we also realize that the growing pains in one sense can be understood as a gift in that they help us think about living for the sake of others. The greatest way to heal myself is by helping other people.

Brothers and sisters, we need to be so grateful that our True Parents are in our lives, and America should be a happy country. We should be happy people, grateful for the lives that we've been given. We really need to be loving life and not always be consumed in a painful or miserable existence. Even if we are in the pits of hell, we need to remind ourselves of the example of our True Mother, that sometimes the greatest ministries are born from miserable situations.

When the people who have suffered and gone through difficulty decide to be agents of change, they can be the healers who help and inspire thousands of people.

So, brothers and sisters, continue the breaking news. We are incredibly fortunate to have our True Parents with us every day. Please have a great week, and God bless.

Notes:

Romans, chapter 12

1: I appeal to you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.

2: Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

3: For by the grace given to me I bid every one among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith which God has assigned him.

4: For as in one body we have many members, and all the members do not have the same function,

5: so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another.

6: Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith;

7: if service, in our serving; he who teaches, in his teaching;

8: he who exhorts, in his exhortation; he who contributes, in liberality; he who gives aid, with zeal; he who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness.

9: Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good;

10: love one another with brotherly affection; outdo one another in showing honor.

11: Never flag in zeal, be aglow with the Spirit, serve the Lord.

12: Rejoice in your hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer.

13: Contribute to the needs of the saints, practice hospitality.

14: Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them.

15: Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.

16: Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; never be conceited.

17: Repay no one evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all.

18: If possible, so far as it depends upon you, live peaceably with all.

19: Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God; for it is written, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord."

20: No, "if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals upon his head."

21: Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. 

Etymology of Pain

pain (n.)

c.1300, "punishment," especially for a crime; also "condition one feels when hurt, opposite of pleasure," from Old French peine, from Latin poena "punishment, penalty" (in Late.Latin also "torment, hardship, suffering"), from Greek poine "punishment," from PIE kwei "to pay, atone, compensate".

The earliest sense in English survives in phrase on pain of death. The verb meaning "to inflict pain" is first recorded c.1300. Phrase to give (someone) a pain "be annoying and irritating" is from 1908; localized as pain in the neck (1924) and pain in the ass (1934), though this last may be the original, unrecorded sense and the others euphemisms. Pains "great care taken (for some purpose)" is first recorded 1520s (in the singular in this sense, it is attested from c.1300). First record of pain-killer is from 1853. 

Sermon Notes for September 25, 2011

In Jin Moon

1. In Jin Nim greeted everyone.

2. True Parents are still in Korea, but they will be joining us next week. In Jin Nim wanted to thank the American movement – for coming together in heartistic unity with our True Parents last week to proclaim our loyalty and devotion – taking the courage to stand up for what is the right thing to do as heavenly sons and daughters of God. In Jin Nim asked us to give ourselves a big applause.

3. Every Sunday morning when In Jin Nim gets up and prepares, preparing for the sermon to be shared with the American brothers and sisters, she likes to take time for meditation and reflection – and many times she can feel the spirit of our Heavenly Parent and the spirit of our True Parents with her, all around. And today was no exception.

4. She was thinking about how incredibly blessed we are, to have this man and woman in our lives. This man has gone through incredible odds, incredible suffering, six times in and out of prison. Two times he was thrown out for dead. And by his side every step of the way we have our True Mother.

5. For the first time in history we have this man and woman working together to give their all to save humanity from self-destruction so that they can be the inspired eternal sons and daughters of God – to be that loving and peaceful sons and daughters of God, so that we can welcome a whole new millennium of peace.

Sun Myung Moon and Hak Ja Han, July 16, 2011

6. In Jin Nim realized that in order to be given this chance to call them our father and mother is and incredible, incredible blessing. When she thinks about them and about their lives and all that they have shared – and our True Father is well into his 92'ish of age, but still going strong – the last couple of days he gave Hoon Dok Hae that was 22 hours long. From 5 AM in the morning until 3 AM the next day. Can you imagine a 90 some-year-old man, without a drop of water, talking and giving out his heart, in such a desperate fashion to us brothers and sisters, it is absolutely incredible.

7. When In Jin Nim sat down at the dining room table and took out a box of Special K cereal and she poured some cereal into her bowl, she was enjoying her breakfast time when she began to look at the cereal box. On the box it gives you a guideline or advice on how to manage your health, your weight, and your life. She thought, "Okay, let's see what this Special K. cereal has to say in terms of helping me manage my health."

8. When she thought about the word manage, she thought it quite interesting. The Webster dictionary defines the word manage or management as; 1) something you handle, 2) something that you control, 3) something that you direct. So when you're thinking about managing your life you want to handle your health and your lifestyle. You want to control your health and your lifestyle and also your weight. And you want to direct your health and your lifestyle in a certain way, so that you can be a satisfied and healthy individual.

9. But, when you look at the word 'manage,' – it is made up of two words. In Jin Nim being a woman always asks herself, why is it that certain words have 'man' in there? Why is it that when you want to handle, control, and direct, why is it a masculine word 'man' is in there and 'age'? It is almost as if in order to manage things properly, in order to exercise management of a particular situation, it helps to be a man and it helps to have a bit of age.

10. In Jin Nim thought, as a woman, "I am asked to give a sermon, but why can't a sermon be a her-mon? Why can't history be her-story? Why can't man-age be the woman-youth?" These are the things that go through her mind. She thought, "I want to manage my life, my health, my weight" – by handling the situation, what she takes in, controlling what she eats – directing a certain type of diet or nutrition to follow. But she thought, "if we think about it in a different way, turn the word manage and give it a bit of the feminine, then you can think in terms of – what about a woman-youth-ment of your life or your nutrition or your lifestyle – then perhaps the word 'manage,' that dictates that we handle, we control, and we direct our lives and our health and our weight – could be understood more in a feminine context.

11. For instance the word 'handle' becoming something that you don't just handle, or take care of a certain thing, not just be responsible – but you actually care. So instead of just handling you actually care, you are caring about this precious life that God gave you.

12. And, instead of just controlling your life, instead of being almost a Nazi at meal time – and In Jin Nim has many friends in the industry who go to every lunch and dinner with a calorie chart. It is a program that dictates how much they can eat and how much they cannot eat. It is great to have a guide, but to have something that is totally controlling your life – your life must be really quite miserable.

13. A lot of In Jin Nim's friends are incredibly beautiful and handsome, but controlled by this computer, or controlled by this little measurement chart – they are uncomfortably unhappy. Instead of controlling one's life – what about guiding it in such a way that these are the guidelines that one follows to have a healthy lifestyle, to have a weight that one is satisfied with – to have a lifestyle that one is satisfied with. But, instead of this feeling – we have to totally control everything about us because we are so awful. What about enjoying a little, allowing God into our lives? Know the rules that are going to yield us a great body and a healthy body and at the same time, use it as a guide, in that we allow the flexibilities of everyday life to entertain us, to perhaps inspire us in ways that we have never been inspired before.

14. And, instead of managing our lifestyle, in terms of direct aid or commanding – what about if you think of the word manage and turn it around and use the word woman-youth. And instead of directing or commanding, what if we embrace and focus on what we want to accomplish in our lives.

15. Basically you are doing the same thing. You are taking charge of your life, you are being responsible for your life – wanting a healthy lifestyle, wanting a great weight that we can be comfortable with. But by infusing a bit of the feminine life becomes much more beautiful, compassionate, and holistic. This is really the beauty of having a living paradigm of true love with us in the personification of our True Parents, a man and a woman. You don't just have the masculine manage, you also have the female, the woman-youth. But perhaps with a bit of love, compassion, and guidance, we might get there faster. We might reach our goals more effectively. And our results might be more long-lasting, in that it is something that we can realistically live with and grow with and learn from.

16. One of the great things about being the senior pastor is that In Jin Nim can spend wonderful time with lots of young people.

17. The most interesting thing for In Jin Nim is to get a group, such as an elementary age group, men and women to be, beautiful bright eyed little girls and boys – and ask them very simple questions. When In Jin Nim asked a group of elementary school children, "what do you want out of life?" They raise their hands with excitement – Bobby said he wanted happiness. She asked again, what do you want out of life? And a little girl, Mary, said she wanted love. In Jin Nim asked again, and someone answered I want to be successful, I want to be the president of the United States. In Jin Nim asked again and someone said, "I want to be pros-per-ous – did I say it right?"

18. These are the cute responses from a group of elementary school students. Basically, when you ask them a simple question, "What do you want out of life?" They want things that tend to be positive. They want happiness. Happiness is something positive in one's life. They want love. Love is something positive in one's life. They want to be successful – something that is positive in their life, they want to be prosperous – something that is positive in their life.

19. And if you ask kids, "what do you not want to be in life?" Their answers tend to be something that they see to be contrary to what is happiness. For example, if you ask a child, "what do you not want to be?," after asking them what do you want your life to be and they answer "I want to be happy," and then when you ask them what do you not want to be, they will say, I don't want to be sad or miserable.

20. When you ask a child and they respond, I want a loving life, I want love in my life – and when you ask them, "what do you not want in your life?" They will answer, "I don't want hate, I don't want hatred in my life."

21. And when you ask a child, "what do you want to be?" and the child answers "success, I want to be successful"– and you ask, "what do you not want to be?" The child will say I don't want to be a loser. I want to be successful

22. And when a child answers I want to be prosperous in my life, they will answer I don't want to be a failure in my life.

23. When you look at the answers that the kids give, you realize that every human being, every divine human being, eternal sons and daughters of God – we have an idea or a concept of the kind of life we would like to have. And we like that life to have all these wonderful ingredients like happiness, love, success, and prosperity.

24. These are all positive things, and in the course of our lives our goal of wanting something positive in our lives never changes. But, the means of getting there sometimes gets thrown out of whack.

25. One of the things that our True Father and our True Mother teaches over and over again, and the lessons that they have taught In Jin Nim and her brothers and sisters ever since they were little – the positive life cannot be had with a negative mind. In other words, if you want a positive light you have to think positively. If you have the ability to conceive what you want, and that inception of what you want is a positive life, then you have to be willing to believe it or actualize it in your life, by thinking positive thoughts.

26. Because, as the Bible says, "as you thinketh, so you shall be." [Proverbs 23:7 King James version only] In other words, what you think is what you become. So, if you want a positive life we have to think positively. Because if you don't think positively, and think negatively, we cannot get to where we want to go. In other words, we cannot achieve by believing in what we intended, or what we conceived in our mind – which is a positive and happy and loving and a prosperous and a successful live.

27. And this thought led In Jin Nim to a section in the Bible, Zachariah 9:12, it says, "return to the stronghold." It says, "Return to the stronghold you prisoners of hope. Even today, I will declare to (restore to you) double and promise you prosperity.

28. What is the Bible saying, in Zachariah, when it asks all of us to return to the stronghold. It is basically saying, a positive life or all the great things in life that we want – starts with God. And if we don't invite God into our lives, we will wait for everybody else to do the dirty work, or our homework for us, and we become prisoners of our own wishful thinking – and that, because we are constantly waiting, hoping, and wishing – we are not living in the now, we're not living the life and loving the life that God, our Heavenly Parent, bestowed on each and every one of us.

29. Life is a gift and a blessing and every one of us, from every different corner of the world, from different racial, cultural, religious, and economic backgrounds – we are a child of God and therefore God wants us to be happy, wants us to have love, wants us to be successful and prosperous.

30. But we have to be the agent of change. We have to liberate ourselves from ourselves. We are the ones that keep ourselves a prisoner – of constantly waiting and wishing. But, the Bible is saying, "return to the stronghold. Return to God. Return to yourself. Discover the treasure within, discover the mountain that is you, discover the love that is already there.

31. In Jin Nim always thought it was interesting – when you think about positive and negative, the symbol for positive is two lines, a vertical and a horizontal – this is the symbol of the positive. The symbol for negative is just a horizontal line. When In Jin Nim thinks about these two symbols in terms of an attitude, or in terms of a lifestyle, it makes her think about a couple of things. When our life is infused with God, when we have God in our lives – the vertical takes shape, our relationship with our Heavenly Parent – the vertical is there. Then we can concentrate on the great relationships that we can have with each other – with our spouse, our children, and with humanity.

32. But, if we only think about humanity, you will never have this (+). You will never have the compilation of the vertical and the horizontal. Only when you have the vertical and the horizontal, and there is this dynamic give-and-take action, this true-love action that takes place – that is the only way we will have or experience the circular motion or the circle of life – the full and holistic and completed picture of life as God intended for all his eternal sons and daughters.

33. But if we only think about the negative (-) or the horizontal – thinking only about our relationships, in relation to each other, and not think about the vertical relationship that we need to have and maintain with our God, Heavenly Parent, and our True Parents – then we will become ever wider, but never fully taking shape. Human beings are beautiful in that we are made of all that is horizontal and vertical.

34. Watching just a horizontal relationship is almost like taking a water balloon and popping it and watching it flow over a table. The water expands everywhere and covers the whole table, but it will never be that circular water balloon again.

35. We need God in our lives. For us to have the ability to start taking steps into being the kind of a person that we want to be, and if we want a positive lifestyle – well then, we have to have God in their together with our humanity, and this dynamic relationship of truelove, constantly turning, constantly evolving, changing, and growing – and in that way we can become incredible people, sons and daughters of God who are not inhibited by concepts of impossibility, by concepts "I cannot." By concepts of "will not, and should not," but by concepts of, "we can, we will, we shall, we are!" Because we are that awesome son and daughter of God.

36. When you really think about it, and we all want a positive lifestyle, we want all things wonderful, we realize that one of the things for which we must always be on guard, is, how do we tackle this negative mind? How do we tackle this negative mind that is going to interfere with this positive and inspired life that we would all like to build for ourselves?

37. There are a couple of things that come to mind. When people tend to be negative – first and foremost we tend to be negative because we don't have a relationship with God in our lives. We are like this deflated water balloon, forever expanding, but never really finding our mast, or our balance, or our focus. But we realize that, when we want to be great people – there are a couple of things we should always be on the lookout for.

38. One of the things that is always there as a main ingredient of a negative mind is this word called 'doubt'. When you don't have God in your life, many times people do not have God in their lives because we doubt. But if we understand that God is our Heavenly Parent, and if we understand that True Parents are our True Parents, we realize that, when we decide to understand, when we decide to believe, there is this wonderful thing that our mind goes through. Our mind goes through a process of decision-making. When we decide to understand or believe, we are actually deciding to believe, we are deciding to understand.

39. But when you look at the word 'doubt', it is also made up of two words – 'do' 'out'. You are doing out with God. We are doing out with faith. We are doing out with the ability to believe in ourselves as the eternal son and daughter of God who was put on this earth with a divine purpose and a goal – to bring forth beauty, and love, and to share, and be inspired by each other.

40. We realize that when we do out with God, what we are doing is, as it states in one's dictionary – it defines doubt as standing in two ways. You are trying to do two things at the same time. We are trying to be a daughter of God, but at the same time not being a daughter of God. We are trying to be the son of God, but at the same time not being a son of God. It is almost like trying to sit on a fence while your world is falling apart. You have to decide what to believe in. You have to decide what your goal in life is.

41. And the great thing about inviting God into your life is that when you decide to invite God, as our Heavenly Parent, in our lives – we realize that everything starts to fall into place. We realize that we as their eternal sons and daughters have a specific purpose and vision in our lives that we must accomplish. And we realize that it is our duty and responsibility, and our honor, to live a life of all true wisdom, serving other people, and living for the sake of others. And then we realize that our life is really the opportunity to be that compassionate son and daughter of God – to tell each other in this cold fragmented, compartmentalized, modern world of today – that we care, that we love, that we believe, that God cares, God loves, God believes in us. And we realize that we can be that excellent man and woman of God, not just being defined by internal characteristics, but if we are truly beautiful men and woman of God exhibiting the moral character that is so fundamental to a person of integrity – then everything that person does will become blessed, will become anointed, will become touched by heavenly fortune – and we see it happen again and again in the lives of our True Parents. Regardless how many people have mistreated them, persecuted them, and accused them of different things left and right – when you are channeling the power of truelove and the divinity within, to be that agent of change, to make the world a better place than when you found it. And not just make the world a better place, but have all of humanity graft onto the true lineage of God through this magic of the Blessing ceremony when we, from all over the world, come together into the common family of God – that is the beauty of our True Parents bringing the gift of the Blessing.

42. How else does black and yellow become one family? How else does Moslem and Catholic become one family? How else does a princess become one family with a popper? It is the magic of the Blessing. The magic of the Blessing that our True Parents bring to all of us – that reminds humanity, we need each other, we are dependent, interdependent on each other. And we need to work together to build this world of peace.

43. And our True Parents are here to say that it starts with all of us. It starts with a decision to believe. It starts with a decision to understand and to love.

44. We realize that when we are plagued with negative thinking, it is this word 'doubt' that always leaves us stranded and straddled in this almost state of abeyance, where we are neither black or white, light nor dark, we don't know who we are. But if we bring God into our lives, then the focus becomes clear.

45. Another main ingredient of negative thinking that prevents us from a positive life style is this word called 'worry.' To an Asian ear the word worry is interesting. The first word 'wor' sounds like war. It is the battlefield of the mind. When you worry you are constantly at war with your own mind or with yourself. The Bible says the peace depends on the spirit, on the fruit of the spirit [Gal:5:22]. But when you are at war with yourself in your mind, what you have is not peace, but you have war. War becomes the fruit of your spirit.

46. What God is asking all of us to do is to believe in God. Take your worries aside. Stop fighting with yourself. Stop being that control freak that needs everything figured out. Leave room for God to work his/her mysterious magic in our lives. Give ourselves to God. Let ourselves go to God. That is what our Heavenly Parent is waiting for us to do.

47. If we look at another main ingredient in the negative mind, not only is it filled with doubt and worry, but the next main ingredient of a negative mind is self-pity. "Poor, poor, pitiful me. I am a victim of my circumstances, of my family, of my society, and of my economic class." But, if we understand ourselves, by inviting God into our lives, if we understand that God is our Heavenly Parent and we are His and Her eternal divine sons and daughters of God – we realize that whatever situation we were placed in, it is not an end or goal of our lives. Sometimes God puts us in very, very difficult situations, because God knows that with the belief in who we are, as God's eternal sons and daughters, knowing that we are divinely gifted, knowing that we are creative, strong individuals – God knows that if we have the power to believe in God and believe in ourselves, it doesn't matter whether we were born in the poor streets of New Delhi, it does not matter whether we were born in one of the rooms of the White House, it does not matter if we were born as one of these girls who are bound to be sold as slaves to human trafficking – if we can recognize the divinity within and realize that life has a purpose we will find strength within ourselves to pull ourselves up with our bootstraps and become the beautiful image, the beautiful person, the eternal sons and daughters that God is waiting for us to be.

48. We realize that once we invite God into our lives, we don't just have to handle doubt, we don't just have to control our worry, we don't just have to direct or command our self-pity away, and therefore manage our lives – but we realize when we invite God back into our lives, we realize that we can replace doubt with an understanding of who we are – as incredible sons or daughters of God. Instead of doubt, we as those eternal sons and daughter of God, we can respond with heart. We can decide to respond with heart. Instead of doubting all the most important things in our lives, and therefore doubting the possibility that we can be happy and we can have love, that we can be successful, and prosperous. Instead of doubting, that we can have a positive life at all – if we get rid of the negative mind and respond with our heart, and responding with our heart means – not responding with our ego or our head or all the hurt we experienced in our lifetime, but truly responding with our heart – then we can do incredible things.

49. And, we realize, instead of being consumed negatively by this thing called worry – we are so at war with ourselves we can never accomplish anything meaningful in our lives. But what God is asking us to do is to respond with heart, number one, and number two, open up yourself. Don't be afraid. Stop worrying. Stop being the prisoners of hope – in that we don't see ourselves as our own agent of change. We are stuck in the prison that we created for ourselves. Get rid of the fears. Open yourself up, even though it might be scary – making yourself vulnerable to another person is incredibly scary, but only by doing so do you earn the trust of another person and therefore get the same in return and experience the most deep and profound and enduring love that you ever experienced in your lifetime. We need to open ourselves up to God.

50. And instead of being consumed negatively by this concept of self-pity, we need to transition ourselves into thinking about, "How do we respond to doubt with heart? How do we overcome worry by deciding to believe in opening ourselves up to God and all that good that is waiting for us?" And thirdly, instead of being consumed by self-pity, we need to concentrate on "how do we concentrate with the arrow pointing in, because that is what we are doing when we say, "poor poor me, poor victim me," the arrow is pointing inward. What we need to do is to point the arrow outward. "Yes, my life and my situation may not be ideal, but what can I do to help other people who are maybe less fortunate than I, who have less food than I, who experience less love than I do?"

51. By turning the arrow outward and concentrating on how we can serve others, how we can take care of others – this negative mind of suffering under the poor poor me, or the victim mentality, gives way to a new understanding of life that, regardless of what we are going through there is still this divine person wanting to come out, wanting to express him or herself in a great and inspired way. So, what can I do to inspire, serve, or love another person? Then we realize that when we respond with heart and not with our ego or my ego or our head or all the things that have hurt us along the way, but when we respond with heart we realize that we begin our life – in that we decided, and we begin to care.

52. When we decide to let go of our worry and to open ourselves up to God and to his/her mysterious workings in every day of our lives, we realize that we are leaving ourselves open for God, our Heavenly Parent, to guide us in many, many ways that perhaps we never thought about before.

53. We realize that instead of just thinking about ourselves, self-pity, we realize that if we lived our lives, living for the sake of others, we realize that with God in our lives we begin to live a life where we embrace everything around us, a life where we embrace and we are focused on what we need to accomplish, what we need to do with our life to leave this world a beautiful place.

54. "When our True Father and True Mother teach that the family is the cornerstone for every great Society, nation, and world, it is so poignant and so profound, because we realize that every family, the responsibility of every building block, or family, depends upon you and me. The positive life that we want depends upon you and me."

55. When the Bible, in Zachariah 9:12 says "return to the stronghold," the Bible is asking us to return to that mountain. A positive life is like a mountain. God placed each mountain in each and every one of us – in that we are always thinking, "oh, we need to go out to climb the mountain. We need to find love, we need to seek love, we need to strive for love." But what God is saying, is that that rich reservoir of love, like a mountain that you have been striving for, looking for, and in pursuit of finding, is nowhere other than in all of you. The mountain and the love and everything that we seek is in each and every one of us. It is not without. It's not love that you are going to find. The whole meaning of true love is, when you truly love someone you don't get married because you want that person to complete you. You get married or blessed because you want to share your love to the person, you want to give your love to the person. And if the other person has a likeminded vision and goal, then you can develop into a beautiful family and create an environment that is incredibly conducive to successful and prosperous children – and loving and happy children.

56. In a way, our True Parents come to liberate us from this whole concept that Christian piety has shared with us all around the world. Because, had Jesus not been crucified on the cross, had he had the opportunity to fulfill his mission, he would have gone on to find that beautiful wife, to create a beautiful family as a living testament of God, as a living paradigm of true love. And he would've inspired all of humanity to love each other as belonging to one family of God. What Rev. Moon is famous for the world over, all these mass weddings – blessing people, is exactly what Jesus Christ would have done 2000 years ago had he not been crucified on the cross. And, had he had a wife, we realize that the paradigm of Christian piety is not just to live a life of denial, sacrifice, and misery, but actually when you see the completed picture we realize that Jesus came to be the Lord of all lords, the King of Kings, he came to show us how to love life, how to love each other.

57. He didn't come just to show us how to be a miserable and sacrificial Christian. He came to teach us how to be a great father, how to be a great husband, how to be a great son, and a great brother – and with a beautiful wife in place we would have seen and experienced how we can be a beautiful mother, a beautiful daughter, and a beautiful sister. In this way we would have had the completed picture of how we as true Christians should live a life being fulfilled, having happiness, love, success, and prosperity that many, many good Christians have denied themselves of because they wanted to live a life of Christian piety. But if we understand Jesus' mission, what he could've been, and what he really came to do, and not the fragmented or the cut version of what Jesus' life was all about, we realize that he was supposed to have a beautiful loving relationship with his wife so that we could see what a loving relationship is like. He was supposed to raise beautiful children, and just like you and me – to create an ideal family is not a walk in the park. Building an ideal family is one of the hardest things to do. Ideal family means – I am committed to deal with my family issues, to deal with my spouse, to deal with my children, to deal with all my in-laws and relatives, and somehow create this beautiful family that is going to be the cornerstone, the building block of this great and peaceful world that we so long for.

58. This is the reason our True Parents are so precious to all of us, because they are that living model. And the incredible thing about them is, regardless of what happens in their life – they don't allow room for doubt, for worry, or for self-pity. They are truly a man and a woman who have been the paradigm of what it is and what it means to respond with heart, to really open yourself up to the whole world – whether the world understands you or not, to open yourself up, to be courageous enough to share the truth, to be courageous enough to be the prophet – to make people uncomfortable and to help them wake up.

59. Rev Moon, our True Parents, come, not to make us feel good about ourselves, but to remind us that we can be better if we work a little bit harder. They come to sometimes make us feel uncomfortable at times because they know that we can be so much more. And they have truly been the kind of woman and man who have given of themselves ceaselessly to the mission – over and over again.

60. In Jin Nim has five beautiful children. Her oldest is finishing up his graduate degree at the London school of Economics and her second and third child, (her second son and her only daughter, Ariana), have just graduated from Harvard and are engaged in public service. And she has Truston and Paxton who are still looking towards their college years. One of the things that In Jin Nim taught her children, from a very, very young age, is the word 'thank you' and the word 'awesome'. When they were very little she told them, "We have God as our Heavenly Parent. Isn't that awesome?" And they would say 'awtome awtome.' They would look at pictures of True Parents and say, "awtome" and they would look at pictures of our brothers and sisters, pictures of Yankee Stadium and Washington monument, True Father at the inauguration of the Washington Times, Father cutting ribbons at the hospital in Japan, on and on and on – all the things that their grandfather and grandmother have done to promote this interface dialogue, to promote understanding that we belong to the same parent – and her kids would say "awtome, awtome"

61. And In Jin Nim thought how fitting. Here we are closing off the month of September looking towards October. We are in this season of autumn. This really ought to be a season of awesome – in that, not only is our Heavenly Parent 'autumn,' but our True Parents are 'autumn' too, and we as their children, by default, means that we are 'autumn' too – in that we are that awesome son and daughter of God. The only thing that is holding us back and keeping us a prisoner of hope, wanting something that is out there, constantly waiting and hoping for something that is out there, not realizing that we are that awesome son and daughter of God, we are that mountain that we are climbing each and every day. So, one day we are going to be standing on the top, truly inspired and truly enjoying all the things that our Heavenly Parent has blessed us with.

62. All we need to do is, each day, continually walk up that mountain. Because, in our effort to be better people – we have to realize that we cannot have a positive life without being one with God, we have to be one with God, we have to have God in our lives – in order to have a positive life. Because, when we have God in our lives we have a positive mind and our mind determines our actions, it determines our outlook. Our mind determines what all the possibilities, what are the opportunities – as opposed to what are the hindrances, or the obstacles, or what are the potential setbacks or failures.

63. And even if we feel that sometimes life has a way of having us experience a setback, that is just preparation for a greater comeback.

64. "Brothers and sisters, this is an anointed time, this is a blessed time, you are living and breathing and walking with our True Parents, so go inspired and go with a grateful heart in knowing that we are God's eternal sons and daughters! God bless!"

Notes:

Proverbs Chapter 23 [King James translation only]

1: When thou sittest to eat with a ruler, consider diligently what is before thee:

2: And put a knife to thy throat, if thou be a man given to appetite.

3: Be not desirous of his dainties: for they are deceitful meat.

4: Labour not to be rich: cease from thine own wisdom.

5: Wilt thou set thine eyes upon that which is not? for riches certainly make themselves wings; they fly away as an eagle toward heaven.

6: Eat thou not the bread of him that hath an evil eye, neither desire thou his dainty meats:

7: For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he: Eat and drink, saith he to thee; but his heart is not with thee.

8: The morsel which thou hast eaten shalt thou vomit up, and lose thy sweet words.

9: Speak not in the ears of a fool: for he will despise the wisdom of thy words.

10: Remove not the old landmark; and enter not into the fields of the fatherless:

11: For their redeemer is mighty; he shall plead their cause with thee.

12: Apply thine heart unto instruction, and thine ears to the words of knowledge.

13: Withhold not correction from the child: for if thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die.

14: Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul from hell.

15: My son, if thine heart be wise, my heart shall rejoice, even mine.

16: Yea, my reins shall rejoice, when thy lips speak right things.

17: Let not thine heart envy sinners: but be thou in the fear of the LORD all the day long.

18: For surely there is an end; and thine expectation shall not be cut off.

19: Hear thou, my son, and be wise, and guide thine heart in the way.

20: Be not among winebibbers; among riotous eaters of flesh:

21: For the drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty: and drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags.

22: Hearken unto thy father that begat thee, and despise not thy mother when she is old.

23: Buy the truth, and sell it not; also wisdom, and instruction, and understanding.

24: The father of the righteous shall greatly rejoice: and he that begetteth a wise child shall have joy of him.

25: Thy father and thy mother shall be glad, and she that bare thee shall rejoice.

26: My son, give me thine heart, and let thine eyes observe my ways.

27: For a whore is a deep ditch; and a strange woman is a narrow pit.

28: She also lieth in wait as for a prey, and increaseth the transgressors among men.

29: Who hath woe? who hath sorrow? who hath contentions? who hath babbling? who hath wounds without cause? who hath redness of eyes?

30: They that tarry long at the wine; they that go to seek mixed wine.

31: Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his colour in the cup, when it moveth itself aright.

32: At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder.

33: Thine eyes shall behold strange women, and thine heart shall utter perverse things.

34: Yea, thou shalt be as he that lieth down in the midst of the sea, or as he that lieth upon the top of a mast.

35: They have stricken me, shalt thou say, and I was not sick; they have beaten me, and I felt it not: when shall I awake? I will seek it yet again.

Zechariah, chapter 9

1: An Oracle The word of the LORD is against the land of Hadrach
and will rest upon Damascus.
For to the LORD belong the cities of Aram,
even as all the tribes of Israel;

2: Hamath also, which borders thereon,
Tyre and Sidon, though they are very wise.

3: Tyre has built herself a rampart,
and heaped up silver like dust,
and gold like the dirt of the streets.

4: But lo, the Lord will strip her of her possessions
and hurl her wealth into the sea,
and she shall be devoured by fire.

5: Ash'kelon shall see it, and be afraid;
Gaza too, and shall writhe in anguish;
Ekron also, because its hopes are confounded.
The king shall perish from Gaza;
Ash'kelon shall be uninhabited;

6: a mongrel people shall dwell in Ashdod;
and I will make an end of the pride of Philistia.

7: I will take away its blood from its mouth,
and its abominations from between its teeth;
it too shall be a remnant for our God;
it shall be like a clan in Judah,
and Ekron shall be like the Jeb'usites.

8: Then I will encamp at my house as a guard,
so that none shall march to and fro;
no oppressor shall again overrun them,
for now I see with my own eyes.

9: Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion!
Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem!
Lo, your king comes to you;
triumphant and victorious is he,
humble and riding on an ass,
on a colt the foal of an ass.

10: I will cut off the chariot from E'phraim
and the war horse from Jerusalem;
and the battle bow shall be cut off,
and he shall command peace to the nations;
his dominion shall be from sea to sea,
and from the River to the ends of the earth.

11: As for you also, because of the blood of my covenant with you,
I will set your captives free from the waterless pit.

12: Return to your stronghold, O prisoners of hope;
today I declare that I will restore to you double.

13: For I have bent Judah as my bow;
I have made E'phraim its arrow.
I will brandish your sons, O Zion,
over your sons, O Greece,
and wield you like a warrior's sword.

14: Then the LORD will appear over them,
and his arrow go forth like lightning;
the Lord GOD will sound the trumpet,
and march forth in the whirlwinds of the south.

15: The LORD of hosts will protect them,
and they shall devour and tread down the slingers;
and they shall drink their blood like wine,
and be full like a bowl,
drenched like the corners of the altar.

16: On that day the LORD their God will save them
for they are the flock of his people;
for like the jewels of a crown
they shall shine on his land.

17: Yea, how good and how fair it shall be!
Grain shall make the young men flourish,
and new wine the maidens.

Galatians, chapter 5

1: For freedom Christ has set us free; stand fast therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.

2: Now I, Paul, say to you that if you receive circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you.

3: I testify again to every man who receives circumcision that he is bound to keep the whole law.

4: You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace.

5: For through the Spirit, by faith, we wait for the hope of righteousness.

6: For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is of any avail, but faith working through love.

7: You were running well; who hindered you from obeying the truth?

8: This persuasion is not from him who calls you.

9: A little leaven leavens the whole lump.

10: I have confidence in the Lord that you will take no other view than mine; and he who is troubling you will bear his judgment, whoever he is.

11: But if I, brethren, still preach circumcision, why am I still persecuted? In that case the stumbling block of the cross has been removed.

12: I wish those who unsettle you would mutilate themselves!

13: For you were called to freedom, brethren; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love be servants of one another.

14: For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."

15: But if you bite and devour one another take heed that you are not consumed by one another.

16: But I say, walk by the Spirit, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh.

17: For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing what you would.

18: But if you are led by the Spirit you are not under the law.

19: Now the works of the flesh are plain: fornication, impurity, licentiousness,

20: idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, party spirit,

21: envy, drunkenness, carousing, and the like. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.

22: But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,

23: gentleness, self-control; against such there is no law.

24: And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

25: If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.

26: Let us have no self-conceit, no provoking of one another, no envy of one another.  

A Positive Mind Is a Positive Life

In Jin Moon
September 25, 2011

Good morning, brothers and sisters. This side of the room: I think you had a big breakfast this morning. I'm glad to see all of you. As you know, our True Parents are still in Korea, but they will be joining us soon, next week. I want to thank the American movement and all of you for coming together in heartistic unity with our True Parents last week to proclaim your loyalty and devotion, taking the courage to stand up for what is the right thing to do as eternal sons and daughters of God. I want to thank you this morning and would like to give all of us a round of applause. Thank you.

Every Sunday morning when I get up and think about preparing for the sermon to be shared, I like to take a little time of meditation and reflection. Often I can feel the spirit of our Heavenly Parent and the spirit of our True Parents all around me. Today is no exception.

Once again I was thinking about how richly blessed we are to have this man and woman in our lives. This man has gone through amazing odds, devastating suffering: six times in and out of prison, and two of those times he was thrown out for dead. And by his side, every step of the way, we have our beautiful True Mother. For the first time in history, we have a man and woman working together, giving their all to save humanity from self-destruction, to inspire all people to be loving and peaceful sons and daughters of God who can welcome a whole new millennium of peace.

Sun Myung Moon and Hak Ja Han at Hoon Dok Hae, July 18, 2011

Being given the chance to call them our Father and Mother is a profound blessing. I think often about them, their lives, all they have shared – and our Father being well into his 92nd year, but still going strong. The last couple of days he gave a Hoon Dok Hae session that was 22 hours long – from 5:00 a.m. until 3:00 a.m. the next day. Can you imagine a 90-some year-old-man, without a drop of water, talking and giving out his heart in such a desperate fashion? It is absolutely astounding.

"Give It a Bit of the Feminine"

When I sat down at the dining room table, took out a box of Special K cereal, and poured some of it into my bowl so I could enjoy a quiet breakfast time, I saw on the cereal box some advice on how to manage your health, your weight, and your life. I thought, "Let's see what Special K cereal has to say in terms of helping me manage my health and my life." When I thought about the word manage, I thought it was quite interesting that Webster's dictionary defines manage as Number One, to handle something; Number Two, to control something; and Number Three, to direct something.

When you're thinking about managing your life, you want to handle your health and your lifestyle. You want to control your health and your lifestyle, and also your weight. And you want to direct your health and your lifestyle in a certain way so that you can be a satisfied and healthy individual. When you look at the word manage, you see that it's made up of two words. Being a woman, I always ask myself, "Why is it that certain words have man in there? Why is it when you want to handle, control, or direct, you find a masculine word man in there and age? It's almost as if in order to manage things properly, in order to exercise management of a particular situation, it helps to be a man and it helps to have a bit of age.

But being a woman, every Sunday when I'm asked to give a sermon, I ask myself, "Why can't a sermon be a hermon?" And why can't history be herstory? Why can't manage be woman-youth? These things are going through my mind. I am thinking, "I want to manage my life, my health, my weight, by handling the situation – controlling what I eat and directing a certain type of nutrition to follow." I thought, "If we think about this in a different way… If we give it a bit of the feminine, then we can think in terms of "What about woman-youthment of your life, or your nutrition, or your lifestyle?"

Then perhaps the word manage, which dictates that we handle, control, and direct our lives, our health, and our weight, could be understood more in a feminine context as well. For instance, the word handle could then become something that we don't just handle, we don't just take care of a certain thing and be responsible for it – we actually care.

I have many friends in the industry who go to every lunch and dinner with a calorie chart, almost like a little program that dictates how much they can and cannot eat. I think it's great to have a guide, but to have something that's totally controlling your life must be quite miserable. Many of my friends are extremely handsome and beautiful, but they are controlled by this computer or this little measurement chart – and they are uncomfortably unhappy.

Instead of controlling our life, what about guiding it by following guidelines to a healthy lifestyle and a weight we are satisfied with? Instead of feeling we have to totally control everything about our self because we are so awful, what about enjoying it a little and allowing God into our lives. What about knowing the rules that are going to yield us a healthy body, but at the same time using the rules as a guide in that we allow the flexibilities of everyday life to entertain us, to perhaps inspire us in ways that we've never been inspired before?

Instead of managing our lifestyle in terms of directing or commanding, what about if we think about the word man-age and turn it around and use the word woman-youth? And instead of directing or commanding, what if we embrace and focus on what we want to accomplish in our lives?

Basically we would be doing the same thing. We would be taking care of and being responsible for our life, wanting a healthy lifestyle and a weight we can be comfortable with. But by infusing a bit of the feminine, life can become much more beautiful, compassionate, and holistic. That's really the beauty of having the living paradigm of true love with us in the persons of our True Parents, a man and a woman. We don't just have to have the masculine man-age, we also can have the feminine woman-youth. And perhaps with a bit of love, compassion, and kindness we might get there faster. We might reach our goal more effectively, and our result might be more long lasting in that it is something that we can realistically live with, grow with, and learn from.

A Positive Mind Leads to a Positive Life

One of the great things about being the senior pastor is I get to spend wonderful time with lots of young people. The most interesting thing for me is getting a group of elementary-age men- and women-to-be – beautiful bright-eyed little girls and boys – and asking them very simple questions. When I asked a group of elementary school students, "What do you want out of life," they all raised their hands, and I asked one for his answer. Bobby relied, "I want happiness." I asked, "What else do you want out of life?" Mary answered, "I want love." "What else do you want out of life?" "I want to be successful." "I want to be president of the United States." Another said, "I want to be prosperous."

These are the cute responses from a group of elementary school students. Basically when you ask them a simple question, "What do you want out of life", they want things that tend to be positive. They want happiness. Happiness is something positive in one's life. They want love. Love is something positive in one's life. They want to be successful, something that's positive in their life. They want to be prosperous, something that's positive.

When we ask the kids, "What do you not want to be in life," their questions and answers tend to be something that they see to be contrary to what is happiness. If you ask them, "What do you not want to be?" after asking them, "What do you want your life to be?" they say, "I don't want to be sad, or miserable." When we ask a child and the response is, "I want love in my life," and then ask, "What do you not want in your life," the response is, "I don't want hate in my life."

When we ask a child, "What do you want to be," and the child answers, "I want to be successful," and then we ask, "What do you not want to be," the child will say, "I don't want to be a loser." When a child answers, "I want to be prosperous in my life," the answer to "What do you not want to be," will be, "I don't want to be a failure in my life."

Looking at the answers the kids give, we realize that every divine human being, every eternal son or daughter of God has a certain concept of the kind of life we would like to have. We would like that life to have all these wonderful, positive ingredients, like happiness, love, success, and prosperity. But many times in the course of our lives even though our goal of wanting something positive in our life never changes, the means of getting there sometimes gets thrown out of whack.

One of the things that our True Father and True Mother teach over and over again, and a lesson they have taught my brothers and sisters and me ever since we were little, is that a positive life cannot be had with a negative mind. In other words, if we want the positive life, we have to think positively. If we have the ability to conceive what we want and that conception of what we want is a positive life, then we have to be willing to actualize it in our life by thinking positive thoughts. As the Bible says, "As you thinketh, so you shall be. [Prov 23:7 KJV only]" In other words, what we think is what we become. If we want a positive life, we have to think positively.

If we don't think positively, and instead think negatively, we cannot get to where we want to go, and we cannot achieve what we intended or what we conceived in our mind, which is a positive, happy, loving, prosperous, and successful life.

The Vertical Connection to God

That thought leads to me to this section in the Good Book, Zechariah 9:12, which says "Return to the stronghold, you prisoners of hope. Even today I declare I shall repay you a double portion and promise you prosperity." So what is the Bible saying when it asks all of us to return to the stronghold? It's basically saying that a positive life or all the great things in life that we want start with God. If we don't invite God into our lives, if we wait for everybody else to do the homework for us, then we become prisoners of our own wishful thinking, in that because we're constantly waiting and wishing, we're not living in the now. We're not living the life and loving the life that God, our Heavenly Parent, has bestowed on every one of us.

Life is a gift and a blessing, and every one of us – from every different corner of the world and from different racial, cultural, religious, and economic backgrounds – is a child of God, who wants us to be happy, to have love, and to be successful and prosperous. But we have to be the agent of change. We have to liberate ourselves from ourselves. We are the ones who keep ourselves prisoners of constantly waiting and wishing. What the Bible is saying with the expression "Return to the stronghold" is "Return to God. Return to yourself. Discover the treasure within. Discover the mountain that is you. Discover the love that is already there."

I always thought it was interesting that when you think about positive and negative, the symbol for positive is two lines, the vertical and horizontal, and the symbol for negative is just a horizontal line. When I think about these two symbols in terms of an attitude or lifestyle, it makes me think about a couple of things. When our life is infused with God, when God is active in our lives, the vertical takes shape.

In our relationship with our Heavenly Parent, the vertical is there. And then we can concentrate on the great relationships that we can have with each other – with our spouses, our children, and humanity. But if we only think about humanity, we will never have the combination of the vertical and the horizontal. Only when we have the vertical and the horizontal in place with dynamic give and take action of true love in process will we experience the circular motion or the circle of life: the full, holistic, and completed picture of life as God intended for all his and her eternal sons and daughters.

If we think only about the negative and the horizontal, if we think only about our relationships with each other and not about the vertical relationship that we need to maintain with our Heavenly Parent and True Parents, then we become forever wider, but we never really fully take shape. Human beings are beautiful in that we are made of all that is horizontal and vertical. But watching just the horizontal relationship is almost like popping a water balloon and watching it deflate as the water expands and covers the whole table but at the same time knowing that we will never see that circular water balloon again.

We need God in our lives for us to be able to start taking steps into being the kind of person that we want to be. If we want to have a positive lifestyle, then we have to have God in there together with our humanity, engaged in this dynamic relationship of true love, constantly turning, constantly evolving, constantly changing and growing. And in that way we can become outstanding sons and daughters of God who are not inhibited by concepts of impossibility – or by concepts of cannot, will not, or should not – but who are empowered by the concepts of we can, we will, we shall, we are.

When we really think about it, we all want a positive lifestyle. We want all things wonderful, and we realize that one of the things we must always be on guard about is how to tackle this negative mind that is going to interfere with the positive and inspired life that we would all like to build for ourselves.

A couple of things come to mind. When we tend to be negative, it's first and foremost because we don't have a relationship with God in our lives. We are almost like this deflated water balloon, forever expanding but never really finding our mast, our balance, or our focus.

Set Aside Doubt, Worry and Self-Pity

We realize that when we want to be great people, there are a couple of things we should always be on the lookout for. One of the main ingredients of a negative mind is the word doubt. When we don't have God in our life, many times it is because we doubt. But if we understand that God is our Heavenly Parent, and our True Parents are my own True Parents, we can also realize that when we decide to understand or believe, our mind goes through a wonderful affirmation process.

When we look at the word doubt, we see that it also is made up of two words – do and out. When we doubt, we are doing out with God. We are doing out with faith. We are doing out with the ability to believe in ourselves as an eternal son or daughter of God, who was put on this earth with a divine purpose and goal – to bring forth beauty and love, and to share with and be inspired by others.

When we do out with God we are doing what is implied by Vine's Dictionary when it defines doubt as "standing in two ways." We are trying to do two things at the same time. We are trying to be a daughter of God, but at the same time not being a daughter of God. We're trying to be a son of God, but at the same time not being a son of God. It's almost like trying to sit on a fence while your world is falling apart. You've got to decide what to believe in. You've got to decide what your goal in life is.

The great thing about inviting God into our life is that when we decide to let our Heavenly Parent into our lives, everything starts to fall into place. We realize that we as their eternal sons and daughters have a specific purpose and vision in our lives that we must accomplish. We come to know that it's our duty, responsibility, and honor to live a life of altruism, serving other people, living for the sake of others. We understand that our life is an opportunity to be the compassionate son or daughter of God. Our life is an opportunity for us to tell each other in this cold, fragmented, compartmentalized, modern world of today that we care and we love, and we believe that God cares, God loves, and God believes in us.

Beyond being an excellent man or woman of God who is defined by our internal characteristics, if we're a truly beautiful man or woman of God exhibiting the moral character that is so fundamental to a person of integrity, then everything that we do will be blessed, anointed, and touched by heavenly fortune.

We see it happen again and again in the life of our True Parents, regardless of how many people have mistreated, persecuted, and accused them of things left and right. When we are channeling the power of true love and the divinity within, we can be the agent of change to make the world a better place than we found it. Not only that, but we can help all humanity engraft onto the true lineage of God through the Blessing ceremony, where people from all over the world come together into the common family of God through our True Parents' gift of the blessing.

How else do black and yellow become one family? How else do Muslim and Catholic become one family? How else does a princess become one family with a pauper? It's the magic of the Blessing that our True Parents bring to all of us, which reminds humanity we need each other. We are interdependent on each other, and we need to work together to build this world of peace. Our True Parents are here to say that it starts with all of us. It starts with a decision to believe. It starts with a decision to understand and to love.

When we are plagued with negative thinking, it's this word doubt that always leaves us stranded in the state of abeyance, where we are neither black nor white, neither light nor dark, and we don't know who we are. But if we bring God into our lives, the focus becomes clear.

Another main ingredient of negative thinking that prevents us from achieving a positive lifestyle is worry. To an Asian ear, the word worry is interesting because the first syllable sounds like war. It's the battlefield of the mind. When you worry, you are constantly at war with your own mind, with yourself. The Bible says that peace depends on the fruit of the spirit [Gal 5:22]. But when you are at war with yourself in your mind, what you have is not peace. War becomes the fruit of your spirit.

God is asking all of us to believe in God, set our worries aside, stop fighting with ourselves, and stop being the control freak who needs everything figured out. Leave room for God to work his and her mysterious magic in our lives. Let's give ourselves to God and let ourselves go to God. That is what our Heavenly Parent is waiting for us to do.

If we are to look at another component of a negative mind, not only is it filled with doubt and worry, but the next main component of a negative mind is self-pity: "Poor, poor, pitiful me. I'm a victim of my circumstances, my family, my society, and my economic class."

But if we invite God into our minds and understand that God is our Heavenly Parent, we realize that whatever situation we were placed in is not an end or goal of our lives. Sometimes God puts us in very difficult situations because God knows that as God's eternal sons and daughters – divinely gifted, creative, and strong individuals – if we have the power to believe in God and in ourselves, it doesn't matter whether we were born in the poor streets of New Delhi, it doesn't matter whether we were born in one of the rooms of the White House, it does not matter whether we were born as one of these girls who are bound to be sold as slaves to human trafficking. If we can recognize the divinity within and that our life has a purpose, we will find the strength within to pull ourselves up by the bootstraps, to become God's beautiful image as the eternal son or daughter whom God is waiting for us to become.

Once we invite God into our lives, we don't have to handle our doubt or control our worry or direct or command our self-pity away, and manage our life in that way. When we invite God back into our lives, we can replace doubt with the understanding that we are this incredible son or daughter of God.

Instead of doubt, we can decide to respond with heart. Instead of doubting all the most important things in our lives and therefore doubting the possibility that we can be happy, successful, and prosperous while living in love, we can have a positive life. If we get rid of the negative mind and truly respond with our heart (and responding with our heart means not responding with our ego or our head, and not responding to all the hurt we experience in our lifetime) then we can do amazing things.

Sometimes we may be so consumed negatively by worry that we are so at war with ourselves that we can never accomplish anything meaningful in our lives. But God is asking us, Number One, to respond with heart; and Number Two, to open up ourselves. God is telling us, "Don't be afraid. Stop worrying."

Let's stop being the prisoner of hope in that we don't see ourselves as our own agent of change. We are stuck in the prison that we created for ourselves. Get rid of the fear. We need to open ourselves up, even though it might be scary. Making ourselves vulnerable to another person is painfully scary, but only by doing so do we earn the trust of another person, and therefore give the same in return and experience the deepest, most profound, and enduring love that we've ever experienced in our lifetime.

We need to open ourselves up to God. And instead of being consumed negatively by self-pity, we need to transition ourselves into thinking about how to respond to doubt with heart. How do we overcome worry by deciding to believe and open ourselves up to God and all the good that is waiting for us? And third, instead of being consumed by self-pity, we need to concentrate on how to stop thinking with the arrow pointing in -- because that's what we're doing when we say, "Poor, poor victim me." What we need to do is point the arrow outward. "Yes, my life, my situation might not be ideal, but what can I do to help other people who may be less fortunate than I am, who have less food than I have, who experience less love than I do?"

By turning the arrow outward and concentrating on how we can serve and take care of others, we can transform the negative mind of suffering under the victim mentality to a new mind of thriving in the knowledge that, regardless of what I'm going through, the divine person within me wants to come out and express him- or herself in a great and inspired way.

So, "What can I do to inspire or serve or love another person?" If we ask that, we soon realize that when we respond with heart – and not with ego or head or all the things that have hurt us along the way – we begin to woman-youth our life in that we decide to care and we begin to care. When we decide to let go of our worry and open ourselves up to God and to his and her mysterious working in every day of our lives, we leave ourselves open for God, our Heavenly Parent, to guide us in many ways that perhaps we've never thought about before.

Instead of just thinking about ourselves – self-pity – if we live for the sake of others and with God in our lives, we begin to embrace everything around us, focused on what we need to accomplish and what we need to do with our life to leave this world a beautiful place.

Love Life, and Love Each Other

When our True Father and True Mother teach that the family is the cornerstone for every great society, nation, and world, it's poignant and profound because we realize that in every family the responsibility of being a building block rests on you and me. The positive life that we want depends on you and me.

When Zechariah 9:12 says, "Return to the stronghold," the Bible is asking us to return to that mountain. A positive life is like a mountain. God placed each mountain in every one of us in that we're always thinking we need to go out to climb the mountain, we need to find love, we need to seek love, and we need to strive for love. But God is saying that that rich reservoir of love, like the mountain you have been striving for, looking for, and pursuing is nowhere other than within yourself. The mountain and everything that we seek are within every one of us. They're not without. We won't find love when we look outside ourselves.

The whole meaning of true love is that when you truly love somebody, you don't get married because you want that person to complete you: You get married or blessed because you want to share your love with the person. You want to give your love to the person. And if the other person has a like-minded vision and goal, then you can develop into a beautiful family and create an environment that is wonderfully conducive to successful, prosperous, loving, and happy children.

Our True Parents come to liberate us from the whole concept that Christian piety has shared with us all around the world because Jesus was crucified on the cross. If instead, he would have had the opportunity to fulfill his mission, he would have found a beautiful wife, created a beautiful family as a living testament of God, as a living paradigm of true love, and inspired all humanity to love each other as members of the family of God.

Reverend Moon is famous the world over for all these mass weddings, and blessing people is exactly what Jesus Christ would have done 2,000 years ago if had he not been crucified on the cross. If he would have had a wife, we would realize that the paradigm of Christian piety is more than just to live a life of denial, sacrifice, and misery.

When we see the completed picture we realize that Jesus came to be the lord of all lords, and the king of kings. He came to show us how to love life and how to love each other. He didn't come just to show us how to be miserable, sacrificial Christians; he came to teach us how to be a great father, a great husband, a great son, and a great brother. And through the beautiful wife of Jesus we would have seen and experienced how we can be a beautiful mother, a beautiful daughter, and a beautiful sister. In that way we would have had the completed picture of how we as true Christians should live a life being fulfilled, and having the happiness, love, success, and prosperity that many good Christians have denied themselves because they wanted to live a life of Christian piety.

If we understand Jesus' mission in terms of what he could have been, what he really came to do, and not the fragmented or cut-short version of what Jesus' life was all about, we realize that he was supposed to have a beautiful loving relationship with his wife so he could show all people what a loving relationship is like.

I'm sure that for Jesus, just as for you and me, creating an ideal family would not be a walk in the park. Building families is the hardest work that anybody can do. Being a parent in an ideal family means that I am committed to deal with my family issues -- to deal with myself, my children, my in-laws, and all my relatives -- while somehow creating the beautiful family that is going to be the cornerstone, the building block, of the peaceful world we so long for.

This is the reason why our True Parents are so precious to all of us. They are that living model. The amazing thing about them is, regardless of what happens in their lives, they don't allow room for doubt, worry, or self-pity. They are truly a man and woman who have been the paradigm of what it means to respond with heart, to open yourself up to the whole world, whether the world understands you or not.

They show us the example of being steadfastly committed to opening yourself up and being courageous enough to share the truth and be the prophet who makes people uncomfortable in order to help them wake up. Reverend Moon and our True Parents come not to make us feel all good about ourselves but to remind us we can be better if we work a little bit harder. They come to make us feel uncomfortable at times because they know that we can be so much more. They truly have been the kind of woman and man who have given themselves ceaselessly to the mission over and over again.

Autumn Is off to an Awesome Start

I have five beautiful children, and my oldest is finishing up his graduate degree at the London School of Economics. My second son and my only daughter have just graduated from Harvard and are engaged in public service. I have Truston and Paxton, who are still looking forward to college. One of the things I taught my children from a very young age are the words thank you and awesome. When they were little, I would say, "We have God as our Heavenly Parent. Isn't that awesome?" And the children would say "aw-tum" because they couldn't quite say "awesome."

They would look at pictures of True Parents and say "aw-tum." They would look at pictures of our brothers and sisters, Yankee Stadium, Washington Monument, Father inaugurating the Washington Times, Father cutting ribbons at a hospital in Japan. The pictures were showing all the things that their grandfather and grandmother have done to promote interfaith dialogue, to promote an understanding that we belong to the same parent. My kids used to look at all those photos and say "aw-tum."

And I thought, how fitting because here we are closing off the month of September, looking to October. We're in the season of autumn. This really ought to be a season of awesome autumn in that not only is our Heavenly Parent aw-tum, but our True Parents are aw-tum, too. We as their children, by default are also aw-tum in that we are awesome sons and daughters of God.

So the only thing that's holding us back and keeping us a prisoner of hope who is wanting something that's out there, constantly hoping and waiting for something that's out there, is our not realizing that we are the awesome sons and daughters of God. We are that mountain that we're climbing each and every day, so one day we're going to be standing on the top, truly inspired and enjoying all the things that our Heavenly Parent has blessed us with.

All we need to do each day is to continually walk up the mountain because in our efforts to be better people we have to realize that we cannot have a positive life without being one with God. We have to be one with God. We have to have God in our lives in order to have a positive life because when we have God in our lives, we have a positive mind, and the mind determines our actions. Our mind determines our outlook. Our mind determines the possibilities and opportunities as opposed to the hindrances and obstacles, or the potential setbacks or failures. And even if we feel that sometimes life has a way of giving us a setback, that's just preparation for a great comeback, brothers and sisters.

This is an anointed time and a blessed time. We are living, breathing, and walking with our True Parents. So go inspired, and go with a grateful heart knowing that we are God's eternal sons and daughters. So God bless.

Notes:

Proverbs Chapter 23 [King James translation only]

1: When thou sittest to eat with a ruler, consider diligently what is before thee:

2: And put a knife to thy throat, if thou be a man given to appetite.

3: Be not desirous of his dainties: for they are deceitful meat.

4: Labour not to be rich: cease from thine own wisdom.

5: Wilt thou set thine eyes upon that which is not? for riches certainly make themselves wings; they fly away as an eagle toward heaven.

6: Eat thou not the bread of him that hath an evil eye, neither desire thou his dainty meats:

7: For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he: Eat and drink, saith he to thee; but his heart is not with thee.

8: The morsel which thou hast eaten shalt thou vomit up, and lose thy sweet words.

9: Speak not in the ears of a fool: for he will despise the wisdom of thy words.

10: Remove not the old landmark; and enter not into the fields of the fatherless:

11: For their redeemer is mighty; he shall plead their cause with thee.

12: Apply thine heart unto instruction, and thine ears to the words of knowledge.

13: Withhold not correction from the child: for if thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die.

14: Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul from hell.

15: My son, if thine heart be wise, my heart shall rejoice, even mine.

16: Yea, my reins shall rejoice, when thy lips speak right things.

17: Let not thine heart envy sinners: but be thou in the fear of the LORD all the day long.

18: For surely there is an end; and thine expectation shall not be cut off.

19: Hear thou, my son, and be wise, and guide thine heart in the way.

20: Be not among winebibbers; among riotous eaters of flesh:

21: For the drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty: and drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags.

22: Hearken unto thy father that begat thee, and despise not thy mother when she is old.

23: Buy the truth, and sell it not; also wisdom, and instruction, and understanding.

24: The father of the righteous shall greatly rejoice: and he that begetteth a wise child shall have joy of him.

25: Thy father and thy mother shall be glad, and she that bare thee shall rejoice.

26: My son, give me thine heart, and let thine eyes observe my ways.

27: For a whore is a deep ditch; and a strange woman is a narrow pit.

28: She also lieth in wait as for a prey, and increaseth the transgressors among men.

29: Who hath woe? who hath sorrow? who hath contentions? who hath babbling? who hath wounds without cause? who hath redness of eyes?

30: They that tarry long at the wine; they that go to seek mixed wine.

31: Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his colour in the cup, when it moveth itself aright.

32: At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder.

33: Thine eyes shall behold strange women, and thine heart shall utter perverse things.

34: Yea, thou shalt be as he that lieth down in the midst of the sea, or as he that lieth upon the top of a mast.

35: They have stricken me, shalt thou say, and I was not sick; they have beaten me, and I felt it not: when shall I awake? I will seek it yet again.

Zechariah, chapter 9

1: An Oracle The word of the LORD is against the land of Hadrach
and will rest upon Damascus.
For to the LORD belong the cities of Aram,
even as all the tribes of Israel;

2: Hamath also, which borders thereon,
Tyre and Sidon, though they are very wise.

3: Tyre has built herself a rampart,
and heaped up silver like dust,
and gold like the dirt of the streets.

4: But lo, the Lord will strip her of her possessions
and hurl her wealth into the sea,
and she shall be devoured by fire.

5: Ash'kelon shall see it, and be afraid;
Gaza too, and shall writhe in anguish;
Ekron also, because its hopes are confounded.
The king shall perish from Gaza;
Ash'kelon shall be uninhabited;

6: a mongrel people shall dwell in Ashdod;
and I will make an end of the pride of Philistia.

7: I will take away its blood from its mouth,
and its abominations from between its teeth;
it too shall be a remnant for our God;
it shall be like a clan in Judah,
and Ekron shall be like the Jeb'usites.

8: Then I will encamp at my house as a guard,
so that none shall march to and fro;
no oppressor shall again overrun them,
for now I see with my own eyes.

9: Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion!
Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem!
Lo, your king comes to you;
triumphant and victorious is he,
humble and riding on an ass,
on a colt the foal of an ass.

10: I will cut off the chariot from E'phraim
and the war horse from Jerusalem;
and the battle bow shall be cut off,
and he shall command peace to the nations;
his dominion shall be from sea to sea,
and from the River to the ends of the earth.

11: As for you also, because of the blood of my covenant with you,
I will set your captives free from the waterless pit.

12: Return to your stronghold, O prisoners of hope;
today I declare that I will restore to you double.

13: For I have bent Judah as my bow;
I have made E'phraim its arrow.
I will brandish your sons, O Zion,
over your sons, O Greece,
and wield you like a warrior's sword.

14: Then the LORD will appear over them,
and his arrow go forth like lightning;
the Lord GOD will sound the trumpet,
and march forth in the whirlwinds of the south.

15: The LORD of hosts will protect them,
and they shall devour and tread down the slingers;
and they shall drink their blood like wine,
and be full like a bowl,
drenched like the corners of the altar.

16: On that day the LORD their God will save them
for they are the flock of his people;
for like the jewels of a crown
they shall shine on his land.

17: Yea, how good and how fair it shall be!
Grain shall make the young men flourish,
and new wine the maidens.

Galatians, chapter 5

1: For freedom Christ has set us free; stand fast therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.

2: Now I, Paul, say to you that if you receive circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you.

3: I testify again to every man who receives circumcision that he is bound to keep the whole law.

4: You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace.

5: For through the Spirit, by faith, we wait for the hope of righteousness.

6: For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is of any avail, but faith working through love.

7: You were running well; who hindered you from obeying the truth?

8: This persuasion is not from him who calls you.

9: A little leaven leavens the whole lump.

10: I have confidence in the Lord that you will take no other view than mine; and he who is troubling you will bear his judgment, whoever he is.

11: But if I, brethren, still preach circumcision, why am I still persecuted? In that case the stumbling block of the cross has been removed.

12: I wish those who unsettle you would mutilate themselves!

13: For you were called to freedom, brethren; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love be servants of one another.

14: For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."

15: But if you bite and devour one another take heed that you are not consumed by one another.

16: But I say, walk by the Spirit, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh.

17: For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing what you would.

18: But if you are led by the Spirit you are not under the law.

19: Now the works of the flesh are plain: fornication, impurity, licentiousness,

20: idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, party spirit,

21: envy, drunkenness, carousing, and the like. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.

22: But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,

23: gentleness, self-control; against such there is no law.

24: And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

25: If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.

26: Let us have no self-conceit, no provoking of one another, no envy of one another.  

Sermon Notes, September 18, 2011

In Jin Moon

1. In Jin Nim greeted everyone. She asked how we were. She brought us greetings from our True Parents who are spending a wonderful time with the 172 ministers who were invited and are seeing True Parents up close and personal. True Father and True Mother have been giving them a lot of love.

2. True Father asked for 172 ministers to come to Korea to spend time together with him. He has been thinking about inviting ministers from the north, east, the west, and the south of America. He believes that the 43 ministers represent the liberation of the course of human bondage. They represent the liberation of the chosen people and the liberation of human beings who are bound to different barriers, like denominational and ethnic, racial, and national barriers. These are all barriers that really need to be liberated in order for us to reclaim our dignity as that heavenly son and daughter of God.

3. Father is also thinking that the number 43 – 43 from the north of America, 43 from the eastern part of America, 43 people from the western part of America, and 43 ministers from the southern part of America – the reason why Father is harping on this providential number, 43, is that it also represents the 4300 years of Korean history. Father sees the country of Korea as the Fatherland, the Homeland, and that is where the final culmination of the battle between communism and the free world takes place. Korea is still a divided country and it is our True Father's and our True Mother's wish to one day see the country unified in an understanding of who our True Parents are in this time of the breaking news.

4. When In Jin Nim first saw this command from our True Parents, to have 43 ministers sent from the north, east, west, and south – adding up to 172 ministers to be invited to Korea, she thought, "this is kind of interesting. I never thought of north, east, west, south as adding up to anything, into a word, but when you add up N, north, E, east, W, west, and S, south – that spells 'news'." This is the time of the breaking news of our True Parents. It is incredibly profound that 172 ministers representing Christianity, come together to set the foundation, to play the role of John the Baptist at this incredible time – and really awaken the world from its long sleep, its long slumber, and finally ring the bells and let all of humanity know that our True Parents are here with us at this time.

5. This is an incredible time and our True Parents are single-handedly taking charge of the Providence and guiding us and leading us to that new millennium of peace, love, and harmony. In Jin Nim finds it incredibly exciting to know that this Sunday also happens to be the Sunday when we invited 120 new members of our "Gen Peace Academy" to New York City. (lots of cheering!) It is so exciting for In Jin Nim, as the senior pastor, to think about getting to know these young men and woman of God. Let's really help them and compel them to be the members of what In Jin Nim calls this generation of peace, so that we can re-brand our world by changing the culture.

6. This is what it's all about, if you think about it. Our True Parents come to teach us the Divine Principle, to teach us how important it is to understand, to inherit what it means to have true love, true life, and true lineage in our lives. In essence, when we think of our lives as an opportunity to create something beautiful, and In Jin Nim always likes to say – to create the new generation of peace, young men and women first and foremost understand our Heavenly Parent to be our Eternal Parent in that we in understanding that we belong to a common parent – we realize that we actually belong to one family of God. Then we realize having God as our Heavenly Parent we realize that we are the children of God, that we are His and Her eternal sons and daughters with a divine purpose in life. And then we realize that through the teachings of Rev. and Mrs. Moon that we have been encouraged to live a life of altruism, living for the sake of others – the philosophy of thinking about others, wanting others to be better than ourselves, wanting to raise up a humanity of incredible people that understand their value, that understand their purpose, that understand that we belong to one family of God.

7. Generation of Peace needs to be a generation that understands the meaning of compassionate living; truly caring for others, more than ourselves – not just through lip service, not because we're going to get a reward at the end of the day, but being that compassionate, Buddha like, True Parents like, Jesus like person who is living and breathing for the sake of others – not dying for the sake of others but who will continue to prosper, continue to do well in life, and continue to be inspired, and continue a life of compassion in their lives.

8. We realize that when we think about generation of peace – we want to raise up young men and woman who are not only internally excellent but externally excellent – in that whatever they feel called upon, in terms of their passions in their lives, passions in terms of being the best doctor, best teacher, best nurse, best minister – whatever they feel called to do in life – that they will try their best to not just be good professionals, but good people as well.

9. This is what In Jin Nim is thinking about when she talks about creating a Generation of Peace. What the Generation of Peace is really going to do for the future of humanity is to give our humanity a whole new culture. What we are doing in terms of our mission work, in terms of trying our best to live a good life, live a compassionate life, to be that internally and externally excellent human being – what we are doing is we are building a new culture of true love. In a way we are re-branding who we are, what our movement is, by changing the culture that permeates our lives.

10. And so the Messiah comes to find his perfect bride, and together as the True Parents they have taught us how to be a good person, why the Fall of Man has caused so much suffering and misery throughout the centuries, and why, through an understanding of who our True Parents are and the importance of grafting onto the heavenly lineage – we have a chance to change our Satanic lineage to the heavenly lineage and therefore become one family under God. This is the gift of the blessing our True Parents have brought to us.

11. But the actual work of building God's kingdom, God's kingdom that Rev. Moon says has no barriers, because it is based on the concept and an understanding of true love – if this is the kind of kingdom that we are going to build, then it has to start from every one of us. And it is going to require all of us to work together. When we think about building a new generation we realize that, if we are to build the world where we all belong to one family of God, there has to be an understanding that we are all connected, that we all affect each other, and we need each other to build this family.

12. In Jin Nim, as our senior pastor – there are a lot of things she would like to do in terms of implementing different thoughts and ideas that might be different, that might be new, that might be a bit scary – because it has never been done before, we're not accustomed to it, and it is not something that we are familiar with. In a way it is going to challenge all of our insecurities and fears. But if we can remain firm to an understanding of who our True Parents are – that they have come to help us change our culture and change the world that we live in – starting with ourselves, then we have to decide to take that leap of faith in our Heavenly Parent, in our True Parents, and in working together with our senior pastor, and she working together with us, then we can create that heavenly culture we so long for.

13. Yes, there are going to be growing pains. Our movement is growing into a movement of this beautiful culture of true love. But as with every growth, there is going to be a process of growing pains. We might feel it's uncomfortable, we might feel pushed, might feel stretched; we might feel pain at times because we are stuck to things that are familiar with. We need to have our eyes on the vision of what we want to accomplish in life and, despite the growing pains that we will suffer together as a movement, if we can stay united and focused on our Heavenly Parent and our True Parents, we are going to get there.

14. Because, the Bible says in 1 John 4:18, "there is no fear in love." There is no fear in love. Perfect love casts out fear. We have an example or a paradigm of true love in our True Parents. We must believe, we must trust, we must follow our True Parents. And we must understand that if we can be absolutely united with our True Parents there is no fear in love.

15. There are times in our growing process when everything, every cell in our body says don't let go, hang on to what you know, hang on to the past. But the growing pains compel us forward. They stretch us wider than we have ever been before. When we are united with our True Parents, sometimes we have to learn to let go of our past, to let go of the sinkers and the burdens that are weighing us down, because our True Parents want to take us to some place better, they want to help us to become better people, inspired people. And so we need to believe in our True Parents and understand that in love there is no fear.

16. When In Jin Nim was thinking about this passage in 1 John 4:18 she was reminded of a short story in a work called the "Dubliners," the famous and incredible writer James Joyce, wrote many years ago. This piece, the Dubliners, is really a collection of 15 different portraits. But what James Joyce really wanted to do by writing this piece was to show the Dubliners, all the Irish people – he wants to provide a looking glass through which his people could observe and study themselves. James Joyce is well known for various obtuse and difficult to understand language, but in this collection of short stories he wrote in very familiar English and he wrote about every man and every woman – nannies, teachers, housemaids, everybody that you see in the course of your life. These were average men and women.

17. The story in particular that In Jin Nim thought about was the story Evelyn. This story is about this young woman, around 19 years of age. The story starts out with Evelyn Hill (her name), she is sitting by the window watching what is taking place in the avenue below. She is thinking about what her life is going to be like. The opening paragraph, describes Evelyn, very much a woman who is stuck to a window unable to move, being an observer of life. And you realize through the course of the story as it unfolds that she very much wants to live a life that is not a repeat of her mother. Her mother died when she was quite young. She always remembers her mother as somebody having suffered through a life of commonplace sacrifices. She is someone who seems to live life, just going through the routines and repetitions of life – but this daughter, Evelyn, wanted to be someone different, she wanted to be a woman in charge of her own destiny. And so she ends up meeting this lovely sailor whose name is Frank, who she falls in love with. He invites her to go together with him to start a new life abroad. He invites her to Buenos Aires. He encourages her to leave her old life behind and really make a new life for herself that is very much different from her mother. But, in the course of this story we realize that this is the story about the battle that this young protagonists, this young heroine goes through, trying to understand the past – where she comes from, trying to grapple with a fear of the unknown, uncharted territories that will be the future of her life – and she is stuck in the middle in this position where she has to decide. "Do I want to remain as a fixture in the life that I have always known, the life I want to escape from, or do I take matters into my own hands and, be my agent of change, and decide to go towards the uncharted territory of her future with this man who wants to marry her and take her to Buenos Aires.

18. We realize that she lost her mother at a very young age, she lost her older brother whose name is Ernest. It is interesting that her older brother's name is Ernest – meaning earnestness, incredible sincerity. And it describes the older brother as having died because he can no longer be himself. He became too serious. He took life so seriously that he never could really be himself in life, and therefore he had to go early. And so, she is left in her life with another brother named Harry. It is her job and responsibility to take care of an ailing father who is becoming more and more abusive. If she stays in her present situation she is looking towards a life of abuse, of a violent father who is going to take out his anger on his daughter. And she is looking forward to a life where she is a teacher – but is not appreciated by any of the students. She is a nanny trying to make extra income, but she is not appreciated by the children who are in her care. Nobody really cares about her and the life that she is living in is a life of misery, suffering, and poverty.

19. But this Frank character becomes like this messianic figure for her. He becomes the symbol of the rescuer, someone who's going to save and take her out of her miserable state of being – if only she can decide to go together with him. But the story ends – here she is, and the things she fears the most is to end up like her mother, and when the book describes the last image of her mother and her dying days – it is that very image of a woman sitting at the window watching her life run out – very much the same visual that we get of Evelyn Hill at the beginning of the story, where she sits by the window watching her life go by – because she cannot get herself to become that agent of change, to seize the day, Carpe Diem, in a way break away from the bondage of everything that made her miserable. When you look at her name, Evelyn, it is Eve and 'line.' James Joyce was saying to his readers through this short story – "Dubliners, woman of Dublin, think about your lives, think about the conflict you're confronted with, think about the past – the domestic responsibilities that you have had before – with a promise of the new world, with a promise of going someplace new, making true the dreams that we've had, to turn our dreams into reality." James Joyce was asking his readers, where are you in this picture? Where are you in this line that holds the past together with the future?

20. The person that holds these two things together, that brings the past through the present onto the future, the person who holds this line together is Evelyn herself. But she cannot decide, she cannot successfully take her past into the future and transition it into a healthy and an inspired and exciting future. She is the key, her own line linking her past to that glorious, prosperous, exciting, inspired future. But because she cannot let go, because she is so afraid of all the different insecurities that abound – when it comes to the concept of the unknown, we don't know what awaits us around the corner.

21. What she is, or has become, is a personification of paralysis. What James Joyce is saying to his listeners was that, "many of you in this society, confronted with the question of 20th century modernity, are afflicted with this thing called paralysis – in that we are unable to decide, unable to grapple the horns of our destiny and become that agent of change – to be the change that we want to see." James Joyce was asking us to ask ourselves that very difficult question, where are you when it comes to the line that links your past to your present and well on to a prosperous future?

22. We realize that, when we look at Evelyn – here is this form of an escape – a sailor, someone who's going to take her on to this uncharted territories through the means of the ocean, through the means of the water. The water becomes a symbol of everything that can be, of a new life that is waiting for her. But continually throughout the story she is afraid that she is going to drown or that Frank, the very messiah who's going to rescue her out of a pitiful and suffering existence, he is going to be the person that drowns her. Evelyn doesn't realize that in many ways, in order for us to be reborn, our old self has to die. The old self must drown so that the water can yield a new and an inspired Evelyn. But she is so afraid of going through the process she cannot let go. She would rather stick to the bondages of a living hell than to let go and believe.

23. In Jin Nim found it incredibly profound, when she is at the last segment of her decision process – the ship is leaving, Frank her messianic savior is calling her, "come with me, tomorrow we will be on the water on our way to Buenos Aires." But the only thing she can do is again – paralysis. She does not answer. She has become a fixture in her own life. She ceases to grow. She ceases to learn. She ceases to be human in a sense. Even though Frank is asking her to come, and come, and come with him on this journey – what she realizes is that she feels more comfortable being stuck in this orbit of repetition, orbit of rituals that she has become accustomed to. And so she cannot let go. The only thing she can do is to pray.

24. This is an incredibly important moment. Because, God has sent Evelyn, her Messiah, Frank, who is going to take her out of her miserable state. God has answered her prayers, but in this time when God is asking her to step up to the plate, be in charge over her own destiny and make that decision, making her own future – she can't. The only thing she ends up doing is to pray to God. She prays to God to tell her what her duty is. In essence she is acquiescing to this state of just acceptance, helpless acceptance. "I will do what you want me to do and I will sit here until you tell me." Evelyn is asking God to do all the dirty work for her. Evelyn is asking God to rule her life for her, to tell her what to do.

25. But God as our Heavenly Parent is waiting for a time, that appointed time, when his eternal sons and daughters decide to be that agent of change, and say, "God you have given me everything that I need, let me take the horns of my destiny, let me make my future, and let me honor you and make you proud – through the blessing you have sent me in the form of this sailor, named Frank." Evelyn could not do that. And so she ends up breathing, in one sense – and there is a constant play on words. She knows the air, she remembers the air when she visualizes or when she remembers her mother's last dying days. She remembers when her mother passed away there was this melancholy air – Italian music being played by a street organ. And just as she is trying to decide whether she is going with Frank or not – she hears that street organ again. What she wants and what she does not want, what she remembers and what she hopes for are all intertwined in her memory of her mother – who she desperately wants to escape from. But she cannot escape if she doesn't make this incredible decision herself.

26. We realize that, with Frank she would be going to Buenos Aires. The literal translation of Buenos Aires is the good air. It's not the air that she, that she breathed, it's not the melancholy air that reminds her of her mother's life, but the promise that Frank gives her is Buenos Aires – the good air. And James Joyce spells Aires, not Aires, he spells it Ayres. You ask, why did he use y, and not the acceptable spelling of Buenos Aires? Is asking us to think, why (y) would Evelyn not want to go towards the good air, the air that promises something good, the air that promises prosperity, the air that promises love, the most important thing in the universe. Why is she afraid? James Joyce is asking the audience, the reader, to think about why Evelyn has such a hard time deciding – letting go, of her life, and deciding her fate.

27. When In Jin Nim thinks about this character, this protagonists Evelyn – many times in our life of faith we also succumb to paralysis, we also succumb to being indecisive. We cannot make a decision and so we live our life almost as if we are living on top of a suspension rope – everything is being suspended because it's neither this nor that. We are not sure if we are going to totally unite with Parents or not. Many times some of us, out of our fear of the unknown, "what is going to happen to our movement? What is going to happen when our True Parents are no longer here? What is going to happen to my children, the second generation, who will they look up to, who will they follow?"

28. All of these insecurities and all of these fears actually leave us in a state of paralysis so that we can not do the right thing. We cannot unite with our True Parents, unite with our Heavenly Parent and work together to build the kingdom. Many times this paralysis leaves us with this "fence sitter" mentality. But if we were to build a brand-new culture of true love – each and every one of us has to decide to be that agent of change. We need to decide, and ask ourselves the difficult questions – "who are our Heavenly Parent, who are our True Parents, who are we, who am I? And what am I going to believe in and how am I going to live my life?" And live our lives accordingly. In so doing, and only by deciding to really unite and work together with our True Parents, can we build this kingdom that has a culture of true love.

29. When In Jin Nim looks around our movement and around our church – she has read a good many books on all these different people who have become extraordinarily wealthy – all these incredible CEOs and their life stories. When In Jin Nim reads their life story, for example one whose name is Tony Shay, when he was 24 years old he sold Linke-exchange to Microsoft for 265 million dollars, and he went on to become CEO of Zappos.Com which is one of the fastest growing retail merchandise businesses on the Internet. He did a series of interviews and people have asked him, "how did you take this retail merchandising company from nothing to $1 billion in gross merchandise sales annually? How are you able to do that? What is your secret formula?" When he was asked this question his answer was very simple, "I have a mission statement. I've always had a mission statement and a vision for the kind of company I want to create." When he was asked, "what is in your mission statement?" He said, "my mission statement is comprised of 10 core values." They asked him, "what are your 10 core values?" He answered that it sums up the culture of Zappos.com.

30. Tony understands that when you are branding a company, when you are trying to recall a major organization or corporation, or even our movement – the way you brand your organization, your Corporation, or a movement, is by changing the culture – he understood that. In order to change the culture you have to have some core values in place.

31. When the interviewer asked, "Please explain to me your core values?" He answered, "first and foremost I believe in wow service." What he means by wow service is service that leaves the consumer with a feeling of wow!, "these are incredible people, this is an incredible company!" He was not satisfied with average or good enough. He wanted his service, his customer service, to be wow.

32. The next point he talks about is how he wanted the word 'change' to be in the mission statement. He wanted to be a company that does not fear change, that does not eschew change. He wanted his company to be a company that embraces it and actually drives change, because he is looking for innovative thinking. He is looking for out-of-the-box thinking. He encourages change in his Corporation.

33. The third point that he talks about is, "in our mission statement it is incredibly important for us to have fun." In Jin Nim thinks that this point is very dear to her heart. A lot of people have told her you, "just want to listen to music and have fun all the time. Look at all the STF, they're smiling too much, they are having too much fun, they are bowling, they're going to Lucky Stars, they're going to movies. What are you teaching them?" But, any teacher knows that the greatest and most profound lessons in life are learned through having fun. If you can bring and engender a fun and creative atmosphere in your classroom you can count on the fact that your students are going to excel and do incredibly well and their retention for what they have learned will be incredible – the longevity of their ability to retain what they have learned will be incredible.

34. So he says that the third point of his core values is to be fun and a little weird. In Jin Nim thought, "wow, this person is talking to the right person, because I always thought that I was weird, I always thought that we were a bit weird." But here's this guy, one of the most successful CEOs on Wall Street, saying that one of the 10 core values, in order to be successful, Is that we have to be weird.

35. He goes on to talk about, not only should we have fun and be a little weird, but we should be adventurous, creative, and open-minded. We should not be like one of those Clydedales (horses) – go to the market and back, goes to the market then back, "we don't see the beauty of the blue sky, we don't see the beautiful people on the street, we just go to the market then back." He is saying that we have to be adventurous; we have to try something new. We have to be creative. We can't be satisfied with how we have always done things. We have to be open-minded. We have to learn how to let ourselves go, from feeling that we know it all – "let me teach you the truth because I know the truth." You might hear, or you might learn something along the way by listening as well. So he is talking about the importance of adventure, creativity, and fun.

36. The next core value he talks about is the importance of growth and learning. Never stop growing. Never stop learning. The minute you stop growing and learning, thinking that you know it all, you have pretty much killed yourself – in that you no longer want to be that divine human being, constantly evolving and changing to become this incredible human being. In a way, we ourselves are our worst enemy if we don't grow and if we do not learn.

37. The next core value he speaks about is the importance of an open and an honest relationship – with communication. In an organization, and a corporation, and in a movement we need to be open and we need to be honest in terms of our relationships. We have to be willing to talk about the difficult things. We have to be willing to address the difficulties that arise in a life of faith and not think we always have to put our best and prettiest foot forward. We have to be willing to get our hands dirty and really work, to really work to build this ideal kingdom, for this ideal world that we so long for.

38. And then he talks about the importance of a family spirit. The importance of a positive team type of thinking. We need to think of ourselves as a team. One team member affects another, just like the way in a family, one sibling affects another, a child affects parents and vice versa. We need to think and realize that we are all connected.

39. And then we realize that we go on to the next core value that Tony talks about, which is the importance of doing more with less. Even if God didn't give us all the 10 ingredients we want, if God gave us seven, by golly that is an invitation to be creative and come up with the next three ourselves – to do something different, something that has never been done before.

40. And the ninth core value that Tony talks about is the importance of being passionate and determined in your work or in your life. We need to be passionate people, not somebody who is suffering from a state of paralysis, unable to make decisions, unable to be our own agent of change. We need to be passionate and determined.

41. In the most important, and last in his 10 core values system, is to be humble. No matter how good you are don't just kiss the people on your way up. Kiss the people you are leaving behind. Because, sooner or later – you know life is a series of sine curves and if you're only kissing up, sooner or later the people that you spat on are going to be your boss one of these days. And they will remember. So you have to treat people well on the front and the back. Be humble.

42. These are his 10 core values, or these are the core values that make up his mission statement for his company Zappos.Com. But when you really think about it, everything that he talks about is very much all the things that our True Parents and all the things that we want our Generation of Peace to be.

43. If you take the word PEACE as an acronym it stands for different things. P, stands for eternal parents, our Heavenly Parent, one family under God. That is like trying to understand our movement – it would be the family spirit that Tony talks about. Family spirit – positive team attitude that he talks about.

44. The letter E, In Jin Nim understands it to mean eternal sons and daughters – that we are eternal divine creatures of Heavenly Father. If we are eternal and divine, God created each and every one of us as that unique, special, handiwork of God. God made us fun and weird. He wanted us to be happy in loving life. He wanted us to showcase something that is divinely ours. Every human being is unique. Every human being is different. That is why when we come together it becomes a beautiful tapestry. And in a way everything that Tony talks about – if we think of ourselves as eternal sons and daughters, would become fun – we become that weird person that he believes is a necessary ingredient to a profitable and prosperous company.

Sun Myung Moon and Hyung Jin Moon, June 6, 2011

45. And we realize that, as eternal sons and daughters of God, we have infinite potential. When we see the letter A – In Jin Nim understands it to mean living a life of altruism, living for the sake of others. In Tony's philosophy it is living the wow service. It's living the kind of life so that others respond to you with, "wow!" When our STFers went out into the world and they met different people, all these different people – like Emmanuelle when he met up with that TV program, people said, "wow! Where do people like Emmanuelle come from? Wow!" He comes from a family that believes in one family under God, that lives and applies the teachings taught by Rev. and Mrs. Moon. Wow!

46. {C} And when you think of the word compassion, to live a life of compassion – in order to be a compassionate person you have to be humble. You have to be willing to think about others before yourself, instead of thinking, "I am so great listen to me." You have to be humble and you have to care that you have to go out of your way to raise people up to be better.

47. When you think about the last letter {E} – In Jin Nim understands the last letter of the word peace to mean excellence. The way she understands excellence is internal as well as external excellence. That calls in what Tony has been harping on about – about the importance of growth and learning, about the importance of doing more with less, being efficient with what we have been given, and about embracing change and driving change – not being afraid of it.

48. The thing In Jin Nim tells herself all the time when she is thinking about really building this culture of true love, she tells herself, "core values, or the character of a person, defines who we are as eternal sons and daughters of God, but the culture that we create around us is what defines our corporation, our organization, and the movement that we belong to." So if we are going to change the world we need to create a culture that works for HSA, that works for our church, that works for the Washington Times, for all the different things that we have – because we understand that we are in the process of building something wonderful.

49. When In Jin Nim thinks about the Generation of Peace and how right now, the time of the breaking news, this is the time when we need to let go of our past, all the different ways that we used to do things – things are going to change. But we need to embrace our change and we need to constantly grow and constantly learn and not be bound by our fears and insecurities, all the things that made us feel comfortable. You know the Messiah doesn't come to continue to make us feel comfortable. The Messiah comes to wake us up from our long slumber. Our True Parents come to change our way of thinking, to change the way that we have branded ourselves over the years. Our True Parents come to change our culture into the culture of true love.

50. And, like James Joyce is saying through the story of Evelyn, is asking us the question, and asking us to think about how we have to be our agent of change – or suffer the fate that we suffer at the cost of our own indecision. This is not a time of indecision. This is not a time when we should be paralyzed by our fear and insecurities and all the unknown. This is a time when we should be focused and united with our True Parents as the control tower in all the airports of our lives and realize that despite all the static in the air, She's the one, God is the one, our True Parents is the one. And we have to understand that we are building on top of the past. But that past needs to grow into – it needs to transform into a glorious and a prosperous and a lovely future that God would like us to enjoy in our lifetime. 51. "Brothers and sisters, we are the hand picked lucky lottery winners, when we think about the providential history of man, to be living at this time of the breaking news, to be working together with our True Parents. And the great thing about our True Parents is that they have always been clear and they continue to make our future clear. We have our True Parents as the center and the focal point of our unity, and that in the future the younger son, Dr Hyung Jin Moon, will be and is spiritual heir of the movement, and therefore it is our job to unite under the desire of our Heavenly Parents and the desire of our True Parents, and set our hearts on fire – understanding that we are living at an inspired time and when God comes knocking we had better answer the door and we had better be proud of being His sons and daughters."

52. "So brothers and sisters, as it says in 1 John 4:18, "there is no fear in love. Perfect love casts out fear. This is a time to let go of our fears and our insecurities, to liberate ourselves from bonds of the living hell we've been living under. This is the time when the number 43, represented by 172 ministers signals a time of liberation when we must overcome all kinds of barriers; denominational, racial, national, religious, and even economic barriers. This is the time to overcome and look towards the kingdom that is based on the culture of true love."

53. "So brothers and sisters you are indeed lucky and blessed and anointed to be walking with our True Parents at this incredible time. Go quietly knowing that you have been blessed and go quietly in confidence, in knowing you are our Heavenly Parent's eternal sons and daughters."

54. "Be blessed, have a great week, and welcome Generation Peace Academy."

Notes:

1 John, chapter 4

1: Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are of God; for many false prophets have gone out into the world.

2: By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit which confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God,

3: and every spirit which does not confess Jesus is not of God. This is the spirit of antichrist, of which you heard that it was coming, and now it is in the world already.

4: Little children, you are of God, and have overcome them; for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.

5: They are of the world, therefore what they say is of the world, and the world listens to them.

6: We are of God. Whoever knows God listens to us, and he who is not of God does not listen to us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.

7: Beloved, let us love one another; for love is of God, and he who loves is born of God and knows God.

8: He who does not love does not know God; for God is love.

9: In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.

10: In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins.

11: Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

12: No man has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.

13: By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his own Spirit.

14: And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son as the Savior of the world.

15: Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God.

16: So we know and believe the love God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.

17: In this is love perfected with us, that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so are we in this world.

18: There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and he who fears is not perfected in love.

19: We love, because he first loved us.

20: If any one says, "I love God," and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen.

21: And this commandment we have from him, that he who loves God should love his brother also.  

"In Love There Is No Fear"

In Jin Moon
September 18, 2011

Good morning, brothers and sisters. How is everyone this morning? You guys have to forgive my voice. I'm recovering from a cold, so please bear with me. But – good morning to all of you. I bring you greetings from our True Parents, who are spending a wonderful time with 172 ministers that were invited to Korea so they can get to know our True Parents in person, up close and personal. True Father and True Mother have been giving them a lot of love.

The Significance of the Number 172

The reason Father asked for the somewhat unusual number of 172 Christian ministers is because he was thinking about wanting to invite ministers from the north, from the east, from the west, and from the south of America, and he sees special significance in the number 43. Let me explain. Father sees the number 43 as representing the liberation of the course of human bondage, the liberation of the chosen people, and more generally the liberation of human beings who have been bound to the different denominational, ethnic, racial, and national barriers. These are barriers that all people need to be liberated from in order for us to reclaim our dignity as heavenly sons and daughters of God.

So, 43 from the north of America, 43 from the eastern part of America, 43 from the western part of America, and the 43 ministers from the southern part of America give us the 172 ministers. At the same time, Father is also emphasizing the providential number 43 because it also represents the 4,300 years of Korean history. Father sees Korea as the homeland, where the final culmination of the battle between communism and the free world takes place.

Korea is still a divided country. It is our True Father and our True Mother's wish to see the country unified one day in an understanding of who our True Parents are. When I first saw this command from our True Parents to have 43 ministers each sent from the north, east, west and south, adding up to 172 ministers to be invited to Korea, it struck me as interesting. I had never thought of north, east, west, south as adding up to anything in a word, but when you put together N, north, E, east, W, west, and S, south, it spells news. This is the time of the breaking news of our True Parents.

It is incredibly profound that 172 ministers representing Christianity have come together to set the foundation, to play the role of John the Baptist at this amazing time. They are in Korea to begin to awaken the world from its long slumber, to finally ring the bell and let all of humanity know that our True Parents are here with us at this time.

Building a Generation of Peace

Brothers and sisters, this is an astonishing time as our True Parents are single-handedly taking the horns of providence, guiding and leading us to the new millennium of peace, love and harmony. I find it extremely exciting to know that on this very Sunday we are welcoming 120 new members of our Generation Peace Academy to New York City.

It is so exciting for me as the senior pastor to think about getting to know these beautiful young men and women of God and doing whatever we can to help, inspire, and propel them to be members of what I call Generation of Peace, so we can rebrand our world by changing the culture. That's what it's all about, if you think about it. Our True Parents have come to teach us the Divine Principle, to teach us how to understand and inherit true love, true life, and true lineage in our lives. In essence, we can think of our lives as an opportunity to create something beautiful, to create the next generation, the new generation of peace -- young men and women who first and foremost know our Heavenly Parent to be our eternal parent.

In understanding that we belong to a common parent, we understand that we actually belong to one family of God; we realize that with God as our Heavenly Parent, we are the children of God, his and her eternal sons and daughters, with a divine purpose in life. Through the teachings of Reverend and Mrs. Moon we have been encouraged to live a life of altruism, living for the sake of others – the philosophy of thinking about others, wanting others to be better than ourselves, and wanting to raise up a humanity of incredible people who understand their value and purpose, and that we belong to one family of God.

The Generation of Peace needs to be a generation that understands the meaning of compassionate living, truly caring for others more than ourselves – not just through lip service, or because we're going to get a reward at the end of the day, but by being a compassionate Buddha-like, True Parents-like, Jesus-like people who are living and breathing for the sake of others. This is not about dying for the sake of others, but about continuing to prosper, doing well in life, and being inspired, as we continue a life of compassion.

When we think about the Generation of Peace, we want to raise up young men and women who are excellent not only internally but externally as well, so that whatever they feel called upon in terms of their passion in life – in terms of being the best doctor, teacher, nurse, minister, or whatever they feel called to do – they will try their best to be not only good professionals, but also good people.

This is what I'm thinking about when I talk about creating the Generation of Peace. The Generation of Peace is going to contribute to our humanity a whole new culture. In terms of our mission work, in terms of trying our best to live a good and compassionate life, while also being an internally and externally excellent human being, what we are doing is building a new culture of true love. We are rebranding who we are. We are rebranding what our movement is by changing the culture that permeates our lives.

The "Growing Pains" of Change

So the messiah has come, he has found his perfect bride, and he and his bride together have become the True Parents who have taught us how to be good people. They have taught us why the human Fall has caused so much suffering and misery through the centuries, who our True Parents are, and the importance of engrafting onto the heavenly lineage so that we have a chance to change our satanic lineage to the heavenly lineage and therefore become one family of God.

This is the gift of the Blessing that our True Parents have brought to us. The actual work of building God's kingdom, which Reverend Moon says has no barriers because it is based on true love, has to start from every one of us. It's going to require all of us to work together. When we think about building a new generation, we realize that if we are to build a world in which we all belong to one family of God, there has to be an understanding that we are all connected, that we all affect each other, and we need each other to build this family.

Even though I'm your senior pastor, when I want to implement a lot of ideas that might be new and different or a bit scary because they've never been done before and we're not familiar with them, there are going to be challenges to our insecurities and fears. But we need to remain firm to an understanding of who our True Parents are and that they come to help us change our culture and the world we live in, starting with ourselves. Then we have to decide to take the leap of faith in our Heavenly Parents and our True Parents, and in working together. You and I, your senior pastor, working together can create the heavenly culture that we so long for.

Yes, there are going to be growing pains as our movement grows into a movement glowing with the beautiful culture of true love. As with every growth, there is going to be a process of growing pains. We might feel a little bit uncomfortable. We might feel pushed or stretched. We might feel pain at times because we are not able to stick with things that are familiar to us. But we need to have our eyes on the vision of what we want to accomplish in life.

Despite the growing pains we will suffer together as a movement, if we can stay united and focused on our Heavenly Parent and our True Parents, we are going to get there. The Bible says in I John 4:18, "There is no fear in love. Perfect love casteth out fear." In our True Parents, we have an example of this, a paradigm of love. We must believe; we must trust; we must follow our True Parents. And we must understand that if we can be absolutely united with our True Parents, there is no fear in love.

There are times in our growing process when everything, every cell in our body says, "Don't let go. Hang onto what you know. Hang onto the past." But the growing pains compel us forward and stretch us wider than we've ever been before. When we are united with our True Parents, sometimes we have to learn how to let go of our past, how to let go of the sinkers and burdens weighing us down. We need to let go of our past because our True Parents want to take us to someplace better. They want to help us become better people, inspired people. We need to believe in our True Parents and understand that in love there is no fear.

The Paralysis of James Joyce's Evelyn

When I was thinking about this passage in I John 4:18, I was reminded of a short story in the work called The Dubliners that the famous Irish author James Joyce wrote many years ago. The Dubliners piece is really a collection of 15 different portraits. What he wanted to do by writing this collection was to provide for the Dubliners – and for all the Irish people – a looking glass through which they could observe and study themselves.

James Joyce is well known for very obtuse and difficult-to-understand language, but in this collection of short stories he wrote in very familiar English, about everyman and everywoman. He wrote about nannies, teachers, housemaids – everybody that the Dubliners of that time might see in the course of their lives. These are average men and women. The story in particular that I thought about when I read this Bible passage is called "Evelyn."

The story is about a young woman around 19 years of age. Evelyn Hill is sitting by the window, watching what is taking place in the avenue below. She's thinking about what her life is going to be like, and the opening paragraph describes Evelyn as very much a woman who is stuck to a window, unable to move, just being an observer of life.

Through the course of the story, we realize that she very much wants to live a life that is not a repeat of her mother's life. Her mother died when Evelyn was quite young and Evelyn remembers her as a woman who suffered through a life of commonplace sacrifices, who seemed just to live life and go through the routines. But Evelyn wants something different. She wants to be a woman in charge of her own destiny.

Evelyn ends up meeting a sailor named Frank and falling in love with him. He invites her to go with him to start a new life abroad in Buenos Aires. He encourages her to leave her old life behind and make a new life that is very much different from her mother's life.

But in the course of the story we realize that this young heroine is in a battle between trying to understand her past, the life and family that she comes from, and grappling with fear of the unknown, the uncharted territory that will be the future of her life. She is stuck in a position where she has to decide: "Do I remain a fixture in the life that I've always known, a life I want to escape from, or do I take matters into my own hands, be my own agent of change, and go toward the uncharted territory of my future with this man who wants to marry me and take me to Buenos Aires?"

We learn that at a very young age Evelyn lost not only her mother but also her older brother. It's interesting that her older brother is named Ernest, meaning seriousness or having great sincerity. But we learn that the older brother died because he could no longer be himself; he took life so seriously that in a way he could never really be himself, and therefore, maybe he had to go early.

So Evelyn is left in her life with another brother named Harry. It's her responsibility to take care of an ailing father who is becoming more and more abusive. If she stays in her present situation, she's looking toward a life of abuse from a violent father who will take out his anger on this daughter. She's looking forward to a life in which she will be a teacher who is not appreciated by any of her students. She is a nanny trying to make extra income, but she's not appreciated by the children in her care. Nobody really cares about her, and she's living a life of misery, suffering, and poverty.

Frank then becomes almost a messianic figure for her, a symbol of the rescuer, somebody who's going to save her, who's going to take her out of her miserable state of being – if only she can decide to go together with him to escape the thing she fears the most, to end up like her mother.

When the story describes Evelyn's image of her mother in her dying day, we see a woman sitting by the window watching her life run out. We see very much the same visual that the beginning of the story presented of the daughter, Evelyn – a woman sitting by the window watching her life go by because she cannot get herself to be the agent of change. She cannot get herself to seize the day, carpe diem, and change her life for the better by breaking away from the bondage of everything that made her miserable.

When you look at her name, Evelyn, it's Eve and lyn. Through this short story, James Joyce was conveying to his readers, "Women of Dublin, think about your lives. Think about the conflict that you're confronted with. Think about the past, the domestic responsibilities that you've had, and then think about the promise of going someplace new, making true the dreams you've had, turning your dreams into reality." In a way James Joyce was asking his readers, "Where are you in this picture? Where are you in this line [lyn] that holds the past together with the future?"

The person who holds these two things together, who brings the past through the present into the future, the person who holds this line together is Evelyn herself. But because she cannot decide, she cannot successfully take her past into the future and transition it into a healthy, inspired, and exciting future. She is the key to her own line, linking her past to that glorious, prosperous, exciting, inspired future. But she cannot let go because she is so afraid of all the insecurities that abound when it comes to the unknown; she doesn't know what waits for her around the corner.

We may say that she has become a personification of paralysis. James Joyce was saying to his listeners, "Many of you in this society, confronted with the question of 20th century modernity, are afflicted with paralysis in that you are unable to decide, you are unable to grab the horns of your destiny and become the agent of the change that you want to see."

James Joyce

James Joyce was asking each of us to ask ourselves that difficult question, "Where am I when it comes to the line that links my past to my present and well on to a prosperous future?" We realize when we look at Evelyn that here is a form of escape, if you will. This is a sailor, somebody who's going to take her to uncharted territory through the means of the ocean, through the means of the water. The water becomes a symbol of everything that can be, of a new life that is waiting for her. But throughout the story she's afraid she's going to drown or that Frank, the messiah who is going to rescue her out of her pitiful and suffering existence, is going to be the person who drowns her.

What Evelyn doesn't realize is that in order for us to be reborn, our old self has to die; the old self must drown so that the waters can yield a new and inspired Evelyn. But she is so afraid of going through the process that she cannot let go. She would rather stick to the bondage of living hell than let go and believe.

I find it extremely profound when she is at the last moment of her decision process. The ship is leaving. Frank, her messianic savior, is saying, "Come. Come with me. Tomorrow we're going to be on the waters and we're going to be on our way to Buenos Aires." But the only thing she can do is, again, paralysis. She does not answer. She has become a fixture in her own life. She ceases to grow. She ceases to learn. She ceases to become human in a sense.

Even though Frank is asking her to come and come and come with him on this journey, she feels so comfortable in her orbit of repetition and rituals that she has become accustomed to that she cannot let go. The only thing she can do is to pray. This is an important moment because God has sent Evelyn her messiah, Frank, who is going to take her out of her miserable state. God has answered her prayers. But at the time when God is asking her to step up to the plate and be in charge of her own destiny, to make the decision to be responsible for her life and make her own future, she can't. The only thing she ends up doing is praying to God. She prays to God to tell her what her duty is.

In essence she's acquiescing to the state of helpless acceptance: "I will do what you want me to do, and I will just sit here until you tell me." Evelyn is asking God to do all the dirty work for her. Evelyn is asking God to roll out her life for her, to tell her what to do.

But God as our Heavenly Parent is waiting for an appointed time when his eternal sons and daughters decide to be agents of change and say, "God, you've given me everything that I need. Let me take the horns of my destiny. Let me make my future. Let me honor you and make you proud through the blessing that you have sent me in the form of this sailor named Frank." Evelyn could not do that.

What she ends up "breathing," in one sense – and there's a constant play of words: "She knows the air. She remembers the air" – when she visualizes or remembers her mother's last days, is that when her mother passed away there was a melancholy air of Italian music being played by a street organ. Just as she's trying to decide whether she's going to go with Frank or not, she hears that street organ again.

What she wants, what she does not want, what she remembers, and what she hopes for are all intertwined in her memory of her mother that she desperately wants to escape from, but she cannot escape if she doesn't make this decision herself.

With Frank, she would be going to Buenos Aires, which literally translates to "the good air." It's not the air that she breathes. It's not the melancholy air that reminds her of her mother's suffering life. But Frank promises Buenos Aires, the good air.

It's interesting that James Joyce spells Ayres not A-i-r-e-s, but A-y-r-e-s. When we look at that, the first thing that enters our mind, is "Why did he use Y and not the accepted spelling of Buenos Aires?" It's because he's asking us to think. He's asking, "Why would Evelyn not want to go toward the good air, the air that promises something good, the air that promises prosperity and love, the most important thing in the universe? Why is she afraid?"

James Joyce is asking the reader to think about why Evelyn has such a hard time deciding to let go, take charge of her life, and decide her fate. When I think about this character Evelyn, I realize that many times in our life of faith we also succumb to paralysis. We succumb to being indecisive. We cannot make a decision so we live our lives almost in abeyance, almost as if we are living on top of a suspension rope, with everything suspended because it's neither this nor that. We're not sure if we are going to be totally united with True Parents or not.

Some of us, in our fear of the unknown about what's going to happen to our movement and the Second Generation when our True Parents are no longer here to look up to and follow, are reduced to a state of paralysis so we cannot do the right thing, we cannot unite with our True Parents and our Heavenly Parent and work together to build the kingdom. Paralysis can leave us with a fence-sitter mentality.

But if we're going to build a brand-new culture of true love, every one of us has to decide to be the agent of change. We need to ask ourselves the difficult questions: "Who are our Heavenly Parent and our True Parents? Who am I? What am I going to believe in? How am I going to live my life?" And only in so doing, in taking charge of our decision to unite and work together with our True Parents can we build this kingdom that has a culture of true love.

The Mission Statement of Tony Hsieh

When I look around our movement and our church, I am reminded that I've read a good many books on people who have become extraordinarily wealthy. Especially, I have read life stories of amazing CEOs. One of these, for instance, is Tony Hsieh, who at age 24 sold LinkExchange to Microsoft for $265 million and went on to become the CEO of Zappos.com, one of the fastest growing merchandise businesses on the Internet.

Mr. Hsieh has done a series of interviews. One thing people have asked him over the years is, "How did you take this retail merchandising company from nothing to $1 billion in gross merchandise sales annually? What is your secret formula?" When he was asked this question, his answer was very simple: "I always had a mission statement. I always had a vision for the kind of company I wanted to create."

Tony Hsieh

When asked, "What's in your mission statement?" he says, "Well, my mission statement comprises what I call the 10 core values." When asked, "Tony, what are your 10 core values?" he says, "This pretty much sums up the culture of zappos.com." And again, Tony himself understands that when you're branding a company, or you're trying to overhaul a major organization, corporation, or even, let's say, our movement, the way you brand your organization, corporation, or movement is by changing its culture.

Therefore, he realized that in order to change the culture you have to have some core values in place. So when the interviewer asked, "Please explain to me what your core values are?" he says, "First and foremost, I believe in 'wow' service." What he means by wow service is service to consumers that leaves them with feeling of "Wow, this is an incredible company." He is not satisfied with average or good enough. He wants the customer service in his company to be "Wow."

The next point he talks about is how he wants the word change to be in the mission statement. He wants to have a company that does not fear or avoid change. He wants his company to embrace and actually drive change because he is looking for innovative, out-of-the-box thinking. He encourages change in his corporation.

The third point he talks about is, "In our mission statement it is extremely important for us to have fun." I think this point is very dear to my heart because a lot of people have said, "You just want to listen to music and have fun all the time. Look at all the STF. They're smiling too much. They're having too much fun. They're bowling; they're going to Lucky Strike; they're going to movies. What are you teaching them?"

But any teacher knows that some of the greatest and most profound lessons in life are learned through having fun. If you can engender a fun and creative atmosphere in your classroom, you can count on the fact that your students are going to excel and do very well. Their retention of what they have learned and the longevity of their ability to retain what they learn will be amazing.

He says, "The third point of my mission statement or my core values is to be fun – and a little weird." I thought, "This guy is really talking to the right person here because I always thought I was weird." I always thought we were a bit weird, but here is this guy who's been one of the most successful CEOs on Wall Street saying, "You know what? One of the 10 core values is 'We have to be weird in order to be successful.'"

He goes on to talk about not only should we have fun and be a little weird, but we should be adventurous, creative, and open-minded. We should not be like one of those Clydesdales that just goes to the market and back, goes to the market and back. We should not be people who don't see the beauty of the blue sky or the beautiful people on the street. We should not just go to the market and back.

He is saying, "We have to be adventurous. We have to try something new. We have to be creative. We can't just be satisfied with how we've always done things. We have to be open-minded in that we have to learn how to let go of the feeling that we know it all, or the attitude of 'Let me teach you the truth because I know the truth.'" We need to be open to the possibility of learning something along the way by listening as well. So he's talking about the importance of adventure, creativity, and fun.

The next core value he talks about is the importance of growth and learning. "Never stop growing; never stop learning." The minute you stop growing and learning, thinking you know it all, you've pretty much killed yourself by deciding essentially that you no longer want to be a divine human being who is constantly evolving and changing to be a remarkable human being. We ourselves can be our own worst enemy if we don't grow and learn.

The next core value he talks about is the importance of having an open and honest relationship through communication. In an organization, corporation, or movement, we need to be open and honest in terms of our relationships. We've got to be willing to talk about the difficult things. We've got to be willing to address the difficulties that arise in a life of faith and not think we always have to put our prettiest foot forward. We have to be willing to get our hands dirty and work to build this ideal kingdom, this ideal world that we so long for.

He talks about the importance of a family spirit, which we may also view as a positive team type of thinking. We need to think of ourselves as a team. One team member affects another just like in a family one sibling affects another. A child affects a parent, and vice versa. We need to know that we are all connected.

And then we go on to the next core value that Tony talks about, which is the importance of doing more with less. Even if God didn't give us all the 10 ingredients we want, if God gave us seven, "By golly that's an invitation to be creative and come up with the next three ourselves and do something different, something that has never, ever been done before."

The ninth core value that Tony talks about is the importance of being passionate and determined in your work or your life. We need to be passionate people, not somebody who's suffering from a state of paralysis, unable to make decisions and unable to be our own agent of change. We need to be passionate and determined.

And the most important, and the last of his 10 core values, is "to be humble." No matter how good you are, don't just kiss the people on your way up. Kiss the people whom you're leaving behind because sooner or later life is a series of sine curves. If you're only kissing up, sooner or later one of the people that you spat on is going to be your boss. Then that person will remember you. So you've got to treat people well on the front and the back. Be humble.

This is his goal. These are the 10 core values that make up the mission statement for his company, Zappos.com. But when you really think about it, everything that he talks about is very consistent with all the things that our True Parents and we, too, want our Generation of Peace to be.

P.E.A.C.E. in a Culture of True Love

I say Generation of Peace. If you take the word peace as an acronym, it stands for different things. P stands for eternal parent, our Heavenly Parent, one family under God. That's like trying to understand our movement with the family spirit and positive team attitude that Tony talks about.

The letter E: I understand it to represent eternal sons and daughters, that we are eternal divine creations of Heavenly Father. If we're eternal and divine, God created every one of us as a unique, special handiwork of God. God made us fun and weird. He wants us to be happy in loving life. He wants us to showcase something that's divinely ours. Every human being is unique. Every human being is different, and that's why when we come together it becomes a beautiful tapestry.

Everything that Tony talks about resonates with our own vision: When we think of ourselves as eternal sons and daughters, we become fun; we become that weird person whom he believes is a necessary component of a profitable and a prosperous company; and we realize that as eternal sons and daughters of God we have infinite potential.

When we see the letter A, I understand it to mean living a life of altruism, living for the sake of others. In Tony's philosophy, it's living the "wow" service. It's living the kind of a life where you're serving others so they respond to you with, "Wow." We saw this when our STF'ers went out into the world and met different people – like when Emmanuel met up with that TV program. People said, "Wow, where does a young man like Emmanuel come from? Wow." He comes from a family that believes in one family under God, and that lives and applies the teachings taught by Rev. and Mrs. Moon.

When we think of the words compassion [C], or to live a life of compassion, we soon conclude that in order to be a compassionate person we have to be humble. We have to be willing to think about others before ourselves. Instead of thinking, "I'm so great, listen to me," we have to be humble, to care, and to go out of our way to raise people up to be better.

When we think about the last letter of Peace, E, to me it means excellence. The way I understand excellence is internal excellence as well as external excellence. That just calls in what Tony has been harping on about the importance of growth and learning, of doing more with less – being efficient with what we have been given – and of embracing and driving change, not being afraid of it.

The thing I tell myself all the time when I'm thinking about building this culture of true love is that the core values or the character of a person defines who we are as eternal sons and daughters of God, and the culture we create around us is what defines our corporation, our organization, and the movement we belong to. So if we are going to change the world, we need to create a culture that works for HSA, for our church, for the Washington Times, and for all the different organizations and programs that we have. We need to create a culture that works for every one of us because we belong and we understand that we are in the process of building something wonderful.

When I think about the Generation of Peace, I see so clearly that right now at the time of the breaking news, this is the time when we need to let go of our past. All the different ways that we used to do things are candidates for change. Things are definitely going to change, and we need to embrace these changes as we constantly grow and learn instead of resisting these changes as we cling to our fears and insecurities, all the things that made us feel comfortable.

You know, the messiah doesn't come to make us continue to feel comfortable. The messiah comes to wake us up from our long slumber. Our True Parents come to change our way of thinking, to change the way we have branded ourselves over the years. Our True Parents come to change our culture into the culture of true love. And through the story of Evelyn, James Joyce is asking us to think about how we have to be our agent of change or we will have to suffer the fate that we buy at the cost of our own indecision.

This is not a time for indecision, when we should be paralyzed by insecurities and fear of all the unknowns. This is a time when we should be focused and united with our True Parents as the control tower in all the airports of our lives and realize that despite all the static in the air, God is the one, our True Parents are the one. We have to understand that we are building on top of the past but that past needs to grow and transform into a glorious, prosperous, and lovely future that God would like us to enjoy in our lifetime.

Lottery Winners

Brothers and sisters, we are the hand-picked lucky lottery winners in the providential history of humankind, not only to be living at this time of the breaking news, but also to be working together with our True Parents. And the great thing about our True Parents is they have always been clear, and they continue to make our future clear. We have our True Parents at the center as the focal point of our unity, and then in the future the youngest son, Dr. Hyung Jin Moon, will be and is the spiritual heir of the movement. Therefore, it is our job to unite with the desire of our Heavenly Parent and our True Parents, so that desire sets our hearts on fire as we experience living at this inspired time.

And when God comes knocking, we'd better answer the door, and we'd better be proud of being his sons and daughters. So brothers and sisters, as it says in I John 4:18, "There is no fear in love. Perfect love casteth out fear." This is the time to let go of our fears and insecurities, to liberate ourselves from any bonds of living hell that we may have been living under. This is the time when the number 43, represented by 172 ministers signals the time of liberation, when we must overcome all kinds of barriers – denominational, racial, national, religious, and even economic barriers. This is the time to overcome it and look toward a kingdom based on the culture of true love.

Brothers and sisters, you are indeed lucky, and you are indeed blessed and anointed to be walking with our True Parents at this incredible time. Go quietly, knowing you have been blessed. Go quietly in confidence, knowing that you are our Heavenly Parent's eternal sons and daughters. So God bless, have a great week, and welcome, Generation Peace Academy.

Notes:

1 John, chapter 4

1: Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are of God; for many false prophets have gone out into the world.

2: By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit which confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God,

3: and every spirit which does not confess Jesus is not of God. This is the spirit of antichrist, of which you heard that it was coming, and now it is in the world already.

4: Little children, you are of God, and have overcome them; for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.

5: They are of the world, therefore what they say is of the world, and the world listens to them.

6: We are of God. Whoever knows God listens to us, and he who is not of God does not listen to us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.

7: Beloved, let us love one another; for love is of God, and he who loves is born of God and knows God.

8: He who does not love does not know God; for God is love.

9: In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.

10: In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins.

11: Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

12: No man has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.

13: By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his own Spirit.

14: And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son as the Savior of the world.

15: Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God.

16: So we know and believe the love God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.

17: In this is love perfected with us, that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so are we in this world.

18: There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and he who fears is not perfected in love.

19: We love, because he first loved us.

20: If any one says, "I love God," and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen.

21: And this commandment we have from him, that he who loves God should love his brother also.  

Remembering 9/11: "Every One of Us Affects Each Other"

In Jin Moon
September 11, 2011

How is everyone? I am delighted to see you this Sunday morning. As Dave Hunter mentioned earlier, today is the tenth anniversary of 9/11, and it's a really poignant moment for all of us who experienced and lived through the horrors that unfolded ten years ago. I myself was also in New York City for one of my appointments. I remember somebody calling my name, saying, "Tatiana, look outside the window. What's going on? There's so much smoke."

In a matter of hours we saw a second plane hit the other Twin Tower and watched in horror as this monument that represented the might and strength of New York City and our technological ability to build something so awe-inspiring and tall just disappear in a matter of hours. All New Yorkers, and not just New Yorkers, but all Americans and all the people around the world were shocked and horrified.

New York City has not been the same since, and I think Americans too have not been the same since as we have had to recognize that something like this could take place in one of the greatest superpowers of the world, when we thought all the wars took place elsewhere, but certainly not on our shores. The destruction and the horrifying nature of hatred that we saw encapsulated in what took place on that day changed all of us forever.

Now we are reminded that already ten years have passed since we tasted what a war of religion is really all about. That's how I understand terrorism: It really is a war of religions, and in the face of this war I realize once again how critically important it is that our Heavenly Parent gave us our True Parents at this particular time. Right now, when we have the means to destroy our world a hundred times over, our Heavenly Parent has sent us our True Parents to guide us out of our destructive nature and help us see ourselves as their eternal sons and daughters and to realize the divinity within. True Parents are here to help us realize that we were all born with a certain purpose and that our life is a gift and an opportunity to leave something beautiful behind in the form of a beautiful family with beautiful children we can call our own.

With our True Parents, we come to realize that for the first time in history not only can we understand and experience true love and true life, but also we have the ability and the opportunity to graft onto the heavenly lineage. With True Parents, we have the ability and opportunity to change our lineage from the satanic lineage that resulted from the Fall by engrafting ourselves into the heavenly lineage of God, building ourselves into the one family of God, and cleansing our consciousness to realize that we belong to the same family because we come from the same common parent.

Therefore, all the different barriers and difficulties that arise from racial, cultural, religious, and economic differences need to fall by the wayside to help us realize that we need each other to survive. We need each other to become that greater humanity.

I think that for a lot of people America has always symbolized independence, freedom, and the ability to be courageous in the face of fear, all different types of fear. But when something like 9/11 takes place, we realize that we are all affected – whether we have lost a loved one, a relative, or a friend in the Twin Towers or not. We as Americans, as members of humanity, are all affected.

"Love Is the Most Powerful Force in the Universe"

When something like this takes place, we come to understand the importance of our connectedness. We realize that if we do not work, live, and love together, we are headed toward a certain destruction of our world. So instead of independence, in which we are all thinking about how we can become independent individuals, doing whatever we want, at this time when a new consciousness needs to flood the world, we have to concentrate on interdependence. We need to concentrate on the importance of being connected. We need to work, live, and love together in order to build the unified family of God that resides together in a world of peace, harmony, and love.

When 9/11 happened, here I was in New York City, and my children were going to school in Boston. They were calling, "Mommy, is everything okay? Are you okay? Is New York City okay?" I remember my children being so terrified that they were going to lose their mommy that day. We didn't know if there were going to be any more airplanes crashing into different buildings. We didn't know if it ended that day or if it was going to be the beginning of something continuously horrific for a long time.

I remember listening to the fear in my children's voices. They didn't know what was going on, but the thought of losing their mother was extremely painful for them. As a mother, I also thought, "What if this is my last day on earth? How do I want to live it? How do I want to end my days?"

On 9/11 we were faced with death up close and personal. We saw all those people jumping out of the World Trade Center. They didn't know what else to do: "Do I turn into pot roast waiting for the fires to consume me, or do I jump out of a window?" And we realized, watching these people jump out of the buildings, that this was not a Hollywood movie. This was not a dream. This was real, and these people jumping off were going to die. And those people trapped in those buildings were going to die. And the scores of fire engines and firemen that did not go the other way but went toward the burning buildings, you realized very quickly that many of them were going to lose their lives.

When we're confronted with death, so up close and personal, we start thinking about what is the most important thing in life. Our True Parents have taught us through many decades the important thing called love. My father breathes, eats, sleeps, preaches, and dreams about love every day. When we are confronted with death, everything turns into slow motion, and we ask ourselves, "Why am I here? What do I want to do with the remainder of my life? How do I want to be remembered?"

I remember thinking about something my father said many years ago, in 1972 – on September 11, of all dates. He said, "The position of love is established when you live your life sacrificing yourself for the sake of others. Once you start deciding to live and die and sacrifice yourself for the sake of others, the position of love is established."

I was thinking about this while watching all those people jump out of the building, not knowing what I could do to help them. How could I calm the different people in the office; how could I calm my colleagues? I looked around and saw people not knowing what to do, frantically taking out their cell phones, to talk to their loved ones: grown men, huge grown, burly men just falling to the floor, turning into Niagara Falls, just not knowing what to do. Fear was everywhere.

But I kept on coming back to what my father said, that the position of love is established when you start thinking about sacrificing yourself for the sake of others. I thought, "How odd," because those men who navigated the planes to fly into the World Trade Center thought that they were loving their God. They thought they were loving the world by sacrificing themselves to send a blatant and powerful message to the arrogant superpower of the Western hemisphere. They thought they were doing a God-given act, a God-sanctified and God-anointed act. They were taking the lives of the 2,977 people who were lost on that day, in the name of God.

In the beginning we didn't know what was happening. We didn't know al-Qaeda was involved. In the course of the days and weeks that followed we came to realize what had taken place, but at that instant the people who crashed the planes into the buildings thought that they were doing this in service of God – that by their death they were sacrificing themselves for the sake of God while taking life away from thousands of people.

Our True Parents have taught us over and over again that love is the most powerful force in the universe. That is why we have to be an eternal son or daughter of God in learning how to channel this great power of God through our lives in a constructive, beautiful, and holistic way.

But what we saw on that day was something totally the opposite, something that took place in the name of God but didn't at all channel the divine power of love in a holistic, inspiring, and constructive way. We saw and felt the destructive, horrific, and mind-boggling act of hatred smacking every one of us that day.

In that moment while I was thinking about what my father had said and watching all those people jumping out of the windows, everyone was telling people in the office, "Get out. We need to get out of New York City. We need to leave." But for some reason I did not want to leave. I remember just sitting there, watching and thinking about all the things my father had taught me throughout my life – the importance of love, of living for the sake of others and sacrificing yourself for others. I thought about these precious lessons as I was watching something that was the total antithesis of every one of them.

I remember thinking to myself at that moment, "If this is my last day, I want to die in love. I want to die wishing love upon people who have brought this horrific and stupefyingly ugly event to New York City. I want to somehow find within myself the power to respond in love. And even if I don't make it, I want to know that I'm going to die being grateful for having had the opportunity to have lived. And hopefully by leaving certain messages for my children on the phone, they will know that they are loved, that their lives have profound meaning, and that they are not to be discouraged by seeing this act of hatred." In fact, I was hoping that my children, by experiencing and witnessing what was taking place that day, could be even more inspired to return love for hatred, to live a life of love and bring about the kind of a world that we as human beings all dream about.

In that moment when I felt very much at peace with God, with the message of my father running through my mind and heart, and with the image of my mom – her beautiful smile that has the ability to cleanse your soul, to cleanse all your troubles away – I felt marvelously blessed that I of all people had had a chance to get to know True Parents. I had a powerfully fervent belief that regardless of what happened on that day, the world would be in good hands because True Parents are here, coming as the anointed ones with heavenly fortune.

Parental Love Is God's Love

When I woke up this morning I was reminded once again by a little note that I wrote to myself back then after coming back to Boston and seeing my kids. That little note said to God, "Thank you first and foremost for allowing me to experience the parental heart of God." I wrote this because by being a parent and having children of my own, I realized for the first time in my life when I held my eldest son in my arms that this is how God, our Heavenly Parent, must love me. This unconditional, eternal, unchanging, absolute, and unique love is what God must have felt when he saw me as his child, as her child.

That was the first time I experienced what parental love is all about. When I became a parent, that's when I came to know, "This is how much God loves me. This is how much my parents love me." I understood how much I loved this child, that I would do anything for this child. I remember asking myself, "If I were to explain to my eldest son what parental love is, what love understood in terms of parental love is, how would I explain it?"

I wrote down three little points. I thought if I lived long enough for Preston to have a conversation with me, this is what I would say to him: Parental love is sacrificial love. When we have our child for the first time we realize that we want to give this child everything that we are. We want to give, not because we're going to be rewarded at the end of our lives, with God, our Heavenly Parent giving us a little blue ribbon saying, "You were a fantastic parent. You get an award for being a good parent." That is not the feeling that ran through my mind and body. The only thought I had in my mind was, "I want to give this child everything. I want to give this child everything without thinking of what I'm going to get in return."

Hinduism teaches this principle very clearly. It states that giving without any thought of receiving, or without any thought of gain, is an example of enlightened giving, an example of being an enlightened person. When we are enlightened, living in the light, or when we are inspired, infused with the power of true love, we're not thinking about how to receive; all we're thinking about is our wanting to give.

When we're inspired about something, we want to share it, to give it away – like, for instance, my daughter. Everybody knows she's a fantastic ballroom dancer? When she came back from Harvard having discovered for the first time the thrill of ballroom dancing, she was a woman inspired. The first thing she wanted to do was share. She wanted to give the gift of ballroom dancing to me. She wanted to give everything that she learned.

That's exactly the spirit a parent has when we look at a child. We want to give everything without thinking. Ariana wasn't thinking, "If I teach my mama how to ballroom, how to cha-cha, how to waltz, and how to do the swing, is she going to think I'm a fantastic person? Is my mother going to think I'm a fantastic daughter?" These are not the kind of thoughts that run through our mind when we are inspired, when we are excited about something.

When we are truly inspired by the power of true love, we're not thinking about what we're going to get; we're thinking about what we want to give. That is the magic of parental love. This is unconditional sacrificial love, when we're living for the sake of others but we're not thinking at all that we want to sacrifice and suffer on this road because we're going to get a carrot or a nice piece of cake at the end of our journey.

We want to share. We want to suffer through – maybe together with our family – just because we love them, just because we want to share that inspiration with everybody we love. Nobody is waiting to give us an award. We simply want to be an enlightened and inspired person, living in the light, illuminating the world around us with our love and divinity, hoping that through our giving and sharing we can raise these people, these loved ones, to be better than ourselves. This is what it means to have and practice and live the sacrificial love of a parent.

The Heart of Heung Jin Nim

When I think about this, I think about my younger brother Heung Jin. He is somebody whom I was extraordinarily close to. We did everything together. We talked about all the different things we were going to do, all the different places we were going to explore. We had a plan of how we wanted to live our lives. He and I used to take long drives into the night, and one of our favorite things to do was to leave Saturday, drive up to Canada, and then get back in time for morning pledge on Sunday at 5:00 o'clock.

We would take these long drives because we wanted to talk to each other. We wanted to share what we thought our families would be like and what we thought we would do in the future. One of the things I always felt about him was that somehow he was different. He was always different in that he had such an amazing, giving heart.

Perhaps this was because he grew up under my older brother, Hyo Jin Oppa, who was very strong, very domineering, very demanding, and very physical. So a lot of the younger ones really suffered a lot under my brother, whom we all love. But you know, "Older brothers can be older brothers." There's a reason why the Chinese character for an older brother is composed of a big mouth and two legs. Certainly my older brother was that in the family. He beat my younger brother up quite badly many times.

The one thing that I noticed about Heung Jin is that every time he got beaten up, he never shouted back at his older brother with words like, "I despise you. You walking mouthpiece. I do not like you; get out of my face." He never, ever did that. Never in my 17 years of life together with him before he passed away did I hear him say a negative word about his older brother.

Many times when we were younger, he wouldn't say anything, but he would keep on going back to the older brother, even when he got scolded or beaten. He would always go back to the older brother, maybe taking something to him from the kitchen, something to drink. Heung Jin never complained, criticized, or admonished. He never left the younger brother's position to admonish the older brother. He never did anything like that.

One of the things that I found wonderfully peculiar about Heung Jin occurred when he started going through his adolescence and he actually became taller than my older brother, who had been a walking mouthpiece for many years because he was physically powerful and verbally powerful in terms of noise. But now my second brother was taller than my older brother. Heung Jin was big. Then my older brother started becoming a little gentler and kinder to him. But even when my older brother exploded in those last years, Heung Jin never, ever yelled back.

The peculiar thing that he would do is when my older brother punched him, he would say, "Thank you." When my older brother kicked him, he would say, "Thank you." I remember once something was thrown at him, and it gave him a bloody nose. I quickly got some Kleenex, wiped off his nose, and said, "You need to get out of here, okay, and clean up your face." He said, "No, this is good. Pain lets me know that I'm living." He said, "I am really grateful because having an older brother who gives you a hard time teaches you humility, teaches you humbleness. And I of all people am grateful for having a teacher who teaches me humility and humbleness, so I am forever grateful to my brother."

I remember when he said this to me, I said, "Are you insane? Are you trying to talk to me like Jesus?" This was interesting. But he said, "No, no, I'm really grateful because this is a reminder for me that I need to serve my older brother, and I need to somehow overcome the difficulty and pain that I receive. But if I can return the pain with love, I will become a better person. He is teaching me to become a better person."

I remember walking away from that conversation, thinking, "This kid is really different." He really made me think about a lot of different things. When that appointed hour came and he was taken away from this world, even in the last minute of his life, the two comrades who were in the car with him can testify that the only thing he was thinking about was how to protect those two friends in the car. He was not thinking about himself. Even though most people driving in a car accident like that would take the car and try to veer themselves away from being hit, he did the opposite. He ran his side of the car into the truck that was coming toward him so that his two friends could be saved.

When I think about my younger brother, I think about how he always just had this heart of, "You know what? I love this person. I love my older brother. I'm going to give everything that I am to my older brother, to my family, to my life, to my comrades." Even though he was a very young child, only 17, he was different in that he understood the profundity and gravity of what a parental heart is all about in its desire to give without hoping for anything in return.

He wasn't hoping for people to say, "Oh, you're such a good younger brother." That is not the reason why he said, "Thank you." He was saying thank you sincerely out of his desire to love and to give love to his older brother. Even to his last breath, giving of himself completely so that he could save two of his friends in the car is really a testament of what a beautiful heart Heung Jin had and how he really, truly understood what living a life of sacrificial love was all about.

The Wisdom of King Solomon

One of the other things I realized when I became a parent is that when we look at this child of God, not only do we want to give without receiving anything in return, we simply want to give because we are inspired, we have been moved to give, just because. But I also realized that when we gaze into the eyes of the person whom we want to make happy – even at the cost of our own happiness or our own life, we are willing to die for the sake of that person, to make the other person happy, prosperous, and successful.

One of the most profound stories in the Bible that I like to read from time to time comes from I Kings 3:16-28, which is in a section that tells us about King Solomon's wisdom. I find this story incredibly inspiring. As a child I used to have my nanny read that section to me over and over again because I used to think, "Wow, King Solomon is so wise. How did he know what to do at this appointed time, at that appointed time? But of course when I had children of my own, that story became even more profound and poignant to me. Again I realized what sacrificial love is all about.

This story from I Kings talks about how King Solomon was approached by two prostitutes. These two women had both given birth just recently, and the child of one of them had died. Both of these women came to King Solomon saying, "This is my child. The other one has stolen my child." Here were two women, each of them claiming they were the mother of the one surviving child. Each of them was claiming that the other one is lying, that the other one had taken the living child from the mother and was claiming it for her own.

When King Solomon was confronted with this dilemma, he asked one of his soldiers to bring him a sword. He told the soldier, "Now cut the child in half and give each of the two warring woman a half." Then one of the women said to King Solomon, "Please, please, do not kill the child. Do not split him in half. Just give the child to the other woman." But the second woman said, "Divide him in half and give my half to me."

It was at this time that King Solomon knew who the real mother was and who was not. How did King Solomon know who the real mother was? King Solomon knew who the real mother was because one of the women was expressing sacrificial love. When you are the real mother, you don't care how your child will survive as long as it survives. When you are not the real mother, and you have just lost your child, and you have the gall to steal another person's child, to claim it for yourself, you feel what is called "misery loves company." "My child died, so I want your child to die."

This very simple story clearly portrays what true love and sacrificial parental love are all about. The story also portrays what self-absorbed love is, a love that's wrapped up in only wanting to satisfy its own need.

On the one hand, the woman who was not the real mother stole the child. Her child is dead so she steals a live child from another mother. Then she lies, telling everybody that she is the mother, that the other woman is the liar. Then the false mother not only steals and lies, but she wants to kill because her child has died.

When we look at the real mother, we see the love of a sacrificial parent who realizes she may never see her child again. Maybe the king would give the child to the other woman, thinking she was the mother. The woman knows that maybe she would have to give up her right as the true mother of this child. But the most important thing to her at that moment is her desire to see her child alive. So she is willing to sacrifice her own happiness, her desire to hold that child for herself, and she allows herself to have the courage to let the child go so the child can live.

This is the sacrificial heart of a parent. When we look at our children, we are willing to do whatever we need to do, even if we have to forgo our own happiness and desires, because we want them to live. We want them to be alive. We want them to be inspired, to be beautiful people, to thrive, prosper, and reap the harvest of heavenly fortune and destiny that they are here to accomplish and substantiate in their lifetimes. A true mother's heart wants the child to live to be happy, prosperous, and glorious.

When we look at I Kings 3:16-28, we see how amazingly powerful parental love is. Parental love is the kind of love where you are willing basically to kill oneself, to die for the sake of others, so that your child can hopefully be alive and live to become happy and prosperous.

I remember when I first became a mother and read I Kings again, that section just totally got me. I realized this is what God, our Heavenly Parent, must have been feeling for the last 6,000 biblical years when he gazed at his children as a parent. God must have been wishing and hoping and believing that his children will find their way back home so that God could fully live and reside with his children as one family under God, as a parent in each child's life. Through these reflections I realized once again how much God loves all of us.

The Theme of Sacrificial Love in Cinema

Alien movie

When we think about what might be another aspect of parental love or sacrificial love, we may be reminded of the great sci-fi movie thriller Aliens. I remember that it was all the rage when it first came out. My older brother, Hyo Jin Oppa, loved sci-fi thriller action-packed movies. He decided to take quite a few of us to the theater. The thing about my older brother is that he's Korean, born and raised in Korea, but he spoke like an Italian Mafia boss. That's the way he spoke. When he wanted to take us to a movie, he would say, "Hey, get the car ready. Get your ass over here. We're going to a movie." That is the way he talked. He was very Italian in that sense.

In the family we used to call him the Boss. He used to walk like the boss. He walked like the Godfather. He was very big, an ninth degree black belt, and he knew all the different martial arts. This is a person you don't mess with; he let you know very clearly. So he was going to take us to see Aliens.

We went to the movie theater, and because he's The Boss he was going to buy the tickets. He approached the counter and said to the ticket agent, "Hey." The lady looked up. And he said, "Four Aliens." And the lady just looked at him because basically what he was saying was, "I want four tickets to your movie Aliens," but he didn't realize that the meaning of his words could be misunderstood because we were all Asian. We all looked like illegal aliens, so he seemed basically to be standing at the ticket counter saying, "Four aliens." The lady was looking at us like, "No, duh, yes, I know you're aliens." But because my brother was so big and so in your face and abrupt, he just stood there. I remember going around him and saying, "Can we have four tickets to the movie Aliens?"

When we finally got into the theater, he's like, "In Jin, popcorn." So I went to get some popcorn and there was another blessed child there and Hyo Jin Oppa was like, "Hey, don't forget the nachos." So here we are: I'm getting popcorn, the other blessed child is getting nachos, and then Hyo Jin Oppa sent somebody else for some napkins. So we all sat down in the theater, everything got dark, and we were waiting for this great movie, because we had heard so much about it. Then we were watching the movie. It was fantastic. I'd never seen anything like it, and we were basically on the edge of our seats.

All of us are sitting next to each other. When my brother went to a movie, he liked to occupy a chunk of the seats, so we were all huddled together, watching the movie. As we walked out we were talking about how the movie was fantastic. But what really got us was the willingness of the heroine to fight the monster to save the others. She was not going to run away. She was not going to say, "The monster is really menacing, really scary. You stay behind while I go."

The thing about sacrificial love and a parental heart is that when we are faced with the monsters of life, when we are faced with aliens charging us, a parent instinctively and without urging from anybody instinctively takes responsibility and protects her or his loved ones. It's instinctual. It's not taught or advised upon. It's something that we do because we love someone.

Of course there was Alien 1, Alien 2, and all the different sequels, but the overriding theme is the willingness of this one woman to fight the monster, the evil, the menacing whatever that stands in the path of survival. She shows us the willingness to stand there and fight a valiant fight – not because she has to, not because somebody has her in a ball and chain, demanding that she fight. She's doing it voluntarily. She's doing it because she loves the people that she cares about. She loves her colleagues, her fellow platoon members, her friends, and her family.

We realize that in the realm of sacrificial love there is an instinctive desire to take responsibility and to protect loved ones. There is no shifting of blame, saying, "It is your fault that the alien has come in my path." There is none of that. Instead it's, "The alien is here. What am I going to do? I'm going to take responsibility. I'm going to take control of the situation and save my loved ones, even if I have to sacrifice myself."

The great thing about movies is they show us visually how powerful sacrificial love can be. I saw it in Aliens, and I've seen it many times over in blockbuster movies through the years. I think one of the most moving scenes in Armageddon is the final scene. Bruce Willis is not the greatest actor, but it's a very moving scene when he was finally holding onto the switch that could explode the asteroid that is coming toward earth for an impact that would extinguish all life on earth. He decided to take responsibility – not because somebody told him to, but because he wanted a better life for his daughter. He wanted the one he loved to have a better life, to have a chance to live. He took it upon himself; he blew himself up together with the asteroid and thus saved the world.

When you see that, you realize, "My goodness, unlike the suicide bombers who took 2,977 lives when they navigated the airplanes to crash into the World Trade Center, Bruce Willis is basically saying, 'I am not going to take another life that God put on this earth. If it takes me to be the sacrificial point person at the designated time to save the world, then I'm going to do it out of love. I'm going to do it with a spirit of volunteerism, and I'm going to do it because I wish upon those that I love great happiness and great prosperity.'" Seeing a scene like this, we realize the disparity of these two things, even though the action of blowing yourself up is one and the same – the action is the same, but the heart is totally different.

True Parents: The Personification of Sacrificial Love

Sun Myung Moon and Hak Ja Han, June 10, 2011

When we ponder this astonishing thing called parental love, we realize that the people who represent, encapsulate, embody, and personify parental and sacrificial love are our True Parents. They are the parents who give ceaselessly, endlessly, and unselfishly, without waiting for anything in return. They are the enlightened beings, the enlightened ones practicing enlightened giving. They are giving for the sole purpose of giving, just because – not because they want to receive something at the end of the day.

Our True Parents have lived the life of sacrificial giving, giving of themselves continually, over and over again. Our True Parents are the personification of sacrificial love in the way that they have suffered so much for the sake of others. They have gone through seven deaths and resurrections for all of us.

Our True Father has gone to prison six times for all of us and for the sake of the mission so that he can continue to be around to share the breaking news with the rest of the world that now is the time to graft onto the heavenly lineage, become one family under God, and safeguard our world from hatred, bigotry, and self-destruction. This is what our True Father and True Mother have come to do. So we have with us a beautiful man and a beautiful woman – hallelujah, thank God for our True Mother. We have our True Mother with our True Father every step of the way, not just giving but always wishing upon us great happiness.

One of the things I asked my mother years ago was, "What prevented you from ever saying, 'This is enough, I've had enough,' and then high-tailing it out of there? What made you stay? What made you persevere? What made you go through endless obstacles, endless difficulties, and unspoken suffering to be able to stand in the position of the perfected Eve so that together with True Father you could be the living paradigm of true love for all of us?" I asked her, "What is the reason that you stayed?"

She looked at me and said, "You know, I told myself a long time ago that there's so much suffering, hatred, mistrust, and ugliness in the world that if I can be the person to overcome whatever I need to overcome to indemnify the position of woman so that a woman can reclaim her divine dignity and worth, then I will do it. I will go through it so that my daughters and granddaughters, my children and my future posterity will know that the buck stops here." She determined through her life of faith to achieve the end of human suffering, the end of the abuse and neglect of women. She determined, "The buck stops with me."

When my mother said this to me, I realized once again, "Thank God the buck stopped with her." Because she went through all that untold suffering and difficulty, and overcame the obstacles to continue to stand as the True Mother of humankind, those coming after her can be liberated. The daughters, the wives, and the sisters can be liberated to reclaim our heavenly dignity and worth, and stand and walk together with our brothers and fathers, holding our heads high and knowing that we are eternal daughters of God. So thank God for our True Mother and for our True Parents.

Our True Parents have not only lived their lives dying for the sake of all of us, in order hopefully to build or to give us the opportunity to pursue a better, more fulfilled life and prosperity. They have always taken responsibility as parents of humankind. They have taken on the responsibility of indemnifying and restoring the human Fall. And as they have had to walk that thorny and burning road to accomplish restoration of human and providential history, they have shed untold blood, sweat, and tears along the way.

But as parents, our True Parents never said, "You do it." Even to this day when we spend time with our True Parents, Father says he has to do everything. It's that desire to take responsibility to protect the loved ones so that the loved ones can go on to become great sons and daughters of God. It's the desire to sacrifice what needs to be sacrificed so that others can be better and others can do well.

When we see in our True Parents this living example of sacrificial and parental love, we have to realize how richly blessed we are to have them as our True Parents.

"True Parents Are Our Center"

At this time there's a lot of talk about maybe our True Father is getting too old, maybe he's senile, maybe he's being manipulated by the evil woman. As a family we have had to go through the pain and suffering of one of our brothers who is giving a lot of heartache to the movement. The whole problem with UCI has been a grave heartache for our True Parents and for our Heavenly Parent in that UCI is an organization that was created to support the mission of our movement financially. UCI is supposed to be the organizational entity managing the assets that were nurtured over the years to do providential work.

But UCI has been taken away, stolen, and abused in a sense because it can no longer function in its original purpose of supporting the mission. UCI stood for Unification Church International. It was supposed to be an organization that supports financially all the mission work internationally around the world. But do you realize that the word international has essentially been replaced with individual? It's no longer Unification Church International. It's now essentially Unification Church Individual, and the individual in question has taken this organization away from God, True Parents, and our movement.

We as Unification Church members – Unification Church – have to clearly see that True Parents are our center, and we should not be confused with the letter I. Heavenly Father wants the letter I to represent our international community. But UCI is acting on an individual-motivated, selfish basis, and that's why it is wrong. There is a clear right and a clear wrong, and we as our movement's children have to honor our parents, who have always lived a life of sacrificial, parental love, always encouraging all of us to be the child of God, to be the best that we can be, to fulfill our destiny.

Our True Parents still hold the reins of this movement. They are still the core; they have always been the core. They have always been the center, and they will continue to be the center. In light of what took place on 9/11 and understanding that acts of terrorism are the expression of a war of religion, of religious ideas with one person saying one thing and another saying another, we can realize that at times like this when the siblings are fighting we definitely need the parents. Without our True Parents, there is really no hope of creating one family under God. But as long as we keep our focus on our True Parents, and we are clearly Unification Church – we see clearly who the control tower is in our movement, then we will start to land gloriously on all the landing pads that have been prepared internationally around the world.

We need to understand that our True Parents are not just your average mom and dad. Thank God they are human, but they have been especially anointed and prepared. They have been blessed to lead humanity at this time away from self-destruction to a new, bright millennium of peace, love, and harmony.

So brothers and sisters, let's learn from II Corinthians 13:11, which asks all of us to aim for perfection – to have a clear goal and purpose in mind – to "listen to my appeal," and to live by peace. In so doing, the scripture says, we will experience the Lord of love and peace.

So when the Bible asks us to aim for perfection, perfection doesn't mean everything is hunky-dory and, there are no problems. What it's asking us is for the perfection of heart. We are to aim for the perfection of heart that is unified, united with our Heavenly Parent and our True Parents. And in so doing, we are to listen to what God and our True Parents are telling us.

We are to work together with our True Parents, and learn from them how to love sacrificially and experience parental heart, thereby developing an understanding that this is not something we should do just with our own siblings, our immediate family. We need to learn from our True Parents the heart that can rise above our own families and above all differences and see our brothers and sisters in Nigeria, Afghanistan, and Tokyo, Japan as our own. Only in so doing, through the magic of the Blessing ceremony that helps all of humanity graft onto this heavenly lineage that we can call God's family, do we really become one family, knowing each other across races, cultures, and religions as our common family members.

Brothers and sisters, our True Parents have come at this incredible time with a great gift for all of us. If we do not unite with God's chosen, appointed representative, then we're going to miss the boat. We're going to miss the heavenly fortune. There's one principle that you cannot go against. You cannot go against the principle of love and think you're going to prosper. You cannot claim that you love God and your parents while persecuting and victimizing your parents. If you do what UCI is doing to the family of God, to our movement, and to our True Parents and think you are going to prosper, then you are going to be greatly disappointed.

UCI may have all the money in the world, but money doesn't last forever. If the people there do not have love, if they do not have an understanding of a sacrificial heart and living for the sake of others, they will not prosper. But if UCI can remain focused and united with our True Parents, practicing the philosophy of living for the sake of others and developing the parental, sacrificial heart of love so that we can inspire our children and humanity to become better than all of us, then we can change the world.

Be Inspired in the Light of the Moon

This morning the band sang "Personal Jesus." All of us often are waiting for God to do the dirty work. We want Jesus to save us. We want True Parents to save us. We want God to save us. But the time of the breaking news is when we as the children of God need to come into our own, to step up to the plate and be our own Christ-like personal Jesus, be True Parents-like as their living representative. And instead of asking God to solve all our problems, when we pray to God, let's try telling God, "Let me be the agent of change in my own life." "Let me be the agent of change that I want to see," said Gandhi. "Let me be the change I want to see." "Let it start with me by aiming for perfection," it says in II Corinthians, "by listening to the Lord and living in peace."

Brothers and sisters, if we can keep this in mind, and if we can understand how supremely sacred our True Parents are to humanity and to all of us, and we realize that it's really a gift and blessing for us to be able to live, work, and walk daily with them, then we should live like enlightened beings. We should live a life of enlightened giving. We should be inspired people of the light, people who have been touched by the moon. We know the moon well. We can be people who cast glorious, beautiful light unto the world, people who help the world see the beauty of all the treasures within that are waiting to be revealed in the light of love, the light of the moon.

On this day when we celebrate the tenth anniversary of 9/11, we need to ask ourselves, "What if today is my last day? What do I want to leave behind? Do I want to leave behind a legacy of suffering and complaining constantly about this little bit of rain that is drowning us every day? Or am I going to leave behind the kind of legacy that basically tells our children and ourselves to keep the faith, keep on going, keep on spreading the good news – and even better than the good news, spread the breaking news?" Be that agent of change. Change a family, change a society, change a nation, and change the world. Be the change that you want to see; be an eternal son or daughter of God.

This is a glorious time for all of us. We've seen something horrific, but there is beauty in that people are willing to come together and understand that we cannot just concentrate on the individual any more. We will not survive the time of self-destruction if we are only thinking about ourselves. We have to concentrate on the meaning and profundity of being connected as we are all part of this beautiful tapestry called humanity. Every one of us affects each other.

Let's think in that way and live our lives in that way, understanding the religious consciousness that teaches us how powerful and important love is in our lives. Then we can start changing the world.

So brothers and sisters, please continue to share and spread the breaking news. Please be inspired and enlightened human beings, and thank God every day that we have our True Parents because with our True Parents here, the world will be a beautiful place, if we are there to walk along with them, unite with them, and make it happen. So God bless, and thank you.

Notes:

1 Kings, chapter 3

1: Solomon made a marriage alliance with Pharaoh king of Egypt; he took Pharaoh's daughter, and brought her into the city of David, until he had finished building his own house and the house of the LORD and the wall around Jerusalem.

2: The people were sacrificing at the high places, however, because no house had yet been built for the name of the LORD.

3: Solomon loved the LORD, walking in the statutes of David his father; only, he sacrificed and burnt incense at the high places.

4: And the king went to Gibeon to sacrifice there, for that was the great high place; Solomon used to offer a thousand burnt offerings upon that altar.

5: At Gibeon the LORD appeared to Solomon in a dream by night; and God said, "Ask what I shall give you."

6: And Solomon said, "Thou hast shown great and steadfast love to thy servant David my father, because he walked before thee in faithfulness, in righteousness, and in uprightness of heart toward thee; and thou hast kept for him this great and steadfast love, and hast given him a son to sit on his throne this day.

7: And now, O LORD my God, thou hast made thy servant king in place of David my father, although I am but a little child; I do not know how to go out or come in.

8: And thy servant is in the midst of thy people whom thou hast chosen, a great people, that cannot be numbered or counted for multitude.

9: Give thy servant therefore an understanding mind to govern thy people, that I may discern between good and evil; for who is able to govern this thy great people?"

10: It pleased the Lord that Solomon had asked this.

11: And God said to him, "Because you have asked this, and have not asked for yourself long life or riches or the life of your enemies, but have asked for yourself understanding to discern what is right,

12: behold, I now do according to your word. Behold, I give you a wise and discerning mind, so that none like you has been before you and none like you shall arise after you.

13: I give you also what you have not asked, both riches and honor, so that no other king shall compare with you, all your days.

14: And if you will walk in my ways, keeping my statutes and my commandments, as your father David walked, then I will lengthen your days."

15: And Solomon awoke, and behold, it was a dream. Then he came to Jerusalem, and stood before the ark of the covenant of the LORD, and offered up burnt offerings and peace offerings, and made a feast for all his servants.

16: Then two harlots came to the king, and stood before him.

17: The one woman said, "Oh, my lord, this woman and I dwell in the same house; and I gave birth to a child while she was in the house.

18: Then on the third day after I was delivered, this woman also gave birth; and we were alone; there was no one else with us in the house, only we two were in the house.

19: And this woman's son died in the night, because she lay on it.

20: And she arose at midnight, and took my son from beside me, while your maidservant slept, and laid it in her bosom, and laid her dead son in my bosom.

21: When I rose in the morning to nurse my child, behold, it was dead; but when I looked at it closely in the morning, behold, it was not the child that I had borne."

22: But the other woman said, "No, the living child is mine, and the dead child is yours." The first said, "No, the dead child is yours, and the living child is mine." Thus they spoke before the king.

23: Then the king said, "The one says, `This is my son that is alive, and your son is dead'; and the other says, `No; but your son is dead, and my son is the living one.'"

24: And the king said, "Bring me a sword." So a sword was brought before the king.

25: And the king said, "Divide the living child in two, and give half to the one, and half to the other."

26: Then the woman whose son was alive said to the king, because her heart yearned for her son, "Oh, my lord, give her the living child, and by no means slay it." But the other said, "It shall be neither mine nor yours; divide it."

27: Then the king answered and said, "Give the living child to the first woman, and by no means slay it; she is its mother."

28: And all Israel heard of the judgment which the king had rendered; and they stood in awe of the king, because they perceived that the wisdom of God was in him, to render justice.

2 Corinthians, chapter 13

1: This is the third time I am coming to you. Any charge must be sustained by the evidence of two or three witnesses.

2: I warned those who sinned before and all the others, and I warn them now while absent, as I did when present on my second visit, that if I come again I will not spare them --

3: since you desire proof that Christ is speaking in me. He is not weak in dealing with you, but is powerful in you.

4: For he was crucified in weakness, but lives by the power of God. For we are weak in him, but in dealing with you we shall live with him by the power of God.

5: Examine yourselves, to see whether you are holding to your faith. Test yourselves. Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you? -- unless indeed you fail to meet the test!

6: I hope you will find out that we have not failed.

7: But we pray God that you may not do wrong -- not that we may appear to have met the test, but that you may do what is right, though we may seem to have failed.

8: For we cannot do anything against the truth, but only for the truth.

9: For we are glad when we are weak and you are strong. What we pray for is your improvement.

10: I write this while I am away from you, in order that when I come I may not have to be severe in my use of the authority which the Lord has given me for building up and not for tearing down.

11: Finally, brethren, farewell. Mend your ways, heed my appeal, agree with one another, live in peace, and the God of love and peace will be with you.

12: Greet one another with a holy kiss.

13: All the saints greet you.

14: The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.

Personal Jesus

Reach out and touch faith

Your own personal Jesus
Someone to hear your prayers
Someone who cares
Your own personal Jesus
Someone to hear your prayers
Someone who's there

Feeling unknown
And you're all alone
Flesh and bone
By the telephone
Lift up the receiver
I'll make you a believer
Take second best
Put me to the test
Things on your chest
You need to confess

I will deliver
You know I'm a forgiver
Reach out and touch faith
Reach out and touch faith

Your own personal Jesus
Someone to hear your prayers
Someone who cares
Your own personal Jesus
Someone to hear your prayers
Someone who's there

Feeling unknown
And you're all alone
Flesh and bone
By the telephone
Lift up the receiver
I'll make you a believer
I will deliver
You know I'm a forgiver
Reach out and touch faith
Your own personal Jesus
Reach out and touch faith