The Words of the Durst Family
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The Words of the Durst Family |
Christianity sets forth the ideal of Christ as the norm of value, the standard by which we as human beings are to fulfill our purpose. Christ is the archetype of divine love, and as Christians we are meant to be raised up by Christ to regain our original nature, our original purpose, our original value, and our original love, and to establish the Kingdom of Heaven on earth as it is in heaven. If we are to realize that ideal of love upon the earth, what is first necessary is to follow Christ.
The motto for this year, as we know, is "Creating and Building the Kingdom of Heaven" This is Father's purpose in the fulfillment of Christ's mission on earth. As God is an organized God and works through principles of creation, God will work in an orderly, reasonable, and loving way to fulfill His original ideal. It is necessary for us to not only be united with our True Parents, but to understand the meaning of unity and the organizing principles by which that unity is accomplished.
Our True Parents come to teach us the meaning of being united with God's original nature, original purpose, original value, and original love. Therefore, for us to follow Father and to be united with him, we have to understand unity centered on nature, purpose, value, and love.
Last night we read Father's midnight prayer from God's Day 1985, and in that prayer Father prayed for God to work through our True Parents and through our church to accomplish His original purpose and original ideal of establishing the Kingdom of love. Father is the central authority of our church, and the central authority of all existence. Father represents the supreme ideal of God's purpose. When we accept Father as the central authority of our church or of the world, we are doing so not blindly, but rationally, because he represents the greatest value, the greatest ideal, and the greatest love.
Let us clarify why we need to follow Father. We understand through the Principle that God has a certain nature, a universal and absolute nature. God has a certain purpose -- to develop within human beings the greatest love, the greatest consciousness, and the greatest sensibility. He has a desire for all of humanity to reflect the original Christ ideal. Our True Parents represent the value of an original human being. The original human being's function is to lift up the world to the fulfillment of exactly the same value. Such a person is always seeking God's fulfillment of original purpose in every situation, in every relationship, in every activity. Such a person has ultimate value and a love that's eternal, absolute, unchanging. Father has said many times that the love of Jesus will be valuable 5,000 years from now, even 50,000 years from now, in exactly the same way. In everything Father does, he seeks to motivate us to work for God's kingdom and His righteousness.
What have True Parents accomplished already? They've clarified for us, in rational, intellectual terms as well as heartistic terms, God's purpose and desire. And that is the most precious thing in the world. In their own lives they have exhibited God's nature and God's value in every situation. I have never seen Father and Mother motivated by anything other than these universal values and ideals.
Furthermore, what have our True Parents done in relationship to us, the brothers and sisters of the church? They have raised up people who seek God's love, righteousness, the well-being of the world, and the unity and harmony of all races, religions, and cultures.
They have raised up people who are sincere, hard-working, faithful, hopeful, loyal, devout -- who have the most precious qualities in human life.
Look at the reality of the life of the Korean elders of our church, the regional leaders. They have come here and sacrificed their families, their nation, and their culture for the sake of something foreign to them, so that they could love us and lift us up. They have sacrificed for us, cared for us, and gone through all kinds of difficulties for the sake of God and the world. Whether you like the style or the dress of our elders or not, you have to be totally humbled by the quality of their lives, their self-denial, their love, their righteousness. Their care and concern is beyond comparison. That is the overwhelming reality of what Father has created.
All of the brothers and sisters that make up our unified family are kind, loving, considerate. Maybe I'm naive, but I've never met one bad person in the Unification Church. Our brothers and sisters, in loving God and doing service to the world, are truly heroes and heroines.
What has God created in our True Parents? He's created a kind of drill, to drill through the hardness, the crust of the world. God now has a vehicle through which to work to fulfill His original purpose. And that vehicle is our True Parents and what they have created, the Unification Church.
Why do we have difficulty in using this vehicle effectively? The central problem of the world is the mistrust of authority. In the 1960s you used to see bumper stickers that read, "Question Authority." Why such a cynical view of authority? Because very rarely did any authority represent a significant or a consistent purpose. Very seldom was there any clarity about the nature of what that authority represented. Under those conditions, who could trust any authority?
What has been our experience in growing up? Most of us were given very little understanding about the nature or value of a human being, of a man, a woman, a family, or our relationship to the world. Almost everyone has grown up confused about the basic questions of life. This leads to the thinking that anything is legitimate -- if you feel it, do it -- and this in turn leads to total confusion, total breakdown of value, and the constant questioning and skepticism of authority.
What do we value in our brothers and sisters? Sincerity, purity, goodness, love, consistency, dignity, honor, virtue. These are the beautiful qualities that uplift us, even in our lowest moments. But what is it that hurts us in the world? Inconsistent and false motivation, lack of hope, lack of faith, lack of righteousness, self-centeredness. It is very difficult to trust that our ideals can ever be real. If we've never had a relationship with any human beings who exhibit original value, then it's very difficult for us to be innocent and pure and trusting that we will receive love from others. This results in a heavy overlay of suspicion, cynicism, and doubt.
Therein lies the difficulty in restoring ourselves within God's framework. The smallest things make us lose our faith -- small hurts, small slights. We come into our church center and someone doesn't smile. We're waiting on the corner and we're not picked up on time. We're wondering how come breakfast wasn't there this morning, or we feel it wasn't the kind of breakfast we wanted. Something like that immediately makes us think, "Maybe people are not true in their love. Maybe they don't really care about me." Therefore, what happens? We forget about God, we forget about our true nature, purpose, value, and desire, and we focus down here on the lowest point -- myself.
The universal problem, then, is how to understand our specific situation in relationship to the great vehicle that God has created to accomplish His purpose. In recreating the garden, we have to weed the garden. In the beginning there may not have been so many weeds. Now all we see are the weeds, the thorns, and the briars. Going into the garden is not much fun because we come out bloody. But we have to understand how to maintain ourselves well within it. To follow Father well, to accomplish God's original ideal of creation, we have to understand certain dynamics about what to be proud of, and how to deal with suffering.
Father has given several speeches on the topic of "Our Pride Father emphasizes that our pride comes in being children of God, in knowing that we have a nature like God's with infinite value, infinite creativity, and infinite love. We have a purpose, and that is to exhibit great love to the world. Father himself understands how to embrace people, how to look at any person and draw out his or her divine value. So the first thing we have to do is to reflect God's nature. We have to act in a way that will manifest that nature in us, that will allow us to feel true pride.
Obviously, the first danger to true pride is when someone seeks to undercut our divine nature and our true purpose and value by saying, for example, "Why don't you spend some time cultivating yourself? Haven't you done any ikebana lately? Haven't you written any haiku poetry lately?" But what does Father tell us we can be proud of? Our personal purity, our dedication, our sacrifice.
I feel so proud to be with my brothers and sisters, because their personal lives are such a beautiful example of what the world can be as they reflect what Father and Mother represent. I've been around Father and Mother in every conceivable situation. They are always dignified, and they never make you feel uncomfortable. You can always trust that they will place you in a situation where you can feel valuable, dignified, heavenly.
Quite a few years ago, while the Little Angels were touring the United States, a very worldly, Hollywood-type man invited Father and Mother to Las Vegas to talk about the possibility of booking the Little Angels into his club. Because I was close by on the West Coast, Father wanted me to meet this man, so we all had dinner together. This man had rings on all ten fingers, and he was smoking a big cigar and blowing the smoke all over. It was awful. I was very upset, wondering why Father and Mother had to deal with such a person as this.
The next morning when I was in True Parents' room, Father said to me, without my previously saying a word, "You want to keep your hands clean, don't you? You have to go into hell itself, not to get corrupted by hell, but to represent a heavenly standard. We have to represent the hope for the world and show that, without judging anybody, we can maintain our dignity and love even in the midst of a satanic environment': For three hours he explained to me the limitation of my own love and how I failed to understand a true pride and a true love, even in a false situation.
Look at the example of our Mother during the last year. I've shared with you before how moved I was when Mother would come every day to Danbury, in rain or snow, every single day that she could possibly come. Every morning she greeted Father as he came into the visiting room with a bright, lovely, joyful smile, even though there was great sadness in her heart. The significance of Mother's true love story is much greater than Dickens or Shakespeare or anyone else could write about. In the Bible you can read the stories of Ruth and Esther, but someday in the Completed Testament you will read the story of our Mother and her absolute faithfulness to Father.
I've seen how Mother in her quiet, dignified way has provided an example for so many sisters in our church. I am a great admirer, respecter, and celebrator of the women in our church, and I know that Father is as well. I am always moved and humbled by the quiet, loving sacrifice of the sisters in our church. I respect and admire the heroism of the brothers, for sure, but I also admire the strong, steadfast nature of the sisters. What a great support they have been to our brothers!
We can also take pride in what Father has accomplished in the United States in the last four months. Somewhere between 15,000 and 20,000 ministers have come to various conferences so far, in which black, white, Oriental, all kinds of ministers have come together -- people who have never been together in such situations before. Eleven o'clock on Sunday morning, especially in the South, is still the most segregated hour in America, but Father has been able to bring the different races together in worship. Father is also reaching out to the oppressed, and the downtrodden, when other people have just been forgetting about them.
Through CAUSA Father is educating legislators, religious leaders, even entire populations about the nature of communism and about God as an alternative to evil. When I went to the rally in Korea recently, there was an overflow crowd, a packed stadium of more than 40,000 people. Father could have spoken to them about communism with great hatred, but what he spoke about was the love of God as the way to overcome the terrible evil of communism.
In over 250 cities, our brothers and sisters are distributing food, toys, medical supplies. We are one of the largest contributors to the food bank in Boston. We just gave away our 5 millionth pound of food in Oakland last year. In Las Vegas we helped serve 19,000 families a month. In city after city, Father has given us the opportunity to feel great pride as we serve the real needs of people -- those who are hungry, those who are sick, those who lack companionship. Our brothers and sisters are reaching out in the most concrete, tangible ways in serving humanity.
Father is moving in a significant way in every area of culture. For example, bankers, financiers, and industrialists are working together now to solve the economic problems of the world. The Washington Institute for Values and Public Policy has been created as a think tank focused on God-centered values. Our Paragon House Publishers is quickly becoming one of the most outstanding scholarly publishing houses in the world. We can see that, by following Father, we can have great pride, because Father has created an instrument that is sharp and powerful; for 40 years it has been focused precisely on God's original ideal.
Our True Parents have offered to God 40 years of suffering and sacrifice and love upon the foundation of thousands of years of God's work through human history. To tamper with this vehicle lightly is very risky business. To play with this in any light way is to undermine a foundation that has come upon the greatest seriousness and the greatest sacrifice in the world.
We have much to be proud about. But, since that which often destroys our pride is our suffering, we have to understand the nature of suffering and how to use our suffering well so that we can enhance our pride through strategies of love.
Everybody suffers. Buddha said, "Life is suffering." Jesus said, "Life means pick up the cross and follow me." Father says, "Life is indemnity." And whether we listen to these great authorities or not, we all recognize that life involves suffering. I have never met or read about any human being that did not experience suffering.
Father, in seeking to fulfill God's purpose of creation, is seeking to fulfill the ideal of joy. We're all motivated by that which is good, beautiful, and loving. But because of the fall, we are easily blocked in the fulfillment of those motivations. So the indemnity process is a restoration that involves a certain amount of pain before we can realize a greater amount of joy.
Look at how God has worked through history with those He has loved. He has always made them suffer. Moses was put through all kinds of terrible suffering. God needed him, but rather than exalting him, He put him through a desert course, a wilderness course. Moses went through every conceivable hardship so that God could use his suffering to liberate a people.
God wanted to create a vehicle at the time of Moses to move the dispensation forward. But it was very difficult for Moses, because the people in the desert were saying, "I don't like the bread. The bread was better in Cairo. Moses has given us rotten bread to eat. He's really looking to hurt us." The people forgot about God's purpose, God's value, God's desire, and God's ideal. "At least in Cairo, even if we were slaves, it was still cool in the evening. Here we're supposedly free and we're dying of the heat. Who needs it? Why do we have to go through the desert? My wife doesn't like walking and here we are walking for 40 years." There were constant complaints. But Moses said, "I understand. I feel your situation. But God needs something larger right now."
Look at the situation of Jesus. Jesus came as the Messiah, to establish the fulfillment of God's ideal on earth, but what happened? People scorned him, mocked him, criticized him, abused him, crucified him. He had to endure every kind of suffering for the sake of God's ideal. He endured those things out of love, for he gave forth only love. He didn't return hatred for hatred; he returned love for hatred. That is the indemnity process -- to love, to serve, to heal, no matter what comes back. God used that offering as the basis for spiritual salvation.
Look at the example of Father -- what was his response to his imprisonment? Forgive, love, unite, serve, heal, seek to do God's will, and fulfill God's ideal and His great love. No matter how much Father has suffered, his response has been that of love and service centered upon God's original purpose of creation. God can use that offering for the fulfillment of His original ideal. Father has offered us the central strategy for dealing with suffering -- be grateful and loving.
When I visited Father in Danbury, the first two times I came in tears. Father said, "What are you crying about? Don't cry for me. Go cry for the world. This a great opportunity. There are many things to do. He harbored no resentment, no hatred, no anger. He urged me to go forth and serve the world, not to be worried about his situation.
There is a dimension of our suffering that afflicts each of us, and often paralyzes us, which I think can be remedied with certain practical strategies of love. Rather than being filled with true pride because we reflect God's nature, because we want to accomplish God's purpose, and because we know we have great value, great creativity, and great love, we often feel a lack of pride because we have been hurt in one or more ways. So it's important for us to understand the ways in which, on a practical level, we hurt each other and how to remedy that hurt, that suffering.
I meet very few people who are not inspired by Father and the Principle once they understand clearly what Father and the Principle are all about. The difficulty that people have, from my observation both in the family and outside, lies in the gap between our ideals and the way we practice our ideals.
Everybody in our church wants to live these noble ideals. On the other hand, everybody is usually only in the process of accomplishing them. By emphasizing high ideals, we are often not sensitive to the unique, living individual who is going through various kinds of struggles in the realization of those great, noble, and high ideals. A spiritually mature person largely operates off of his or her ideals, but what motivates most of us are the many little ways we are too sensitive or too insensitive to each other's feelings. We all feel very, very sensitive. I have never met one person in our church who didn't feel that he or she was very sensitive, very complicated, very touchy.
If we are to follow Father, we must represent Father in our relationship to each other. That means, as we look upon a sister, for example, that we should feel, "This is God's daughter, with infinite value, infinite preciousness, infinite love;' and we have to listen to her soul, to her spirit, not just her words. It's important in our relationship to each other to affirm, acknowledge, validate, and authenticate the divine nature of our brother or our sister. Only in that way do these ideals become a living reality.
Following
the speech Pres. Mose Durst, regional director Rev. Chan Kyun Kim,
and Mr. Takeru Kamiyama cut the Cod's Day cake.
A number of years ago Father and Mother came to California and stayed at our church center for several days. We did everything for them -- we prepared lovely meals, we made the house beautiful, we polished the apples. Everything was perfect. We did all this thinking, how can we really honor and glorify our True Parents? I know all of you have that same kind of heart -- seek to respect, to honor, and to make everything beautiful for our True Parents.
But when Father and Mother were about to leave, they gathered all the brothers and sisters together who had been attending them, and Father said, "In these last few days, you have really extended yourselves and prayed and sacrificed to make everything beautiful. But just as you've treated us in this special and precious way, so now treat each other in the same way. Love each other in exactly the same way, so that you will feel God's love from each other. This is what I am teaching you, so that you will discover God within the other. Honor each brother and sister as if they were True Parents. If guests come into your home, respect them as if they were True Parents. With that kind of attitude and that kind of heart, we can establish the fulfillment of God's ideal"
In our ministerial work, in our witnessing, in our relationship to each other as members of a spiritual family and a spiritual community, we need to care much more deeply about people, understand them, listen to them, and acknowledge our own shortcomings in relationship to them. When we make mistakes, we should apologize. If we've hurt somebody, we should bow down and ask forgiveness from that person. It's no shame to bow down before your wife or your sister or your brother and say, "I'm sorry, please forgive me. I'm the one who hurt you and I want to restore the relationship':
Religion, from what Father has taught us, involves humility. Humility is not only abstract humility before God; it's a concrete humility between our brothers and sisters. It's necessary to embody that heart if we're going to realize our ideals and move away from merely being sensitive to our own hurts toward being sensitive to God.
Father is teaching us the deepest standard of friendship. What have the great classical writers like Aristotle and Cicero said about friendship? Aristotle and Cicero do not approach the depths of what Father is saying, although they're similar. They say that friendship is based upon the good -- drawing out the good within the other and exhibiting good yourself. When you unite upon a purpose which is good, you can have true friendship.
Without an ideal of the good, there actually isn't true friendship. Last night I walked over to the World Mission Center and you could see groups of friends going out to Times Square to celebrate New Year's Eve. It looked like the end of the world. But here, in the ballroom, the first second of the new year we heard the precious words -- "Dearest beloved Heavenly Father..."
Father has taught us how to be true friends -- how to love each other centered upon the good. We can have the deepest friendships of our lives if we know how to apply the good in every specific, unique situation.
What has Father taught us about art, about the imagination, about creativity? I spent much of my adult life teaching literature. I am fascinated with art and the creative process, but Father has taught us that life itself must be a work of art. We must use our imagination transformed by the redeeming power of love. If your brother is hurting, you can imaginatively transform him with the spirit of love. Love is not just a weapon or a sword that you use to cut through things. Love also means sprinkling stardust on each other. You can do a million little things every day to show your love to your brother or sister. Whether by doing a Korean dance or singing American jazz, there are multitudinous ways in which we can exhibit God's creative, imaginative love, so that our daily life becomes a truly spiritual life. It's not just in great novels that we read about great heroic things. Our lives can be great, imaginative, beautiful, and heroic if we truly follow Father's teachings.
American junior high students are often taught the novel A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. This is one of the most beautiful and moving stories ever told. It's a story about a man who sacrifices his life for the sake of someone else. When teenagers read A Tale of Two Cities they feel, "That is a great story. I also want to dedicate my life to something good, beautiful, noble, and heroic"
Well, Father has come up with a great novel -- it is called The Divine Principle. The only difference between the Principle and the novel is that the Principle is true. Through it we can make of our lives something beautiful, something imaginative, something creative. The poet Basho understood: "If to the moon you put a handle -- oh, what a splendid fan!" In that haiku poem is the secret of God's creativity.
It's important for us to understand that following Father means, in essence, uniting with Father's purpose, nature, value, and desire, and uniting with the vehicle that he has created to accomplish all of these things. It's necessary for us to unite with True Parents in order to understand all of the dimensions of our life. I've studied thousands and thousands of books; I've met thousands and thousands of people; I've traveled in the last six years to over 40 countries. I've asked, "Who are the great teachers of the world?" And I've found n., one who understands anything nearly as significant as what Father is teaching.
It's very difficult to live a life of high ideals. It's the hardest thing in the world. If we can understand how to deal with the small sufferings, we will enable ourselves to deal with the great sufferings, and then we will realize a great joy.
What has Father asked us to concretely accomplish in the next three years? Reach out to 120 ministers. Every 10 days reach out to a minister with whom you can a make a significant relationship. Give life to one human being a month. These are difficult goals. Even if there are not 120 ministers in your area, find out from your regional leader or your state leader who needs to be written to. Let's be pen pals with 120 ministers. Let's figure out imaginatively and creatively how to send our testimony to 120 ministers. Let's send pictures or inspirations of our spiritual life to 120 ministers.
Whenever I'm on a plane I sit next to somebody and we have a conversation. Usually by the end of the plane ride I tell that person who I am and what I'm doing and then I offer a copy of my book, which is my testimony. You can make your own book, in whatever form you want. Offer your testimony -- even if it's not on paper. Give whatever you think will move a person closer to God's love. Get his name and address so that you can write to him.
We are not collecting members. We're bringing the world back to God. We're stimulating the heart of love in a world that doesn't trust love. If we can fulfill this goal and truly follow Father, we can accomplish God's original ideal of creation. God needs our love, our parents need our love, our elder brothers and sisters need our love, our younger brothers and sisters need our love, the environment needs our love, everything needs our love. All we need to do is offer true love. True love comes upon understanding the nature of love, the purpose of love, the value of love, and the right direction and desire of love.
The year 1986 can be a year of renewal, of rebirth, of building and creating the Kingdom of Heaven if we can fulfill the ideal of love.' That's the challenge our Parents have given us. If we follow Father, we can fulfill that challenge. Let us, in 1986, bring glory to heaven, glory to our True Parents, and peace and love on this beautiful earth.