A Life of Faith Takes Practice

In Jin Moon
December 4, 2011

Good morning, brothers and sisters. How is everyone? You have a lot of energy today. Thank you so much. I bring you greetings from our True Parents, who will be joining us very soon. It's been a whirlwind of activity here at headquarters. We're constantly trying our best to make our movement shine as brilliantly as it possibly can, and to help support and empower families to build that wonderful, loving life that we would like to see all across America.

An Inspired and Mission-Oriented Generation

I spent a great deal of time perusing different pictures because I wanted to get a feel for what it was like in the early days of the American movement. I came to this country in 1973 when I was eight years old, and for me America represented a land of opportunity and dreams, where I would see different kinds of people – not all with black hair and black eyes. I could see blonde-haired people, red-haired people, brown-haired people, and curly- or straight-haired people, and I very much looked forward to getting to know my international community in this great country of America.

Looking through the pictures, I was reminded of the early days of our movement with the first-generation. I saw so many pictures of what brothers and sisters used to look like in their early 20s. You were so bright and tall and slim. You were supremely inspired. You were mission-oriented, goal-oriented – like soldiers ready to hit the battlefield with a sense of mission. You felt called by God to wake up America so her young men and women could truly rise and be inspired to be eternal sons and daughters of God.

I saw the excitement, I saw the sparkle in the eyes. And you guys went on MFT teams in vans all across the country. When I was a little younger I also had the opportunity to go fund-raising in a van driven by my older brother [Hyo Jin Moon], with the song "Born to be Wild" and all of his favorite classic rock hits blaring through the stereo system. I was very much raised on this spirit of, "Let's go and do our mission. Let's make a difference. Let's be the agent of change. Let's do something really action packed."

The feeling of being in a van with seven or eight other like-minded people, all inspired, all young, all bitten with this energy, made you feel you were running on adrenaline. It was a huge adrenaline rush. We would go from town to town trying to spread the good news and asking for donations for the different work we were doing all across the country and in the world. We felt so great. We felt like heavenly soldiers, and we were going to fight the good fight. We were going to represent our country and do it with honor and dignity.

I know many of you first-generation also experienced this, and we had great successes throughout the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. We went through the Day of Hope tours in which you, together with our True Father and True Mother, traveled across the country taking the breaking news of our True Parents to all the states and townships, to different churches and town meeting halls. It was an exciting time.

Then we had the great successes of the Washington Monument rally, and here in New York the Yankee Stadium rally. It was action packed, an adrenaline rush. We knew what we had to do: mobilize, mobilize, mobilize, focus, focus, focus, results, results, results. "Let's go in and let's win and bring the victory home." We had a very clear set of plans.

Transitioning Into the Time of Settlement

A couple of weeks ago Time magazine ran an article talking about the 45,000 soldiers who will be returning home from the various combat tours they've been engaged in. The big question of the day is, "How will these fine soldiers who have proven themselves as courageous, successful, and heroic young men and women on the battlefield be able to integrate into a society that is in many respects totally ignorant of the combat tours they have just come back from?" "How will they integrate back into society so they can be successful, happy, and thriving citizens?" "How do they transition from the soldier's consciousness to the consciousness of a happy individual who would like to raise a beautiful family?"

Reading that Time magazine article very much reminded me of some of the things that we in the movement have gone through. In the early 1970s and 1980s we did have a soldier-like mentality. We had a clear mission and a team that we worked with. We knew what we were going to do. There was a great deal of action. Every day brought something new to stimulate us to learn and grow, and it was exciting. It was action after action after action.

Just as the soldiers returning home are confronted with and challenged by the transition from being a strong, heroic soldier on the battlefield back into life as a civilian, I think many of us who were gung-ho, inspired, energized soldiers of our faith also had to deal with the problems or issues that arise in transitioning from that soldier-like existence. We had been individuals, not families. We had been constantly on the move, not thinking about settling down and raising kids, which takes a lot of planning and scheduling. We had the consciousness that we're going to go in and out quickly, almost like a blitzkrieg. We were thinking mission, mission, mission!

But as we transitioned into civilian life as husband and wife, we found ourselves wanting to build a beautiful family that would be successfully integrated into society so we could be the agent of change and source of inspiration not only for our communities but also for our societies, nation, and world. When we started thinking about these things, we realized that before it was so simple. We were a bunch of individuals, young men and women in teams, almost like soldiers experiencing life in a platoon under a very strong, centralized command system. It was very clear-cut. There were extremely strict, simple rules that we abided by. It was all mission-oriented.

But here we are transitioning from the time of the wilderness – when we were those soldiers on the move, individuals with a mission-oriented lifestyle – to a time of settlement when we have to do the hard work of building families. Now we have to raise healthy children while being part of a larger community. We aim to do this in a successful and inspired way so we can substantiate the kind of world we would like to live in.

We realize now in this time of settlement that mission is still important, but in the time of settlement we have to see our mission in the larger context of creating a beautiful culture of love, peace, and harmony. Then we see the importance of creating the successful family and lifestyle that rears successful youth who will carry the mission, our tradition, and our heritage forward with a great deal of dignity, honor, and pride.

From Soldiers to Parents

In order to do that, unlike the adrenaline-packed rush of hitting the pavement every day, we find ourselves in the context of a family dealing with the perfunctory, mundane, ordinary things that need to be handled on a daily basis so that little by little we can, with persistence and patience, build the kind of families that we would like to see.

We have to transition from the wilderness mentality of mere survival to the settlement mentality thinking about fulfilling the original intention of our Heavenly Father and Mother when they first created Adam and Eve: to build an ideal family, a beautiful family. We realize that in order to do that it's going to take a lot of work.

I think a lot of parents, having gone through the transition from being a soldier to being a civilian, from being an individual to being part of a family, might often feel lost. They may find themselves wondering, "Whatever happened to the good old days, when I was so inspired and able to do this amazing action-packed mission? But now I'm sitting at home raising my kids. Where do I find inspiration in life? Where do I find inspiration in driving my kids to their lessons, doing their laundry, and thinking about recipes for healthy meals?" This is what we are faced with.

Some soldiers have an excruciating experience transitioning into civilian society because they feel unappreciated and unacknowledged for the victories they've had; they feel the country doesn't know them and is not aware of what they have gone through. I think a lot of early members might feel the same way. We might feel totally lost.

At this time when our True Father has proclaimed the Pacific Rim era, the Era of Women, his keen sense of timing is truly profound. During the time when soldiers are trying to transition successfully into civilian living, they have a lot of work to do. Similarly, during this time when we're trying to assist the first-generation with their heroic and inspired soldier-like mentality in transitioning into being the parents of successful and loving families engaged successfully with their communities and societies, we have a lot of work to do.

Communication, Cooperation and Consistency

Our True Parents have always encouraged and guided us throughout the years, but one of the things they've always asked – at least of the children in their direct family – is to think about, regardless what kind of change or transition we're dealing with, how we can be the agent of change to influence our environment to be better.

When I was called to HSA to lead this country, I thought about how profound it is that Father has proclaimed the Pacific Rim Era as a time of women. During this time of transition, the key for soldiers transitioning successfully back into society, and also the key for families transitioning successfully from the individual, soldier-like- or mission orientation to more of a settlement mentality, is the shift to a mentality that prizes building and working together to create the culture of peace, love and harmony. This is something that comes innately with a mother's heart.

That's why, when we look at our True Parents, not only do we have the strength and masculinity personified in our True Father, but we have the tremendous gift of True Mother, the beautiful woman by the side of True Father. She conveys all the qualities that will be necessary to bring about the kind of world we would like the next millennium to be.

The soldier-like mentality is very masculine, command centered, top-down. It's, "I command, you obey." But the great thing about our True Mother and the concept of our True Parents is that, "Yes. That is still there. The vertical is still there, but now comes the horizontal." Usually in women's leadership we're not so concerned about power and exercising top-down command. What we're more concerned about is communication and cooperation, working together to bring about the kind of change we would like to see.

Women tend to stress the importance of consistency. Communication, cooperation, and consistency pretty much mark what a really good mother would do in the home. When that's applied to an organization, like HSA or any other organization, it's going to seem a little bit weird or out of place in the beginning because everyone is used to top-down, command-and-obey leadership.

But now with the infusion of the feminine touch, we're asking people to understand the importance of communication and of not just myself being the leader and you being the follower. We're asking you to understand the importance of working together in cooperation to accomplish a goal that we would like to substantiate and being consistent about it so that together we can do the work required to carry it forward.

In order to be successful in anything, in order to make that smooth transition, we have to be a movement that is well integrated. The word integrate means to make whole or to unify. We have some good qualities that have come with our experience in the past that need to be continued. But we also need to be made whole and unified. Going forward there are going to be some changes that perhaps we've never experienced before, but it doesn't mean it's something we should be afraid to try or to unite with.

This is a time when we can make our lives whole, when we as those beautiful families can start being building blocks of our society so that we not only envision and dream and are inspired by the idea of creating God's kingdom, but we actually do the work as we live our faith day to day, one day at a time.

Surround Yourself With the Right People

I ask myself, how can we be successful and happy Unificationists? The Good Book has a wonderful passage in Psalms 1:1, "Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked, who do not take the path of the sinners or sit in the seat of scoffers, but happy are those who delight in the law of the Lord." This passage means that in order for us to create a beautiful culture supporting a beautiful lifestyle through which we can be fulfilled and satisfied eternal sons and daughters of God, there are a couple of things that we need to be mindful of.

Being a successful and happy Unificationist does not mean that the only thing we need to do is attend Sunday Service once a week for two hours, so that becomes what defines us as a successful, happy Unificationist. I don't think so. In order for us to be great Christians, to be great believers of any faith, we must make a choice. We have the 5-percent responsibility to be successful, to decide to be successful, and to decide to be happy. We have the ultimate choice. We are our own agent of change. We can determine our own destinies.

I think many of us are swayed by thinking the world is so difficult and wicked. "There are lots of sinners and scoffers out there. Why don't I just go with the flow, or succumb to that influence, just drift along with nothing to commit to? Life is just about floating along like bubbles in the air, and I'll just see what happens." This is not how we can become successful or happy in our lives.

If we really want to be successful at something, we have to exercise our choice and decide on our lifestyle. A life of faith is not something that you do just on Sunday. It's something that you do 24/7, seven days a week. We have to decide on the kind of lifestyle that will yield a successful and happy eternal son or daughter of God.

If we lead a lifestyle of constantly surrounding ourselves with people who complain or blame others, then we tend to be blamers and complainers ourselves. If we constantly surround ourselves with people who really don't want to do anything with their lives except waste them away, we tend to become that kind of a person.

If you want to change your lifestyle, you have to make that decision and surround yourself with people who are going to be positive and inspired influences in your life. If you are a fantastically talented artist thinking about a career in the arts, you're not going to spend your time in a crack house somewhere in the Bronx, thinking you have to hang out with all the other musicians who are doing drugs because that's how you're going to be a great musician.

If you really want to be a successful musician, you would practice your craft and surround yourself with artists who are better than you, who you want to be like. In that way you will be inspired to be the kind of person who lives a certain lifestyle so you can be successful in whatever career path you decide for yourself.

Another thing we have to be cognizant of if we want to be successful and happy in life is to tell ourselves that we will not be defined by the influences, but we will be defined by what God has given to us in our care, which is to be that divine son or daughter of God. If you succumb to the influence of friends who are going to rob the liquor store, get some money and liquor, and just party all night long, you would be deciding to live that kind of lifestyle, deciding to go with the flow.

People who decide to go with the flow usually do not amount to much. It's the people who have the willingness and confidence to stand up for what they believe in because they know that they are awesome people in the making, expecting a greater standard from themselves, who become successful in whatever they decide to do and ultimately achieve a happy life.

If we follow whatever the fad or fashion of the day is, we'll never be the leaders. We have to ask ourselves, "Do I want always to be a follower, or do I want to be ahead of the game? Do I want to follow the fad or do I want to anticipate the new fad that I might start or a new fashion or lifestyle that I can make popular?"

Instead of being constantly influenced to live a certain lifestyle, we can think about how we as that agent of change can be a great influence on the world. Only by deciding, thinking, praying, meditating, and then doing something about it by standing up for our beliefs and being willing to go the difficult extra mile to make ourselves what we would like to be, are we going to be successful.

10,000 Hours of Practice

Another highly important component for taking charge of our lives is commitment. It doesn't matter how wonderful a lifestyle we decide for ourselves. We can decide we want a certain lifestyle with a certain kind of planning and scheduling, and a certain destiny in mind, but regardless of how wonderful our plan is, if we don't remain committed to the lifestyle on a daily basis, we'll never get there.

This brings me to a fantastic book written by a gentleman named Malcolm Gladwell. The book is a best-seller called Outliers. In that book Mr. Gladwell talks about how if we are to be successful or happy in life, we have to do certain things. After doing years of research, studying myriad personalities in different sectors of business, entertainment, academia, and the arts, he came to an understanding that there's a golden rule called "10,000 hours." He learned that for a person to become a master at his or her craft, it usually took about 10,000 hours or approximately 10 years of life.

One of True Father's teachings over the years is that before you think about being the master of the world, think about being master of yourself. That's exactly what the book is pointing to. The third chapter of Outliers gives the example of great figures we all know – Bill Gates and the Beatles. He said that by studying their lives, we see that they have spent about 10 years, or 10,000 hours, honing their craft. Bill Gates' ability was ready to go when the opportunity came. You can't just have ability and you can't just have opportunity. In order to be successful and happy, your ability – meaning all the preparation, all the sweat and hours of persistence and practice – has to be in place before you meet opportunity and have a chance of being hugely successful.

Young Bill Gates and Paul Allen, founders of Microsoft

Bill Gates spent endless hours in his garage programming computers. He basically lived there like a hermit in a cave. That's what it took to prepare him and put him in a place where he was poised to meet his opportunity and become a highly successful human being.

The Beatles in Hamburg Germany 1960 - 1962

Likewise, when we hear about the Beatles, a lot of people think that they were an overnight sensation, four boys from Liverpool who just had some fantastic luck, and they made it big. "Well, no," says Mr. Gladwell. When you look at their background you realize they had a long history of playing seven days a week, eight hours a day. They started playing at a strip club where nobody was listening to them because everybody was looking at something else. So the Beatles were busy playing to an audience that did not hear them. But they kept on playing for eight hours a day. Can you imagine playing for an audience that really doesn't care and throws bottles at you? They did this seven days a week for approximately 10,000 hours, starting in Hamburg, Germany.

In that way they were able to become a really tight band that was poised, with the ability in place because they'd been practicing all those hours, so that when the opportunity came their way, they were ready. All the preparation made them ready to meet opportunity to become successful.

The Pressure of Fitting In

Likewise, when we think about the biblical verse, it says, "Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked, who do not walk the path of the sinners, or sit in the seat of scoffers, but delight in the law of the Lord." Basically it is saying that you will be happy and successful if you don't spend all your time following the advice of the wicked. For some, these "wicked" ones might be some not-such-good-quality friends who want to take you out and do things with you, and you follow them because it's much easier to do not-such-good-things with a lot of people than by yourself. This Bible verse is saying, "Think about taking the advice of the wise." Perhaps it will be a smarter thing to listen to your parents, your mentor, or somebody older than you who truly has your best interests at heart.

Those friends who are stealing you away for a good time do not necessarily have your best interests or your future in mind. They just want to use you for a good time, and they're not really thinking about the consequences of their actions or your actions. So instead of following the advice of the wicked or not-such-good-advice from people who are questionable, you need to stay focused on the advice of the wise instead of following the path of the sinner.

Going through the teenage years, all of us have at one time or another felt like a total nerd. What I mean by that is feeling totally alien to this world, like we don't fit in anywhere. We look around, we go to school, and we're wondering, "Who are these people? Why am I here? I just don't fit in." Many of us at one time or another have felt like an alien in the midst in our lives.

When we're going through adolescence, one year we were wearing glasses and were a total bookworm, and then the next year we start getting taller and start developing breasts and butts, and boys start noticing us and then we're really thinking, "Wow, am I all that?" And we start thinking, "Does this mean I should do something? Or maybe I should just waste my life playing the way the rabbit played." You know the story about the hare and the tortoise, right? The hare was way out front, but he decided to play around and wait around for the tortoise, not realizing that the slow, persistent, and consistent worker usually wins the game.

Usually in that time when we're feeling really nerdy, there's so much temptation to just fit into a group. I think high school is the worst, and it's known for cliques. If you don't fit into a clique, you feel like a total weird moron, and you're always wondering how you can fit in. If you're not an inspired human being who understands you have a certain destiny, it's so tempting to do whatever it takes to fit into that group.

The movie Back to the Future has several sequels in which we get to see what happens to these uber-cool people and uber-hot people in high school. If they don't make anything of themselves because they're relying on what they think is the most important, which is the physical attributes of their youth, then the fast-forward through a couple of series, shows us that the uber-cool kids are actually the losers in life because they were busy trying to be somebody that they were not.

I think a lot of young people feel tempted to do something that they would not naturally do because they're trying to be something they're not, trying to fit into something that they don't really want to belong to but just want to try it out because it's the cool thing. It's the fashionable thing. It's the right clique.

I myself was one of the nerdy adolescents, wanting to try out the things that I know were not good for me, just because I wanted to fit in. But instead of walking the path of sinners, our Heavenly Father and Mother want us to walk the path of winners to be eternally happy sons and daughters of God. Our Heavenly Father and Mother are asking us to be winners instead of sinners.

Once a Scoffer, Usually a Scoffer

When the Bible says, "Do not sit in the seat of scoffers," what are scoffers? They're people who sit on the sidelines, deriding, mocking and making fun of people. The scoffers might be our parents, they might be the first-generation, or they might be other second-generation friends. Somehow the scoffers think they are better. Basically they are people who are extremely arrogant, not realizing that we're all divine children of God.

The scoffers will mock, make fun of, and literally devour. That's another meaning of scoffer. Scoffers are people who devour, who consume without really thinking what they're doing to another person. The Bible is instructing us not sit in the seat of scoffers, meaning in high school or middle school not to join a clique or one of the different camps, or in college, not to hang out with the kids who just make fun of things, talk badly of people, blame everything for their life problems, and laugh at the world, not realizing that if they continue to live this lifestyle they will be nothing but a scoffer in the end.

God does not want us to sit in the seat of scoffers, deriding, making fun of our own church, blaming the church or our parents, or tearing people down. We need to realize that when we associate with that kind of clique or group, yes, we're a part of that group and we can join them in making fun of others, but the minute we leave that clique, guess what? They're going to do the same to us. It's a common pattern: Once a blamer, usually a blamer later in life; and once a complainer, usually a complainer later in life.

So if you enjoy only the company of people who make fun of, deride, blame, and persecute others, then you yourself are not just taking part in that; you're setting yourself up so that if for whatever reason these scoffers decide they don't like you, they're going to do the same to you.

We are reminded of the importance of surrounding ourselves with the right kind of people, deciding to sit in the right seat, and deciding not to sit in the seat of scoffers who tear everything down. We are reminded of the importance of choosing to sit in the seat of a victorious, successful, and healthy eternal son or daughter of God. In a larger sense, this Bible verse is highlighting the importance of choices in our life.

Becoming a Person of Integrity Takes Work

As we go on this journey called life, many of us may feel totally a victim of our family or our situation. But the Bible is reminding us that, no, we are not a victim as long as we decide to exercise our 5-percent responsibility to make the right kind of choice to delight in the law of the Lord. And the law of the Lord means the framework or the boundary that God has set out for us, in which we can learn to be grateful and go forward.

We know that if we want a healthy lifestyle or a beautiful body, there are certain things that we may have to change about our nutritional intake so we can be the beautiful body that we would like to have. Likewise, we realize that in order to become a successful and happy person, who is truly a master of oneself, then just as it takes approximately ten years and 10,000 hours to produce something like the Beatles or somebody like Bill Gates, it takes 10 years or about 10,000 hours to produce a man or a woman of integrity, a man or a woman who is worthy to be a divine eternal son or daughter of God.

A lot of people come up to me nowadays who are all excited about the Blessing that's coming up in February and they're asking me many questions. What I usually say is, "In order to be a great candidate for the blessing, you should be well prepared with ability that you have practiced for the last 10,000 hours, for the last 10 years of your life, so that when you meet your opportunity, your beautiful eternal spouse, through the Blessing, you can be better poised to be the wonderful spouse who can build an ideal family.

The teenage years, those 10 years of our life, are incredibly important in practicing to be a successful son or daughter of God. During these 10 years there are approximately 10,000 hours of work that we need to do – not just to be successful doctors or astronauts. It really doesn't matter what we do in life as a profession. Ultimately what we all desire is to find our beautiful soul mate, our eternal spouse and build a family. We all ultimately desire that.

This time during our teenage years is the time when we have to prepare ourselves and work at our ability to truly love another person. We need to work at the craft of living for the sake of others and the craft of understanding delayed gratification, setting goals, and doing the necessary steps in order to accomplish our goals. Only in that way will we be poised to meet the opportunity that God wishes upon all of us so that we can actually take part in building the successful and happy family of our own.

When I think about this biblical passage, I realize that what we do as human beings very much starts with our words. Many times our words define what our actions are going to be. The words define our actions, our actions define what our habits are going to be, our habits define what kind of character we're going to have as a person, and our character defines what our destiny is going to be.

This is what we need to concentrate on in the teenage years: being mindful that words lead to actions; actions lead to habits; habits lead to character; and character leads to destiny. Of course, as adolescents wanting to be bright-eyed and trying out many different things, there are going to be times when we mess up, and there are going to be times when we do silly things.

The Brotherly Heart of Heung Jin Nim

One of the things I was reminded of happened in the early 1980s when my older sister Ye Jin onni was entrusted with running the first Divine Principle workshop for True Children together with the Blessed Children. She really took it to heart, prayed about it, and prepared for it. She wanted it to be a great experience for all the Blessed Children involved. I was happy to be her second in command, and whatever she asked me to do I was willing to do. Together with my younger sister, we three wanted to run a successful workshop for Blessed Children.

At that time I had my younger brother, Heung Jin, who later passed away when he was 17 years old. He and I were particularly close. At the workshop I was so busy helping my older sister that Heung Jin, I think, went through something like separation anxiety. I was not giving him as much appreciation and time as I normally would have. He wanted to do something that would irk me.

During that time we were doing our prayer conditions, meeting every night. We had different groups and we would go to the holy rock at Belvedere and pray for hours. Many of the Blessed Children had spiritual experiences for the first time. A lot of them were suddenly opened to the spirit world; lots of them saw ancestors talking to them in dreams and visions. There were a lot of spiritual phenomena going on at that time.

But my younger brother decided to do something that took me and my older sister a long time to forgive. We returned from nightly prayer at the holy rock. We must have been out there for two or three hours, and by the time we came back it was pitch dark. For any of you who have visited the Belvedere main house, it's a cavernous, older house and at night things start creaking. The lights are dim in certain areas, and you swear you saw a ghost. Our walk back to the main house was the scariest thing in the dead of night. I was holding onto my two sisters' hands and we were so scared, slowly climbing up the stairs to where we were spending the night.

When we walked into the room, we flicked on the light, and my younger sister just screamed in horror. I was so frightened that I couldn't move. My older sister suddenly fell to the floor, saying, "Please help us, Heavenly Father." What we saw in the room was that every piece of furniture and decoration was reversed: The table was turned upside down; the lamps were turned upside down; the bed was turned upside down; the pictures were turned upside down; the light fixtures were turned upside down; the curtains were taken out.

We said, "What did we do?! We must have done something wrong! Heavenly Father is so angry at us." We didn't know what to do. Everybody was asleep and we didn't know what to do: Perhaps we should stay up and pray all night, and meet together the next morning and talk about it. Heavenly Father and Mother surely were not happy about something.

We decided to do a cold shower condition before we started praying. So even before we touched anything in the room – even all the pencils were turned upside down – we took cold showers with 21 shots of cold water on our shoulders. Then we came out and were like, "We have to pray hard and figure out what we did wrong and how we're going to have a better workshop." So we were praying vehemently.

In the middle of the night, you can hear a dense silence, but at the same time things squeaked, so the chills are running up and down your spine. Then we heard some footsteps and somebody pounding on our door. We thought, "God is here!" We were looking at each other, "You get the door." "No, you get the door!" We didn't know what to do about this banging on the door.

My sister said, "Let's do rock, paper, scissors to see who answers the door." And I lost, so I had to open the door! I was terrified. The room was turned upside down, and now there's some pounding on the door. When we called out, "Who is it?" nobody would say anything. We didn't know what was out there. It could have been a big-eyed monster ready to devour me the minute I opened the door.

I slowly opened the door, and as I opened the door I heard all these footsteps scuffling away. When the door opened, there stood one Blessed Child who really didn't know why he was standing there. He thought he was standing with a group of people, but there he was all alone. Everybody had disappeared.

I said, "Why are you here?" He was looking for his comrades-in-arms but they had all gone away. I said, "Why are you banging on the door?" He's like, "Uhhh, we have something to tell you." I asked, "Who is 'we'"? Later we found out it was my younger brother who engineered this thing just to give us a heart attack. He and a group of boys, while we were at Holy Rock, came into our rooms and turned everything upside down, just to freak us out.

This is an example of a silly thing that is funny now but it was deathly frightening back then. Many of us throughout our adolescence do stupid, silly things that when we look back at them we laugh about. I don't know how many times my friends have said, "Oh my goodness, when I was a teenager I got so drunk, I puked all over my parents." For them that's a funny story now, but it wasn't that funny back then. The wisdom of years gives us the ability to laugh about it, but at that time it was really heart-breaking and it was a grave offense.

The thing about my brother is – which is the reason I'm sharing this story – he knew that he messed up. He knew that he hurt his sisters a lot, and he knew he hurt us deeply.

What do you do in a situation when you've done something wrong but words are not enough – words and tears? Anybody can do that. But there has to be something more. Words have to be the vehicle through which actions come about. Actions have to be the vehicle through which good habits come about. Good habits need to be the vehicle through which great character comes about. And great character needs to be a vehicle through which great destinies are born and made.

The great thing I appreciate about my brother – and it took me some time to get over it – is that he sincerely went through the process of not just saying the words, "I'm sorry." That's just not enough at a time like that. What he did was say, "You know, guys, we really messed up. We really hurt our sisters. So let's show them that we want to change, we're willing to make amends, and we're going to go through the necessary steps to regain the trust of our sisters that we're not going to do this again because we realize how hurtful it was for everybody."

The boys started out wanting to make fun of all of us, but they realized how horribly hurt we were. In the end they were hurt, too, because they caused a lot of tears and grief.

My younger brother called the boys together and said, "We really messed up so we have to make amends. Saying, 'I'm sorry,' is not good enough." He did a seven-day condition of writing in a journal that was later given to his sisters as to why he was sorry. Seven days in a row. And on top of that he outlined in the book what he was going to do to make amends. He said, "We're going to do a condition of 21 days of cold showers."

My sisters and I saw this clear plan of action that was going to yield a better habit for these boys and that was going to make us feel they were doing something about it. Anyone can say, "I'm sorry," but if you're truly sorry, then your actions should reflect how you are feeling inside, and you will be willing to go through the difficulty of winning back the trust and loyalty that you've lost because you messed up or you've done something wrong.

My brother got all these boys to do a 21-day condition to clean the girls' room for the rest of the workshop. In that way he worked his way back to gaining our trust and making us feel like "Yes, he did something wrong. But he not only said he was sorry but he proved to us he was sorry." In that way it brought us closer.

Depending on how we react in a situation like that, it can allow us a great opportunity for either victory or failure. When we had that crisis-like event many years ago at the workshop, if our younger brother never really went out of his way to not just say, "Sorry," but to carry out action to rectify his mistake and make himself whole in the eyes of his sisters, we would never have felt like he meant it. We would have felt he did something silly and now he's just trying to find a quick way out. Instead we felt that he was sincerely contrite. It allowed us to become even closer.

I think whenever we have crises like these – and they come in various forms in families, in schools, in different organizations – we immediately want to just somehow make it go away. "Oh, it wasn't such a big deal. We'll do better next time." But if we don't allow people to be responsible for the consequences of their actions, and the people themselves are not willing to be responsible for the consequences of their actions, those people will never really grow, learn, and mature as ideal adults.

Therefore, if we can seize upon difficult moments like that, seeing them as an opportunity to make something better, to learn or to grow from them, those moments can be a deeply bonding experience that is better for all parties involved.

"You Are Truly Beautiful"

Brothers and sisters, we as a growing movement, transitioning from the soldier mentality into civilian life, from individuals to families, have a lot of work ahead of us. But the great thing about our lives at this time is we have our True Parents with us, and they are ringing the bell of the breaking news, saying, "Brothers and sisters, this is the time. When we truly unite with our Heavenly Parent and our True Parents, there is nothing that we cannot accomplish, that we cannot substantiate in our lives."

Despite how difficult each and every one of our journeys may be – and we will have our highs and lows, our up curves and down curves, our different trials and tribulations – we can have the right frame of mind and realize that happiness is something that we decide to do for ourselves. We just need to decide to tell God, "No matter what, you're the one I turn to all the time. No matter what, True Parents, you are the ones I turn to all the time. And no matter what, brothers and sisters, you are the ones I turn to all the time."

Then we can begin to realize that instead of feeling somehow we are nerds and we don't fit in, or we feel outshined by everyone else and maybe there's really no meaning in our life because we're worthless particles of dust floating in the air, we can be the change that we want to see in the world, the light that we want to see in this world.

As long as, just like a light bulb, we are plugged in to that heavenly socket that transmits the heavenly circuitry of true love, then we realize that we don't have to look elsewhere to find warmth. We ourselves are the very light that is meant to cast brilliant warmth, light, and love into the world.

Brothers and sisters, you are truly beautiful. You are truly unique, and you are eternal sons and daughters of God. Expect a higher standard from your lives because you are those awesome creatures that God has desired us all to be. If you can just concentrate on working on yourself, to be the master of yourself, dedicating 10 years of your life to make solid preparation for the future by working on the passion that is calling you, giving it 10,000 hours, as Malcolm Gladwell says, then you will be the master of yourself. In order to be a true artist, you have to be able to conquer mind over body and be willing to apply yourself in your craft so you can truly be a great artist and master in your chosen area.

Please remember our True Parents in your heart and in your prayers. They will be joining us soon. During this holiday season also be mindful of the last three months being precarious. Please buckle down and remember to give that hug and a kiss to your loved ones, and always maintain a heart of gratitude. Whether we are happy or whether we are successful really depends on you and me being that agent of change.

So God bless, and thank you.

Notes:

Born To Be Wild
By Mars Bonfire - Steppenwolf

Get your motor runnin'
Head out on the highway
Looking for adventure
In whatever comes our way

Yeah, darlin'
Gonna make it happen
Take the world in a love embrace
Fire all of your guns at once
And explode into space

I like smoke and lightnin'
Heavy metal thunder
Racing in the wind
And the feeling that I'm under

Yeah, darlin'
Gonna make it happen
Take the world in a love embrace
Fire all of your guns at once
And explode into space

Like a true nature child
We were born
Born to be wild
We can climbed so high
I never wanna die
Born to be wild
Born to be wild

Get your motor runnin'
Head out on the highway
Looking for adventure
In whatever comes our way

Yeah, darlin'
Gonna make it happen
Take the world in a love embrace
Fire all of your guns at once
And explode into space

Like a true nature child
We were born
Born to be wild
We can climbed so high
I never wanna die
Born to be wild
Born to be wild

Psalms, chapter 1

1: Blessed is the man
who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,
nor stands in the way of sinners,
nor sits in the seat of scoffers;

2: but his delight is in the law of the LORD,
and on his law he meditates day and night.

3: He is like a tree
planted by streams of water,
that yields its fruit in its season,
and its leaf does not wither.
In all that he does, he prospers.

4: The wicked are not so,
but are like chaff which the wind drives away.

5: Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,
nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous;

6: for the LORD knows the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked will perish. 

Sermon Notes -- November 27, 2011

In Jin Moon

1. In Jin Nim began be greeting everyone

2. Good morning brothers and sisters. It's so good to see everybody. Did everybody survive the Thanksgiving feast, the turkey and stuffing and gravy and all the desserts? I had a lovely Thanksgiving at the (Lovin Life) Learning Center (43rd St) together with GPA (Generation Peace Academy). The whole Gavin family was busy in the kitchen preparing a delicious feast for all of us. I thoroughly enjoyed not having to work in the kitchen. For the first time I realized what it feels like to be a child again. I felt so well taken care of by the Gavins and all those who volunteered to help in the kitchen. It was such an incredible time for me because I got to spend some time with our kids.

3. They (GPA) have been quite busy the last couple of months preparing for our True Parents birthday celebration. It will be a huge birthday celebration, a couple of months from now in Korea. Our True Parents invited all the different countries of the world to send in a video of their best choir. Father and Mother would like to preside over what initially started out as a choir competition, which has now been expanded to include plays and different types of music and dance. It's going to be an artistic competition in Korea.

4. I had the great fortune of working with the Blessed Children in Japan for over a decade with the Youth Concerts for World Peace. When I first went to Japan many many years ago I really wanted to support the importance of art and the children's education. Because, whenever you endeavor to be the best artist there are certain things that come into play. You have to understand the meaning of late gratification, how to set both short and long-term goals, and to really commit yourself to discipline and to the process to become that great artists, to accomplish those short and long-term goals.

5. When we first started in Japan we didn't have a great deal of financial resources to invest in the second generation of Japan. But, when I looked at these beautiful kids, they already had the gift within. God gave them wonderful vocal cords that, with the right kind of discipline and encouragement, could become phenomenal singers in a beautiful choir. So, for the course of more than 12 years, Japan has really grown beautiful choirs and every year at the youth concert hundreds of choirs from all around Japan compete to be able to perform at the Youth Concert.

6. By the ninth or 10th year these kids became so good and so well versed in their choirs, the embassy row in Japan began to take note. So, even though Japan is still a country that refuses our True Father an entrance visa, they could not ignore the beauty of our second generation blessed children choirs. And so they began to be invited to the embassy row and performed for different ambassadors, dignitaries, and VIPs coming to Japan.

7. We realized that in this beautiful choir we had great ambassadors for peace. They became the face of our movement. They became the face of our True Parents. They became our face to the people of Japan and to all the dignitaries that were invited and had the honor to be entertained by these angelic voices.

8. And then they went on to do greater works by really practicing living for the sake of others by not just entertaining the dignitaries, but really thanking the ancestors of Japan – the Elders of Japan by bringing a little bit of heaven to people who were in old folks homes waiting to die. When these beautiful faces, 10, 11, and 12-year-old kids, come and really took all day long to spend time with the elderly – playing games with them, making origami with them, touching them, holding them and hugging them, and performing for them. All these people just waiting to die feel like God has sent them a little piece of heaven and God has sent them a vision of how beautiful their country of Japan can be. They can see the beauty of the future of Japan in these children.

9. It has always been my dream, we cannot just do this in Japan, but really all over the world. And so this international competition really gives us, the American movement, the opportunity to partake of this. And so, when I first started with the thought of creating Lovin' Life Ministries – I brought Brian Saunders over to build up our choir. I hoped that he could really create a choir like these mothers and professional woman have done with the BCs (Blessed Children) in Japan. But with the difficulty of running the Ministry and every artist has their own angst and issues and childhood tribulations – I felt remiss in thinking that, "you know we are well on our way to becoming a great ministry, but gee, I wish we had a great choir." And then this notice came from Korea calling for an international competition.

10. I remember watching a video long time ago that I showed to the Japanese Blessed children about how incredible the American Blessed children were. This was a video of a Blessed children's choir from Seattle. I always had this choir in mind, and it was this image of these beautiful American Blessed children – that really inspired the Japanese children to try their best, because they wanted to be the best representatives of their country.

11. And so I thought, "wow, for this choir competition, instead of bringing together all the adults, wouldn't it be wonderful if we could expand the idea of the choir that existed in Seattle, but really bring it home – and turn GPA into the home of the future Unification Church Tabernacle Choir?" You know the Mormon Church has their Mormon Tabernacle Choir that is the envy of the world. And whether you agree with their faith or not you cannot help but admit that their choir is incredible – awe-inspiring. So, how wonderful if we could do the same at the GPA where the kids have an opportunity to figure out who they are, really come to own their identities, to own their destinies, and to really decide to do something with their life – and while they are here really go through the process of growing through the difficulty of preparing for their future life in college or as a young adult, so that they can do incredible things.

12. So when I explored a little bit further who this woman was, I found out that she is Mitsiru's mother, the lovely lady that you see every Sunday playing the viola. She came over and started working with the kids. When she first worked with the kids she said, "This is going to be really difficult. I play them a note. I ask them to sing it back to me, and I get three or four different notes." She realized that she had a great deal of work to do, but with the heart of a mother, with a heart really investing in the future, really wanting to make our children shine – she together with Mitsiru, a mother-daughter team, did a phenomenal job. When they gave me a taste of what people can expect in Korea, I was totally floored. I was so amazed. I want to give the GPA a round of applause for a great work and I am hoping, with continued effort over the next couple months, with continued effort we will be able to bring the grand prize home as the winner of the competition.

13. Although I spent 12 years with the kids in Japan, I am somewhat biased right now. It'll be wonderful to see our American second generation bring the trophy back home. But I reminded them at the Thanksgiving feast, they have some really stiff competition. They (Japanese) beat the little angels. Not only that, but they have the "cute factor" going for them. GPA are 17, 18, 19, and 20. These kids are 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9. So, they are incredibly cute. Just by the cute factor alone they can win any prize, but then on top of that, they sing like angels. And the amount of investment they put into each song – their whole body sings. When you see their faces, not just their eyes, but their mouth, and their tongue, and their cheeks, everything sings. As a member of the audience you can't sit there without being amazed and moved and inspired. So, GPA, you have stiff competition ahead of you, so keep on practicing.

14. I was sharing with them, here we are celebrating Thanksgiving. It's that time of Thanksgiving turkey and great desserts – time to let your waistband go a couple inches. And we have Christmas and New Year's and all of the celebration around the corner. But we also know the holiday season is a time when emotions run incredibly high. It tends to bring out the best in the family and the worst in the family. So, anybody who enjoys going to Loew's theater for movie entertainment, I am sure you are well aware of all the Christmas movies about family and about how a protagonist might not be too keen on seeing particular relatives or family members – and the angst that one goes through just to prepare one's self to get to that family event – or the different kind of issues that were not resolved and the different kind of conflicts that have been in that family for many many years, is something that many of us do not look forward to.

15. I know a lot of people, and I'm sure many many people in New York City feel the same way when they think about Christmas holidays or the holiday season in general. For a lot of young people this is a very difficult time because it's the end of the year, the New Year is around the corner, they want a sense of closure, they want a sense of feeling of achievement, but if their year has not been a good one for them, they can easily get lost in the feeling of being ignored or neglected or feeling worthless, or in the words of some of the youngsters I've worked with, feeling like an invisible tree.

16. Many of them suffer with a great deal of depression and they don't know who to go to, who to talk to. They don't know how to seek help. Many times the family just does not know what to do with young people who are going through or are in the throes of dealing with depression. I'm sure the American movement is well aware of the tragedy that took place with a family in New Hampshire where a young man decided to take his own life.

17. When you look at young people, the history or the background of why they decided to take their own life, you realize it is not an isolated event. It is not a one-time impulse that turned into somebody losing their life. You realize that there is a whole history behind the person, the disturbed person who takes their own life. And you realize that many many times the signs, the warning signs, appear very early on.

18. When we are talking about teenage suicide and teenage death, many times the warning signs can be seen as young as 10, 11, or 12. In particular 12. And we realize that in a religious community like ours, where we really believe and really want to accomplish a healthy and a beautiful world, building ideal families – we realize that it is first and foremost a great responsibility and burden to take upon.

19. And many of us, myself included, simply did not feel ready to be parents, in that nobody gave me a manual on how to be a parent. Nobody gave me a manual or sent me to a workshop that taught me how to deal with all the issues that might arise in raising a child or in raising a family or dealing with the issues that arise in a family. All of us, we try our best with what we have, not realizing that we haven't really been given the full set of tools to really deal with all the issues.

20. And, when a tragedy happens like this, the interesting thing about the end of the year – our True Parents have always stressed the importance of the last three months of the year –is the time when things come to a close in preparation for the new spring, or the New Year, or the new heavenly fortune that awaits. And so it's time to take stock, to be introspective, to be respectable of the year that has passed in preparation for the year that is to come.

21. But this last three months tends to be the most precarious in that so many things are taking place, so many emotions are running high. And again, the holiday season brings out the best in families and the worst in families. Many of us would like a perfect family, perfect in the way we understand what perfection means. And everybody understands perfection in their own unique way. But when a young person feels trapped in a family that he or she feels is not perfect, or he or she feels they do not belong to, or he or she feels neglected by, then the child feels totally lost. And when the child does not have a strong inner core or a relationship with Heavenly Father or with our True Parents or with the church community, the child can so easily lose hope.

22. I think we as parents, first and foremost, our prayers and thoughts and well wishes go to the family that has lost their loved one. But, we realize that we as parents many times find ourselves in this situation that is tragic – and we don't know what to do. We don't know how to deal with what just took place. We don't know how to rid ourselves of the blame that we put upon ourselves. We don't know how to concentrate on the future, maybe on the rest of the family that exists, that needs to be taken care of, how to deal with our lives in the context of a larger community called our movement. Sometimes these questions are incredibly difficult for families hit with a tragic event like this.

23. When we realize that we as parents, we as children, we as brothers and sisters of this movement, have been hit with a tragedy – you know whenever somebody faces a tragedy there is this immediate desire to blame someone. To blame something. "This took place because this person was to blame, or that person was to blame, or their ancestors were to blame, or the parents themselves neglected a lot of the warning signs and they are to blame." And I know that parents in this situation go through a series of these, what I call the blaming game.

24. And many parents, first and foremost, they blame themselves. "What could I have done? My child is rebellious. My child is addicted. My child is sick." And they immediately blame themselves thinking that for some reason everything that the child does is somehow their responsibility.

25. But we as a community need to understand that it's wonderful for the parent to start the grieving process by looking in and wanting to take the blame onto their shoulders, but when you look at a young person's life – and this is a 20 year old adults – you realize that the child also has responsibility that was not met. And, yes there could be a myriad of other reasons why something like this took place, but it's not just the parents' problem.

26. And I think many times in this situation, parents or different family members immediately look towards the generational family to blame. For instance, "my father and mother were alcoholics and therefore I'm an alcoholic. My mother or her aunt tried to attempt suicide and therefore I will attempt to commit suicide." We've seen this all throughout history. When Adam and Eve were caught by God and God asked them, "why are you hiding?" It was another example of each blaming the other. Adam blaming Eve, Eve blaming the serpent, and even their children, Cain and Abel. Cain blaming Abel for being the favorite one, and Cain blaming Abel as to why his sacrifice was not accepted by God.

27. We realize that this thing called the blame is an incredibly dangerous and a difficult thing to overcome. And when we look at families that are kind of stuck in blaming the generations, or their ancestors, or their family, we realize that this is the kind of a family that cannot look forward in life. Many times life, when we are going or driving down the path of life, it is almost like driving a car in that we have to be cognizant of where we are going. We have to be looking forward to where we are going, to our goal, to our destination. But at the same time we have to be aware of the side mirrors that tell us where we are in the course of our lives. We have to know where we are and who we are. But also when you are journeying you have the rear view mirror that allows you to look back from time to time so that you can gauge the distance of your vehicle vis-à-vis the other vehicles that are coming your way. And so by monitoring where you are going, looking forward, assessing the side mirrors, knowing where you are in your life, and by looking at the rear view mirrors from time to time, then we can kind of gather an idea of where we are on the highway and proceed down the road.

28. But when we are stuck in this blaming game, many times blaming ourselves, many times blaming the ancestors or family relatives or the things that have gone before, it is all like driving down the highway going backwards, staring at the rearview mirror. If you continue driving looking at the rearview mirror, 70 or 80 miles an hour, first of all it is a very dangerous thing to do. Sooner or later you might get into an accident. In other words, when we are stuck on the past, not realizing or not keeping focus on where we are going, what our future is, what our destiny is, in light of the tragic circumstances that just took place, it's like driving down the highway only looking at the rearview mirror – in that we are stuck to our past, we cannot move away from our past to really see the glorious future ahead, to see that, "yes every tragedy that takes place in our lives is incredibly painful and difficult, but if we can learn from it, and if we can gain insights from it, if we can gain a certain level of wisdom, then we can become a stronger person that prepares us for the future and for the destiny that we are here to accomplish in our lifetime."

29. When you look at many families stuck in this blaming game, we realize that some of us are stuck in this idea of being a martyr in that, being a martyr is a very unhealthy – taking responsibility for others – that is really a detriment to your own well-being. In other words, somebody who is suffering from this martyr complex might be telling themselves, "Poor me. My poor life. Why was I born in this family? Why was I born so destitute with no prospects for the future?" Many African-Americans might have felt like this before the civil rights movement. "Why was I born black?"

30. We realize that when we decide to take responsibility for ourselves, instead of just seeing ourselves as just a prisoner of our fate or of that present circumstance, we realize that we can do incredible things. When an African-American decides and realizes, "I am no different than white Americans. God created me in His image and Her image just like my white brothers and sisters. I have the right to live my life as a dignified and divine being and I have the right to not blame my misfortune on my race or the history, but I have the right to look towards the future and my glorious destiny and to pull myself from the bootstraps and become that great person or that agent of change." It is this kind of thinking that allows a black man like Pres. Obama to sit in the White House.

31. It's not being resigned to our fate or our particular situation, but in understanding that we can still be that agent of change – that, instead of waiting for God to send this miraculous cure for all our ills and problems, God gave us the spirit within. In fact God resides in the very spirit that is within as it says in First Corinthians 3:16. Paul was talking to his Corinthians, saying, "do you not know that you yourself are God's temple? Do you not know that you are God's temple? That God's spirit lives, resides, and dwells in you?"

32. In a way we are not a product of a circumstance that we find ourselves in. Because, we realize that regardless of where we are born, what tragedies we find ourselves faced with, what difficulties are in our path, we realize that the Spirit of God resides within. And that, with God, if we truly believe that we are God's temple, then we almost have a duty and responsibility to live that holy life, to live that grateful life, and instead of feeling sorry for ourselves, thinking "poor poor pitiful me" or thinking if only my parents were this way, if only my friends were this way, if only my brothers and sisters were this way, if only my grandparents were this way – we realize that instead of blaming others for our misfortune, that because God lives within, we have the responsibility to live for the sake of others in that we can support, we can encourage, and we can inspire, by really tapping in to the divinity that is within us.

33. I always remind the people that I find stuck in this martyr complex, blaming everybody else for their misfortune, I say "if we are a true martyr, it doesn't matter how much we are suffering, or how much we are dying, or how much we are persevering, if we are a true martyr we would not be blaming others. We would continue to pray for others. We would continue to wish well-being of others. We would continue to want to empower others – while we are suffering, while we are dying."

34. When I was counseling this one couple – a young couple, the wife was suffering from what I call this martyr complex, this blaming complex. "I am miserable because you make me miserable (talking to the spouse). You are the reason I am unhappy. You're the reason why I'm miserable. You are the reason why I see no value in my life."

35. This young lady vocally articulated so much negativity of blaming, constantly blaming, a constant replay of why I am unhappy. "If only you were like this, and because you are not, you make me miserable." In a way she made her happiness contingent on somebody else's actions. In a way she was basically saying, "I am an independent woman. I want to do my own thing." But she made herself a prisoner in that relationship by making everything dependent on what the other was doing.

36. The sister kept on constantly blaming, and almost to the point where the last two years of their relationship she was basically saying, "Get out of my life. You're the reason why I'm miserable. If you're gone then I'll be happy. Get out of my life. I want a divorce." In the last two remaining years of their relationship she pushed, pushed the husband to get a divorce. But then when the husband could not take it anymore, because she was locking him out of the house, she was saying horrible things – blaming him for all the problems to all her friends and the community and so on – so much so that this man couldn't take it anymore – and so he said, "fine, you want a divorce I will give it to. You want a divorce and I will give it to." Then she turned around and said, "How dare you! How dare you divorce me!" He said, "Excuse me?" And she said, "How dare you break the blessing! What kind of a member, an Unificationist are you?" All of these things came out. And the husband said, "You were the one asking me for a divorce." And she said. "How dare you! You come back here right now!"

37. But by then she had pushed the husband so much – she pulled a knife on him, threw dishes at him – this man had battle wounds. He could not see the hope of continuing. He felt that this woman needs to work on herself before any kind of a future can be had by both of them. She really needed to focus on not blaming everybody for her martyrdom complex, but really focusing in on herself, and realize that being on constant replay button as a tape recorder, as to why she is unhappy, she is actually becoming her own self-fulfilling prophecy, in that she was creating her own unhappiness by her inability to see – that by blaming, constantly blaming the other for all of her problems, that she was actually losing the very thing that she wanted so much.

38. I see this happen over and over and over again. And when the husband finally decided to leave then she decided, "You should have no right to my children." She said that they were "my children." Brothers and sisters, when you have kids they are not your children. They came about because of God, because of True Parents, because of the husband and the wife. There was a sperm and an egg at play here. Regardless of how difficult a marriage situation is, you cannot divorce your husband out of your children's life. A child came to exist because of the father and mother and regardless of what you're going through with your spouse you have to give each other the dignity to maintain that relationship with the child as a father and a mother. With the exception of extreme situations where incest is involved. Then we have to take other measures. But provided the father was not sexually abusing the children and was trying his best to be a father, the wife has no right to divorce the husband just because he pisses her off. In other words, regardless of how upset we might be in our own individual claims as to why we think we have the right to blame other people, we have to recognize things like children, wonderful precious presents from God. Children did not come into being just through us. It usually requires a man and a woman, a father and a mother. Therefore a child needs to be raised together by a father and a mother, regardless of what the spouses are going through, whether it's a divorce or separation or going through the process of working things out – the child needs access to both father and mother.

39. Because if you don't, and if the wife continues in this manner, she is actually going to end up ruining her own future relationship with her children. Her children are now young so she can pretty much tell them whatever she wants. She can tell them father's evil, he is awful, he broke the Blessing – without telling the child that she is the one who drove him to break the Blessing. And the mother might feel that she is in total control, but if she keeps this up the children will grow up and they will start asking where's my father, why is my father not here. And they will start seeking out their father and actually end up resenting the mother for keeping them away from their father. So at the end of the day the blaming game does not work. Because at the end of the day she is not only going to be the one losing her husband but she is going to be a very lonely woman losing her kids. When I see this incidence take place over and over and over again, I realized how incredibly detrimental and how much of a difficulty it is for families to deal with this thing called "The Blame"

40. I think a lot of parents in this situation, some of them take blame for themselves, take responsibility for themselves. Some parents refuse to take any responsibility for themselves. But many times in regards to the relationship between parent and child that child blames the parents for everything. Just as, it's never the right thing to say it's all one person's fault, likewise in a parent-child relationship it's never just all the parents fault, or its never all the child's fault. It's usually a blend of two things.

41. I know a child that came up to me and said, "I cannot stand my parents. I cannot stand them. They are evil. They are awful. I cannot talk to my father. I cannot talk to my mother. They are just horrible parents." But when you look behind the situation and look at the background you realize, perhaps the father was very very strict, because the child was going through the throes of addiction. The child was partying, taking drugs and alcohol, the child was not in school, the child was not being respectful.

42. So we realize that when you look at a situation in a family there are many many different reasons and many many different people at play that makes it very very difficult to say, "that person is to blame, or this person is to blame." Usually it's the combination of a lot of things.

43. And we realize that when a family is engulfed in this kind of turmoil we realize it didn't happen overnight. The family got their by practicing certain things. And the reason why I bring up the issue of blame is that, when you meet somebody who blames quite a bit or gossips quite a bit, you realize that it takes a lot of practice. Just like the sister who was on constant replay – of all her reasons why she was unhappy, you realize that she got there by practicing every day, to any willing ear, as to why she is unhappy. By blaming others she is teaching herself the reasons why she feels she has the right to be unhappy. In a sense, blaming people and gossiping about that person, takes a great deal of time and a great deal of practice.

44. When you meet a family member or a brother or a sister who tends to blame or assign blame outwardly to everything else except themselves, then you realize that this person has a long history of this constant replay. They have a long history of being this way. And they have a long history of being negative. And that is why it is incredibly difficult to see anything positive or anything rewarding about life.

45. One of the things that I used to always tell myself – I used to write this down in my diary – when I was growing up and I was living with my younger sister, she was a very difficult younger sister to live with. She was incredibly clean and incredibly tidy. And, even though we shared a room there was this invisible demarcation. "This is my bed, this is my part of the carpet, your footprint will not pass." If my footprints landed on her side of the room I would have to vacuum it right away.

46. And so I realize that many times she got me really really upset and I wanted to blame her right back. I wanted to say, "I cannot live a natural existence. I like my room tidy, but not sterile." I could not live a natural existence with a sister like that. I felt like I was living with an alcohol rub (you know, rubbing alcohol). Any piece of dust any piece of dirt was just wiped away. It was almost as if I did not exist in that room. I went through a period where I was incredibly upset and I really wanted to blame her, I wanted to get angry at her.

47. But then I realized, the more I did that, the angrier I got. And the more I blamed her in my head, the more negative I got. And I realized that the more I blamed, I was habitually teaching my brain to think negatively. By blaming others I was teaching myself to think negatively to a point where I could not be grateful for my life, I could not see any thanksgiving in my life. I found myself incredibly depressed.

48. Usually what I do when I'm faced with a difficult obstacle is I like to write. One of the things I wrote down for myself, that seemed to help me in this process of desiring to overcome this impulse to blame others – was I wrote this little sentence. I said, "blaming others leaves you perpetually lame." It leaves you, or me, or anybody, perpetually lame – in that you feel like you are handicapped. You cannot do anything but continue to blame, continued to be negative, continued to not see hope or meaning in your life. So blaming others leaves you perpetually lame.

49. You realize that only when you can really discover or uncover the inner flame within, with the courage to change – so instead of blaming others that keeps you lame, if we can uncover the inner flame, meaning the divinity within, with the courage to change, not change others, but with the courage to change yourself, that's the way you keep yourself ahead of the game. Ahead of the game, meaning all the things that life puts in front of you, all the trials and tribulations or the tricks that life might play upon you. That only by uncovering your inner flame, with the courage to change, meaning change yourself, will you stay ahead of the game – meaning all the things that life puts in front of you.

50. And that reminded me of the Bible verse where Paul said, "God resides, he dwells and he lives within you." So when I was confronted with this incredible desire to blame others, I asked myself, "how can I get myself out of this rut? How can I get myself to a point where I start looking towards the road I'm driving down and not be stuck in their rearview mirror, always stuck to my past, always stuck to what has gone on, always stuck in the reasons why I should be miserable.

51. Or, many blessed children, I think, going through adolescence, they want to do a lot of different things, but they might say to themselves, "my older brother and sister are doing it, so I should do it." Of "They are making my life miserable and therefore I will be miserable." In a way they are attributing their desire to do something on others and therefore feeling fine about doing it. In other words they're making excuse for what they are going to do by blaming others.

52. And I realized that I didn't want to do that. I didn't want to be a rebellious daughter just because my life was a public life, or I was born to a public family, or I had parents who were always living life serving the world. There are many many reasons as to why somebody in the True Family might want to blame everybody else, other than ourselves. But, I didn't want to do that. I didn't want to be a martyr. I didn't want to be blaming my parents. I didn't want to be blaming my ancestors or my relatives. I didn't want to be blaming the church. So, if I find myself in this difficult situation, regardless of what has gone in my life, "how can I make it better?" That is what I was asking myself.

53. And several things came to mind. I realize that when you come to a place where you've decided to make that change, to stop blaming others, take control of your life by really tapping into that inner flame, because as our True Parents said to us many times, "human beings are like a light bulb, this glorious light bulb that is lighting this room." But, if it's not connected to God or the spirit of God or the power of true love, you are not going to get this brilliant light that casts upon all of us in this room. Likewise if we are not tapped into God, if were not connected to God, regardless of how beautiful, how ornate a light bulb we might be, we'll never be able to emanate or cast that brilliant light upon the world that we were meant to do.

54. And so I realize that one of the first and foremost important things is to go back to the core, go back to the reason as to why I am here. Regardless of what I am going through in life, I realize the most important thing to keep in mind is, if you want to change your life from this stage of blaming everybody – to really being a grateful person, being a proactive person, being that agent of change that is going to make your life better, in a way, reveal your life to the glorious destiny that waits for you – you have to do a couple of things.

55. The first thing you have to do is you have to have a clear vision of what you want. You may find yourself in an un-ideal family, situation, or relationship. But in order to change, or get yourself from that relationship or from that rut of a family that you are in, we have to have a vision of what family we want to create, what kind of a family we want to build. In other words, we have to understand ourselves in a relationship with God. We have to understand why we are here. That God is our Heavenly Parent. That God created us, not to just suffer and wither away and persevere and die, but He really wanted us to be that brilliant light bulb casting that glorious light unto the world. And so we realize that when God created you and me, His eternal sons and daughters as divine creatures, that He had a vision for all of us. He had a vision of the kind of life that he would like all of us to enjoy and to feel fulfilled in.

56. And then we realize that when you have an understanding of what kind of a family, or you have a clear conception or a vision or a mission statement of what you want in your life – then we realize that the next step is to come up with a course of action or a plan. We have to have a clear plan in being able to identify what we do not want in our lives and what we do want.

57. So instead of blaming others, petrifying ourselves into a miserable state, we start looking at our individual circumstances and we say, "Okay this is a tough situation. These are the things I'd like to get rid of, but these are the things I would like to work on, and these are the things that I would like to see in my relationship or in my family." So you have a set plan by identifying what you don't want and what you want.

58. Then there has to be a sense or a commitment to be responsible, in that we are going to be responsible for the change in our life. We are going to be the agent of change, regardless of how difficult or how unbearable our situation is. If we have the vision, and we have the plan, and we are committed to being responsible – meaning, carrying out that plan diligently and with commitment, then we will be able to see the fruits of our labors.

59. And we realize that, when we say we are going to be responsible it means that, just like the way of blaming others and gossiping about others takes a lot of practice and lots of hours over coffee – you realize that living a proactive and a positive life where we can be the determinant of our own destinies, we realize that being responsible means, also practicing this every day. So, by being responsible we are agreeing to daily practicing. And many times the greatest form of practice is through prayer, by daily reminding ourselves why we are doing what we are doing, because we are committed to accomplishing the vision that we have set for ourselves. We have a plan of action. We know exactly what we don't want and exactly what we do want, we know what we need to do to get there – and by deciding to be responsible and committed to this process by practicing. So just as a practice blaming others and therefore creating this negative attitude towards life, what we need to do proactively is to practice thanksgiving and practice being grateful so that we can concentrate and practice on a daily basis – all the reasons why we need to be grateful and we need to be inspired.

60. This is the reason why, young men and woman of our movement, we need our parents. There was a black-and-white movie many years ago about the Lost Boys. It was basically a movie about a bunch of boys that were stranded on a mountaintop. You saw what life would be like without parents in these young boy's lives. And you realize that without a parental figure, without someone like the coach guiding them and supervising them, that these kids basically degenerated into what (Hobbs?) would call a savage like existence. They became savages in their desires. They wanted to kill each other. They wanted to destroy each other. And when you see movies like that you realize the importance of having a parental figure in our lives.

61. The thing about America is that it is such a great superpower. It is so great when it comes to its constitution, the checks and balances. It guarantees freedom and equal rights to all men and women. But if we do not understand the importance of having a centered vertical relationship with a parental figure like God, then we realize that even a great country like America can so easily degenerate into a country of amoral living and a life of not really knowing what the purpose, what your purpose is.

62. But if we can really be united with our parental figure, and that is really the reason why we need our True Parents in our lives. Because as great as we might be as children, we always need our father and mother.

63. And so I think a lot of the young men and woman feel, they know what needs to be done, they know the providence, they know what needs to take place, and only they can provide the solution for the future. But, without an understanding or a holistic picture of why we are here in the first place, regardless of how great we are as men and women, if we cannot acknowledge God in our lives, if we cannot acknowledge the importance of having a living paradigm of true love, like True Parents in our lives, we will never be fully expansive in our role as the great ambassadors for peace that we were all meant to be.

Sun Myung Moon and Hak Ja Han

64. In other words Heavenly Father and Mother gave us this living paradigm called True Parents in our lives, and as long as we can stay focused and united with them, and because they afford us such a great example of living for the sake of others – we knows they are not the kind of people that blame others for their misery. If anybody had a right to blame others for their misery I think my father and mother should have the first go at it. He has been imprisoned six times, thrown out for dead from a North Korean concentration camp, he was maligned, abused, and misunderstood for many many years. But this man never blames others. He takes responsibility for himself, and goes on to continue to lead a proactive life of wanting to empower and inspire and encourage his children to be the best that we can be.

65. And the same for our True Mother. The kind of suffering that this woman had to bear is unbelievable. Many many unspoken sufferings. Many many countless reams of toilet paper and Kleenex boxes that have fallen by the wayside through her tears. This woman is a woman who understands and knows suffering. But she never blames others. She never blames the past. She always encourages her children to look towards the future, to look towards the destiny that awaits them.

66. In a way, our True Mother has always encouraged the children. "You know, you guys did not grow up in the best environment in the early days of the church, but don't let the past hold you down. Look towards the future, the future that you can play a part in making." And so she always helped us look forward, being cognizant of the side view mirror, every now and then looking through our rearview mirror to remind ourselves of what has gone on, to learn from the mistakes of the past, and not be stuck in being resentful or being angry at the past, but learning from it, gaining wisdom from it, so we can really create our own power to propel us forward into that glorious destiny that belongs to you and me, to all of us as God's children.

67. So brothers and sisters in this time of great difficulty, not just the brother that passed away in New Hampshire, but we had another Blessed child, a 21-year-old, who took his own life. And again when you look at the family history you realize that there is a history, there are a whole lot of things that need to be worked out. Just recently in New Jersey we have a young girl attempting to take her own life because she was so severely bullied at her school. So when things like this take place, instead of blaming others, blaming the parents, blaming the teachers and friends or whoever, we need to take stock of where we are and where we are going to go.

68. And in this year for Lovin' Life Ministry, the banner in my mind is to really work on the ideal family, in dealing with all the issues that arise in the context of the family – to really help our movement become that glorious generation of peace, a generation that is worthy of this next millennium. And we very much want to highlight some of the issues that take place in the family setting. It is so unfortunate to have to do just that in light of what took place. But this is really a great opportunity for us to come together as a community and say, "yes, we find ourselves hit with a tragic circumstance or event, but instead of being locked into it or petrified by it, how are we going to be proactive? How are we going to keep our focus on the future and continue to make things better for our youth, or community, and for our movement?"

69. In order to do that I cannot stress the importance of maintaining the spiritual heritage of our movement. I think when you look at these examples we realize that it's 10 or 15 years in the making. To be honest, for the past 20 years our church has done many many great works in the name of service for peace, in the name of living for the sake of others, but we failed to invest in our people. We failed to invest in our youth.

70. The biggest problem that I recognized when I was preparing to go to North Korea is that – at Pyongyang they have all these fabulous façades of glorious monuments to Kim Il Sung, glorious monuments to their communist regime, all these high-rises, some higher than buildings in South Korea, but there is nobody there. And all these condominiums that are not inhabited by any people. You realize it is all a show, everything is a show of the power and grandeur of the communist regime. But you realize that without love, without an understanding of God, there is no desire to recognize each and every human being as a divine son and a daughter of God.

71. And when an organization or a movement or a regime does not invest in the people, and does not encourage and inspire the people to want to be their best, sooner or later that organization, that movement, or that regime will collapse from within. You see that happening over and over again in former Iron Curtain countries. And if we continue to concentrate on the grandeur of all the work that we are doing providentially by having all these glorious festivals and celebrations, but do not concentrate on the spiritual heritage from which we come from or the church that our True Parents found, or the meaning of the sacrament of how incredible the Blessing is, that it's a gift unto the world, then we will start crumbling within.

72. And we see that even within our own movement. We see that for the last 20 years we've not had growth. In fact we've had negative growth. We realize that many of the second generation are lost and have gone their own ways. We realize that if we do not invest in the future by investing in the people, by taking care of the people, by practicing compassionate living day to day – if we do not do this we will collapse from within.

73. And that is why we need a ministry. That is why we need a united ministry to remind us of that unity with our Heavenly Parent and are True Parents. It has to be the core. Without the core you will not have the inspired people. And if you do not have the inspired people occupying the great grand monuments, like the way they have in Pyongyang, sooner or later that regime will collapse.

74. Likewise, a lot of people have criticized me, "why are you concentrating on the young people? Why are you concentrating on the ministry? It should not be a ministry, it should be a service project movement." Absolutely not! Because if we just concentrate on the external's, of how we look to the world but we are not addressing the issues that we deal with on a daily basis, then sooner or later we are going to be no different from North Korea.

75. And so we need God in our lives. We need True Parents in our lives. And we don't have to waste our time proving whether we are eternal sons and daughters of God or not. Whether we are on the right path, we're on the wrong path, sooner or later we'll get back on the right path. And so, instead of trying to make excuses as to why we are on the wrong path, we need to concentrate on being united with our True Parents and go forward as one family under God!

76. So brothers and sisters be a proud Unificationist, be proud of your spiritual heritage, be proud of your parents. True Parents or my parents, they are your parents, they are our True Parents. So let's be that worthy ambassador of peace by being that incredible son and a daughter of God, that eternal son and daughter of God that is truly an embodiment of internal excellence as well as external excellence.

77. So please have a wonderful Sunday and God bless.

Notes:

1 Corinthians, chapter 3

1: But I, brethren, could not address you as spiritual men, but as men of the flesh, as babes in Christ.

2: I fed you with milk, not solid food; for you were not ready for it; and even yet you are not ready,

3: for you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh, and behaving like ordinary men?

4: For when one says, "I belong to Paul," and another, "I belong to Apol'los," are you not merely men?

5: What then is Apol'los? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each.

6: I planted, Apol'los watered, but God gave the growth.

7: So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.

8: He who plants and he who waters are equal, and each shall receive his wages according to his labor.

9: For we are God's fellow workers; you are God's field, God's building.

10: According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and another man is building upon it. Let each man take care how he builds upon it.

11: For no other foundation can any one lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.

12: Now if any one builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw --

13: each man's work will become manifest; for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done.

14: If the work which any man has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward.

15: If any man's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.

16: Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you?

17: If any one destroys God's temple, God will destroy him. For God's temple is holy, and that temple you are.

18: Let no one deceive himself. If any one among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise.

19: For the wisdom of this world is folly with God. For it is written, "He catches the wise in their craftiness,"

20: and again, "The Lord knows that the thoughts of the wise are futile."

21: So let no one boast of men. For all things are yours,

22: whether Paul or Apol'los or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future, all are yours;

23: and you are Christ's; and Christ is God's.  

Responding to Tragedy: Overcoming the Blame Game

In Jin Moon
November 27, 2011

Good morning. It's so good to see everybody. Has everybody survived the Thanksgiving feast? And the turkey and the stuffing and the gravy and all the desserts? Or are you still carrying it on with you? [Laughter.]

I had a lovely Thanksgiving at the Learning Center, together with the Generation Peace Academy (GPA). And Jatoma, together with his whole family – Jaga and Tammy, and I heard their parents were also busy behind in the kitchen – prepared a delicious feast for all of us. I thoroughly enjoyed not having to work in the kitchen. For the first time I realized what it feels like to be a child again because I felt so well taken care of by the Gavins and the people who volunteered to help in the kitchen.

The Youth Concerts for World Peace

It was such an incredible time for me because I got to spend some time with our GPA kids. They have been quite busy the last couple of months preparing for our True Parents' birthday celebration, a huge event a couple of months from now in Korea. Our True Parents recently invited all the different countries of the world to send a video of their best choir. Father and Mother would like to preside over what initially started out as a choir competition, which has now been expanded to include plays and different types of music and dance ensembles. So it's going to be an artistic competition in Korea.

I had the great fortune of working with the blessed children in Japan for over a decade with the Youth Concerts for World Peace. When I first went to Japan years ago, I wanted to support the importance of art in children's education. Whenever you endeavor to be the best artist, certain things come into play. You have to understand the meaning of delayed gratification, you have to learn how to set both short-term and long-term goals, and you have to be willing to commit yourself to the discipline and to the process to become a great artist to accomplish those short-term or long-term goals.

When we first started in Japan, we didn't have a great deal of financial resources to invest in the second-generation there, but when I looked at these beautiful kids, I could see that they already had the gift within. God gave them wonderful vocal cords that, with the right kind of discipline and encouragement, could help them become phenomenal singers in a beautiful choir.

Over the course of more than 12 years Japan has grown beautiful choirs. Every year at the youth concerts, hundreds of choirs all around Japan's prefectures compete to be able to perform at the youth concert. By the ninth or tenth year, these kids became so good and so well versed in their choir practices that the Embassy Row of Japan began to take note. Even though Japan still refuses our True Father an entrance visa, it could not ignore the beauty of our second-generation blessed choirs, so these choirs began to be invited to Embassy Row to perform for various ambassadors and dignitaries coming to Japan.

We realized that in this beautiful choir we had great ambassadors of peace. They became the face of our movement, the face of our True Parents. They became our face to the people of Japan and to all the dignitaries who were invited and had the honor to be entertained by these angelic voices.

Then they went on to do greater work by living for the sake of others, not just entertaining dignitaries but also thanking the elders of Japan by bringing a little bit of heaven to people in old folks' homes waiting to die. When these beautiful children 10, 11, and 12 years old come and take all day long to spend time with the elderly, playing games with them, making origami with them, hugging them, touching them, and performing for them, all of these people who are only waiting to die feel like God has sent them a little piece of heaven and a vision of how beautiful their country of Japan can be. They can see the beauty of the future of Japan in these children.

The Generation Peace Academy Choir

It has always been my dream to not just do this in Japan but also all over the world. This international competition gives the American movement an opportunity to partake of this. When I first started with the thought of creating Lovin' Life Ministries, I brought Brian Saunders to head up the choir with the hope he could create a choir like these professionals have done with the Blessed Children in Japan. But with the difficulties of running the ministry, and every artist having their own angst, issues, trials, and tribulations, I found myself thinking, "We're well on our way to becoming a great ministry, but I wish we had a decent choir."

Then a notice came from Korea calling for an international competition. I remember a video I showed a long time ago to the Japanese Blessed Children about how incredible American Blessed Children were. It was a video of the Sun Hak choir from Seattle. I always had this choir in mind. It was the image of these beautiful Blessed Children who inspired the Japanese Blessed Children to try their best because they wanted to be the best representatives of their country.

I thought, for this choir competition, instead of bringing adults, it would be wonderful if we expanded the idea of the choir that existed in Seattle and turned GPA into the home of the future Unification Church Tabernacle Choir. You've heard of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, which is the envy of the world. Whether you agree with their faith or not, you cannot help but admit that this choir is incredible, profound, and awe-inspiring. How wonderful if we could do the same at GPA, where the kids have an opportunity to figure out who they are, come to own their identities and destinies, and to decide to do something with their life, while preparing for their future life in college or as young adults.

When I explored a little further, I found out the Sun Hak director is the mother of Mitsuru, the lovely lady that you see every Sunday playing the viola. So Mitsuru's mother came and started working with GPA. When she first worked with them, she said, ooh, this is going to be really difficult: "I play a note, I ask them to sing it back to me, and they give me three or four different notes." She realized she had a great deal of work to do.

With heart of a mother to invest in the future, wanting to make our children shine, she and Mitsuru have done a phenomenal job. When they gave me a taste of what people can expect in Korea, I was totally floored and amazed. I want to give the GPA a round of applause for great work, and I'm hoping that with continued effort – you guys have a couple of months – we'll be able to bring the Grand Prize home as the winner of the competition.

Although I've spent 12 years with the kids in Japan, I'm somewhat biased right now and it would be wonderful to see our American second-generation bring the trophy back home. I reminded them at Thanksgiving they'll have really stiff competition. Last year the Japanese choir beat the Little Angels, and not only that, they have the "cute" factor going for them. The GPA members are 17, 18, 19, 20 years old. The Japanese choirs are 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 years old, and incredibly cute. Just by the cute factor alone they will win any prize.

But then on top of that, they sing like angels. And with the amount of investment they put into each song, their whole body sings. When you see their face, not just their eyes but their mouth and their tongue, their teeth – everything sings. As a person in the audience, you can't sit there without being amazed, moved, and inspired. So GPA, you have stiff competition ahead of you, so please keep on practicing.

Headaches of the Holiday Season

I was sharing with them, Here we are celebrating Thanksgiving, a time of family, turkey, and great desserts and letting your waistline go a couple of inches. And then we have Christmas and New Year's and all of this celebration around the corner. But we also know the holiday season is a time when emotions run incredibly high. It tends to bring out the best in the family and the worst in the family. Anybody who enjoys going to the movies for entertainment, I'm sure you're well aware of all the Christmas movies about family, about how a protagonist might not be too keen on seeing a particular relative or other family members and the angst that one goes through just to prepare oneself to get to the family event. Or the different unresolved issues and various conflicts that have been in that family for many years are things that many do not look forward to.

I know that a lot of people – and I'm sure many people in Midtown Manhattan – feel the same way when they think about Christmas holidays or the holiday season in general. For a lot of young people, this is a difficult time because it's the end of the year and the new year is around the corner. They want a sense of closure, a feeling of some achievement. But if the year has not been a good one for them, they can easily get lost in the feelings of being ignored, neglected, or feeling worthless: or, in the words of some youngsters that I've worked with, feeling like an invisible tree.

Many of them suffer a great deal of depression. They don't know who to go to or talk to, how to seek help. Often the family does not know what to do with young people who are in the throes of dealing with depression. You may be aware of the tragedy that took place with a family in New Hampshire where a young man decided to take his own life. When you look at young people and the background of why they decided to take their own life, you can see that it's not an isolated event; it's not a one-time impulse that turned into people losing their life. There's a whole history behind a disturbed person who takes his or her own life; many times the warning signs are seen early on, as young as 10, 11 or 12 years of age, in particular 12.

In a religious community like ours, where we want to accomplish a beautiful world, building ideal families, first and foremost it's a great responsibility and burden to take up. Many of us, myself included, simply did not feel ready to be parents. Nobody gave me a manual on how to be a parent, nobody sent me to a workshop that taught me how to deal with all the issues that might arise in raising a family. All of us try our best with what we have, not realizing that we really have not been given a full set of tools to deal with all the issues.

Overcoming the Blame Game

Our True Parents have stressed the importance of the last three months of the year. It's a time when things come to a close in preparation for the new spring, the new heavenly fortune that awaits. It's a time to take stock, to be introspective, to be respectful of the year that has passed in preparation for the year that is to come.

But the last three months tend to be the most precarious in that so many things are taking place and so many emotions are running high. Again, the holiday season brings out the best and also the worst in families. Many of us would like the perfect family – perfect in the way we understand what perfection means. Everybody understands perfection in a unique way. When a young person feels trapped in a family that he or she feels is not perfect or feels like he or she doesn't belong, then the child feels totally lost. When the child does not have a strong inner core or a relationship with Heavenly Father, our True Parents, or the church community, the child can so easily lose hope.

As parents, first and foremost our prayers, thoughts, and well wishes go to the family that has lost a loved one. We as parents many times face ourselves in this tragic situation, and we don't know what to do. We don't know how to deal with what just took place. We don't know how to rid ourselves of the blame we put upon ourselves. We don't know how to concentrate on the future, with the rest of the family that still needs to be taken care of, how to deal with our lives in the context of a larger community called our movement. Sometimes these questions are incredibly difficult for families hit with a tragic event like this.

When we as parents, as children, as brothers and sisters of this movement have been hit with this type of tragedy, there is an immediate desire to blame somebody or something: "This took place because that person was to blame, or their ancestry was to blame, or the parents themselves neglected a lot of the warning signs so they're to blame." I know that parents in this situation go through a phase of what I call the blaming game. Many parents first and foremost blame themselves: "What could I have done? My child was rebellious, my child was addicted, my child was sick." They immediately blame themselves, thinking everything their child does is somehow their responsibility.

As a community we need to understand that it's okay for the parents to start the grieving process by looking within, by wanting to take the blame on their own shoulders. But when you look at a young person's life – and this is a 20-year-old adult – you realize the child also has responsibility that was not met. Yes, there could be a myriad of other reasons why something like this took place, but it's not only the parents' problem. Often in this situation parents or different family members immediately look to the generational family to blame. For example, perhaps the father and mother were alcoholics and therefore the child is an alcoholic. Or a parent or parent's sibling attempted suicide, so therefore the child will attempt suicide.

We've seen this all through history. When Adam and Eve were asked by God, "Why are you hiding?" it was the first instance of each blaming the other: Adam blaming Eve, Eve blaming the serpent. And even with their children, Cain and Abel, Cain blamed Abel for being the favored one and Cain blamed Abel as to why his sacrifice was not accepted by God.

Blame is a very dangerous and difficult thing to overcome. When we look at families who are stuck in blaming the generations or their ancestors or their family, we see that this is the kind of family that cannot look forward in life. When we're going down the path of life, it's almost like driving a car in that we have to be cognizant of where we are going; we have to be looking forward to our destination. But at the same time we have to be aware of the side mirrors that tell us where we are in the course of our lives. We have to know where we are and who we are.

But also when you're driving, you have a rear-view mirror that allows you to look back from time to time, so you can gauge the distance of your vehicle vis-à-vis the other vehicles that are coming your way. By monitoring where you are going, looking forward, then assessing with the side mirrors where you are in your life, and by looking in the rear-view mirror from time to time, then you can gather an idea of where you are on the highway and proceed down the road.

But when we are stuck in this blaming game – many times blaming ourselves, many times blaming ancestors or relatives or the things that have gone before – it's almost like driving down the highway going backward, staring at the rear-view mirror. If we continue driving 70 miles an hour while looking in the rear-view mirror, it's a dangerous thing to do. Sooner or later we might get into an accident. When we are stuck in the past, not keeping focus on where we are going and what our future is in light of the tragic circumstance that just took place, it's like driving on the highway while only looking in the rear-view mirror. We are then stuck in our past, not moving away from our past to see the glorious future ahead. Yes, every tragedy that takes place in our lives is incredibly painful and difficult. But if we can learn from it, if we can gain insights from it, if we can gain a certain level of wisdom, then we can become a stronger person who is prepared for the future and for the destinies that we are here to accomplish in our lifetime.

Taking Responsibility for Ourselves

Some of us are stuck in the idea of being a martyr. It is very unhealthy taking responsibility for others and really is a detriment to our own well-being. People suffering from this martyr complex might be telling themselves, "My poor life! Why was I born in this family? Why was I born so destitute, with no prospects for the future?" Many African Americans might have felt like this before the civil rights movement: "Why was I born black?"

When we decide to take responsibility for ourselves, instead of just seeing ourselves as prisoners of our fate or our present circumstances, we realize we can do incredible things. African Americans have begun to realize, "I am no different from white Americans. God created me in his and her image, just like my white brothers and sisters. I have the right to live my life as a dignified and divine being, and I have the right to not blame my misfortunes on my race or its history. I have the right to look toward the future and my glorious destiny, to pull myself up by the bootstraps and become that great person and agent of change." It's this kind of thinking that allowed a black man like President Obama to sit in the White House.

Let's not be resigned to our fate or our particular situation, but rather understand that we can be that agent of change, that instead of waiting for God to send us a miraculous cure for all our ills and problems, let us know that God gave us the spirit within. In fact, God resides in the very spirit that is within, as it says in I Corinthians 3:16, where Paul said, "Do you not know that you yourselves are God's temple, that God's spirit dwells in you?"

We are not a product of the circumstance that we find ourselves in. Regardless of where we are born, what tragedies we find ourselves faced with, what difficulties are in our path, the spirit of God resides within. If we truly believe that we are God's temple, then we have a duty and a responsibility to live that holy life, to live that grateful life. Instead of feeling sorry for ourselves, thinking, "Poor, pitiful me, or, if only my parents were this way, if only my friends were this way, if only my grandparents were this way," we realize that instead of blaming others for our misfortune, God lives within us and we have the responsibility to live for the sake of others by supporting, encouraging, inspiring, and tapping in to the divinity within us.

I always remind the people that I find stuck in this martyr complex, blaming everybody else for their misfortune, that if we are true martyrs, it doesn't matter how much we are suffering, dying, or persevering. If we are true martyrs, we would not be blaming others. We would continue to pray for others. We would continue to wish well-being on others. We would continue to want to empower others while we are suffering, while we are dying.

The Blaming Complex Within a Marriage

I was counseling a young couple, and the wife was suffering from what I call the blaming complex, talking to the spouse, saying, "You are the reason why I am unhappy. You are the reason why I see no value in my life." This young lady vocally articulated so much negativity, constantly blaming, constantly replaying why she was unhappy. "If only you were like this, and because you are not, you make me miserable." She made her happiness contingent on somebody else's actions. She was basically saying, "I am an independent woman. I want to do my own thing." But she made herself a prisoner in that relationship by making everything dependent on what the other was doing.

This young woman kept on blaming, almost to the point where the last two years of their relationship she was basically saying, "Get out of my life. You are the reason I'm miserable. If you are gone then I will be happy. Get out of my life. I want a divorce."

For the previous two years of the relationship she pushed the husband to get a divorce. But when the husband couldn't take it anymore because she was locking him out of the house, saying horrible things, blaming him to all their friends and community for their difficulty, he said, "Fine. You want a divorce? Then I'll give it to you.

The minute this man said, "Okay, fine. You want a divorce? You can have it." Then she turned around and said, "How dare you divorce me!" The husband said, "Excuse me?" She said, "How dare you break the blessing! What kind of an Unificationist are you?" All of these things came out. Then the husband said, "You're the one asking me for a divorce." She said, "How dare you! You come back right now!"

By then she had pushed her husband so much. She pulled a knife on him and threw dishes at him. This man had battle wounds. He really could not see hope in continuing. He felt this woman needed to work on herself before there could be a future together for them. She really needed to focus on not blaming everybody for her martyrdom complex but realize that using the constant replay button as to why she is unhappy, she was actually becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy, that she was creating her own unhappiness by her inability to see that by constantly blaming the other for all of her problems, she was actually losing the very thing that she wanted so much.

When the husband finally decided to leave, she decided, "Okay, you should have no rights to my children." She called them her children. First of all, brothers and sisters, when you have kids, they're not your children. The children came about because of God, because of True Parents, because of the husband and the wife. There was both a sperm and an egg involved there. And regardless of how difficult a married situation is, you cannot divorce your husband out of your children's life. A child came to exist because of a father and a mother, and regardless of what you are going through with your spouse, you have to give each other the dignity to maintain that relationship with the child as a father and a mother, except in extreme situations, such as when incest is involved; then we have to take other measures. But provided that the father is not sexually abusing the children and is trying his best to be a father, the wife has no right to divorce the husband from the children just because he pisses her off.

In other words, regardless of how upset we might be in our own individual claims as to why we think we have the right to blame other people, we have to recognize that children – precious presents from God – did not come into being just through us. It requires a man and a woman, a father and a mother. Therefore, the child needs to be raised together by a father and a mother, regardless of what the spouses are going through – whether they're divorced, separated, or going through the process of working things out. The child needs access to both father and mother.

If the wife continues in this manner, she's actually going to end up ruining her future relationship with her children. Her children are now young, so she can pretty much tell them whatever she wants, such as "Dad is evil; he broke the blessing," without telling the children that she's the one who drove him to break the blessing. The mother might feel she's in total control, but if she keeps this up, the children will grow up and they will start asking, "Where is our father, why is our father not here?" and they will start seeking out their father and actually end up resenting the mother for keeping them away from him.

The blaming game is not going to work because at the end of the day she's not only going to lose her husband, but she's going to be a very lonely woman by losing her kids.

Blaming Takes Practice

When I see these types of incidents take place, I realize how detrimental, how much of a difficulty it is for families to deal with blame. Often in regard to the relationship between parents and children, the children blame their parents for everything. Just as it's never the right thing to say it's all one person's fault, likewise in a parent-child relationship it's never just all the parent's fault and never all the child's fault. It's usually a blend of two things.

A child recently came up to me and said, "I cannot stand my awful parents. I cannot talk to my father: I cannot talk to my mother. They're horrible parents." But when you look behind the situation and see the background, you might see that perhaps the father was very strict because the child was in the throes of addiction, or the child was not in school, or the child was not being respectful.

When you look at a situation in a family, there are many different reasons and different people at play, which makes it difficult to say only this or that person is to blame. Usually it's the combination of a lot of things. When a family is engulfed in this kind of turmoil, it didn't happen overnight. The family got there by practicing certain things.

When you meet somebody who blames quite a bit or gossips quite a bit, you realize that it takes a lot of practice. Just like the wife who was on constant replay of all her reasons why she was unhappy, you realize that she got there by reciting every day to any willing ear why she's unhappy. By blaming others, she's teaching herself the reasons why she feels she has the right to be unhappy. Blaming people and gossiping about someone takes a great deal of time and a great deal of practice.

When you meet people who tend to assign blame outwardly to everything else except themselves, then you realize that they have a long history of this constant replay. They have a long history of being this way, and they have a long history of being negative. That's why it's incredibly difficult to see anything positive or anything rewarding about life.

"Blaming Others Leaves You Perpetually Lame"

Growing up, I shared a room with a younger sister who was difficult to live with. She was incredibly clean and tidy, and even though we shared a room, there was almost an invisible demarcation: "This is my bed, this is my part of the carpet. Your footprint will not pass." If my footprints landed on her side of the room, I would have to vacuum the carpet right away.

Many times she got me really upset, and I wanted to blame her right back. I wanted to say, "I cannot live a natural existence. I like my room tidy but not sterile." I could not live a natural existence with a sister like that. I felt I was living with alcohol rub – any piece of dust, any piece of dirt was wiped away. It was almost as if I didn't exist in that room.

I went through a period when I was very upset. I really wanted to blame her, and I really wanted to get angry at her. But then I realized that the more I did that, the angrier I got. And the more I blamed her in my head, the more negative I got. The more I blamed, the more I was habitually teaching my brain to think negatively. By blaming others I was teaching myself to think negatively, to a point when I could not be grateful for my life. I could not see any thanksgiving in my life. I found myself incredibly depressed.

Usually what I do when I'm faced with a difficulty or obstacle is I like to write. One of the things I wrote down for myself that seemed to help me in this process of desiring to overcome this impulse to blame others was this sentence: "Blaming others leaves you perpetually lame." It leaves you or me or anybody perpetually lame, in that you feel like you're handicapped. You cannot do anything but continue to blame, continue to be negative, continue to not see hope or meaning in your life. Blaming others leaves you perpetually lame.

You realize that only when you can really discover or uncover the inner flame within, with the courage to change. So instead of blaming others who keep you lame, if you can uncover the inner flame, meaning the divinity within, with the courage to change – not change others, but with the courage to change yourself – that's the way you keep yourself ahead of the game, meaning dealing with all of the things that life puts in front of you, all the trials and tribulations or the tricks that life might play upon you.

Only by uncovering your inner flame with the courage to change do you stay ahead of the game. That reminded me again of the Bible verse where Paul said that God dwells and lives within you.

When I was confronted with the desire to blame others, I asked myself, how can I get myself out of this rut? How can I get to a point when I start looking toward the road I'm driving down and not be stuck in the rear-view mirror, always stuck to what has gone on, always stuck to the reasons why I should be miserable?

Connect to God's Circuitry

Many Blessed Children going through adolescence want to do a lot of different things. They might say to themselves, "My older brother and sister are doing it, so then I should do it." Or, "They are making my life miserable, so therefore I will be miserable," attributing their desire to do something to others, and therefore feeling fine about doing it: in other words, making an excuse for what they're going to do by blaming others.

I realized I didn't want to do that, to be a rebellious daughter just because I was born to a public family or I had parents who were always living life by serving the world. There are many reasons why somebody in the True Family might want to blame everybody else other than ourselves, but I didn't want to do that. I didn't want to be blaming my parents, or my ancestors, or my relatives. I didn't want to be blaming the church.

If I find myself in a difficult situation, regardless of what has gone on in my life, how can I make it better? That's what I asked myself. And several things came to mind. When you come to a place where you decide to make that change, to just stop blaming others, to take control of your life, you can tap into your inner flame. As our True Parents said to us many times, human beings are like light bulbs, like those lighting this room. But if you're not connected to the spirit of God or the power of true love, you're not going to get the brilliant light that casts upon all of us in this room.

Likewise, if we're not connected to God, regardless of how beautiful, how ornate a light bulb we might be, we will never be able to cast that brilliant light upon the world that we were meant to do. One of the most important things for me is to go back to the reason why I'm here. Regardless of what you're going through in life, the most important thing to keep in mind is, if you want to change your life from the state of blaming everybody to really being a grateful person, being a proactive person, being that agent of change that will make your life better, you have to do a couple of things.

Determining Our Own Destinies

The first thing you have to do is have a clear vision of what you want. You may find yourself in an un-ideal family or relationship, but in order to change or get yourself from the rut you are in, you have to have a vision of the family you want to build. We have to understand ourselves in relationship with God, understand why we're here, and understand that God is our Heavenly Parent who created us not just to suffer and wither away and persevere and die, but he really wants us to be that brilliant light bulb casting glorious light into the world.

When God created you and me, his eternal sons and daughters, as divine creatures, he had a vision for all of us, for the kind of life he would like all of us to enjoy and feel fulfilled in. When we have an understanding of what we want in our life, then we realize that the next step is to come up with a course of action. We have to have a clear plan in being able to identify what we do not want in our lives and what we do want.

Instead of blaming others, petrifying ourselves into a miserable state, we start looking at our individual circumstances and say, "This is a tough situation. These are the things I'd like to get rid of, but these are the things that I would like to work on. These are the things I'd like to see in my relationship or in my family". So you identify what you don't want and what you want.

Then there has to be a commitment to be responsible in that we are going to be responsible for the change in our lives. We are going to be the agent of change, regardless of how difficult, regardless of how unbearable our situation is. If we have the vision, and we have the plan, and we are committed to being responsible – meaning, carrying out that plan diligently and with commitment – then we will be able to see the fruits of our labors.

When we say we're going to be responsible, it means that just like the way blaming others and gossiping about others takes a lot of practice and a lot of hours over coffee, in living a proactive and positive life, where we can determine our own destinies, being responsible means also practicing this each and every day. By being responsible, we are agreeing to commit ourselves to daily practicing.

The greatest form of practice is prayer, daily reminding ourselves why we are doing what we're doing because we're committed to accomplishing the vision that we have set for ourselves. We have a plan of action; we know exactly what we don't want, what we do want. We know what we need to do to get there: by deciding to be responsible and committed to the process by practicing. Just as we practice blaming others and therefore create a negative attitude toward life, what we need to do proactively is practice thanksgiving and practice being grateful so that we can concentrate on a daily basis on all the reasons we have to be grateful and inspired. This is the reason why, young men and women of the movement, we need our parents.

The Importance of Our Parents and True Parents

There was a movie many years ago about a bunch of boys stranded out on a mountaintop. The movie showed what life was like without parents in these young boys' lives. Without a parental figure, without a coach guiding and supervising them, these kids basically degenerated into what Hobbes would call a savage-like existence. The boys became savages in their desires. They wanted to destroy each other.

When you see movies like that, you realize the importance of having parental figures in our lives. America is a great superpower with a Constitution having checks and balances. It guarantees freedom and equal rights to all men and women. But if we do not understand the importance of having a centered, vertical relationship with a parental figure like God, then even a great country like America can so easily degenerate into a country of amoral living and people not knowing what their purpose is.

That's why we need True Parents in our lives. As great as we might be as children, we always need our father and mother. I think a lot of the young men and women feel they know what needs to be done, they know the providence, they know what needs to take place, and only they can provide the solution for the future. But without an understanding or a holistic picture of why we're here in the first place, regardless of how great we are as men and women, if we cannot acknowledge God in our lives, if we cannot acknowledge the importance of having a living paradigm of true love like True Parents in our lives, we will never be fully expansive in our role as the great ambassadors for peace that we were all meant to be.

In other words, Heavenly Father and Mother gave us this paradigm called True Parents in our lives. They afford us such a great example of living for the sake of others. They are not the kind of people who blame others for their misery. I think if anybody had a right to blame others for their misery, my father and mother should have the first go at it. Father has been imprisoned six times and thrown out for dead from a North Korean concentration camp. He's been maligned, mistreated, abused, and misunderstood for many years. But this man never blames others. He takes responsibility for himself and goes on to continue to lead a proactive life of wanting to empower, inspire, and encourage his children to be the best that we can be.

Sun Myung Moon and Hak Ja Han

The same is true for our True Mother. The suffering that this woman has had to bear is unbelievable: many, many unspoken sufferings. Countless Kleenex boxes have fallen by the wayside during her tears. This woman understands and knows suffering. But she never blames others. She never blames the past. She always encourages her children to look toward the future, toward the destiny that awaits them. Our True Mother has always encouraged the children, telling us, "You guys did not grow up in the best environment in the early days of the church. But don't let the past hold you down. Look toward the future, the future that you can have a part in making."

She always helped us to look forward, being cognizant of the side-view mirrors, every now and then looking in our rear-view mirror to remind ourselves what has gone on, to learn from the mistakes of the past and not be stuck in being resentful or angry at the past. She encouraged us to learn from it, gaining wisdom from it so we can really create our own power to propel us forward into that glorious destiny that belongs to all of us as God's children.

Reacting to Tragedy with Proactivity

Brothers and sisters, it's not just the brother who passed away in New Hampshire. We had another Blessed Child, 21 years old, who took his own life recently. Again, there's a history, a whole lot of things that really need to be worked out. Recently in New Jersey we had a young girl attempting to take her own life because she was so severely bullied at her school.

When things like this take place, instead of blaming others, blaming the teachers, friends or whatever, we need to take stock of where we are and decide where we're going to go. This year for Lovin' Life, the banner in my mind is to work on the ideal family in dealing with all the issues that arise in the context of the family, to really help our movement become that glorious generation of peace, a generation that is worthy of this next millennium.

We very much want to highlight some of the issues that take place in a family setting. It is unfortunate to have to do that in light of what took place, but this is an opportunity for us to come together as a community and say, "Yes, we find ourselves hit with a tragic event, but instead of being petrified by it, how are we going to be proactive? How are we going to keep our focus on the future and continue to make things better for our youth, for our community, and for our movement?"

In order to do that, I cannot overstress the importance of maintaining the spiritual heritage of our movement. When we look at these examples, we realize that they are 10 or 15 years in the making. If we're to be honest, for the last 20 years our church has done many great works in the name of service for peace, in the name of living for the sake of others. But we failed to invest in our people. We failed to invest in our youth.

The biggest problem that I recognized when I was preparing to go to North Korea was that in Pyongyang there are fabulous facades, glorious monuments to Kim Il Sung and the communist regime, high-rises that are higher than those in South Korea, but there's nobody living there. All those condominiums are not inhabited by people. Everything is a show of the power and grandeur of the communist regime. Without love, without an understanding of God, there is no desire to recognize each and every human being as a divine eternal son and daughter of God.

"We Need a United Ministry"

When an organization or a movement or a regime does not invest in its people and does not encourage and inspire the people to want to be their best, sooner or later that organization, that movement, or that regime, will collapse from within. You see that happening over and over again in former Iron Curtain countries. If we continue to concentrate on the grandeur of all the work that we're doing providentially by having all these glorious festivals but not concentrate on the spiritual heritage that we come from, or the church that our True Parents founded, or the meaning of the incredible sacrament of the Blessing that is a gift unto the world, then we will start crumbling within.

We see that, even within our own movement. We see that for the last 20 years we've not had growth. In fact, we've had negative growth. Many of the second-generation are lost and have gone their own way. If we do not invest in the future by investing in the people, by taking care of the people, by practicing compassionate living day to day, then we will collapse from within.

That's why we need a ministry, and that's why we need a united ministry to remind us of that unity with our Heavenly Parent and our True Parents. It's got to be the core. Without the core, you will not have the inspired people, and if you do not have the inspired people occupying the great, grand monuments like they have in Pyongyang, sooner or later the regime will collapse.

A lot of people have criticized me for concentrating on the young people, on the ministry, saying, it should not be a ministry; it should just be a service project movement. My reply is, absolutely not. If we just concentrate on the externals of how we look to the world but we're not addressing the issues that we need to deal with on a daily basis, then sooner or later we're going to be no different from North Korea, brothers and sisters.

We need God in our lives. We need True Parents in our lives. And we don't have to waste our time proving whether we are eternal sons and daughters of God or not. Whether we're on the right path or on the wrong path, sooner or later we will get back on the right path. So instead of trying to make excuses as to why we're on the wrong path, we need to concentrate on being united with our True Parents and going forward as one family under God.

So brothers and sisters, be proud Unificationists. Be proud of your spiritual heritage. Be proud of your parents. True Parents are my parents, they are your parents, and they are our True Parents. So let's be that worthy ambassador of peace by being that incredible eternal son or daughter of God that is truly an embodiment of internal excellence as well as external excellence. So please have a wonderful Sunday, and God bless.

Notes:

1 Corinthians, chapter 3

1: But I, brethren, could not address you as spiritual men, but as men of the flesh, as babes in Christ.

2: I fed you with milk, not solid food; for you were not ready for it; and even yet you are not ready,

3: for you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh, and behaving like ordinary men?

4: For when one says, "I belong to Paul," and another, "I belong to Apol'los," are you not merely men?

5: What then is Apol'los? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each.

6: I planted, Apol'los watered, but God gave the growth.

7: So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.

8: He who plants and he who waters are equal, and each shall receive his wages according to his labor.

9: For we are God's fellow workers; you are God's field, God's building.

10: According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and another man is building upon it. Let each man take care how he builds upon it.

11: For no other foundation can any one lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.

12: Now if any one builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw --

13: each man's work will become manifest; for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done.

14: If the work which any man has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward.

15: If any man's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.

16: Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you?

17: If any one destroys God's temple, God will destroy him. For God's temple is holy, and that temple you are.

18: Let no one deceive himself. If any one among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise.

19: For the wisdom of this world is folly with God. For it is written, "He catches the wise in their craftiness,"

20: and again, "The Lord knows that the thoughts of the wise are futile."

21: So let no one boast of men. For all things are yours,

22: whether Paul or Apol'los or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future, all are yours;

23: and you are Christ's; and Christ is God's.  

Call for Applications to Cheong Shim Graduate School of Theology

Call for Applications to Cheong Shim Graduate School of Theology

Sermon Notes for November 20, 2011

In Jin Moon

1. In Jin Nim greeted everyone. Thanksgiving is just around the corner -- I am sure you are busy preparing for the festivities. I am no different with five kids of my own. They are all looking forward to the Thanksgiving holiday; family, turkey, and a whole lot of desserts. Now that I work at headquarters I can no longer spend 24 hours preparing the succulent feast that they are accustomed to. Starting last year we decided to celebrate as a family with all the kids at GPA. We have turned our family Thanksgiving into a real family Thanksgiving, and this year will be the same. My family is looking forward to that

2. As I was going about my business, not only are we getting ready for the Thanksgiving holiday, but the Christmas holidays are also around the corner. If you happen to have more than 40 some relatives, Christmas shopping starts quite early. It was a nice reminder for me to get going on that.

3. As I was making my rounds going down the list of all the people I have to cover for the holidays I came across this very interesting sticker that somebody stuck in one of the ladies' rooms at the mall that I went to. It was a little cute sticker. Initially the red color caught my eye against a light gray background. And it said, "menopause, menstruation, mental problems. All of these words start with a men." And somebody stuck this in the ladies room so that all the ladies going through using the restrooms could have a laugh or two.

4. This sticker made me think about what my father and I have talked about for many, many years. When I was first starting out at Divinity School my father asked me what is the biggest problem? What is the hottest conversation piece? What is the most sexy issue that you guys are discussing at the Divinity School. I said, "We have lots of concerns and people from all over the world, people from different cultural and ethnic backgrounds, different economic backgrounds – these people come ready to study and to make their points and let their opinions be heard. But I would really have to say that the great hot topic of the day is, it always comes down to this one issue, the issue between man and woman, and how do we really create unity and how do we develop a true relationship between men and women.

5. After that conversation that I had with my father in the early 90s I was so excited when father made the WFWP, really allowing woman to step up to the plate and lead an active life in the life of faith and really be that voice unto the world, to really compel all of humanity to seek justice, to seek cooperation, to seek harmony and love, and hopefully prepare humanity for great long years of love and peace and harmony.

6. I always thought that if we could find some way to get along and work together without blaming each other for everything. I always felt that in the history of religion, even the story of the Fall, it was basically a story of one blaming the other. It was a blame game. I thought how incredible if we could somehow truly learn to love each other, to trust each other, so that we become those eternal sons and daughters in that we are exercising our 5% responsibility to be that responsible, that true, that awesome son and daughter of God – so that we are ready to live our lives for the sake of others, being responsible for all the things that we need to be responsible for.

7. When I saw that sticker I was reminded, "oh my goodness! Here we go again. All the woman in the world who have felt oppressed, suppressed, and abused – we really want to blame the other sex for all our troubles. I don't know what man had to do with menopause or menstruation, but here we go again, blaming the others for our problems.

8. And that reminded me of something that I saw on a bumper sticker many years ago; "woe to man, = woman." So it is like both sides are blaming each other, constantly, for the problems that we are immersed in, that we are confronted with, that we find ourselves dealing with.

9. When our True Parents (True Parents) come as the True Father and True Mother of humankind, and really encourage all of us to get on that path of building ideal families – and I think a lot of the first generation who came to our movement had this incredible desire, perhaps because they came from broken in homes, came from abusive homes, came from homes where they felt neglected and ignored – you know this message of building an ideal perfect family was too irresistible for a lot of people. And so a lot of you jumped in and said, "I want to build this ideal family."

10. Fast-forward 30 or 40 years and we find ourselves having children of our own, perhaps having in-laws, having an extended family, and we realize that we thought we were asking God to give us this perfect ideal family. But many of us over the years have felt, "God did not give me this perfect family. God did not give me this ideal family. God gave me a whole set of problems and obstacles and trials and tribulations. I thought the kids that would come from our union, Blessed children, would be ideal. They would be borne ideal, go through their childhood ideal, go through adolescence ideal, perfect, pure, angelic.

11. These are the kinds of concepts we've had, but we realize when God promised an ideal family, God gave us exactly that. In that, he gave us a textbook to work through in the course of our lives, to truly understand how we come to love each other and how we come to find that perfect, or that ideal relationship that we can have with each other – whether it be parent and child, husband and wife, or among siblings. In a way we realize that God gave us a family so that we can deal with all these issues. And by going through the experience of building our family we realize that God is teaching us to have the parental heart and to really build the kind of love that is eternal, that's genuine, that's -- that's worth fighting for.

12. When I was thinking about this this morning, and realizing that a lot of the Blessed Families are now thinking towards the next Blessing. We've been having Blessing Workshops across the country, and many parents and many second-generation are sending e-mails with questions on the Blessing. "How can I deal with my family? How can I deal with my spouse? What is the best way to prepare myself for the Blessing? How do I know that that person is the one? How am I sure that this is the person that I want to connect my life to?" These are the kinds of questions that float my way.

13. But every now and then I get this e-mail, what I call the SOS category, where certain couples or certain individuals, in the context of a family, are dealing with very very pressing concerns and difficult issues. They don't know how to handle it. Or the parents, or the siblings, or the child does not know how to handle that family situation. And so they cry out to me, asking me, "In Jin Nim please fix my family. Fix my spouse. Fix my child. Fix my problem."

14. As the senior pastor and as somebody who understands a lot of the issues that all of you are going through, I want to be there for each and every person. But I realize that, many times when we think about the Blessing, and the Blessing is one of the greatest gifts that True Parents bring to all of us, a gift from God. It is really an opportunity for us to graft onto this heavily lineage of God – to change our fallen lineage to a godly lineage and become one family under God.

15. One of the most difficult things about the Blessing that I think a lot of people had yet to deal with is the concept of – Blessing is forever. Blessing is eternal. That is a concept that is really really wonderful. But Blessing presupposes certain things, and that is, just as when you take a college course, some college courses require a prerequisite, a course that you need to take in order to take that course. Blessing is very much like that, in a sense that we have to prepare ourselves to fully understand the magnitude and the gravitas of the responsibility that we are about to enter into.

16. So when a parent reaches out to me saying, "I have a 16 year old daughter. She is mature beyond her age. She is beautiful. She is so perfect. Can she go to the Blessing?" I would be the first one to say, I am so happy to hear that your daughter is wonderful and beautiful, and I'm sure she is, but at 16 years of age she does not really understand the magnitude of the gravitas of this thing, institution, or sacrament that she is entering into.

17. So just as, before you take a college course, it is assumed that you have gone to high school, middle school, elementary school, kindergarten, and nursery. Likewise, when we prepare for the blessing it's not merely sending our kids to enjoy a relationship with another person so that they can live happily ever after. We have to understand that we as parents need to be responsible to make sure that all the prerequisites are in place, before they start college. In a way, the Blessing is kind of like that.

18. Here at headquarters I'm dealing with, not just a lot of blessed couples, but a lot of blessed couples that are struggling. And many of them are struggling because they did not take the prerequisites that are required before you are prepared to take the college course. In other words, they have not made the necessary, profound, life altering decisions, or understand the sense of commitment that puts them in a prepared situation for this incredible gift.

19. I very much like to encourage parents – it's almost like, for instance, if we have a beautiful bag of diamonds that God gave to us, in our care. Saying to us, "please handle with care. Take care of my precious diamonds. Give them to your kids one at a time when they go to the Blessing." This is something that was given to you by God, these precious stones, that symbolize eternity, commitment, and loyalty forever. But if our child has no consciousness, or no understanding of how valuable this diamond is, then the child will not fully appreciate or know what to do with the diamond.

20. My daughter, when she was young, really liked sparkly things. When she would come into my room and I would give her a kiss, she would not be looking at me but looking at my earring. And she would always be looking at my rings. Something that sparkled brilliantly fascinated her. But she had no concept of how valuable our precious it is. I remember once she was playing in my room. I had taken off my ring and she was just thinking that it was no different from any other toy. She thought, in her little mind, "wow! This sparkled so much. I wonder if this would sparkle inside water?" And so, at three years old, she decided to take my wedding ring and throw it into the toilet bowl to see if it would sparkle more brilliantly. She was peering over the toilet bowl and I said to her, "What are you doing Ariana?" And I saw what she was doing. Of course I told her that this is very very precious. But even though I tried to convey this to her, she was not mature enough to understand what it symbolized or what it meant.

21. Likewise, when a child is not emotionally, spiritually ready, for the kind of gift that is as important and profound as the Blessing, then we as parents should not look to the blessing as, almost like handing our child over to another person. "Now my responsibility is done. That child is your problem!" I think as parents many of us would like to do that real soon. It's much easier to send a beautiful child, still in the throes of adolescence, maybe 16 – not having tested the rebellion that is going to rear its head in all of us now and then, and to think that we as parents have done such a great job. Now let's deliver the child of God, or put it in the spouses' hand. We as parents would like to do that.

22. But as responsible parents we have to realize that we have to help the child along a little longer, to understand how important the Blessing is. It's not something you try out and you throw away and then try out again. Understanding that, and hoping that, two people come to this sacrament with a similar understanding of what is required of them, and when they are emotionally spiritually ready. Physical readiness is not the reason that a child should go to the blessing. A child must also be spiritually ready and also emotionally ready to go to the blessing.

23. If they are, then with the support of the parents, the child should go, having found the right person. But if that is not the case, the parents have the responsibility to deal with the beautiful child and take that child, together with the good people of our movement, to really prepare them in the best way. So that when they make that incredible and important decision, it becomes a binding one, and it becomes a committed one, and it becomes a serious one.

24. We realize that in many instances, for various reasons, people don't come to the blessing with the best preparation. And many of us still go to the blessing not knowing who we are. We realize that God has prepared 95% of everything we need. And Divine Principle teaches us we have a 5% responsibility to really raise ourselves to be that great, eternal, son and daughter of God.

25. But many of us enter the blessing not really knowing who we are, and therefore we are not prepared to take on another person in this thing called a relationship or marriage. Many of us think that all we need to do is find another person and then work together and build something, and everything will be hunky-dory, a Cinderella story, or a Snow White story. We will find our Prince and live happily ever after.

26. But when you look at the word "ideal family," God is giving us a hint. We never really hear about Cinderella after she rides off into the glorious sunset with her prince. What happens thereafter? What happens when she marries that Prince charming? I myself dreamed of this knight in shining armor. This handsome prince, tall and intelligent, eyes that are mesmerizing, who will sweep me off my feet and take me to a castle up in the sky. This is what most women or girls dream about.

27. And we realize that when we find ourselves in a Blessed situation, in a marriage, Prince charming is not something that comes prepackaged. We realize, if we want a Prince charming, (there is) work that we need to do together, to turn that into a reality. I think a lot of the people, especially second-generation who're going to the Blessing and have gone to the blessing, have this ideal image in their mind, "I want to create an ideal family. I want to be an ideal spouse. I want to be an ideal couple. I'm going to go to the Blessing and I'm just going to make it work." Well, all good intentions aside, we realize that that is not enough to make their marriage or blessing work. We realize that there is a whole lot of difficult work that goes on.

28. When a person going into the Blessing, feels like they want to commit themselves to this person eternally, they are taking it as a given that the other person going with them feels the same way. But many times, when we are Blessed, we find out that actually we are not like two legs on a body wanting the same things, going the same direction, headed toward the same goal. We realize that because we did not do our homework, we did not properly prepare – and I think the great thing about our True Father, opening up the gate for the Blessing to allow every individual to partake, actively partake in the Blessing process, I believe it's a great blessing. But every blessing comes with responsibility.

29. The responsibility falls on the individual. When the floodgates have been opened up and you can choose your own spouse. To go through the process of understanding whether that person wants to walk the same path you want to walk, wants to go the same direction, has the same purpose that you would like to accomplish together in your life. Because if the interests and directions and goals are different, sooner or later you are going to be faced with a great deal of trouble.

30. And so working out these problems, before you get to the blessing, is probably the ideal thing to do. And so I would really like to encourage all parents, don't be stressed out because your children are not Blessed yet. Help them to be that responsible person, to find somebody that they might be interested in going to the Blessing with. But then encourage that child to take the time to learn and figure out where the person wants to go with his or her life. Regardless of how much the heart is palpitating, how much they think they might be passionately attracted to each other, attraction and passion fall by the wayside very very quickly. If there are no firm ground setting rules that both people can agree on, the marriage would not be a lasting one. Regardless of whether they make it to the Blessing or not, sooner or later they will find out that they want very different things in life.

31. For instance, maybe the boy wants to be an accountant and a banker, but the girl wants to be a missionary. She doesn't want anything to do with money, she wants to live for the sake of others, working in Africa. But this boy doesn't want to leave Wall Street. These are the kinds of questions that the parent and child need to ask themselves. What does my spouse want? What do I want? Are we going in the same direction?

32. But many times this kind of prerequisite course that one would have to take in order to take that college course, has not been done. So many of the questions that are fielded my way deal with a lot of the problems that the individual never solved, or never dealt with, in their individual lives – and therefore have brought into the marriage and now has become a great big monstrous problem.

33. One of those problems that I see over and over again is this issue of addiction. Addiction comes in many many different forms. There are people who are addicted to pornography. There are people who are addicted to alcohol, dealing with drug abuse, dealing with sex, dealing with abuses of power. Addicted to power. Addicted to controlling behavior. In all of these things you realize that it is a problem that the person brought in from their individual lives, many times because they were not raised in an ideal family, they were not raised in the most wonderful, or nurturing or encouraging family. Perhaps their father was (militant). Perhaps the mother was a nonexisting mother in that she never voiced or protected her children against a militant father. Perhaps the child grew up in a family where they felt extremely neglected. Perhaps they grew up in a family where the child was sexually, emotionally, and mentally abused over many many years. And perhaps this child grew up in a family where anger reigned and power reigned, so that the only thing this young child learned was – power works, anger works, those are the only things that get things done.

34. When a child starts discovering their identity at the age of two and they start voicing their opinion, they learn the power of no for the first time in their lives. They also started recognizing that words are incredibly powerful. They realize that just by saying no, they can change the atmosphere of the room. They realize that this one word has incredible power. And so, as a child grows from the ages of 2 to 5 what they end up doing, is not just a massing a whole range of vocabulary that they can utilize and exercise powerfully, but what they are doing is they are basically mimicking what their father and mother are saying, the words that the father and mother use when they address the child. When a child is between the ages of 2 to 5 we realize that they start developing their understanding of their relationship to their parents in terms of role-play.

35. This is done very much by youngsters, either playing with their teddy bears or the figurines, Superman or Batman figurines, or dolls. Everything the child says right here is what the parents say to the child, the child mimics in role-play when she or he plays with their dolls or stuffed animals. Between the ages of 2 to 5 they understand the word as a series of command. When the father and mother says, "Put on your coat. Put on your socks. Clean the dishes. Wipe yourself. Use one utensil at a time." The child will take that command, and in a form of role-play, imitate and repeat the same commands that he or she has heard from the parents. And thereby, where this constant repetition, it becomes an arsenal of their understanding of what the world is like, or what their relationship is like, vis-à-vis the parents.

36. When a child grows up in a family that might not be the most beneficial or encouraging to positive growth, then the child starts internalizing words and commands like, "you are worthless. You are ugly. You are nothing." And then in the role-play you see the child do the same thing with a doll, it's stuffed animal or figuring, you hear the child saying, "You are nothing. You are ugly." And in that way the child constantly repeats what is being said to that child and starts developing its own consciousness of what a relationship is.

37. Many of us, having come to this point where we understand and hear the Divine Principle for the first time, and we realize that we have our True Parents here with us, we have the breaking news with us, we have the opportunity to make right the ills and the wrongs of history, to really turn a suffering life into a positive loving life, we realize that this is an incredible time. But we also realize that not all of us came from the best environments, where the best families. So when we really haven't worked on ourselves, of the way we process information, and the way we repeatedly develop our own understanding of ourselves, our own understanding of how to go about having relationships with others – we realize that all our baggage of not really knowing who we are, not really understanding how to develop a good relationship follows us into our blessed lives.

38. Somebody who had an addiction to pornography – let's say a young man or young woman who has not dealt with their addiction to pornography before their marriage – well, if they have not dealt with it, just because they are married that problem is not going to go away. In fact it will become more pronounced once you enter into a relationship with another person. Because, it is no longer you and this thing that you had a relationship with before, now there is another person involved. And so the complexity of the relationship becomes magnified in the problems that we have as individuals, if we do not take care of it, carries well into our relationship. And many of the couples have a great deal of difficulty handling this in their married life. The same goes for alcohol and drug abuse.

39. Part of the reason why we encourage young people in the audience, as parents – "please try to refrain from drugs and alcohol when you are young and please try to refrain from it as much as possible" because it is not healthy for you physically. It is not healthy for you mentally. And it will not do anything in terms of supporting your emotional health or your spiritual health in your life.

40. Lately the biggest rage nowadays for young people, coming out of the ecstasy scare, is this thing called Spice. A lot of young people taking Spice are thinking, "oh this is not illegal. It's legal. We can buy it in the mall. We can take it. It doesn't do any harm to us. Our parents think it is just (?). We're sticking it into our little bongs and smoking it. It's just incense that we are smoking." But it's not incense. Spice is a deadly drug. It's a synthetic drug. It can alter your brain forever. I think a lot of parents are thinking, "My kids have tried pot here and there. Spice, we hear, is not as bad as pot." No, spice is worse.

Pre-frontal cortex

41. Part of the reason why parents encourage young people to refrain from these substances is the well known scientific fact that the pre-frontal cortex, the part of your brain right here (she points) does not stop developing or growing until you are 25 years old. In other words, that pre-frontal cortex of your brain is the most important part of your brain that controls executive functions. What I mean by executive functions is – the ability to differentiate from right and wrong, multitasking, and at the same time coming up with a synthesis that might give you alternative options, or understanding the importance of delayed gratification – because you understand the consequences of your actions. All these things take place in the pre-frontal cortex of your brain. And when you are not careful with alcohol and when you are not careful with drugs you can severely damage this part of your brain. Meaning, that the executive functions that are necessary to operate as that efficient and competent human being in the course of one's life, become severely damaged and impaired. Meaning, you are not going to be able to differentiate what is clearly right and wrong. You see a lot of criminals and you study their brains, they are dealing with a brain that has a great deal of damage or impairment to the pre-frontal cortex. This is a very important part of the brain that continues to grow until you are 25.

42. We realize that when we look at our kids, when they're 15 or 16 and they look so strong and they look so ready, but not really, because their ability to function as that successful man or woman still has not finished. It is a work in progress.

43. We know that a lot of people are dealing with addiction to drugs and alcohol abuse. And when you are dealing with substance abuse it can truly break a family apart. I know a lot of parents and many many friends who are in this hopeless situation, who are faced with this complete despair. They have no idea what to do. And I know that a lot of these spouses in relationships in which one spouse is heavily addicted to power, heavily addicted to controlling behavior. It is something that is incredibly difficult to overcome. Or if a husband and wife are dealing with anger issues – how to manage one's anger in the context of a relationship is a very difficult and painful process. And I know many many people who have cried their eyes out over this problem with addictions of all different kinds.

44. But when we seek help, and when we seek to really heal ourselves from these things, one of the first and foremost things we have to realize is – we have to be humble. We have to be humble to a point where we want to seek help. I know a lot of parents who are writing me e-mails – please help my child. What I need to tell them is, I cannot help your child until the child wants to be helped. I cannot help your spouse unless he wants to be helped. I cannot help your wife unless she wants to be helped. In order to heal ourselves the person in question must first come to realize that he or she needs help. In other words he's got to be willing to kneel down and pray and ask for help, ask for assistance.

45. In getting the person to that point it's an incredibly painful and a heart wrenching process. But the only way the healing can start is if that person decides to commit to wanting to get better. And then you realize that you really have to be willing to be honest with ourselves in confronting all the fears that that person might have. "What if my parents find out about me? What if they find out I'm not their perfect baby anymore?"

46. Well, a lot of the parents ask me, "In Jin Nim why do you talk about these problems at Sunday service?" I think a lot of parents don't realize, for example pornography, my kids were first introduced to pornography, not just magazines but videos and movies, when they were in the first grade. I think most parents are in denial as to how early these things take place. A joint (pot) was offered to my kids in second grade. This is how early they are exposed. So, if we as parents are not cognizant, or think "they're getting A's, they are doing okay." But if we don't really know the world that they are living in, we are not going to be as effective parents as much as we would like ourselves to be.

47. This is really a chance to speak together as a movement, to discuss the difficult issues at hand. This is how we can work together to bring about a substantial solution so that we can really prepare our kids for a great married life – by tackling these addiction problems early on, before they head off for the Blessing.

48. Many parents ask, "In Jin Nim, if we can come to our senses and be honest with ourselves, and admit that we do have a problem, I have a problem and I have to fix my problem, and there is a certain willingness to commit to work on this problem – then many questions are asked. How do we go about this? This is a family problem. Yes this is a family problem and I think a lot of people, because we live in a spiritual and religious community, think that if we pray, prayer will be good enough.

49. I have some experience in this area, and prayer is not good enough. You need prayer, and then some. You need an action. You need a course of action to follow along with prayer. Relying on God to solve all our problems is really not doing our 5% responsibility, by taking care of ourselves and our families. Right, brothers and sisters? We need to take responsibility for ourselves and our loved ones.

50. When I talk about living for the sake of others, I think a lot of the spouses stuck in abusive relationships, especially substance abuse relationships, feel like, "I don't want my family to be seen as a family with problems. My husband has this problem but I'm just going to do my best to make sure that there is seemingly no problem." I know a lot of spouses are in this predicament. Meaning, they care more about what they look like to the community than dealing with the issue at hand. Well, if we continue to cover up our husband's or our wives problems, if we clean up after our husband or wife, after they have drunk three bottles of vodka and have vomited all over the kitchen floor and are lying there, but because we have kids, because we have in-laws and friends and family, we're just going to clean him up again and act as if nothing has happened.

51. Then what we are actually becoming is codependent -- helping our spouse continue a life of addiction. I think many of us are afraid that if we don't clean up our husband, put nice pajamas on our wives and put them to bed, maybe our sister or brother will judge us – "You're not loving your spouse enough. That's why you're having this problem. You can overcome everything with love. Live for the sake of others. Clean him up. Do whatever it takes." A spouse, the other spouse, is truly dying for the sake of others, but because he or she feels judged by the rest of the family or the community, this abused spouse continues to cover up, clean up, and never really confronts the demon that is plaguing her family.

52. Well, doing whatever an addicted person wants, is not truly loving that person. I have a younger brother who is addicted to power right now. He has stolen the assets of our church and he continues to do whatever he wants, even though the family has reached out time and time again, even though True Parents have reached out time and time again. Sometimes, we as the other members of the family, feel victimized in this sense that the rest of the community is looking at all of us saying, "Why don't you love him? Love more. Love will conquer all." Basically, bend over backward and do whatever it takes. But that is not love. Love is also tough love. Love is also having the courage to face our fears regardless of what people say. We know that we are loving by taking a stand. We know we are loving by going out of our way and extending a hand. But if the other has no desire to be in a reciprocal relationship, there is very little you can do, other than continued the tough love. Because you truly love this person.

53. Likewise, husbands and wives, finding themselves in this codependency state, need to have the courage to listen to all the people who are complaining and persecuting you, for not loving your spouse enough, and to allow him to deal with the consequences of his actions. He needs to be embarrassed. She needs to be embarrassed. They need to hit rock bottom, because if we are always cleaning up the mess, making everything pretty so they never hit rock bottom. Guess what? The addiction will continue and the other spouse will see the blessed life as something they can take for granted. They will never feel the need to change, because regardless of what they do, nothing changes. The wife or the husband will just clean up the mess, make everything look pretty, pretend there is no problem. And if we continue to do this then we will never be able to overcome the addiction and the devastation that takes place, that literally slowly suffocates all the family members involved.

54. I have seen this over and over and over again. And we as a community, we can do our best living for the sake of others by giving these families space to work things out. Sometimes I think well-meaning friends or family members who really don't understand how difficult and how complicated the addiction process is, actually make matters worse. If we really want to help this family, then, instead of talking about them, gossiping about them, not understanding what is going on – well if we don't understand what is going on we should pray for them, not gossip about them.

55. And discreetly (guide) them to seek help. And there is a lot of help out there. We as a religious community must not be afraid to seek help. There are lots of good materials, manuals, and books out there that can help different people dealing with this process, suffering under this process. And there's a great deal of research. When you read all of these books and when you do all this research you realize that a lot of the problems that culminate into these addiction problems later in life, started very very early on, between the ages of two and five – when we start processing all these commands and we start developing our sense of self and our understanding of what our world is all about. And so a lot of the different counselors and therapists really encourage, in a way going back and re-learning these commands. And so there are certain steps that we can work on to overcome this addiction process.

56. Number one is to figure out what the external triggers are. What is the trigger that makes you want to click onto that pornographic site, what is the trigger that makes you want to light up a marijuana joint? What is it? It could be something like a different color or different sound. I know some people who, once they heard the click of a lighter, their addiction was totally inflamed and they had to have that drug – once they heard the click sound of a lighter. These are the external triggers that we need to help our loved ones identify.

57. Then you have to look at, what are the internal triggers that causes them to react, to really want to push that button of addiction. And the internal triggers are not triggers that are caused from the outside but are the triggers triggered from memory. Different things that happened in the person's childhood, things that have happened in the course of your relationship with your spouse, different things that happened in a child in the context of their relationship with you. We need to help our loved ones identify what these internal triggers are. Perhaps the child was sexually abused when he or she was young and the only thing that he or she remembers is the smell of this perpetrator, the cologne that this perpetrator was wearing – something like that is an internal trigger that triggers a child's memory into wanting that addiction button.

58. Then we need to help our loved ones find out what the signals are. When a person is able to identify what the external and internal triggers are, we need to help them understand – if there is incredible pain and desire, "where am I feeling it?" Every time I want to push my addiction button, am I feeling it in my (?), am I feeling it in my stomach, am I feeling it in my side? Where am I feeling it? In my back?

59. These are the things that, just like the way a child, through repetition understands and comes to realize their understanding of their world, in a way, by repeating all the external triggers and internal triggers, all the signals over and over again – like practicing for a grand performance – we educate the brain to be proactive in fighting the addiction that we are dealing with.

60. Another thing that we need to help our loved ones really concentrate on and think about are these things called coolers. Here we have our external triggers that triggers the person to want to practice their addiction, there are the internal triggers that pushes a person to want to push that button again, there is the signal that tells the body that, "oh my goodness the body is getting ready for another addiction fix," then we need to help the person go through what is called coolers – different things that help them slow down, that help them take themselves out of that situation so that they can have time to assess what they are about to do. So, certain things a person might do is to count backwards from 100 to 0, concentrate on breathing, meditation is great, and certain things like different kinds of music can be very very therapeutic for certain individuals. These are the kinds of coolers that we have to help our child or spouse identify – how they can handle their addiction buttons.

61. But the most important thing that we need to help our family members with is this next thing called consequence. The great thing about Blessing is its forever and eternal – means that it goes on forever. But I think that we as blessed central families have to understand that there is this thing called the consequences of our actions – in that many people think we are blessed and matched forever. Regardless of what we do, we are matched forever. No! There are many people in Blessed Families that do not deserve to be Blessed, and do not deserve to be in that last relationship. In other words, Blessing presupposes that those spouses will be loyal and truthful and work towards the same goals. If one is loyal and supportive, but the other is doing whatever they want, you cannot claim that the Blessing is forever. In fact many times the only way a person changes is when a spouse has the guts and courage to say, "Enough is enough. If you honor the Blessing and you honor our relationship you need to change and you need to stop, or I am out of here!"

62. Many times we as Blessed couples don't have the courage to say that. And so the addiction continues. We feel hopeless, because we have to somehow help this person hit rock bottom, and they are hitting rock bottom every day. "But the Blessing is forever. We are stuck forever" No, you cannot change your spouse but you can certainly change yourself. And by changing yourself and having the courage to say the difficult things, that is what's going to change your spouse and that's what's going to give hope for the future of your Blessing.

63. Understanding that the blessing is the most incredible gift that God gives us, we have to realize we cannot take that for granted. If we don't recognize how important it is, or if you are not a member of this union that recognizes that your going to honor the other person just as much as the other person honors you, then you don't deserve the Blessing.

64. This is probably a heretical and surprising thing coming from a senior pastor, but that is how important and profound it is. And the consequences of our actions is something that we have to allow an addictive person to face and to deal with, because that's the only thing that is going to change this person – to want to change and to really be that person committed to getting better.

65. The next thing we have to realize is to really help our loved one understand the importance of social skills. An addictive behavior, or a person addicted to all these things, is not a socially competent person. It is somebody who is totally immersed in the self. It's me, myself, and I. Nothing else exists other than you and the fix you need to get. And when we develop social skills – and that is part of the reason here at Lovin' Life Ministries we are encouraging the youth to develop healthy social emotional spiritual skills by different things – like ballroom dancing. We have to learn how to deal with the opposite sex, not just look at them as body parts, like the way we have conditioned ourselves to look at the other sex as – as if we are only looking at pornography. By understanding and developing a true and a genuine relationship with the opposite sex, then you can overcome this difficulty and realize that the opposite sex is much more than a body part.

66. And you can realize that when we commit to this addiction of pornography, that we are not doing something in the confines of our ---, just in secret, but actually we are affecting the whole world. You are taking part in the human trafficking that exists all around the world, that is one of the fastest growing industries in the world. And if were going to tackle that industry we have to start with ourselves, we have to work on working on our fix, our desire to get that fix. Because it's not just some silent, doesn't hurt anybody activity, between you and the computer, you are actually hurting a great many men and women all around the world.

67. And so we realize that all the things we need to do as a community in order to create this beautiful culture of love and harmony and peace, it really starts with all of us. And it really starts with all of us taking responsibility for ourselves. And that means, being prepared and doing all the prerequisite courses that are advised, that are recommended, before we send our children off to the Blessing. And when we do send them off, don't look at the Blessing as – almost like a preventative organization because we are so worried about our children falling. Guess what? If we are afraid of our children falling before, and we are thinking that marriage is the only cure for our fears, they are going to fall anyway, if they want.

68. What we need to do as parents is to help them, prepare them, and help them wait, to not want to do that – because they don't just want a boy to love or girl to love – they want a relationship that will be long-lasting.

69. Brothers and sisters, as a mother and as a member of this community, I have seen a great deal of suffering, on many many different levels. I have known many many people that have been affected by this problem of addiction. But we as a community really need to approach this with a sense of love, but also give each other the courage to tackle our problems in our families, give each other the space, but also encourage each other to seek help so that we can overcome this very difficult and monsters problem that has torn many many families apart.

70. As you go forward, one of the things I want to remind the congregation, and to remind my children, and myself – I have certainly had my moments of despair and this passage has helped me greatly. It's from the Good Book, Proverbs, chapter 4:20-22. It says, "Pay attention my child to my words. Listen carefully. Don't lose sight of my words. Let them penetrate deeply within your heart, for they will bring life, radiant health to all, to anyone, who discovers the true meaning." In a way this is what God wants us to remember. God wants to tell us – "pay attention in the midst of your suffering and difficulties, pay attention to my words. Listen carefully. Listen! Don't be so quick to blame, to throw words, to play hot volley, or tennis, by ping-pong game of words, but listen carefully. Do not lose sight of my words. Let them penetrate deeply into your hearts. Meaning – own my words."

71. And what are God's words to his children? What do we as parents say to our children? When I was faced with one of my moments of despair, this Bible verse really helped me so much. When I was deep in prayer I heard a voice that said, "You, you are good. You are my eternal daughter and you were born to love your life." This is what God said to me, and this is what God says to anybody else who is going through this problem. --- and remember what God is saying, in other words you are God's eternal sons and daughters. You are good. You know? I know the spouses, dealing with spouses with these problems, are being persecuted, being misrepresented, and not understood. Because tough love is difficult for many people to understand. But tough love -- it's got a be. We have to be strong. We have to be willing to persevere, to yield the kind of result that will be beneficial for our family, because it's worth fighting for.

72. Brothers and sisters, continue to listen to what God is saying, that you are good, you are good people. And you are his eternal sons and daughters and you were certainly not born to live a miserable life, but to love your life. This is what God said to me and I know this is what God will, and continues to say, to all of you.

73. Always remember our Heavenly Parent, remember He loves us, She loves us eternally, and wants the best for us and wishes to see us succeed – and so do our True Parents. So have courage, bear your burdens with dignity, and work. Be willing to work on the difficulties at hand. And if you do so you will be able to overcome the difficulties and all the trials and tribulations that are beset before you. And know that you are never alone. True Parents are with you and we are with you. Lovin' Life is with you. So know, going, that you are loved.

74. And in this time of Thanksgiving take the time, in a wonderful way to thank someone --- give of yourself. Celebrate family, Turkey, the good old apple pie and pumpkin pie, and I wish you happy holidays and God Bless, Thank you.

Notes:

The Books of Proverbs, chapter 4

1: Hear, O sons, a father's instruction,
and be attentive, that you may gain insight;

2: for I give you good precepts:
do not forsake my teaching.

3: When I was a son with my father,
tender, the only one in the sight of my mother,

4: he taught me, and said to me,
"Let your heart hold fast my words;
keep my commandments, and live;

5: do not forget, and do not turn away from the words of my mouth.
Get wisdom; get insight.

6: Do not forsake her, and she will keep you;
love her, and she will guard you.

7: The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom,
and whatever you get, get insight.

8: Prize her highly, and she will exalt you;
she will honor you if you embrace her.

9: She will place on your head a fair garland;
she will bestow on you a beautiful crown."

10: Hear, my son, and accept my words,
that the years of your life may be many.

11: I have taught you the way of wisdom;
I have led you in the paths of uprightness.

12: When you walk, your step will not be hampered;
and if you run, you will not stumble.

13: Keep hold of instruction, do not let go;
guard her, for she is your life.

14: Do not enter the path of the wicked,
and do not walk in the way of evil men.

15: Avoid it; do not go on it;
turn away from it and pass on.

16: For they cannot sleep unless they have done wrong;
they are robbed of sleep unless they have made some one stumble.

17: For they eat the bread of wickedness
and drink the wine of violence.

18: But the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn,
which shines brighter and brighter until full day.

19: The way of the wicked is like deep darkness;
they do not know over what they stumble.

20: My son, be attentive to my words;
incline your ear to my sayings.

21: Let them not escape from your sight;
keep them within your heart.

22: For they are life to him who finds them,
and healing to all his flesh.

23: Keep your heart with all vigilance;
for from it flow the springs of life.

24: Put away from you crooked speech,
and put devious talk far from you.

25: Let your eyes look directly forward,
and your gaze be straight before you.

26: Take heed to the path of your feet,
then all your ways will be sure.

27: Do not swerve to the right or to the left;
turn your foot away from evil. 

Preparing for the Blessing: Overcoming Addiction

In Jin Moon
November 20, 2011

How is everyone this morning? I am delighted to see you once again. On this beautiful Sunday, and with Thanksgiving just around the corner, I'm sure all of you are quite busy preparing for the festivities and the great family time. I am no different, with five kids of my own. They're always very much looking forward to the Thanksgiving holiday because it means family, turkey, and a whole lot of dessert.

Since I came to work at Headquarters, however, I can no longer spend 24 hours in the kitchen preparing such a succulent and wonderful feast that they've become quite accustomed to. Starting last year we decided to celebrate together as a family with all the kids at Generation Peace Academy, so we turned our family Thanksgiving into a real family Thanksgiving, and this year will be the same. My family is very much looking forward to that.

As I was going about my business, I was reminded that not only are we all getting ready for Thanksgiving, but the Christmas holidays are also around the corner. If you happen to have more than 40-some relatives, as in my family, Christmas shopping starts quite early. It was a nice reminder for me to get going on that.

Forgoing the "Blame Game" Between Men and Women

While I was making my rounds, going down the list of all the people I have to cover for the holidays, I came across an interesting sticker that someone stuck in a ladies' room at the mall. It was a cheap little sticker, and initially the red color caught my eye against a light gray background. It said, "Menopause, Menstruation, Mental problems – All of these words start with 'men.'" Somebody stuck this in the ladies' room so all the ladies going through could have a laugh or two.

The sticker made me think about what my father and I have talked about for many years. When I was first starting out at divinity school, my father asked me, "What is the biggest problem? What is the hottest conversation piece? What is the sexiest issue that you guys are discussing at divinity school?" I said, "We have a lot of concerns, and we have people from all over the world – representing different cultural and ethnic backgrounds, and different economic backgrounds. These people come ready to study, to make their points clear, and let their opinions be heard. But I would have to say that whenever we discuss what the great hot topic of the day is, it always comes down to one issue. That is the relations between men and women. How do we create unity? How do we develop a true relationship between men and women?"

Sun Myung Moon and Hak Ja Han, November 11, 2011

After that conversation with my father in the early 1990s I was terribly excited when Father created the Women's Federation for World Peace, allowing women to step up to the plate, to play an active role in a life of faith. He was inviting women to be the voice unto the world that compels all of humanity to seek justice, cooperation, harmony, and love, and that hopefully prepares humanity for long years of love, peace, and harmony.

I always thought how great it would be if we could somehow find a way for women and men to get along, to work together without blaming each other for everything. I've always felt that in the history of religion, even the story of the Fall was basically a story of one blaming the other. It was a blame game. So I have thought how wonderful it would be if we could somehow really and truly learn to love and trust each other. Then we could become eternal sons and daughters in that we would be exercising our 5-percent responsibility to be true and awesome sons or daughters of God; we would be willing to live our lives for the sake of others while also being responsible for all the things we need to be responsible for.

When I saw that sticker, I thought, "Here we go again. A lot of women in the world have felt oppressed, suppressed, and abused. We immediately want to blame the other sex for all our troubles." I don't know how men have anything to do with menopause or menstruation, but there we go again, blaming the other for all our problems. That reminded me of a bumper sticker I saw many years ago: "Woe to men = women." It's like both sides are blaming each other constantly for the problems that we find ourselves dealing with.

Building a Love "Worth Fighting For"

Our True Parents come as the True Father and True Mother of humankind and encourage all of us to get on the path of building ideal families. I think a lot of the first generation who first came to our movement had this exquisite desire – perhaps because many of them came from broken or abusive homes or from homes where they felt neglected and ignored. This message of building an ideal, perfect family was irresistible for a lot of people, so a lot of you jumped in and said, "I want to build this ideal family."

Fast-forward 30 or 40 years and we find ourselves with children of our own, with in-laws, with a wide extended family, and we realize that we thought we were asking God to give us a perfect ideal family. But many of us over the years have felt, "God did not give me a perfect family, an ideal family. God gave me a whole set of problems, obstacles, trials, and tribulations. I thought the kids born from our union, Blessed Children, would be born ideal, they would go through their childhood ideally, and they would go through adolescence ideally: perfect, pure, and angelic."

These are the concepts we've had, but we realize that when God promised an ideal family, God gave us exactly that. God gave us a textbook to work through in the course of our lives so we can learn how to love each other and how to create the perfect or ideal relationship we can have with each other – whether it be parent and child, husband and wife, or amongst siblings. God gave us a family so we can deal with all these issues. And by going through the experience of building a family, we come to realize that God is teaching us to have a parental heart and to build the kind of love that's eternal, genuine, honest, and worth fighting for.

The Blessing Comes With Prerequisites

I was thinking about these things this morning, while also being aware that a lot of the Blessed Families are thinking about the next Blessing and have been attending Blessing workshops across the country. I've been receiving e-mails on the question of the Blessing: "How can I deal with my family? How can I deal with my spouse? What is the best way to prepare myself for the Blessing? How do I know that that person is the one? How am I sure that this is the person whom I want to commit my life to?" These are the kinds of questions that float my way usually. But every now and then I get an email in what I call the SOS category, in which certain couples or individuals in a family are dealing with very pressing concerns and difficult issues. They don't know how to handle them. Or the parents, or the siblings, or the child do not know how to handle that family situation. So they cry out to me, asking me to fix their family, their spouse, or their child. They are crying out, "Fix my problem."

As a senior pastor and as somebody who understands a lot of the issues that all of you are going through, I want to be there for each and every person. The Blessing is one of the greatest gifts that True Parents bring to all of us. It's a gift from God. It's an opportunity for us to graft onto the heavenly lineage of God, to change our fallen lineage to a Godly lineage, and become one family of God. But one of the most difficult things about the Blessing that I think a lot of people have yet to deal with is the concept of "The Blessing is forever. It is eternal."

As a concept, that is really wonderful, but the Blessing presupposes certain things. When you take a college course, some courses require prerequisites, courses that you took before. The Blessing is very much like that in the sense that we have to prepare ourselves to fully understand the magnitude and gravitas of the responsibility that we're about to enter into.

When a parent reaches out to me, saying, "I have a 16-year-old daughter who is mature beyond her years. She is beautiful, she is so perfect; so can she go to the Blessing?" I would be the first one to say, "I am so happy to hear that your daughter is wonderful and beautiful. But at 16 years of age she does not really understand the magnitude or the gravitas of the sacrament that you want her to enter into."

Just as before you take a college course it is assumed that you have gone to kindergarten, elementary school, middle school, and high school, likewise, when we prepare for the Blessing it's not merely sending our kids to enjoy a relationship with another person so they can live happily ever after. We have to understand that just as we as parents need to be responsible to make sure that all the prerequisites are in place before our children start college, we need to be similarly responsible in assuring that our child is prepared for the blessing.

Here at headquarters I'm dealing with not just a lot of Blessed Couples, but a lot of Blessed Couples that are struggling, and many of them struggle because they did not take the prerequisites that are required before a person is prepared to take a college course. In other words, they have not made the necessary, profound life-altering decisions or have not achieved a sense of commitment that puts them in a prepared situation for this gift.

Understanding the Preciousness of the Blessing

I very much like to encourage parents. For instance, imagine we had a beautiful bag of diamonds that God gave to us in our care, saying, "Please take care of my precious diamonds and give them to your kids one at a time when they go to the Blessing." This is something given to you by God, this precious stone that symbolizes eternity, commitment, and loyalty forever. But if our child has no consciousness or understanding of how valuable this diamond is, then the child will not fully appreciate or know what to do with the diamond.

When my daughter was young, she really liked sparkly things. Whenever she came into my room and I would give her a kiss, she would not be looking at me but at my earring or my rings. Something that sparkled brilliantly fascinated her, but she had absolutely no concept of how valuable or how precious it was.

I remember once she was playing in my room, where I had taken off my ring. She thought it was no different from any other toy that she found. In her little mind she thought, "This sparkles so much. I wonder if this would sparkle inside water." When she was three years old, she decided to take my wedding ring and throw it into a toilet bowl to see if it would sparkle more brilliantly. She was peering over the toilet bowl, and I asked, "What are you doing, Ariana?" Then I saw what she was doing. I told her, "This is very, very precious." But even though I tried to convey it to her, she was not mature enough to understand what it meant.

Likewise, when a child is not emotionally or spiritually ready for the kind of gift that is as important and profound as the Blessing, we as parents should not look to the Blessing as an opportunity to hand our child over to another person: "My responsibility is done; that child is now your problem." I think that many of us as parents would like to do that real soon. It's much easier to send away a beautiful child who is still in the throes of adolescence and not having tested the rebelliousness that's going to rear its ugly head in all of us every now and then. We may think that we as parents have done such a great job, so let's deliver the child to God, or to a spouse.

Being responsible parents, we have to realize that we have to help the child along a little longer. We have to help the child understand how important the Blessing is. It's not something you try out and throw away and try out again. The child needs to understand that. Then we hope that the two people come to this sacrament with a similar understanding of what is required of them, and that they are emotionally and spiritually ready. Physical readiness is not the reason a child should go to the Blessing. A child must also be spiritually and emotionally ready to go to the Blessing.

If the child is ready in all these ways, then with the support of the parents the child should go to the Blessing, having found that right person. But if that is not the case, then the parents, together with the good people of our movement, have the responsibility to deal with our beautiful children and prepare them in the best way so that when they make that important decision, it becomes a binding and committed one, a serious one.

A "Happily Ever After" Takes Preparation and Work

In many instances, for various reasons, people haven't come to the Blessing with the best preparation. Many of us still go to the Blessing not knowing who we are. God prepared 95 percent of everything that we need, and Divine Principle teaches us that we have a 5-percent responsibility to raise ourselves to be an eternal son or daughter of God. But many of us have entered the Blessing not knowing who we are and therefore are not prepared to take on another person in the relationship of marriage. Many of us have thought that all we need to do is find another person and then work together and build something, and it will turn out like a Cinderella story. We will find our prince and live happily ever after.

When we look at "ideal family," God is giving us a hint here. We never hear about Cinderella after she rides off into the sunset with her prince. What happens after? What happens after Snow White marries Prince Charming? Growing up, I myself dreamed about a knight in shining armor – handsome, tall, intelligent, with mesmerizing eyes – who would sweep me off my feet and take me to a castle in the sky. This is what most girls dream about.

But we realize when we find ourselves in a marriage that Prince Charming is not something that comes prepackaged. If we want a Prince Charming, it's some work we need to do together to turn that into a reality. I think a lot of second generation who are going to the Blessing, and have gone to the Blessing, have had this ideal image in their mind: "I want to create an ideal family. I want to be an ideal couple. I'm going to go to the Blessing, and I'm just going to make it work."

All good intentions aside, we realize that that's not enough to make the marriage or the Blessing work. There's a whole lot of difficult work that goes into making a successful Blessed Family. So when people going into the Blessing feel ready to commit themselves to their intended spouse eternally, they are taking it as a given that their intended spouse feels the same way. But many times when we're Blessed we find out that actually my spouse and I are not like two legs on a body, wanting the same things, going the same direction, and headed toward the same goal. We realize that this is because we did not do our homework; we did not properly prepare.

I think that our True Father's opening the gates of the Blessing to allow every individual to participate actively in the Blessing process is a great blessing because every blessing comes with responsibility. The responsibility clearly falls on the individual when the floodgates have been opened and you can choose your own spouse: You can through the process of understanding whether that other person wants to walk the same path, go the same direction, and has the same purpose that you would like to accomplish together with your spouse in your life.

If the interests, direction, and goals are different, sooner or later you're going to be faced with a great deal of trouble. So working out these issues before you go to the Blessing is probably the ideal thing to do. I would like to encourage all parents, "Don't be stressed out because your kids are not Blessed yet. Help them to be a responsible person to find somebody they might be interested in going to the Blessing with. But then encourage each child to take the time to learn and figure out where he or she wants to go with his or her life."

Regardless of how much the heart is palpitating, how much they think they might be passionately attracted to each other, attraction and passion can fall by the wayside very quickly. If there are no firm ground rules that both people can agree on, the marriage will not be a lasting one. Regardless of whether they make it to the Blessing or not, sooner or later they will find out that they want very different things in life.

For instance, maybe the boy wants to be an accountant and a banker, but the girl wants to be a missionary, doesn't want anything to do with money, and wants to live for the sake of others by being in Africa. But the boy doesn't want to leave Wall Street. This is the kind of question that the parents and child need to ask themselves. "What does my potential spouse want? What do I want? Are we going in the same direction?"

Many times this kind of prerequisite course has not been taken. Many of the questions that I've fielded deal with problems that individuals have not solved in their individual lives and therefore have brought into their marriages. And now those individual problems have become great big Blessed Couple problems.

Address and Overcome Addiction Before Marriage

One of the problems in couples and families that I see over and over again is addiction, which comes in many different forms. People may be addicted to pornography, alcohol, drug abuse, sex, or power and controlling behavior. All of these addictions derive from problems brought in from individual lives, many times because the person was not raised in the most nurturing or encouraging family. Perhaps the father was so militant. Perhaps the mother never protected her children against that father. Perhaps the child grew up in a family where he or she felt extremely neglected. Perhaps the child grew up in a family where he or she was sexually, emotionally, or mentally abused over many years. Perhaps this child grew up in a family in which anger and power reigned, so the only thing this young child learned was that power and anger work.

When children first start discovering their identity at the age of two and learn the power of "No" for the first time, they also learn that words are extremely powerful. They learn that just by saying "No" they can change the atmosphere in the room; this one word has amazing power. As children grow from two to five years of age, they are not just amassing a whole range of vocabulary that they can exercise powerfully, they are also mimicking what their father and mother are saying, the words they use when they address their child.

Children between the ages of two to five start developing their understanding of their relationship to their parents in terms of role play. This is done by youngsters either playing with their teddy bears or dolls or figures. Everything that a child hears a parent say, the child mimics in role playing with stuffed animals and toys. Children understand words as a series of commands, such as when a parent says, "Put on your coat. Put on your socks. Clean yourself. Use one utensil at a time." The child will take each command and in a form of role play repeat the command. With constant repetition, it becomes an arsenal in understanding what their world is like or what their relationship is like vis-à-vis the parents.

When a child grows up in a family that may not be the most beneficial or encouraging of positive growth, the child starts internalizing commands like, "You're worthless. You're ugly. You're nothing." In a form of role play, the child may start doing the same thing with a doll or stuffed animal, saying, "You're worthless. You're nothing. You're ugly." In that way the child repeats what is said and starts developing his or her own consciousness of what a relationship is.

Many of us, having come to the point of hearing the Divine Principle for the first time and learning that we have our True Parents, the breaking news, with us, feel strongly that we have an opportunity to make right the ills and the wrongs of history, to turn a suffering life into a positive, loving life. We realize that this is an incredible time, but we also need to realize that not all of us came from the best environment.

When we haven't worked on ourselves – on the way we process our own understanding of ourselves or our own understanding of how to go about having relationships with others – we eventually come to find out that all our baggage of not knowing who we are and not understanding how to develop good relationships follows us into our Blessed lives.

Anyone who has had an addiction to pornography and has not dealt with the addiction before marriage will bring the addiction into the marriage. Just because we're married, the addiction is not going to go away. In fact, it becomes more pronounced once we enter into a relationship with another person because it's no longer only me and this thing that I had a relationship with before. Now there's another person involved.

The complexity of the relationship becomes magnified, and the problems that we had as individuals, if we do not take care of them, carry over into our marriage. Many couples have a great deal of difficulty handling them in married life, whether it is pornography, alcohol, or drug abuse. Part of the reason, as parents, we encourage young people in the audience to please try to refrain from drugs and alcohol is because they are not healthy for them physically or mentally and will not do anything in terms of supporting their emotional and spiritual health.

Lately the biggest rage for young people coming out of the Ecstasy scare is a thing called Spice. A lot of young people are taking Spice, thinking it's not illegal: "You can buy it in a mall. It doesn't do any harm to us. Our parents think it's just potpourri, that we are sticking into our little bongs and smoking, so it's just incense." But it is not incense. Spice is a deadly drug; it's a synthetic drug that can alter your brain forever. I think a lot of parents think, "My kids have tried pot here and there, but Spice, we hear, is not as bad as pot." Well, no. Spice is worse.

Part of the reason parents encourage young people to refrain from these substances is the well-known fact that the prefrontal cortex, the part of your brain behind your forehead, does not stop developing or growing until you are 25 years old, and the prefrontal cortex is the most important part of your brain for controlling executive function. What I mean by executive function is the ability to differentiate right from wrong, to multitask, to come up with a synthesis that might give you alternative options, and to understand the importance of delayed gratification because you realize the consequences of your actions. All these things take place in the prefrontal cortex.

When you are not careful with alcohol or drugs, you can severely damage this part of your brain, meaning that the executive functions necessary to operate as an efficient and competent human being in the course of your life become severely damaged and impaired. It means you won't be able to differentiate clearly what is right and what is wrong.

Studies of the brains of a lot of criminals reveal that their brains often have impairment to the prefrontal cortex, this very important part of the brain that continues to grow until you're 25. When we look at our kids ages 15 or 16, they look so tall, so strong, and so ready. But they are probably not really ready. Their ability to function as a successful man or woman is still not finished. They are a work in progress.

We know that a lot of people are dealing with addictions to drug and alcohol abuse, and when you're dealing with substance abuse, it can break a family apart. I know a lot of parents and friends in this hopeless situation – they're faced with complete despair, and they have no idea what to do.

I also know a lot of spouses in relationships in which one spouse is heavily addicted to power, to controlling behavior. It's something that is horribly difficult to overcome. Or if a husband or wife is dealing with anger issues, learning how to deal with one's anger in the context of a relationship is also a horribly difficult and painful process. I know many people who have cried their eyes out over problems with addictions of all different kinds.

Realizing Help Is Needed

When we seek help to heal ourselves from these things, one of the foremost things we have to realize is we have to be humble to a point of wanting to seek help. A lot of parents are writing me e-mails, saying, "Please help my child." What I need to tell them is, "I cannot help your child until the child wants to be helped. I cannot help your husband unless he wants to be helped. I cannot help your wife unless she wants to be helped."

In order to heal ourselves, the person in question must first come to realize that he or she needs help. In other words, that person has got to be willing to kneel down and pray to ask for help, to ask for assistance. Getting the person to that point is an incredibly painful and heart-wrenching process. But the only way healing can start is if that person decides to commit to get better.

Knowing this, you have to be willing to be honest with yourself in confronting all the fears that that person might have, such as, "What if my parents find out about me? What if they find out I'm not their perfect baby anymore?" A lot of parents ask me, "Why do you talk about these problems at Sunday Service?" I think a lot of parents don't realize the likelihood of their children being tempted by these things.

Consider, for instance, pornography. My kids were introduced not just to pornographic magazines, but to videos and movies when they were in the first grade. I think most parents are in denial as to how early these things take place. A joint was offered to my kids in second grade. This is how early they are exposed. And so if we as parents are not cognizant or think, "They're getting straight A's. They're doing okay," but we don't really know the world they're living in, we're not going to be as effective as we would like to be.

This is a chance to speak together as a movement, to discuss the difficult issues at hand, to see how we can work together to bring about a substantial solution so that we can prepare our kids for a great married life by tackling these addiction problems early on, before our kids go to the Blessing.

Many parents ask, "Well, okay, if we can come to our senses and be honest to say, 'Yes, I have a problem. I have to fix my problem, and I am willing to commit to work on this problem,' then, 'How do we go about this?' This is a family problem." Yes, it is a family problem. I think a lot of people, because we live in a spiritual and religious community, think that if we pray, prayer will be good enough.

I have some experience in this area, and it has shown me that prayer is not good enough. You need prayer and then some. You need a course of action to follow along with prayer. Relying on God to solve all our problems is really not doing our 5-percent responsibility to take care of ourselves and our families. We need to take responsibility for ourselves and for our loved ones.

"Love Is Also Tough Love"

When I talk about living for the sake of others, I think a lot of spouses stuck in abusive relationships – especially substance-related relationships – feel like they don't want their family to be seen as a family with problems. "My husband has this problem, but I'm just going to do my best to make sure there is seemingly no problem." I know a lot of spouses are in this predicament, meaning they care more about what they look like to the community than how they are dealing with the issue at hand.

If we are more concerned about how we look to the community, we continue to cover up our husband's or our wife's problems. We clean up after our husband or wife after they have drunk three bottles of vodka and vomited all over the kitchen floor and are lying there – because we have kids, because we have in-laws, because we have friends and family. We just clean them up yet again and act as if nothing happened.

If we cover up like this, then we are becoming codependent, helping our spouse to continue his or her life of addiction. I think many of us are afraid that if we don't clean up our husband, put nice pajamas on our wife and put her in bed, maybe our sister or brother would judge us for not loving our spouse enough and would assume that's why our spouse is having this problem. The codependent is thinking, "I can overcome everything with love. Just live for the sake of others. Clean them up. Do whatever it takes."

The codependent spouse is truly dying for the sake of others, but because he or she feels judged by the rest of the family or community, this abused spouse continues to cover up, clean up, and never confront the demon that is plaguing his or her family.

Doing whatever an addicted person wants truly is not loving that person. I have a younger brother who is addicted to power right now. He has stolen the assets of our church, and he continues to do whatever he wants, even though the family members and our True Parents have reached out time and time again. Sometimes we as the other members of the family feel victimized in the sense that the rest of the community is looking at all of us, saying, "Why don't you love him more? Love will conquer all." They're saying basically, "Bend over backwards and do whatever it takes."

But that is not necessarily love. Love is also tough love. Love is also having the courage to face our fears, regardless of what people say. We know we are loving by taking a stand. We know we are loving in going out of our way by extending a hand. But if the other has no desire to be in a reciprocal relationship, there is very little we can do, other than to continue the tough love because we truly love this person.

Likewise, husbands and wives finding themselves in codependency need to have the courage not to listen to all the people who are complaining and persecuting them for not loving their spouses enough, and instead to allow the spouse to deal with the consequences of their actions. They need to be embarrassed. They need to hit rock bottom because if we are always cleaning up the mess, making everything pretty so they never hit rock bottom, guess what? The addiction will continue, and the addicted spouses will see the Blessing as something that they can take for granted. The addicted spouses will never feel the need to change because regardless of what they do, nothing changes. The wife or husband will just clean up the mess, make everything look pretty, and pretend there is no problem.

If we continue to do this then we will never be able to overcome the addiction and the devastation that literally slowly suffocates all the family members involved. I've seen this over and over and over again. We as a community can do our best living for the sake of others by giving these families space to work things out. Sometimes I think well-meaning friends or family members who really don't understand how difficult and complicated the addiction process is are actually making the matter worse.

Necessary Steps To Overcome Addiction

If we really want to help these families, then instead of gossiping about them and not understanding what's going on, we should pray for them, not gossip about them – and we should discreetly encourage them to seek help. There's a lot of help out there. We as a religious community must not be afraid to seek help. There are a lot of good materials and books out there that can help different people suffering under these conditions. There is a great deal of research.

When you read these books and do this research, you realize that a lot of the problems that culminate in addictions later in life started very early on between the ages of two and five, when children start processing all these commands, and start developing their sense of self and their understanding what their world is all about.

A lot of counselors and therapists encourage going back and relearning these commands. There are certain steps we can work on to overcome the addiction process. Number one is trying to figure out what the external triggers are. What is the trigger that makes you want to click on that pornographic site? What is the trigger that makes you want to light up a joint? And for a lot of people it could be a different color, or a sound. I know some people who, once they heard the click of a lighter, their addiction was inflamed and they had to have that drug. These are the external triggers that we need to help our loved ones identify.

Then you have to look at what are the internal triggers that cause them to react, to really push that button of addiction. The internal triggers are not caused from the outside, but are triggered by the memory of different things that happened in childhood or in the course of their relationship with you, the spouse, or what happened to a child in the context of his or her relationship with you. We need to help our loved ones identify what these internal triggers are. Perhaps the child was sexually abused when young, and the only thing he or she remembers is the smell of the cologne the perpetrator was wearing. Something like that could be an internal trigger that pushes the button of wanting that addiction.

Then we need to help our loved ones find out what the signals are. In other words, when a person is able to identify what the external and internal triggers are, we need to help them understand, if there's this incredible pain and desire, where am I feeling it? Every time I want to push the addiction button, am I feeling it in my heart? Am I feeling it in my stomach, in my side, in my back? Just as a child through repetition comes to understand his or her world, by repeating all the external triggers, the internal triggers, and the signals over and over again, like practicing for a performance, we can re-educate the brain to be proactive in fighting the addiction that we're dealing with.

Another thing we need to help our loved ones think about are things called coolers. Here we have an external trigger that pushes a person to want that external addiction, here are the internal triggers, and this is the signal that tells the body that it is getting ready for another addiction fix. We need to help the person go through different things that help him or her slow down and step out of that situation so the person can have time to assess what he or she is about to do.

What a person might do is count backwards from 100 to 0 or concentrate on breathing. Meditation is great. Different kinds of music can be very therapeutic for certain individuals. These are the kinds of coolers that we have to help our child or spouse identify as to how they can handle their addiction button.

But the most important thing that we need to help our family members with is consequence. The great thing about the eternal Blessing is that it goes on forever. But I think we as Blessed Central Families have to understand that there are consequences of our actions, even in such extremes as the addictive behaviors. Many people think, "Well, we're Blessed forever, regardless of what we do." No. In other words, Blessing presupposes that both spouses will be loyal and truthful and work toward the same goals. If one is loyal and supportive but the other is doing whatever he or she wants, we cannot claim that the Blessing is forever. In fact, many times the only way a person changes is when a spouse has the guts to say, "Enough is enough. If you honor the Blessing and you honor our relationship, you need to change and you need to stop, or I'm out of here."

Many times we as Blessed Couples don't have the courage to say such strong words, so the addiction continues. We feel hopeless because we have to somehow let this person hit rock bottom. "The Blessing is forever, we are stuck forever." No. You cannot change your spouse, but you certainly can change yourself, and by changing yourself and having the courage to say the difficult thing, that's what's going to change your spouse. And that's what's going to give hope for the future of your Blessing.

Understanding that the Blessing is the most incredible gift that God gives us, we have to realize we cannot take it for granted. If we don't recognize how important it is, or if we as a member of a Blessed Couple do not recognize that we're going to honor the other person just as much as they honor us, then we don't deserve the Blessing. This is probably a heretical and surprising thing coming from a senior pastor, but that's how important it is, and that's how profound it is.

The consequences of actions are what we have to allow an addictive person to face and deal with because that's the only thing that's going to change this person to want to change to be the person who is committed to getting better.

"Taking Responsibility for Ourselves"

The next thing we have to learn is that we need to help our loved one understand the importance of social skills. An addict is not a socially competent person but is totally immersed in the self – me, myself and I. Nothing else exists other than that person and the fix.

That's part of the reason why here at Lovin' Life Ministries we're encouraging the youth to develop healthy social, emotional, and spiritual skills through different things like ballroom dancing. We have to learn how to deal with the opposite sex and not just look at them as body parts, like the way we have conditioned ourselves to look at the opposite sex if we are only looking at pornography. By understanding and developing a genuine relationship with the opposite sex, then you can overcome this difficulty and realize that the opposite sex is much more than a body part. You can realize that when you commit to the addiction of pornography you're not just doing something in the confines of our bedroom in secret, but actually you are affecting the whole world; you are taking part in the human trafficking that exists all around the world. It's one of the fastest growing industries in the world.

If we're going to tackle that industry, we have to start with ourselves. We have to work on our desire to get that fix because it's not just some silent activity between you and the computer that doesn't hurt anybody else. Our private pornography fix in the bedroom is actually hurting a great many men and women all around the world.

All the things we need to do as a community in order to create this beautiful culture of love and harmony and peace start with all of us taking responsibility for ourselves. That means being prepared and doing all the prerequisite courses that are recommended before we send our children off to the Blessing. When we do send them off, don't look at the Blessing as almost a preventive solution because we're so afraid of our children falling. Guess what? If we're afraid of our children falling before the Blessing and we're thinking that marriage is the only cure for our fears, they're going to fall anyway if they want to.

What we need to do as parents is to help prepare them and help them wait, to not want to do that because they don't just want a boy to love or a girl to love. They want a sincere relationship that's going to be long and lasting.

Brothers and sisters, as a mother and a member of this community, I have seen a great deal of suffering on many different levels. I have known many people who have been affected with addiction. We as a community need to approach this with a sense of love. We need to give each other the courage and the space to tackle the problems in our families, but we also need to encourage each other to seek help so we can overcome this very difficult, monstrous problem that has torn many families apart.

"You Are God's Eternal Sons and Daughters"

As we go forward, one of the things I would like to remind the congregation, my children, and also myself is a Bible verse that has helped me greatly in my moments of despair, which I've certainly had. Proverbs 4:20–22. "Pay attention, my child, to my words. Listen carefully. Don't lose sight of my words. Let them penetrate deeply within your heart, for they will bring life, radiant health to anyone who discovers their true meaning."

This is what God wants us to remember, what God wants to tell us. Pay attention. In the midst of your suffering, in the midst of your difficulty, pay attention to God's words. Listen carefully. Listen. Don't be so quick to blame, to play a ping-pong game of words, but listen carefully. "Do not lose sight of my words. Let them penetrate deeply in your heart." Meaning, own my words.

And what is God's word to his children? What do we as parents say to our children? When I was faced with one of my moments of despair, this Bible verse helped me so much. When I was deep in prayer I heard a voice that said, "You are good. You are my eternal daughter, and you were born to love your life."

This is what God says to me, and this is what God says to anybody else who is going through this problem with addiction. Listen carefully and remember what God is saying. In other words, "You are God's eternal son or daughter. You are good." I know the husbands and wives dealing with spouses who have problems are being persecuted, misrepresented, and not understood because tough love is difficult for many people to understand. But tough love has got to be, and we have to be strong, and we have to be willing to persevere, to yield the kind of result that would be beneficial for our family, because it's worth fighting for.

Brothers and sisters, please continue to listen to what God is saying: that you are good people and you are God's eternal sons and daughters, and you were certainly not born to live a miserable life but to love your life. This is what God said to me, and I know this is what God will and continues to say to all of you.

Always remember our Heavenly Parent, and always remember that he loves us, she loves us infinitely, wants the best for us, and wishes to see us succeed. And so do our True Parents. So gather your courage, bear your burdens with dignity, and be willing to work on the difficulties at hand. If you do so, then you will be able to overcome the difficulties and all the tribulations that are set before you. And you know that you are never alone because our True Parents are with you and we are with you. Lovin' Life is with you.

So know that you are loved and in this time of Thanksgiving, take the time to really thank God. A wonderful way to thank somebody is to be giving of yourself, so as we celebrate family, turkey, and good old apple and pumpkin pie, I wish you wonderful holidays and God bless. Thank you.

Notes:

The Books of Proverbs, chapter 4

1: Hear, O sons, a father's instruction,
and be attentive, that you may gain insight;

2: for I give you good precepts:
do not forsake my teaching.

3: When I was a son with my father,
tender, the only one in the sight of my mother,

4: he taught me, and said to me,
"Let your heart hold fast my words;
keep my commandments, and live;

5: do not forget, and do not turn away from the words of my mouth.
Get wisdom; get insight.

6: Do not forsake her, and she will keep you;
love her, and she will guard you.

7: The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom,
and whatever you get, get insight.

8: Prize her highly, and she will exalt you;
she will honor you if you embrace her.

9: She will place on your head a fair garland;
she will bestow on you a beautiful crown."

10: Hear, my son, and accept my words,
that the years of your life may be many.

11: I have taught you the way of wisdom;
I have led you in the paths of uprightness.

12: When you walk, your step will not be hampered;
and if you run, you will not stumble.

13: Keep hold of instruction, do not let go;
guard her, for she is your life.

14: Do not enter the path of the wicked,
and do not walk in the way of evil men.

15: Avoid it; do not go on it;
turn away from it and pass on.

16: For they cannot sleep unless they have done wrong;
they are robbed of sleep unless they have made some one stumble.

17: For they eat the bread of wickedness
and drink the wine of violence.

18: But the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn,
which shines brighter and brighter until full day.

19: The way of the wicked is like deep darkness;
they do not know over what they stumble.

20: My son, be attentive to my words;
incline your ear to my sayings.

21: Let them not escape from your sight;
keep them within your heart.

22: For they are life to him who finds them,
and healing to all his flesh.

23: Keep your heart with all vigilance;
for from it flow the springs of life.

24: Put away from you crooked speech,
and put devious talk far from you.

25: Let your eyes look directly forward,
and your gaze be straight before you.

26: Take heed to the path of your feet,
then all your ways will be sure.

27: Do not swerve to the right or to the left;
turn your foot away from evil.  

Sermon Notes for November 6, 2011

In Jin Moon
Bridgeport, CT

1. In Jin Nim greeted everyone. It's been a couple of years since she last visited Bridgeport.

2. Ever since our True Parents began investing in Bridgeport and in the University in 1992 we have been hearing glowing reports about what our community has done in the state of Connecticut -- to hear all the different renovations and improvements that have taken place on the campus is really an exciting thing.

3. This is an incredible opportunity for the love-life team (Lovin' Life Ministries) to come and celebrate the Sunday worship, not just together with the Bridgeport community but with all our brothers and sisters around the world.

4. First, In Jin Nim gave her heartfelt thanks to the Lovin' Life (Lovin' Life Ministries) production team who were up all night working through breakfast and up to the Sunday worship. They have done a phenomenal job. Hopefully this can be as close to a Lovin' Life Ministries as possible, technologically.

University of Bridgeport

5. In Jin Nim brings greetings from our True Parents. They are always praying and thinking about this great providential country, America. When our True Parents first purchased this University in 1992 they had great plans for this University. As you know this University sits in the center of the town of Bridgeport. In many respects In Jin Nim's father was hoping that this could be a harbor or port city – to create all sorts of bridges to link the world and bring it into this one glorious unified family of God. In Jin Nim knows that her father is hoping that this University will grow to be the representation of all that is wonderful and good about the American people and that it can be a symbol to inspire and empower the American youth – to really be that great young American, young great men and women of God that her father and mother pray for fervently each and every day.

6. It is truly In Jin Nim's honor as the senior pastor to spend time with us. Whenever she feels called or invited to come and share the pulpit with our brothers and sisters all around the country, she feels that it is such an honor for her, because it is her wish that whenever the Lovin' Life Ministries team travels, that they can share with us a bit of the breaking news – what an incredible time it is to be living at the time of our True Parents.

7. For In Jin Nim, as a woman pastor, just the fact that the living paradigm of what true love is all about is composed of a man and a woman – is incredibly exciting for her. As you know our Heavenly Parent sent their loving son, Jesus Christ, 2000 years ago, but because the Israelites were not prepared heartistically, in terms of their faith and understanding of who Jesus was, that he was the son of God sent to give us the good news, to share with us the message of true love and hopefully enlighten the consciousness of the people in his time to really be that eternal son and daughter of God. If the Israelites really understood the fullness and magnitude of Jesus' mission they would've realized that the purpose of Jesus' coming was not to die on the cross. In fact he had a wonderful mission, a glorious mission, a fulfilling mission that was cut short because the people did not realize who he was, and people were not there to protect the son of God and to realize that he was really the hope for all of humankind.

8. Because Jesus never really had that opportunity to find that beautiful wife, to complete the original purpose, or the original intention of God as to why he created Adam and Eve, man and woman, in the first place. Jesus never had the chance to build that beautiful family with that beautiful wife. He never really had a chance to fulfill what we call the Four Position Foundation in our movement, this thing called a family – with God at the helm and man and woman representing both sides of the hemisphere, coming together in heavenly matrimony, creating and inviting beautiful children into their lives and thus create the building block of a beautiful family, society, nation, and world. This is what Jesus Christ was supposed to do, this was his mission. His mission was to marry, to find that beautiful wife and to create a beautiful family.

9. And In Jin Nim is sure, just like all of us, in Jesus' attempt to create this ideal family he went through all sorts of obstacles, trials and tribulations, all the same issues that we deal with as parents, as brothers and sisters, as siblings, and as members of the extended family – all the issues he would've dealt with in attempting to build this ideal family. He would have had to deal with all the different things, and in so doing, provide a living paradigm for all of humanity to say, "Well, if Jesus can do it, so can we." And if Jesus can deal with these issues and overcome them and grow deeper and wider and taller in the process, and stronger – then so can we. And then we would have had this great working paradigm as an example for everyone to be inspired by and to aspire to.

10. But because we did not have that in the family of Jesus Christ the last 2000 years of Christian history have been a very very lonely and desolate one. If we wanted to be true believers, be that great subject for a servant of the Lord, or servant of the son of God, we thought that we had to deny everything. We had to reject the world. We had to isolate ourselves in a convent or monastery or cloister and the only thing that we could do was to work on our individual salvation. That was the best that we could do with the model that Jesus left us. And so a great many Christians, men and women, have lived a life of total sacrifice, of total denial. They never had a chance to build that beautiful family, that original mission of Jesus Christ, because we were following this solitary life of sacrifice and we felt we had to do the same.

Sun Myung Moon and Haj Ja Han, November 1, 2011

11. Fast-forward 2000 years and here we have with us this wonderful man and a beautiful woman by his side called the True Parents. Our True Father is great in that, yes he is that second coming, yes he is the son of God returned, but no matter how great the son of God is, the son of God alone cannot be the True Parents. You need a female component or a female partner, there by his side. And so for the last 2000 years the silence and the suffering of woman in the life of faith, of woman in the life of the church, was finally answered in the existence of and in the person of our True Mother. We realize that we don't have to be voiceless, we don't have to be faceless, we don't have to be a woman standing with so many burdens of guilt and fear and insecurity. We realize that we can be that eternal daughter of God, that we can reclaim our dignity as that beautiful child, beautiful daughter of God, and together actually build something beautiful with our spouse, that is called a family.

12. We realize that women have equal value. Yes men and woman are different, but before God they have equal dignity, they have equal value. And therefore it is no accident when our True Father propelled our True Mother forward in the early 90s starting with the creation of WFWP and she as the international chairwoman really toured the world and preached the breaking news. This is a great time for woman, not just to liberate themselves from men, but to liberate the world. "We should not be defined as the opposite sex, but we need to do better. In fact we need to work together with our brothers, our fathers, and our sons, and inspire them -- to become that handsome, confident, wonderful, eternal son of God.

13. In this beautiful example of our True Parents we see the completed picture and we realize that, in order to aspire to want to live a life of faith it doesn't mean that we have to lock ourselves up in our houses, lock ourselves up in a convent or monastery – we realize that we can lead an active moral life, and be that internally excellent as well as externally excellent person. We realize that the harder thing to do is to deal with our problems, not to ignore or neglect, not to eschew our problems but be in the thick of it. Deal with our problems and do the hard work of actually building that relationship, building that church, building that community, building this campus, and build an ideal world.

14. We realize that when we look at our True Parents and when we realize that that was God's original intention, to really provide a living paradigm of what true love is about and help us understand that the picture that Jesus left us – is like watching a movie halfway. It was not the completed picture, in that we never saw what happened after Jesus got married, had kids, raised a family, raise a community that thought more about others than themselves and encouraged all different nations to heal ourselves and to really work together as a local community, as one family under God. In a way, what Rev. Moon is famous for is the very thing that Jesus Christ would have done 2000 years ago.

15. In a way, if you ask people, "what do you know about Rev. Moon?" The first thing they will say is, "mass weddings." It's one of those things – people saying "Mansei!!" And lots of people getting married together. And if you don't understand the Korean, Mansei, it does sound quite monstrous. Thousands of people getting married together in huge stadiums around the country – all going "Mansei! Mansei!" And for those who lived through World War II the atrocities of the Nazi regime are still very much on our consciousness. It looks rather militaristic, but if you understand what Mansei means in Korean, it means 10,000 years of peace. So when a couple gets married we don't want to wish them just a happy decade or two, we want to wish them a happy millennium, a happy 1,000 years. When the community comes together in these marriages of thousands and tens of thousands to gather in stadiums they are all wishing each other "10,000 years of peace!" And that is what our movement is famous for.

16. If Jesus had a chance to finish his movie, to finish the story, he would have done the same – 2000 years ago. And he would've encouraged all different races, different religious backgrounds, different belief systems, different cultural backgrounds, different national interests – he would've asked all the brothers and sisters to lay down their barriers, to really come together and love each other as one family. Jesus Christ would have done the same thing that Rev. Moon has done. He would have very much encouraged international marriages. How else are two countries going to come together. Two countries come together and truly learn to love each other when they come [together] in matrimony.

17. This morning when In Jin Nim was in the green room waiting to come into the hall she had her beautiful niece and niece's tall beautiful half German half Korean husband. "We in the True Family, would make fun of them -- they are so lovey-dovey." In Jin Nim and her siblings like to watch them – they hug each other. He was stroking her hair. It is a beautiful thing to see. So, just in this couple, both Germany and Korea are represented -- it is international unity. This is what makes our movement special.

18. One of In Jin Nim's friends who works as a pastor in a Christian church, he said, "the interesting thing about your movement is that, when I come to your service I don't just see white people, I don't just see black people, I don't just see Korean people, but I see all different colors. I see all different races. I see all age groups. I see grandpa's with their grandsons. And it is a feeling that you are worshiping together with the world." And that is the beauty that True Parents bring.

19. We have a great deal to be proud of, and to be excited about. One of the things that In Jin Nim has been dealing with at HQ, together – working with her two younger brothers in Korea, the international president Dr. Rev. Hyung Jin Moon and Kook Jun Moon who runs the Korean Foundation – they have been engaged in this fight revolving around this faith breaking issue that is taking place in Japan. Our movement has come a long way, especially with the new generation coming to the forefront and stepping up to the plate and getting involved in their faith, getting involved in their communities, and even at headquarters it is so wonderful to see young faces.

20. But, one of the things we've been fighting, we've been working hard on, is this faith breaking issue that we are fighting in Japan. In the early 70s and 80s and through the early 90s, the American movement have had to deal with the misconceptions and the misunderstandings when it concerns the Unification Church. We were very much branded as this monstrous parasite infecting society, taking innocent young minds and turning them into brainwashed zombies. This was very much perpetrated by organizations like CAN (Cult Awareness Network). We have had to fight the good fight, but with the due process of law and with the Constitution at our side we could win and we could bring our cases to court and seek justice. And we were able to win a lot of legal matters concerning our members who had been abducted and kidnapped and held against their will.

21. But the same thing has been taking place in Japan. But Japan still refuses to recognize our movement as a church. Many of our Japanese brothers and sisters, especially the sisters, that have been abducted or kidnapped – they suffered unspeakable atrocities during their time of captivity. And the thing about what is taking place in Japan – at least here, when we were putting up the fight for religious freedom, we had good friends, good ministers and pastors all around the country who came to our True Parents' defense and our church's defense – and fought together with us for our liberties and our rights as citizens, --- But in Japan, it is actually the government together with the Christian ministers, that are partaking in this abduction and kidnappings that have scarred a great many brothers and sisters.

22. One year ago the story of Mr. Goto came to In Jin Nim's attention. He was held in captivity for 12 years and five months. His family had to fork over $1.5 million to this organization that deprograms people – just to hold him captive. But because of his unbreakable faith, even though they starved him almost to the brink of death, he refused to renounce his faith. And so even those captors finally had to surrender and say, "There's nothing more we can do with this guy." And they threw him out with a pair of shoes, half naked, onto the street. And thank goodness, while he attempted to crawl to safety, the second person he approached on the street happened to be a sister of our faith and she was able to take him to our hospital where he was able to recuperate. And when he did, he came to America to tell us his story and to ask the American brothers and sisters, "please help Japan." To exert the right kind of pressure through the American government so that the Japanese government can recognize our church and allow the citizens of Japan, our brothers and sisters, to exercise their right that is guaranteed in the Constitution, implemented there after World War II by Gen. Douglas MacArthur. It guarantees religious freedom. It is not being adhered to. It is being ignored. And in the process over the last 30 years many of our brothers and sisters have been abused.

23. And many of our sisters have not just been physically and emotionally abused, they have been sexually abused as well. One sister in particular, during her captivity, she was raped consecutively 33 times. You can well imagine, anything as dramatic as rape, once will do you in. But this poor woman had to suffer, grin and bear it. And she was from a community, a culture, that looks down on your personal problems. And so she felt like she had no voice. She had no way to get her story heard. A couple of the sisters who were victimized only wanted to meet In Jin Nim in secret because they did not want their identity to be shared, even within their own community. They suffer in silence.

24. What they want to see more than ever is to see our faith recognized as a legitimate faith and for them, as Japanese citizens, to be allowed to exercise their freedom of worship. All of these people are over the age of 21. They should be allowed to decide for themselves how they want to exercise their life of worship. There is even one sister who was abducted who was in her 60s. Her family abducted her because they claimed she was brainwashed.

25. This is the kind of thing taking place in Japan and even this year there are brothers and sisters continually being abducted, kidnapped, and abused.

26. When In Jin Nim heard that this Sunday would be a chance to spend time with the Bridgeport community on the Bridgeport campus – she did a lot of prayer, thinking, "Campus is a place to where children, who graduated from high school, may leave home for the first time." They're going to take time to explore who they are, come to an understanding of their identity, what they're going to do with their lives, discover their passions, apply themselves into their passions, and look towards a great career.

27. But this is also a chance when you have a huge group of people coming together wanting to change the world. In the 60s when the civil rights movement took over the American consciousness – the civil rights movement started in the churches, but it was the college campuses that really allowed the American people to really realize what is going on. And it was the students on college campuses that turned it into their own social activism. They made it their mission, and in so doing helped the civil rights movement accomplish many of its goals.

28. It's the same thing with the issues we are dealing with, when it concerns the faith breaking issues. In Jin Nim is talking about ignoring the religious liberties of these men and woman. We're talking about the sexual abuse, physical and emotional abuse, of these men and woman! Their human rights are being violated even as we speak! And so the consciousness of what is taking place – we become aware of what is going on through the churches and through the pulpits, but we need the help of the young people in all the different college campuses of the world to turn it into something of social activism – to make it their mission to say, "do we really want to grow up in a world where our human rights are violated – and that's okay? ---

29. We need to start asking the kind of questions that many people don't want to ask. Many times we are just too tired, [stuck] in our own ways, we've become fixtures in our own careers and in our lives. But, sometimes it takes the young people who are there, who want to be that agent of change, who want to change the world – and really do something about it in terms of creating a world that is better than the one they were born into.

30. When In Jin Nim thinks of college campuses – and she just had a meeting with the directors of CARP – she said, "this is an incredible time for different CARP organizations all around the country to highlight the human rights violations that are taking place in Japan and all around the world and really help the student body recognize that we as members of the campus, as citizens of this country, have a duty to uphold. We have a duty and responsibility to our country, to our future, to the future of our kids, to the future of our world – and we need to do something about it, instead of just waiting for the politicians and the good pastors and ministers to do the work for us – how much more wonderful would it be if we become our own agents of change.

31. Gandhi once said, "be the change that you want to see in others." In other words, don't wait for the world to change. You can change the world by changing yourself. I can change my world by changing myself. You can change your campus by changing yourself.

32. This is a place where people come to gain knowledge. But we need to do better than just be somebody who is sucking on the straw of knowledge and enjoying it for our own self. If we do have the opportunity to gain knowledge, we have to think about – how can we share what we have learned with others? How can we learn from what we just learned, and think of ways to make our world better, our families better, make our community better, make our nation's better. How can we as the new young generation really help create this one family of God so that we can overcome the barriers of hate, overcome the barriers of religion, overcome the barriers that divide us all.

33. And when you really ask yourself, "why is it that so many people are so afraid of Rev Moon?" If you genuinely ask yourself (In Jin Nim has asked herself) and if we ask others "why are you so afraid of Rev. Moon?" Honest people will tell you a couple of things. They'll say, "[He doesn't talk right. He sounds funny]. He doesn't look like the blue-eyed blond haired pictures of Jesus Christ we have seen. How can he be the Messiah? He doesn't look right." And, "he does more than to just share the glorious words of love. He provokes us and stimulates us to be better. Many times he comes off like one of those Chinese village teachers who teaches, pushes people to be better, forces them to do things they never thought they could do. Because he knows that we can be so much more than the limitations that we put on ourselves.

34. We realize that many times we fear what we do not know. And when the fear button is pushed all sorts of insecurities come out in many different ways. Many times we can hate that person. Then that person is a little bit strange and scary, but at the same time intriguing, and it stirs something inside of us. That person is provoking us to feel something. Mmmmmm – dangerous.

35. But when people are willing to surrender to the way that God works through the Providence – God works in mysterious ways. He does not always send us exactly what we are waiting for. He keeps his promise. He sent his son again. We have our second coming in are True Father, but he is not necessarily what we thought he would be. "He is not Jewish, he is Korean! Why Korean!? Why an Asian man? Why somebody who speaks Korean? He speaks great Japanese, but what about English?" Or maybe he just doesn't look right to lots of people, as to what a religious man should be.

36. Our True Father is a universal man. True Parents come to fulfill --- many times we've been preconditioned to think that a person, or gifts from God, can only come through a certain package. But if we can put aside our fears, if we can put aside our own limited expectations, and open up our hearts, and allow God to work in mysterious ways – then we realize, "Wow, that weird, that 'Hi Hitler' thing, actually means 10,000 years of peace. Wow, these people, seemingly like brainwashed zombies, are actually doing something really phenomenal! They are really wanting to commit themselves to God, to humanity, and to each other. They are deciding to love the world's first and then joining together as a family. Wow! How beautiful. They are living the life, living for the sake of others. Instead of me me me! Give me the money, show me the money, make me rich, make me not hungry – instead of the me me me – these are idealistic, inspired young man and woman who really want to serve the world as God's chosen servants. They want to serve humanity. They want to serve their nations. They want to serve their parents and their community. Wow! How beautiful and wonderful!"

37. You realize that when people are willing to take that great leap of faith, come to our gathering, come to our worship and really spend time together – people realize that our movement and our family is one of the most beautiful things that they have ever seen. Where else do you find extraordinary kids that are respectful of their parents, that understand the need to have inter-religious dialogue, that understand the need to respect different faiths and cultures, that understand the need to rise above our own understandings of things for a common purpose. Where else do fine young men and women – not driven to succeed because they are following the philosophy of show me the money, but because they are inspired to be great eternal sons and daughters. And success and prosperity is a byproduct of their lives. Where else do you find these kinds of people?

38. It's a beautiful thing, and so we should not be afraid to share this wonderful news, this breaking news with the rest of the world. Probably one of the most wonderful gifts we can give to each other is the news of our True Parents and the news that, instead of living our lives in this fallen lineage we have the chance to graft onto the true lineage and become part of the heavenly family. Through our True Parents, they were able to indemnify the fall of man, and by uniting together with them, in working together, we can build a beautiful world, we can build a holistic world, a world that is fulfilling, that is satisfying, the world that is enjoyable, a world that is beautiful and loving.

39. In a way, God wants us to love our life. The greatest gift that God gave to all of us is this chance at living this life, living out this life. And, in one sense life is incredibly short. But in another sense it is incredibly long. And really, what we need to think of as that eternal son or daughter of God, "what are we going to do as great man and woman of God, as citizens of this great country to truly take it a notch up or a step further – so that every generation that comes after us – slowly starts building a beautiful world."

40. At Lovin' Life Ministries, when they get together and think about – "what are we going to talk about this time, how are we going to inspire, how are we going to share the breaking news?" – we ask ourselves and we brainstorm around the room many times about different ways and methods – and our Lovin' Life Ministries has unrolled in the last year or so this thing called the Launch-Pad. We are not here to share the news, just to share the words of Rev. and Mrs. Moon. We are here to do the actual work of building the kingdom, of building that family – which means, regardless of the great blueprint that our True Parents have for the world – before you can build a great mansion, or cabin, or great condominium, or great skyscraper, you have to have a blueprint, and our True Parents have provided us with a blueprint. But regardless of how wonderful the blueprint is, it will never come to fruition in that glorious skyscraper, or beautiful condominium or mansion on the Hill or that beautiful log cabin in the woods – if we don't build it, if we don't work together.

41. [We have] different people with different skills. We need plumbers. You need electricians. You need people who know how to hammer the nails right. You need people who specialize in building the frame. Before that you need people who know how to build the right kind of foundation for the house or the building that we are building. You need all sorts of different people with different skills, to come together and really build that great monument, great house, or great building.

42. Building one family at a time, it takes teamwork. You can't build a family on your own. If you don't have a partnership with your spouse, if you don't have an understanding with your kids that – we are a team, we are one building block, and we are going to try our best to be the best, the strongest building block that we can possibly build. One family at a time. If we don't do that, regardless of how great the blueprint is for the family, the family will never be as great as it can be.

43. Likewise when we are building a ministry, this ministry is not just about HQ. It is really about creating the kind of communities, it's not just about receiving Father's words and memorizing Father's words and being really good at reciting them from time to time – it's not just words. We have to make the words flesh. We have to apply the words into the reality of our lives. And therefore building a ministry is like building a huge family. You cannot do it alone. We need everyone from Seattle to work together with HQ. We need everybody from the Bay Area to work together with HQ. We need everyone from Atlanta to work together with HQ. We need everybody to work together with each other in order to really fully experience what a beautiful house or community that God envisions for all of us.

44. We have to realize that God has a great vision for our time. God has a huge and a beautiful house that he wants to welcome all of humanity in. God has a blueprint in his hands and what he is asking, by asking different people to be leaders, different district directors, different state leaders, different co-directors of Lovin' Life Ministries – God is asking all of us to work together, to build it one family, one community at a time. And the great thing about having different district pastors and different Lovin' Life Ministries co-pastors all around the country is that we have the same message, but the different pastors are cognizant of the needs of each community. This is a wonderful chance to have the same vision, inherit the same vision, apply the same vision – but because God made us so gloriously unique, men and women, different ages, different interests – then the way it is expressed in a community can be in many, many different ways, truly representing everybody in the community who participates.

45. If we work together through the Launch-Pad, through our District Pastors, and through the different things that we are doing at HQ, sooner or later we are going to start realizing that we are changing our world, we are changing our movement. Look around you, the Sunday service you used to go to three years ago is vastly different from the one you are attending now. The Summer Camps that we are developing for the children are very different from the summer camps that the older blessed children have gone through. The leadership training module that we are creating for future leadership is very different from what we had before. In fact we didn't have any before. And the educational curriculum that we are rolling out month after month is incredibly different than what we had before. We never really had an educational curriculum.

46. And therefore certain things, like providing brothers and sisters with a blessing manual – "who would have thought that would be something people might want to have." These things that are necessary in terms of applying the Principle into our daily lives so that we can make the word flesh. This is what we are doing here at HQ, to really inspire and empower each man and woman of our movement to be their best.

47. This is a time when we need to understand that we are going through a transitional phase in our movement from the first generation to the second generation on to the third generation. Each generation has its pros and cons. Each generation has its great habits and not such good habits. And what we are trying to do is not to throw the baby out with the bathwater – we would like to keep the baby, but we would like this baby to grow up healthy, holistic, organic, and inspired. We would like this baby to grow up into that inspired, empowered, young men and woman that are really going to be that bridge to connect all the different interests, passions, careers, nations – all around the country. These are the people that are going to be the agent of change, who connect the dots for all of humanity.

48. So if we work together. Many times we are thinking, "Where is the grand picture? Where is the grand vision?" The vision is there and sometimes we have to have the courage to trust the leadership. "I know it has not always been easy. But, I need your trust. You need my trust. We need to work together. As the senior pastor, when I ask each District Pastor to connect the dots – they might be thinking, "what is she putting us through? Kindergarten? Asking us to connect dots, asking us to work together." Yes you work for UPF, yes you work for WFWP, yes, you work for CARP. But, you know what, if we really want to fight the faith breaking issue we need to work together. And ACLC when I go to Capitol Hill you are coming with me. We need to harness the power that is already there.

49. A great example is – our True Father laid an incredible foundation in New York City. We have the Manhattan Center, the New Yorker, and 43rd St., what we now call the Learning Center. These are three incredible monumental assets that our True Parents have prepared. But before, every entity was working independently and against each other. The CEO of the Manhattan Center did not talk to the CEO of the New Yorker, even though they shared several floors in the building. And 43rd St. was more like a tomb. There was no life. But when Father envisioned these three assets of our movement – it is like a Trinity, to come together as a holistic body. The Manhattan Center is the cultural gem of midtown New York, it is artistic, it is feminine. The New Yorker is a great example of Art Deco building. It is massive. It is very masculine. The learning center is a great place, like a birthplace for future leaders to come out of. It is like a family. You have a mom and a dad you have a place where children can hang and grow and be inspired. When these three assets start working together then we start seeing the magic happen.

50. In Jin Nim said [to the New Yorker CEO] -- here you are trying to sell rooms, individual rooms one at a time, but if you and the Manhattan Center work together think of the vacation packages you can offer your guests. When they come and stay at your hotel, they are not just staying at the hotel but maybe they could get a discount on some phenomenal concerts that are taking place in the Manhattan Center. We are talking about working together. We're talking about connecting the dots, about creating a synergistic relationship so that what we have together is much greater than what we were independently.

51. This is the incredible thing about being a unified family. Manhattan Center, New Yorker, 43rd St. – is just one example in the city of New York. But our True Parents have prepared huge assets all around the world and especially in America in the beautiful brothers and sisters who have really hung on, who have been with our True Parents all these years. If we can harness all of our strength together then we can really build something exciting and something phenomenal.

52. As a senior pastor, In Jin Nim's vision is to raise that beautiful generation of peace. And by generation of these she means young men and women who understand that they belong to one family of God, in that they know we all belong to our Eternal Parents. And as eternal sons and daughters of God, they have a responsibility to have a purpose in their lives to really treat this most important gift of our lives and give back something to the world, really honor our God through the way we live our lives – by leaving something beautiful behind in the form of our children, inspired children. Not depressed, not uninspired, but inspired and empowered children.

53. And generation peace young men and women, they would really be compelled to live a life of compassion, thinking about others, caring about others. How many people can you meet in New York City who are willing to go out of their way to give you a warm hello. Our modern day is quite cold and quite fragmented and compartmentalized. But we need to be the people that care.

54. We should not be, regardless of what a great church or a lawyer we are, who look down on the less fortunate the less educated. We should be the kind of lawyers that want to do great work to raise up society to be better than us.

55. And then we also need to be the kind of people who want to live a life of altruism, living life for the sake of others. We will not be satisfied in being happy ourselves.

56. This reminds In Jin Nim of a conversation she had with a young girl who is going through some difficult times. She said, "In Jin Nim you are doing Lovin' Life Ministries. That is good, but I want to do my own thing. I want to be left alone." And In Jin Nim asked her, "How much do you want to be left alone?" And she said, "I don't need the world, I don't need my parents, I don't need anybody. I just have me. That is all I need." And In Jin Nim asked her, "regardless of how independent or how fabulous or how capable you are, do you not need to go to the grocery store?" And she looked at her, "what do you mean?" In Jin Nim explained, "every time you go to the grocery store and you have that opportunity to come back and prepare something for you, for your siblings, or whoever else you like on your list, you have to realize that there is somebody who prepared that food, who harvested that grain or that vegetable that you like so much. You are dependent on other people, regardless of how independent you want to be. You can never ever really be independent. If you use public transportation then you are dependent already aren't you? You are dependent on the public transportation, on the person who is running the system. If you want to see a movie then you are dependent on Hollywood to produce the movie. You are dependent on the theater to show your favorite show at your favorite time. So regardless of how independent and how alone you want to be, we all need each other."

57. Many times we think that we are --- special. All I need to do is to take care of my family. "The work that you are doing is great, but I am going to concentrate on my family and that is the only thing that matters." But the thing about the world is that, regardless of how well-meaning we all are in thinking that we are only going to take of our own children – if we don't partake of building a better world, a safer world, then we are not being great parents – in that sooner or later the world is going to affect the children, our precious children. Therefore instead of thinking of our family is just that one dot, the only thing we need to think about. "You guys can do the work I am going to just concentrate on my family." That is really not a smart thing to do. Because there is no way you can keep the world away from your children, if they reside and participate and grow in the world.

58. We, as a parent, have a certain level of duty to be our own agent of change in wanting to create a better world for our children. And therefore living a life of altruism is actually a very rewarding way of taking the best -- and then we realize that, especially on campus, we have the opportunity to be not just internally excellent but externally excellent.

59. We need to ask ourselves a tough question, "Why do we want to be externally excellent?" Is it because we want that quick fix, we want that hot shiny new car, we want that beautiful woman, or that handsome man, we want that mansion with a swimming pool." Is that the reason why you want to be externally excellent? In Jin Nim works with a lot of rich and famous people in New York City who do have their mansions, have their swimming pools and the Jacuzzis – and you realize at the end of the day, regardless of what they have, and many people who are not internally excellent know that they are missing something in their lives, that they have to try to fill their lives with all these superfluous things that make them feel like they are somehow accepted or respected by society, living at this incredible address up on the Hill and therefore should be respected, they should be honored, this is the mark of their achievement, "this is the reason why everybody greets me in such a way, or I belong to a certain club and therefore I am a worthy person."

60. We need to ask ourselves why do we want to be externally excellent. We want to be externally excellent because our lives are a gift that our Heavenly Parent gave to us. We have the duty not to just be beautiful internally, but to really manifest that in everything that we do externally.

61. A Generation of Peace will be kids who are solid in their faith, who are solid in their understanding of who God is in their life, who True Parents are, who they are, and how they should live their lives. Their lives should be full of purpose and yet at the same time, if they consistently be the kind of awesome people that they are, regardless of what they do, their success and prosperity become the byproduct of the kind of people that they are.

62. In Jin Nim realized that as a mother and as a senior pastor, one of the greatest missions that she has is really in raising young kids and to inspire the second third and fourth generation to be the best. She is also hoping that the parents can work together with her, because regardless of how well-meaning she is, she cannot do the job without us. This is a great opportunity to ask ourselves, "yes doing the homework, connecting the dots can be monotonous, sometimes grueling work, tedious work, but every now and then – take a step back. Meaning, every now and then, for the last three years at HQ we have been connecting the dots. Every now and then take a look and ask yourself, "is our movement different from what it was three years ago?" "Are we making improvements? Are we going in the right direction? Are we losing our second and third generation like the way we have been for the last 20 years, or are they being inspired, and not just inspired are they committing themselves to their live of faith, becoming more involved in their active life of faith." Ask ourselves these questions, and when we do, when we do take a step back every now and then, to look at the big picture, we realize that what seemed like tedious grueling difficult work, actually was a process that we have been going through and are going through, to create this incredible tapestry, incredible painting – worthy of being hung in the Smithsonian Institute. This beautiful picture of a loving family, of a loving society, a loving community, of a loving nation, and take pride in knowing that we've done it together.

63. "So brothers and sisters, the first three years have really been a time when we've been digging our foundation, inspired by the blueprint that we see before us, that God has shared with us. And all we need to do is to keep on building on that foundation. Develop trust, develop and love as we go forward, and before we know it, we take a moment to step back and look at our community and our movement again, you'll come to realize, I will come to realize, that we have something exciting, something beautiful in each other."

64. "The band earlier, sang, "I want to know what love is" and probably more than any place on earth college campus is a place where young people ask, "I want to know what love is." And many times we think that love is something we have to find out there. We have to search long and hard. It is not something that is tangible that is nearby. "I want to know what love is, want to feel what love is." What God is telling us is, "you are the love. You are the love. You are the agent of change on the world." I want to feel what love is, but in order to be that agent of change you have to realize that we are the love that we so long for, we so strive for, that we have searched long and hard for."

65. "If we can just change our way of thinking, to realize that we are the whole package. God has prepared us well. If we realize that the only thing we need to do is to tap into our own divinity and to decide today, "Wow! I am the love I want to be!" Decide today that we are going to be the love unto the world, that peaceful world."

66. "Brothers and sisters, be that bridge, continue to connect the dots, and know that there is a beautiful picture at the end of the rainbow and all we need to do is to really stay vigilant in our unity with our True Parents and persevere with a new determination, that there is really nothing that we cannot accomplish once we decide to do so."

67. So you are the love! God bless!

Notes:

I Want To Know What Love Is - Mick Jones, Foreigner

I gotta take a little time
A little time to think things over
I better read between the lines
In case I need it when I'm older
Aaaah woah-ah-aah

Now this mountain I must climb
Feels like a world upon my shoulders
And through the clouds I see love shine
It keeps me warm as life grows colder

In my life there's been heartache and pain
I don't know if I can face it again
Can't stop now, I've traveled so far
To change this lonely life

I wanna know what love is
I want you to show me
I wanna feel what love is
I know you can show me
Aaaah woah-oh-ooh

I'm gonna take a little time
A little time to look around me, oooh ooh-ooh ooh-ooh oooh
I've got nowhere left to hide
It looks like love has finally found me

In my life there's been heartache and pain
I don't know if I can face it again
I can't stop now, I've traveled so far
To change this lonely life

I wanna know what love is
I want you to show me
I wanna feel what love is
I know you can show me
I wanna know what love is
I want you to show me
And I wanna feel, I want to feel what love is
And I know, I know you can show me

Let's talk about love
(I wanna know what love is) the love that you feel inside
(I want you to show me) I'm feeling so much love
(I wanna feel what love is) no, you just cannot hide
(I know you can show me) yeah, woah-oh-ooh
I wanna know what love is, let's talk about love
(I want you to show me) I wanna feel it too
(I wanna feel what love is) I wanna feel it too
And I know, and I know, I know you can show me
Show me what is real, woah (woah), yeah I know
(I wanna know what love is) hey I wanna know what love
(I want you to show me), I wanna know, I wanna know, want know
(I wanna feel what love is), hey I wanna feel, love
I know you can show me, yeah 

Connecting the Dots: Creating a World of Peace

In Jin Moon
November 6, 2011
Bridgeport, Connecticut

Good morning, Bridgeport. How is everyone this morning? I'm delighted to meet all of you here. It's been a couple of years since I last visited Bridgeport. Ever since our True Parents really invested in this community and in this university starting in 1992, we've been hearing glowing reports about what our community has done for the state of Connecticut. To hear about all the different renovations and improvements that are taking place on your campus is really exciting.

I believe this is an incredible opportunity for the Lovin' Life team to come and celebrate our Sunday worship, not just together with the Bridgeport community but with all our brothers and sisters around the world, and in particular in this country of America.

First of all, I would like to give my heartfelt thanks to the Lovin' Life production team, who have been up all night, working through breakfast and on to Sunday worship. They have truly done a phenomenal job of bringing a little bit of the Manhattan Center to your college campus, so hopefully this can be as close to a Lovin' Life experience as we possibly can make it technologically.

I also bring you greetings from our True Parents. As you know, they're always praying and thinking about this great providential country of America. I know that when our True Parents first became interested in this university in 1992, they had great plans.

Bringing True Parents' Message to Bridgeport

As you know, this university sits in the center of the town of Bridgeport, and I think in many respects my father was very much hoping that this could be like a hub or a port city to create all sorts of bridges to link the world and bring it into one glorious, unified, harmonious family of God. I know my father is hoping that this university can grow to be a representation of all that is wonderful and good about the American people and that it can be a symbol to inspire and empower the American youth to become the great men and women of God that my father and mother pray fervently for each day.

It's truly my honor as senior pastor to spend time here. Whenever I feel called to come and share the pulpit with different brothers and sisters around the country, it is such an honor for me. It is my wish that wherever the Lovin' Life team travels, we can share with you a bit of the breaking news of what an incredible time it is to live at the time of True Parents. As a woman pastor, just the fact that this whole concept, the living paradigm of true love composed of a man and a woman, is so exciting.

As you know, our Heavenly Parent sent their loving son Jesus Christ 2,000 years ago, but the people were not ready to understand that Jesus was the Son of God sent to give the good news, to share the message of true love, and hopefully to enlighten the consciousness of the people in his time. If the people had truly understood the fullness and magnitude of his mission, they would have realized that the purpose of Jesus' coming was not to die on the cross. In fact, he had a glorious mission that was cut short because the people did not realize who he was. People were not there to protect the Son of God and to realize that he was the hope for all of humankind.

Also because Jesus never had the opportunity to find his beautiful wife, to complete God's original intention for creating Adam and Eve or men and women in the first place, he could not build a beautiful family. He never had a chance to build what we call the Four Position Foundation, with God at the helm and men and women representing both sides of the hemisphere coming together in holy matrimony, creating beautiful children, creating the building block of a beautiful family, society, nation, and world.

This was what Jesus was supposed to do. His mission was to marry, find that beautiful wife, and create a beautiful family. I'm sure, just like all of us, in his attempt to create this ideal family Jesus would have gone through all sorts of obstacles, trials and tribulations, all the same issues that we deal with as parents, as brothers and sisters, as siblings, as members of an extended family. In so doing, he would have provided a living paradigm for all of humanity to say, "W ell, if Jesus can do it, so can we. If Jesus can deal with these issues and overcome them, growing deeper, wider, taller, and stronger in the process, then so can we."

Then we would have had a working paradigm as an example to emulate, to be inspired by and to aspire to. But because we didn't have that in the family of Jesus Christ, the last 2,000 years of Christian history have been lonely and desolate. If we wanted to be the true believers, if we wanted to be great servants of the Lord, of the Son of God, we thought that we had to deny everything; we had to reject the world and isolate ourselves in a convent or monastery, and the only thing we really could do was work on our individual salvation. That was the best that we could do with the model that Jesus left us.

A great many Christian men and women have lived lives of total sacrifice, of total denial, and never had a chance to build that beautiful family, part of that original mission of Jesus Christ. Because we were following the solitary life of sacrifice, we felt we had to do the same.

But fast-forward 2,000 years, and here we have with us this wonderful man and a beautiful woman by his side, the True Parents. Our True Father is great in that, yes, he is the Second Coming and, yes, he is the Son of God returning, but no matter how great the Son of God is, he alone cannot be the True Parents; he needs a female partner there by his side.

So the last 2,000 years of the silent and the voiceless suffering of women in the life of the church was finally answered in the existence and person of our True Mother. We realize that we don't have to be voiceless, and we don't have to be faceless. We don't have to be women burdened by so much guilt, fear, and insecurity. We can reclaim our dignity as beautiful daughters of God and together actively build something beautiful with our spouses called a family.

We realize that women have equal value. Yes, men and women are different, but before God we have equal dignity and equal value. Therefore, it is no accident that our True Father propelled our True Mother forward in the early 1990s, starting with the creation of the Women's Federation for World Peace, and that she as the international chairman toured the world and preached the breaking news. This is a great time for women, not just to liberate ourselves from men but to truly liberate the world. We need to work together with our brothers, with our fathers and with our sons and inspire them to be better brothers, fathers, and sons, better men, to be handsome, confident, wonderful eternal sons of God.

In this beautiful example of our True Parents, we see the completed teacher. In order to aspire to want to live a life of faith, it doesn't mean that we have to lock ourselves up in our closet, in a convent or monastery. We can lead an active, modern life but also be internally excellent as well as externally excellent people. The harder thing to do is to deal with our problems: not to ignore, not to neglect our problems but to actually be in the thick of them, dealing with our problems and doing the hard work of actually building that relationship, building that church, building that community, building this campus, and building an ideal world.

A Living Paradigm of True Love

When we look at our True Parents and when we realize that it was God's original intention to provide a living paradigm of what true love is all about, we see that the picture that Jesus left us is like watching a movie halfway. It was not the completed picture. We never saw what happened after Jesus got married, had kids, raised a family, and raised a community that thought more about the other than themselves and really encouraged all the different nations to heal themselves and to work together as a global community, as one family under God.

What Reverend Moon is famous for is the very thing that Jesus Christ would have done 2,000 years ago. When you ask people, "What do you know about Reverend Moon?" the first thing they say is, "Mass weddings, where everybody goes 'Mansei' and a lot of people are getting married together." And if you don't understand mansei, it does sound quite monstrous, doesn't it? Thousands of people getting married together in huge stadiums around the country, all going, 'Mansei.' It looks rather militaristic, but mansei actually means 10,000 years of peace.

So when a couple gets married, we want to wish them not just a happy decade or two; we want to wish them a happy millennium. When the community comes together and thousands of people get married together in a stadium, they're all wishing each other 10,000 years of peace. That's what our movement is famous for, aren't we, brothers and sisters?

If Jesus had had a chance to finish the story, he would have done the same thing 2,000 years ago. And he would have encouraged all different races, different religious backgrounds, different belief systems, different cultural backgrounds, and different national interests to lay down their barriers and come together to love each other as one family. Jesus Christ would have done the same thing that Reverend Moon has done. He would very much have encouraged international marriages. How else do two countries come together and truly learn to love each other? When they walk through the portal of matrimony.

This morning when I was waiting to come into the hall, I saw my beautiful niece here, with her tall half-Korean, half-German husband. In the True Family we like to tease them, they're so lovey-dovey. It's a new thing for old-timers like my siblings and me. We really like to watch them because they actually hug each other. When I walked in, he was stroking her hair. It's a beautiful thing to see. So just in this couple alone, you have Germany represented and Korea represented. It's an international community, and that's what really makes our movement special.

One of my friends works for a Christian pastor in a church and said to me, "The interesting thing about your movement is that when I come to your service, I don't just see white people, or just black people, or just Korean people. I see all different colors. I see all different age groups – grandpas with their grandsons – and it's the feeling that you're worshipping together with the world." That's the beauty that True Parents bring to all of our lives.

Fighting for Religion Freedom in Japan

Our movement has come a long way. I love especially having the new generation coming to the forefront, stepping up to the plate and getting involved in their faith, getting involved in their communities. It's beautiful to see young faces working with me at Headquarters each day.

We have a great deal to be proud of, to be excited about.

But, working with my two younger brothers in Korea – the international president Rev. Hyung Jin Moon and also Kook Jin Moon, who runs the Korean foundation – we've been engaged in a fight revolving around the faith-breaking issue that is taking place in Japan. Through the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s the American movement had to deal with the various misconceptions concerning the Unification Church. We were branded as a monstrous parasite infecting society, accused of turning young minds into brainwashed zombies. We've had to fight that.

But with the due process of law and with the Constitution, we could bring cases to court to seek justice, and we were able to win many legal matters concerning our members being kidnapped and held against their will. The same thing has been taking place in Japan, but Japan still refuses to recognize our movement as a church. Many of our Japanese brothers and sisters – especially the sisters who have been kidnapped – have suffered unspeakable atrocities during their time of captivity. At least here in the United States, when we were fighting for religious freedom, we had good friends, pastors all around the country who came to our True Parents' defense and fought together with us for our liberties as citizens.. But in Japan it's actually the government itself, together with Christian ministers, who are perpetrating these kidnappings that have scarred a great many brothers and sisters.

The story of Mr. Goto came to our attention a year ago. He was held in captivity for 12 years and five months. His family forked over $1.5 million to the organization that deprograms people, just to hold him captive. But because of his unbreakable faith, even though they starved him almost to death, he refused to give up his faith. His captors finally had to surrender, seeing there was s nothing more they could do, and threw him out. Thank goodness that when he attempted to crawl to safety, the second person that he met on the street happened to be a sister of our faith. She was able to take him to our hospital, where he was able to recuperate.

When he did recuperate, he came to America to tell us his story. And he came here to ask the American brothers and sisters to help Japan so that the Japanese government can finally recognize our faith as a legitimate church and allow the citizens of Japan, our brothers and sisters, to exercise their right, guaranteed under the Japanese constitution that was implemented after World War II by Gen. Douglas MacArthur. Although I t guarantees religious freedom, it has not being adhered to: It is being neglected and ignored.

In the process of the last 30 years, many of our brothers and sisters have been abused. Some of our sisters have not just been physically and emotionally abused but sexually abused as well. One sister in particular, during her captivity, was raped consecutively 33 times. You can well imagine anything as traumatic as one rape would do you in, but this poor woman had to suffer much more. She is from a culture that really looks down on talking about personal problems. So she felt she had no voice, no way to get her story heard.

A couple of other sisters who were also victimized wanted to meet me only in secret because they didn't want their identities to be shared even with their own community. They suffer in silence. But what they want to see most is to see our faith recognized as a legitimate faith, and for them as Japanese citizens to be allowed to exercise their freedom of worship. All of these people are over the age of 21. They should be allowed to decide for themselves how to worship.

There is one sister over 60 years old who was abducted by her family because they thought she was brainwashed. This is the kind of thing taking place in Japan. Even this year, there are brothers and sisters continually being abducted and abused.

"Change the World by Changing Yourself"

In anticipation of speaking today on this campus, I thought a lot about how a campus is where young people who just graduated from high school are living away from home for the first time and have a chance to explore who they are, coming to an understanding of their own identity and what they want to do with their lives, discovering their passions, applying themselves in preparing for a great career. But this is also a chance, with a huge group of people coming together, to change the world.

In the 1960s, the civil rights movement took over the American consciousness. That movement started in the churches, but it was the college campuses that really allowed the American people to realize what was going on. It was the students that turned the movement into a mission of social activism and in so doing helped the civil rights movement accomplish many of its goals.

It's the same thing with this issue of faith breaking. We're talking about ignoring the religious liberties of men and women, about the physical and emotional abuse of these men and women. Their human rights are being violated even as we speak. We become aware of what is going on through the churches, but we need the help of young people on the college campuses of the world to really turn it into social activism, to make it their mission to say, "Do we really want to grow up in a world where our human rights are being violated, and that's okay with our government, with our country?" We need to start asking the kind of questions that many times people don't want to ask. Often we've become fixtures in our careers or our lives; sometimes it takes the young people who want to be agents of change to really do something about creating a world better than the one they were born into.

I just met with the directors of CARP and said that this is an incredible time for different CARP organizations around the country to highlight the human rights violations that are taking place in Japan and all around the world and help the student bodies recognize that we as members of the campus, as citizens of this country, have a duty to the future of world, and we need to do something about it. Instead of waiting for the politicians or the pastors to do the work for us, how much more wonderful would it be if we become agents of change?

Gandhi once said, "Be the change that you want to see in others." In other words, don't wait for the world to change for you. You can change the world by changing yourself. I can change my world by changing myself. You can change your campus by changing yourself. This is a place where people come to gain knowledge, but we need to do better than just be somebody who is drinking from the straws of knowledge and enjoying it for ourselves. If we do have the opportunity to gain knowledge, we have to think about how we can share what we have learned from others. How can we think of ways to make our world better? To make our families better, make our communities better, make our nations better? How can we as a new young generation help in creating one family of God so that we can overcome the barriers of hate, overcome the barriers of religion, overcome the barriers that divide us all?

Sun Myung Moon, November 8, 2011

"True Father Is a Universal Man"

When you really ask why so many people are so afraid of Reverend Moon, honest people will tell you a couple of things. They say, "He speaks funny. He doesn't speak our language. He doesn't look like the blue-eyed, blonde-haired Jesus Christ pictures that we've seen. How can he be the Messiah? He doesn't look right."

He does more than just share glorious words of love. He really provokes us to be better. Many times he comes off like one of those Chinese village teachers who teach with an iron fist. He pushes people to be better. He prods them to do things they never thought they would do because he knows that they can be so much more than the limitations that they put on themselves.

Often we fear what we don't know. When the fear button is pushed, all sorts of insecurities come out in many different ways. When we don't understand, many times we can get angry at that person, or hate that person. Often we can make that person's life miserable because maybe he or she is a little bit strange and scary, but at the same time intriguing. It stirs something inside of us. That person is provoking us to feel something – ooh, dangerous!

But when people are willing to surrender to the way God works through providence, God works in mysterious ways. He doesn't always send us exactly what we are waiting for. He kept his promise. He sent his son again. We have the Second Coming in our True Father, but it's not necessarily what we thought he would be. He's not Jewish! He's Korean! Why an Asian man? Why somebody who speaks Korean? Yes, he speaks Japanese, but what about English? Or maybe he just doesn't look like a lot of people's idea of what a religious man should be.

Our True Father is a universal man. The True Parents come to fulfill, to make the picture whole. We've been preconditioned to think that a person or a gift of God can come only in a certain package. But if we can put aside our fears and our own limited expectations, opening up our hearts to allow God to work in mysterious ways, then we realize, "Wow, that weird cheer actually means 10,000 years of peace. These people who look like brainwashed zombies are actually doing something really phenomenal. They really want to commit themselves to God and humanity and then to each other. They've decided to love the world first and then join together as a family. How beautiful!

They're willing to live a life for the sake of others. Instead of me, me, give me the money, show me the money, make me rich, make me not hungry – these are idealistic, inspired men and women who really want to serve the world as God's children. They want to serve humanity, serve their nation, serve their parents, and serve their community. How wonderful!"

When people are willing to take that first great leap of faith – come to our gathering, come to our worship – and really spend time together, they realize that our movement and our families are one of the most beautiful things they have ever seen. Where else do you find extraordinary kids who are respectful of their parents, who understand the need to have inter-religious dialogue, who understand the need to respect different faiths and different cultures, who understand the need to rise above their own understanding of things for a common purpose? Where else do you find young men and women not driven to succeed because they are following the philosophy of "show me the money," but because they are inspired to be great eternal sons and daughters? Success and prosperity is a by-product of their lifestyle. Where else do you find these kinds of people? We find them in our community of faith.

It's a beautiful thing, so we should not be afraid to share this wonderful breaking news with the rest of the world. Probably one of the most wonderful gifts we can give each other is the news of our True Parents, the news that instead of living our lives in this fallen lineage, we have a chance to graft onto the true lineage and become part of the heavenly family.

Our True Parents were able to indemnify the human Fall, and by uniting with them we can build a beautiful world. We can build a holistic world that is fulfilling, a world that is satisfying, a world that is enjoyable, beautiful and loving. God wants us to love our life. The greatest gift God has given to all of us is this chance at living out this life. In one sense, life is incredibly short, but in another sense, it's incredibly long. Really, what we need to think of as eternal sons and daughters of God is, what are we going to do as great men and women of God, as citizens of this great country to truly take it a notch up, a step further, so that every generation that comes after us slowly starts building a beautiful world, one family at a time?

"We Need To Work Together"

Brothers and sisters, we at Lovin' Life, when we think about how we are going to share the breaking news, talk about different methods. Lovin' Life has unrolled in the last year or so something called the Launch Pad. We're not here just to share the word of Reverend and Mrs. Moon. We're here to do the actual work of building the Kingdom, of building that family. Before you build a skyscraper, you have to have a blueprint, and our True Parents have that blueprint.

But regardless of how wonderful that blueprint is, it will never come to fruition in that glorious skyscraper or beautiful condominium or mansion on the hill or that log cabin in the woods if we don't build it, if we don't work together. We need people with different skills – plumbers, electricians, carpenters, framers, people who can dig the right kind of foundation. All sorts of different people with different skills have to come together to build a great monument or building.

Likewise, building one family at a time takes teamwork. You cannot build a family on your own. If you don't have a partnership with your spouse, if you don't have an understanding with your kids that you are a team, regardless of how great the blueprint is for that family, it will never be as great as it could be.

Likewise, when we're building a ministry, it is not just about Headquarters. It's really about creating a kind of community. It's not just about receiving Father's words and being gloriously happy that we can recite them from time to time. It's not just words; we have to make the words flesh. We have to turn the words into the reality of our lives.

Therefore, building a ministry is like building a huge family. You cannot do it alone. We need everybody from Seattle to work together with Headquarters. We need everybody from the Bay Area to work together with Headquarters. We need everybody from Atlanta to work together with Headquarters. We need everybody to work together with each other in order to fully experience the beautiful house or community that God envisions for all of us.

Brothers and sisters, we have to realize that God has a great vision for our time. God has a huge and beautiful house where he wants to welcome all of humanity. God has the blueprint in his hands, and what he is asking different leaders, district directors, and co-ministers of Lovin' Life is to work together to build it one family, one community at a time.

The great thing about having different district pastors and Lovin' Life co- pastors all around the country is that even though we have the same message, the different pastors are cognizant of the needs of each community. This is a wonderful chance to inherit and apply the same vision. Because God made us so gloriously unique – men and women, different ages, different interests – then the way it is expressed in a community can be in many different ways, truly representing everybody in the community who participates.

If we work together through the Launch Pad, through our district pastors, and through the different things we're doing at Headquarters, sooner or later we're going to realize that we are changing our world and changing our movement. Brothers and sisters, look around you. The Sunday Service that you used to go to three years ago is vastly different from the one you're attending now. The summer camps that we are developing for the children are very different from those that the older blessed children have gone through. The leadership training module that we're creating for future leadership is very different from what we had before. In fact, we didn't have any. The educational curriculum that we are rolling out month after month is incredibly different from what we had before. We never really had a unified educational curriculum. And even certain things like providing a blessing manual – who would have thought it was something people might want to have?

These things are necessary in terms of applying the Principle in our daily lives so we can make the word flesh. This is what we are doing at Headquarters to inspire and empower each man and woman in our movement to be their best. This is a time when we need to understand that we're going through a transitional phase here, from first Generation to second Generation, onto the third Generation.

Each generation has its pros and cons. Each generation has its great habits and not such good habits. What we are trying to do is not throw the baby out with the bath water; we would like to keep the baby, but we would also like the baby to grow up healthy, holistic, organic, and inspired. We would like this baby to grow into an inspired and empowered person who is going to be a bridge to connect all the different interests, passions, careers, and nations around the world. These are the people who are going to be the agents of change who connect the dots for all of humanity.

We may be wondering, where is the grand vision? The vision is there, and sometimes we have to have the courage to trust the leadership. I know it has not always been easy, but I need your trust; you need my trust. We need to work together.

So when the senior pastor asks each district pastor to connect the dots, you might be thinking, "What is she putting us through – kindergarten? Asking us to connect dots, asking us to work together?" Yes, you work for UPF; yes, you work for Women's Federation; yes, you work for CARP. But you know what? If we really want to fight the faith-breaking issue, we need to work together. And you know what, ACLC? When I go up to Capitol Hill, you're coming with me and you're bringing your ministers with me. We need to harness the power that's already there.

Manhattan Center

The Manhattan Center, the New Yorker, and the Learning Center

The great example is the incredible foundation that our True Father laid in New York City alone. For example, we have the Manhattan Center, we have the New Yorker, and we have the 43rd Street building that we now call the Learning Center. These are three incredible, monumental assets that our True Parents have prepared. But before, every entity was working independently and against each other. The CEO of the Manhattan Center did not talk to the CEO of the New Yorker, even though they share several floors in their buildings. And 43rd Street was more like a tomb; there was no life.

What Father envisioned for those three assets of our movement is almost like a trinity, to really come together as a holistic body. The Manhattan Center is the cultural gem of Midtown New York. It's artistic; it's feminine. The New Yorker is a great example of art deco architecture: It's massive and very masculine. The Learning Center is like a birthplace for future leaders. It is like a family, with a mom and a dad and a place where children can grow and be inspired.

When these three assets start working together, then we see the magic happen. I told the hotel staff, "Here you are trying to sell individual rooms, but if you and the Manhattan Center work together, think about the kind of vacation packages you can offer your guests. Guests could get a discount on some phenomenal concerts that are taking place in the Manhattan Center." Again, we're talking about working together, connecting the dots, creating a synergistic relationship so that what we have together is much greater than what we were separately.

The Manhattan Center, New Yorker and 43rd Street are just one example of being a unified family in the city of New York, but our True Parents prepared huge assets all around the world, and especially in America, in the beautiful brothers and sisters who have really hung on and been with our True Parents all these years. If we can really harness all of our strength, we can really build something exciting.

Raising a Generation of Peace

As senior pastor, my vision truly is to raise that beautiful Generation of Peace. By that, I mean young men and women who understand that they belong to one family of God, who know that we all belong to our eternal Parent of peace, and who know that as eternal sons and daughters of God they have a responsibility, a purpose in their lives to give back something to the world, to honor God through the way they have lived their lives, by leaving something beautiful in their inspired and empowered children.

And the young men and women of Generation Peace would really be compelled to live a life of compassion, thinking about others, caring about others. How many people can you meet in New York City who are willing to go out of their way to give you a warm hello? Our modern day is quite cold, fragmented, and compartmentalized. We need to be the people who care. We should not be, regardless of what a great judge or lawyer we may be, those who look down on the less fortunate, on the less educated. We should be the kind of lawyers who want to do great work to raise up society to be better than we are.

Then we also need to be people who want to live lives of altruism for the sake of others; we will not just be satisfied being happy ourselves. This reminds me of a conversation I had with a young girl who was going through a difficult time. She said, "In Jin Nim, you're doing Lovin' Life and that's all good, but I want to do my own thing. I just want to be left alone." I asked her, how much do you want to be left alone? She responded," I don't need the world, I don't need my parents, I don't need anybody. I just have me. That's all I need."

I asked her, "Regardless of how independent or fabulous or capable you are, do you not need to go to the grocery store?" She looked at me, like, what is this crazy woman saying? I said, "Don't you need to eat?" She said, "What are you getting at?" I said, "E very time you get to the grocery store and you have an opportunity to prepare food for yourself or your siblings or whoever else is on your like list, you have to realize that there was somebody who harvested that grain or that vegetable that you like so much. You are dependent on other people. Regardless of how independent you want to be, you can never really be independent."

If you're going to use public transportation, you're dependent already, aren't you? You're dependent on the person running the system. If you want to see a movie, you're dependent on Hollywood to produce the movie. You're dependent on the theater to show it at your favorite time. So regardless of how independent and alone we want to be, we all need each other.

We might think that we are just one special dot, or "All I need to do is take care of my family. You know what – the work you're doing is great, but I'm going to concentrate on my family and that's the only thing that matters."

Well, the thing about the world is, regardless of how well-meaning we all are in thinking we are going to take care of only our children, if we don't partake of building a better world, a safer world, then we're not being great parents in that sooner or later the world is going to affect our precious children. "I don't want to get involved. You guys can do the work. I'm just going to concentrate on my family." That's really not a smart thing to do because there is just no way you can keep the world away from your children if they decide to participate in the world.

As parents we have a certain level of duty to be our own agents of change in wanting to create a better world for our children. And therefore, living a life of altruism in the end is actually a very rewarding way of taking the best care of our children.

Especially on a campus like this, we have the opportunity to be not just internally excellent but externally excellent. But we need to ask ourselves the tough question: Why do we want to be externally excellent? Is it because we want that quick fix, that hot shiny car, or that beautiful woman, or that handsome man, that mansion, the swimming pool? Is that the reason why we want to be externally excellent?

I work with a lot of rich and famous people in New York City who do have their mansions, their swimming pools and whatever. Many people who are not internally excellent know they are missing something in their lives, so they try to fill their lives with these superfluous things that make them feel they're somehow respected and accepted by society: "By living at an incredible address up on the hill, I should be respected. This is the mark of my achievement. This is the reason why everybody greets me in such a way. Or I belong to a certain club and therefore I'm a worthy person."

We need to ask ourselves, why do we want to be externally excellent? We want to be externally excellent because our life is a gift that our Heavenly Parent gave to us. We have a duty not just to be beautiful internally but to manifest that in everything that we do externally.

A Generation of Peace will be kids who are solid in their faith, in their understanding of who God is in their life, who True Parents are, who they are, and how they should live their lives, that their lives should be full of purpose. And yet at the same time, if they consistently be the kind of awesome people that they are, regardless of what they do, then success and prosperity will become the by-product of the kind of people that they are.

As a mother and a senior pastor, I realize that probably one of the greatest missions I have is raising young kids and inspiring the second-, third-, and fourth generation to really be their best. But I'm also hoping that the parents can work together with me. Regardless of how well-meaning I am, I cannot do the job without you.

Connecting the Dots

Yes, doing the homework, connecting the dots can be monotonous, sometimes grueling work, sometimes tedious work. But every now and then, take a step back. For the last three years at Headquarters we've been connecting the dots. But every now and then, take a look and ask yourself, is our movement different from what it was three years ago? Are we making improvements? Are we going in the right direction? Are we losing our second and third generation, the way we have been for the last 20 years? Or are they being inspired – and not just inspired, but committing themselves to their life of faith, being more involved in their active life of faith? Ask these questions.

When we do take a step back now and then to look at that big picture, we can see that what seems like tedious, grueling, difficult work actually is a process that we have been going through and are going through to create a tapestry, a painting worthy of being hung in the Smithsonian: this beautiful picture of a loving family, a loving society, a loving community, a loving nation. And we can take pride in knowing that we've done it together.

Brothers and sisters, the first three years have been a time when we've been digging our foundation, inspired by the blueprint that we see before us, the one that God has shared with us. All we need to do is keep on building on that foundation, and develop in trust, develop in love as we go forward. Before we know it, when we take a moment to step back and look at our community and our movement again, you and I will come to realize that we have something incredible, something exciting, something beautiful in each other.

The band earlier sang, "I Want to Know What Love Is," and probably more than anywhere else on earth, college campuses are places where many students and young people ask, "I want to know what love is." We may think love is something that we have to find out there, that we have to search long and hard, that it's not something tangible nearby. "I want to know what love is, I want to feel what love is."

But what God and our True Parents are telling us is, "You are the love. You are that agent of change unto the world." I want to feel what love is, but in order to be that agent of change we have to feel the love ourselves. We have to know that we are the love that we so long for, that we so strive for, that we have searched long and hard for.

Let's just change our way of thinking to realize that we are the whole package, that God has prepared us well, and that the only thing we need to do is to tap into our own divinity and to decide today, "Wow, I am the love I want to be, I am the love I want to feel, so I realize it starts with me, and you, and us together." If we decide today that we are going to be the love unto the world, then we can change the world into that beautiful, peaceful world that we're all longing for.

So, brothers and sisters, continue making that bridge. Continue to connect the dots and know that there is a beautiful picture at the end of the rainbow and all we need to do is to stay vigilant in our unity with our True Parents and persevere with a new determination that there's really nothing that we cannot accomplish once we decide to do so. So you are the love.

God bless, and thank you.

Notes:

I Want To Know What Love Is - Mick Jones, Foreigner

I gotta take a little time
A little time to think things over
I better read between the lines
In case I need it when I'm older
Aaaah woah-ah-aah

Now this mountain I must climb
Feels like a world upon my shoulders
And through the clouds I see love shine
It keeps me warm as life grows colder

In my life there's been heartache and pain
I don't know if I can face it again
Can't stop now, I've traveled so far
To change this lonely life

I wanna know what love is
I want you to show me
I wanna feel what love is
I know you can show me
Aaaah woah-oh-ooh

I'm gonna take a little time
A little time to look around me, oooh ooh-ooh ooh-ooh oooh
I've got nowhere left to hide
It looks like love has finally found me

In my life there's been heartache and pain
I don't know if I can face it again
I can't stop now, I've traveled so far
To change this lonely life

I wanna know what love is
I want you to show me
I wanna feel what love is
I know you can show me
I wanna know what love is
I want you to show me
And I wanna feel, I want to feel what love is
And I know, I know you can show me

Let's talk about love
(I wanna know what love is) the love that you feel inside
(I want you to show me) I'm feeling so much love
(I wanna feel what love is) no, you just cannot hide
(I know you can show me) yeah, woah-oh-ooh
I wanna know what love is, let's talk about love
(I want you to show me) I wanna feel it too
(I wanna feel what love is) I wanna feel it too
And I know, and I know, I know you can show me
Show me what is real, woah (woah), yeah I know
(I wanna know what love is) hey I wanna know what love
(I want you to show me), I wanna know, I wanna know, want know
(I wanna feel what love is), hey I wanna feel, love
I know you can show me, yeah