The Words of the Balcomb Family
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The Words of the Balcomb Family |
True
Parents at Cheon Jeong Peace Palace on October 15.
Father spoke
for six hours at a lunch banquet.
Dr. Michael Balcomb accompanied 104 International Leadership Conference participant couples who took part in the 10.14 True Parents' Cosmic Blessing Ceremony. He offered the following observations of their experiences.
We had some very fine people come to the blessing from the International Leadership Conference. One couple who come immediately to mind is Ahmad Kabbah, the former president of Sierra Leone, and his wife Isatu Jabbie Kabbah. The former president has been to a few Universal Peace Federation conferences, but this was the first time his wife could witness what he has been doing.
He is very well regarded and is still very active in public life. He was appointed by the Commonwealth and the African Union to oversee elections in Kenya and Zimbabwe and will do so again in Botswana this coming week. In fact, to carry out this role on behalf of the Commonwealth, he is flying there immediately after the blessing.
President Kabbah is a lifelong Muslim and is deeply committed to the vision of interfaith peace through marriage, because the conflict between Islam and Christianity is very problematic all over Africa. Sierra Leone itself has suffered terribly from inter-religious and intertribal conflict. The blessing may offer an opportunity to heal these old wounds.
There were also several interracial and interfaith couples. One outstanding example is Parvez and Ellu Mansoor from Sweden, who have been married thirty-five years. They have been active with the Unification movement for over ten years. He is an Asian Muslim, and she is a blonde Swedish Lutheran. They told me they have been living the inter-religious ideal for all these years without ever thinking that this is something particularly special.
For couples like these, the blessing validates their type of marriage and the example they are already demonstrating. But it is also adding something new -- they now have met hundreds of others in the same situation. Moreover, they have heard Father give his unique insight into the importance of marriage as the ultimate instrument of peace.
Many participants are active community leaders; some are religious leaders, congressmen, or members of Parliament. Madame Gayatri Nepal, the wife of Madhav Nepal, the prime minister of Nepal, said that she had come not just for their family but because she believed that the blessing could offer a new road to peace for Nepal, which has been haunted by political and religious strife for the past ten years. I believe that it can make a difference in the fortune of a nation if the First Lady is able to go back and say, Our family participated in this blessing, and I recommend it for the nation.
In fact, a large delegation came from Nepal, led by Ek Nath Dhaka!, the UPF Secretary General there. Ek Nath is now a Nepalese congressman and has become well known in public life in his nation. He and his Filipino-born wife Blessie gave a moving testimony about their own marriage and blessing. Taj and Josephine Hamad and Thomas and Lynn Walsh also shared about the blessing.
It was interesting to see that all the delegates at the conference were so interested to know how the blessing had worked out for these couples. They didn't think of them as simply "Unification couples" or merely as members of Rev. Moon's religion, but rather as people who had received this blessing ahead of them -- fifteen, twenty, or even twenty-five years ago. As couples just about to receive the blessing, they wanted to know how it has impacted these couples who come from widely differing national backgrounds.
A very moving part of the International Leadership Conference was the opportunity to meet by regions and invite the couples to introduce each other to the group and say what they loved about their partner and hoped to bring to the blessing. The wives introduced their husband and the husbands introduced their wife. When one spouse started to talk about the other,
I noticed some initial embarrassment that soon evolved into ear-to-ear grins. You could also see, as we went around the circle, couples quickly conferring to make sure they got the story straight! Quite often, one of them would end up weeping because it was such a profound moment to have a testament of their love declared in front of other people.
It was a very beautiful experience and showed how we all are the same as brothers and sisters and sons and daughters of God. We may have different religious, ethnic, national and professional backgrounds and speak different languages, but at the deepest level, we all respond in the same way in front of the power of true love.
As the seminar went on, you could see that all the ambassadors for peace really wanted to be part of the blessing. A few came by themselves and didn't bring a picture of their spouse, probably because they thought Oh, that's not for me. However, they soon found themselves frantically e-mailing home to get a photograph of their spouse, and then bringing it up to our office late at night so everything could be ready in time for the blessing.
A number of the couples had special circumstances, such as a spouse in the spirit world. One of these was the former president of Albania, Alfred Moisiu. He brought a photograph of his wife, and, when the moment came, solemnly offered her the holy wine, and then he drank it himself.
Moisiu, who was president of Albania when True Parents visited the country in 2005 as part of the UPF Peace Tour, is now almost eighty years old, and during the conference he was suffering from an eye infection. Most of the time, he was wearing dark glasses, but he didn't want to wear them in front of True Parents on a public stage. He took off his glasses, even though the bright sunlight was quite painful, so that he could be seen clearly. "I think I speak for all blessed couples when I say we have been newly commissioned to be ambassadors for peace," he said, "And Father and Mother, we won't let you down."
As we all know, the day of the blessing was a spectacular success, and it was a joy to see Sun Moon University filled with couples. Wonderful though the ceremony was, I think it's only the beginning. The real outcome will come when the people participating in this blessing go out and multiply it, blessing others and encouraging others to receive the blessing. The newly-blessed ambassadors for peace, because of their status in the community and the fact that they do come from many different faith backgrounds, are well placed to be effective advocates for the blessing.
We certainly do need to grow our church and our faith community; we have to be strong and proud in our faith and be outspoken in our commitment. But at the same time it has always been our theology that the blessing is for all humanity. It's not limited by faith or theology. However, only when we see that as a living reality, as we did this time, can we really feel confident in the universal value of the blessing.
Muslims readily understand the blessing. They are happy to receive it, and they all recite the blessing vows with enthusiasm, as do Christians and Buddhists. Even people who don't believe in a personal God seem to find the idea of a world of brothers and sisters living as one family under God very appealing. This does not require them to change their religion or change their faith, but it adds something new. After all, in most nations and in most traditions, family and marriage are still rather private affairs. But Father is unique in that he sees this as the way to deal with the problems of the whole human family -- to bring peace and to strengthen individual families one by one.
The day after the blessing, all the ambassadors for peace went up to the Peace Palace for a celebration luncheon with Father and Mother. Just as we expected, the luncheon became a dinner, because Father began to speak and couldn't stop pouring out his heart for six long hours. Some of the other members and I were privately worried about how these new blessed couples would be able to process all the things that Father was saying, but we needn't have worried.
When we stand side-by-side with people from other faiths and from other countries, when we all affirm the blessing vows together, when we all receive the same education, when we all sit with True Parents together, it creates a bond that cannot be cemented simply by education or theology. It is a whole-life experience of a power that simply cannot be denied.
Finally, everyone was also very encouraged this time by the level of media attention. Earlier this year when Father and Mother conducted a blessing in New York, there was relatively little media coverage, and some of our ambassadors for peace openly wondered, "Does any of this make any difference? Did anyone notice, or care?" But this time, because of the great coverage by the International Herald Tribune, upbeat reports from the BBC and Associated Press, they all felt they could go back and freely talk about their experience, knowing that the people they meet will likely have already heard about the blessing and be curious.
I think the new policy of engagement with the press is very wise. Of course we won't always get what we want; occasionally we will run across those who insist on putting a negative slant on things. But journalists are Abel and Cain as well. Generally they are pursuing the truth. If we are open and trusting, God will guide the Abel-type journalists, and their influence is enormous. After all, without the press coverage, the blessing would have just been an event in Asan that only those who were there knew about.
I think it's clear that what made this blessing such a story was the idea that it might be the last major Blessing Ceremony that Father conducts personally, and that could be true. I will say, though, that the ambassadors for peace in their reflections said they tend to think the media jumped the gun a bit. "We think Rev. Moon will have a long life and be healthy and we'll be doing this again quite soon," some said. "Maybe it isn't the last time."
The success of this world peace blessing is a tremendous opportunity for development. I think it's important that in the follow up we encourage the couples who have been blessed and provide them with material to testify widely to their experience. At UPF, we've given all the couples CDs of photos. They also have the stories and the press coverage. On top of this, they have their own couple's photos and of course irreplaceable memories. I'm confident that when they go out to tell their story, they will find the world eager to listen.
Michael Balcomb is the communications director of UPF