Women's Federation For World Peace
"This speech was given in Tokyo at the banquet on September 23rd at the start of the WFWP seven-city lecture tour by Mrs. Moon in Japan."
On September 17, last year, I came to Tokyo as the principal speaker at the national rally held by the Women's Federation for Peace in Asia. Since that rally, this organization has received tremendous support in Japan and around the world, and has accomplished remarkable growth.
On November 20, last year, a Women's Federation for Peace in Asia rally was held in Seoul for the first time. It was a highly successful event, attended by 15,000 representatives of Korean women.
Then, on April 10 this year, Seoul's Main Olympic Stadium was filled beyond capacity by more than 150,000 women from 72 countries expressing their strong desire for world peace. That rally, the largest ever held of women, became the occasion for the inauguration of the Women's Federation for World Peace.
I have nothing but the highest words of praise for all of you for your strong dedication and hard work in bringing about such remarkable growth in this movement.
Following that international rally, I toured 81 cities in Korea and continued my lectures on the topic of "Women's Role in the Ideal World."
Everywhere I went, people gathered in such large numbers that they resembled the clouds of heaven. In all, I received the welcome and support of more than one million women in Korea. The enthusiasm of these women clearly illustrated that women hold an infinite capacity to contribute to future world peace.
In only eight years now, we will enter the twenty-first century. We are witnessing the passing of the era of brute force, in which men have held sway almost exclusively. This era has been tainted by war, violence, exploitation and destruction. In the new era we are about to enter, women will have the central role in leading humanity into love, forgiveness, harmony and cooperation. My tour was an important opportunity to bring this realization to the people of Korea.
Original role
Throughout these rallies, I stressed that women need to come to a new realization of their original, God-given role and become cornerstones for peace, happiness and freedom. The only way for us to build peace in each of our nations and in the world is to build true families, that is, families confirmed in true love.
The international wedding ceremony of 30,00 couples held in Seoul's Olympic Main Stadium on August 25 was a grand occasion validating the fact that world peace can be brought to reality through ideal families. This international mass wedding ceremony, held as a part of the First World Culture and Sports Festival, was, in a word, an historic declaration which opened the gate to world peace. It was a giant panorama of love manifesting to all that humanity is one family, and that all people in the world are bound by a common kindred tie centering on God's love.
On that day my husband, the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, and I, in our capacity as the True Parents, gave the blessing of eternal love to some 60,000 brides and grooms from 131 countries.
At this magnificent festival of love held under the bright sunshine and azure blue sky, each and every bride and groom made his and her pledge before God, True Parents and all humanity to establish true families and a world of true peace.
The covenants of love formed that day centering on God's true love are eternal and absolute. Such bonds of marriage can never be seen as conditional or limited. This is because true love is love that seeks to give perpetually. When two people come together in such love, they form an eternal association that no force can sunder. Thus, for these brides and grooms, there can never be even the slightest thought of divorce or the corruption of sexual morals, two problems which have become so widespread in today's society.
Because these people come together in an environment of God's true love, differences of nationality, race, language, and customs do not become obstacles. God's true love melts down all obstacles, and these husbands and wives will discover in his bosom a common language of true love. They will come together in the common arena of true love. Their unions transcend nations, race and religion. They will grow to become citizens of the future world who will serve and embrace the world. When these people set down their roots of sacrificial true love around the world, the world will be swept clean of all the philosophies of hatred and conflict. There will be an end to the tragedies of war and human slaughter. There will only be true ideal families and a true world.
Peace through marriage
Already, in 1988, Rev. Moon built a bridge of eternal peace between Korea and Japan by joining in marriage more than 6000 Korean-Japanese couples. After these Korean and Japanese young people were made husbands and wives centered on God's true love, they formed families which, by virtue of their connection by lineage, have a greater love than anyone for the peoples, traditions and cultures of both countries. The peace in Northeast Asia, at least, is now guaranteed forever, by virtue of these Korean-Japanese couples.
Traditionally, the task of protecting and nurturing the family has been the special right and mission given to women. In our society today, however, there are innumerable fundamental problems which threaten to undermine our families. Certainly, the problems faced by the world today cannot be resolved by developing military might or economic power. What we see in our societies today is that the amplification of problems of an internal nature, such as the collapse of traditional values and the breakdown of social order, is out pacing external growth and development.
Even now, tens of millions of people on this earth are dying of starvation. Underlying this problem of the amount and distribution of the world's food supply, there is the even more fundamental problem of the desiccation of the love which would otherwise let us see these suffering people as our own sons and daughters, our own brothers and sisters, our own mothers and fathers. Societies today are increasingly afflicted with crime and drugs. It is said that humanity has escaped the threat of nuclear war. Yet our future appears more apt to be darkened by the clouds of despair than lit up by the sunshine of hope.
Such crises faced by the world today reflect deeper, more fundamental problems which will not be resolved by fragmentary or superficial means. Any effort to pursue the solutions to such problems solely through human means, while excluding the God Who has been in the background of human history working His Providence, is certain to end in failure.
This is the reason that Rev. Moon has declared Godism, which is referred to as "Headwing Thought." Despite having had to undergo every imaginable form of suffering, he has opened a new horizon of victory which enables humanity to find solutions to the problems of the world. His message is that the gates to a peaceful world will be opened only when humanity recovers its relationship with God and reestablishes original ideal families.
Not only in America but even in places such as Russia which have been controlled by atheistic communism, Headwing Thought is enabling large numbers of young people and intellectuals to come to know the existence of God, and is opening their eyes to the ideal of a true family.
Whether we are concerned with racial discord, violence, conflict between the rich and the poor, destruction of the environment, or even the issue of selfishness on the part of countries and peoples, we can begin to work out the solutions to the world's problems only after we have been trained within the environment of the ideal family for the practice of true love--that is, the love that seeks to sacrifice one's own self for the sake of others.
Practical steps
Rev. Moon, in order to bring Godism into reality, has endeavored in a wide variety of fields. Using the Unification Church as a foundation, he has established the International Conference on the Unity of the Sciences, the Professors World Peace Academy, the World Media Conference, the Summit Council for World Peace, the World Congress of Religions, the Federation for World Peace, the Inter-Religious Federation for World Peace, the World Collegiate Association for Research of the Principle, the World League of Universities, various international performing arts groups and many other organizations. Each of these organizations holds as its ideal and purpose the building of a world of peace centered on God.
Rev. Moon, who has devoted his heart and soul to the realization of world peace through the establishment of ideal families, was also the central figure in the establishment of the Women's Federation for Peace in Asia and the Women's Federation for World Peace. In addition, he has founded the House of Unification for World Peace for the purpose of enhancing the solidarity of the unified foundations and efforts which are already in existence in each country around the world.
No one can deny that Rev. Moon has established the world's greatest foundation in the world, extending into religion, thought, scholarship, media, education, science and culture. When all these different fields join forces and begin to march forward as one, the world of peace that has been the object of our desires is sure to appear before our eyes.
True love, by its nature, perpetually seeks to give and to sacrifice for the sake of others. In true love, there can be no allowance for any concept of an enemy. Rev. Moon, during the course of his endeavors to practice Godism centered on true love, has received all sorts of misunderstanding, persecution, slander, and innumerable hardships. Rev. Moon, however, would never even think of considering anyone to be his enemy. Thus, Rev. Moon visited Mikhail Gorbachev when he was president of the Soviet Union, even though the Soviet Union had been considered for almost a century to be the enemy of the free world.
Rev. Moon also went to North Korea and met with President Kim Il-sung and expounded on Headwing Thought, which is the principle of peace centered on God's true love. Rev. Moon has shown that he is willing to go anywhere in the world, even to the ends of the earth, if it is for the purpose of practicing the true love that seeks to give to others perpetually.
Japan's role
Even at this moment, Rev. Moon is working harder than anyone to lay the foundation for Japan to become a nation receiving the highest level of respect in Asia and the world. He is also working day and night to ensure that his teachings reach the young people of Japan so that they can live their lives according to a properly moral path.
Look at those young people working in a pure and healthy manner! Already, many Japanese young people have gone out across the world. As a result of their activities, they are receiving the unlimited love, esteem and respect from the people of the world.
Even this evening, Rev. Moon would have had much to say to each one of you regarding the true way to save Japan. I know very well how much love my husband holds for this country and for the people of this country. Unfortunately, however, I must appear on this stage alone tonight, even though I am not nearly qualified to give to you the full message of his deep love. Certain persons who are ignorant but are caught up in their own prejudices continue to persecute and oppose Rev. Moon's work. I hope that they will come as quickly as possible to be a true understanding of Rev. Moon's love and his true will.
Ladies and gentlemen, if Japan is to expand its relations with other Asian countries, it would be better to do so in a position of unity with Korea. this way, Japan will be able to have more friends and build a larger foundation for itself. Koreans and Japanese each refer to the other's country as "the country that is so close to us, and yet so far distant from us." Now it is time for our two countries to become close to each other in every meaning of that word and to stand side by side in shouldering the future of Asia. More than anything else, I believe that Japan must devote its full energies to the unification of Korea.
Japan's rule over Korea finally ended in a division of the peninsula. The deep pain that comes from this division can be relieved completely by such efforts on your part for Korean unification. As a first step, there needs to be an effort to establish a foundation for Korean unification by accomplishing unity between the two organizations of Korean residents in Japan, one of which is pro-Seoul and the other pro-Pyongyang. These two organizations can be brought together by means of Headwing Thought, centered on true love. If Korea and Japan contend against each other and fight each other, they will both lose all that they have. If these two countries combine their strengths, they will become the strongest forces for building Asia's future and accomplishing world peace.
Historically, Asia has been the leader in developing the spiritual aspect of world civilization. It is historically inevitable, then, that a new movement of women, a new movement of families and a new movement for peace should begin here in Asia.
Rights and responsibility
The women's movement that I have been conducting has a fundamentally different character from the women's rights movements that challenge male authority and stress female rights exclusively. The women's rights movements that have developed in Western societies until now reflect the mutual antagonism and animosity that is an integral part of Western civilization's spirit of struggle. Ours, by contrast, is a movement based on the East Asian principles of harmony that stress mutual accord and complementaryity. Our movement's ideal is to seek out tasks that men cannot perform, that is, tasks that can be performed only by women, so that we can join men in complementarity in order to establish true families.
The destruction of families is becoming the most serious problem in our societies, and yet no one is able to propose an effective solution. The very foundation of human existence is being shaken.
Thus, in the United States, family values and issues of social morality are becoming major issues in the ongoing presidential election campaign. Such issues are not the concern of America and Western Europe alone, however. They represent a serious crisis for all humankind.
Japan and Korea are also affected by such problems. We are at a stage where we must seriously concern ourselves with the moral crisis that has grown up parallel to our economic development. The only way to resolve this crisis is to teach Godism and Headwing Thought, which approaches the problem from the aspect of providential history.
We have a particularly urgent need for the moral education of our young people. In this regard, I was surprised to hear that many Japanese people responded positively to the recent series of rallies upholding the spirit of Yoo Kwan-soon. Certainly, Yoo Kwan-soon, who is known as the Joan of Arc of Asia, is a most appropriate role model for instilling patriotism in young people. What surprised and moved me, though, was the progressive and broad minded attitude of the Japanese people in their search to transcend the historically unpleasant relations between Korea and Japan and open a new avenue of understanding.
Take a stand
I would like to ask that the women of Japan, in particular, take your stand at the forefront of the effort to resolve the serious issues in our world related to the family. You possess the most admirable tradition of women in the world, because through your country's long history you have protected your families and nation in a spirit of love and sacrifice. Also, I know that you women were the hidden force behind your country's recovery after the total destruction of World War II to become among the strongest economic powers in the world.
You need to take the foremost position in our movement, because the virtues of sacrifice and service which you have cherished through your tradition now must be transformed on the worldwide level into the true love of perpetual giving for all of humankind.
Men have tried for the past twenty centuries to build a world of peace, but now the task has been entrusted to us women. It is the decree of Heaven that we take up the task of building world peace through ideal families.
In general, men tend to lead their lives centered on themselves, whereas women tend to be more willing to sacrifice themselves. With the coming of the age of women, we are entering a new history where, instead of sacrificing the whole for the benefit of each individual, we need to sacrifice ourselves for the benefit of the whole and, thus, exercise true love.
Let us all arm ourselves with Headwing Thought, and become leading figures in building a world of peace. We need to correct the family morals which are steadily deteriorating. We must take the lead in standing up against drug abuse and the spread of AIDS. We need to give proper guidance to our young people, who are wandering aimlessly down deviant paths.
We are in a new age of transition in which women must take a firm stand in order to contribute to world peace. I hope that everyone here this evening will take the lead in this march toward peace. In closing, let met thank you again for the support you have given to the national lecture tour which is about to begin. I pray that God's blessing will be upon you and your families.