The Words of the Hernandez Family
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The Words of the Hernandez Family |
Good morning. It's so good to see you all. Good morning, America. Good morning, brothers and sisters in our one nationwide church. Thank you so much.
First of all, I want to express my sincerest gratitude to our national pastor, Rev. In Jin Moon, for this incredible privilege, and for her expression of trust in my heart and in the hearts of the other district pastors who have spoken and who have yet to speak.
I want to dedicate my sermon today to our elder brother Hyo Jin Nim, who envisioned this place being filled with people who could glorify God through music. Amen, Aju. The fourth anniversary of his ascension was yesterday, and truly I'm so grateful that I can deliver this sermon.
My title today is "Ideality: Loving Life through Bringing Our Ideals into Reality."
I've got to give some shout-outs. I'd be very remiss as a district pastor not to give shout-outs to my district. I don't know if you know my district, District 9. It's pretty vast. It extends from Yellowstone National Park down to the Rio Grande Valley and the Gulf of Mexico, and from the Mississippi River and Arkansas to Great Salt Lake in Utah. So I've got to give shout-outs to the Love family in Laramie, Wyoming; to Mike and Wendy Stovall, the state leaders and their great family in Salt Lake City; to Rev. Michael Hentrich and Shigeko Hentrich in the Colorado family; to Rev. Rick and Janice Schnorr in the New Mexico family in Albuquerque; to Rev. Jun Orikasa and his wife Eiko and the Oklahoma family. It's a lot of families.
To the Arkansas family under Rev. John Jackson and Asai Jackson. To the Texas family under Rev. Hideyuki and Toyoko Sakai, and to all the wonderful city leaders -- in Houston, Rev. Brewer; in Austin, Rev. Ken Morgan; in San Antonio, Dave Rogers; in Dallas, Rev. Killey; and in El Paso, the Rodriguez family. We are a huge district. It's very hard to get around, yet through it all, through the distance we have some great ministries. Lovin' Life has given us such a boost.
I want to give a real shout-out to the Albuquerque youth. They've been there since two hours before Service. They've been coming and doing that for two years, coming to Service for two hours before and practicing. They've got a great Albuquerque Lovin' Life band. And then they double as the ACLC youth choir. They go out to churches and celebrate the anniversaries of ministers' churches, and they're the most sought-after commodity of the ACLC scene in Albuquerque.
I want to give a shout-out to the Dallas Sunday Service team that comes an hour early. They've been doing this for more than a year. They're so dedicated, and they've been growing. It's college-age to middle-school-age kids who come to church because they really want to own their church. Amen, Aju. And a great group of young guys that have been developing a ministry called BC Crew. They're break dancers. You've got to see them some time. I couldn't bring them. Sorry. But they are so hot. They're great.
And now I have a long overdue shout-out. It might sound strange, and I know we're not on Mother's Day yet, but I want to give a shout-out to all the awesome sisters in our movement. I've had such a privilege in my almost 40 years in this movement to work with sisters from all different nations and backgrounds. You know who you are, how much you've touched me, how much you've poured into my life and left your legacy. I've always sought to do the same, to leave a legacy through my life.
Brothers, come on! I want to hear it for our sisters, our mothers, our wives, our daughters.
You know, another important thing about this weekend, this March 17th weekend -- today's the 18th -- this is the fifth anniversary of our True Father's historic Pacific Rim speech in Kona, Hawaii. I don't know if you've read that speech many, many times, as he asked us to, but central to that speech is his warning about how the Pacific Rim needs to be made safe and secure, and also his call to women to rise, in this Era of Women. Let's hear it for the Era of Women.
We've always said it's paradoxical that we're the elder son nation, but at the helm is an elder daughter. I'm so happy and I'm so proud of that.
Another reason why I want to call attention to our mothers, our wives, our daughters, and our sisters is that just a few days ago, on March 15th, our True Mother was inaugurated as the chairperson of the board of the Sun Moon Educational Institute. Did you hear about that? Yes. In her very graceful way, our True Mother said that neither democracy nor communism is the answer, but we must open a new era. And she called that era the Era of Heavenly Love, or Heavenly Emotion. And she called for the Sun Moon Institute to lead the way in providing education that fosters and promotes a culture of harmonious interaction, communication, and interdependence. If our Mother, our True Mother is not the embodiment of all those things, what is she?
Yesterday as the plane was flying in from Texas to New York, I could look out the window and see parts of Brooklyn. As we were flying over Brooklyn and I looked down, and I could see trees in blossom. I could see pink trees and white trees. Brothers and sisters, there is an irreversible spring upon us. It made me think, "Can we see the signs, the signs of an irreversible cosmic spring?"
Our True Father and True Mother are marching to that day, which is Foundation Day, the Day of Origin. And I'm very concerned. Cosmic spring is coming. As our national pastor has spoken to us many times, we of the First Generation hunkered down, and we survived. But quite honestly, we haven't thrived. We haven't. In many cases we've been in hibernation. We've been in our caves.
And the fear struck me, as I looked down and saw that beautiful spring coming, "True Parents have declared an incredible spring to come and last for eternity. But am I, are we, hibernating in the caves? Are we going to come out of the cave?"
Brothers and sisters, we've striven too long and too hard to miss this cosmic spring. Reverend Cotter, just two weeks ago on March 4th, called us to march forth with the foundation initiative. And almost a year ago to this day our pastor, Rev. In Jin Moon, called us to be all-in, to jump completely in. And just this past True God's Day our True Father extolled the virtue of total dedication, of life-or-death dedication. But what's amazing is that he likened it to the birth pangs and the glory that mothers go through in childbirth. Amen.
So you may wonder, what does this have to do with ideality? Growing up, I was one of those cock-eyed optimists. But I was pretty grounded as an optimist, and for me I thought I'd coined the word ideality. Later on I found it in Webster's dictionary, but it didn't mean what I wanted it to mean. In Webster's it could be used to describe the views of a person that are the contrary of reality, whereas reality could be used to describe the views of a person who accepts the facts and values as they are.
But I was the kind of young person who dreamed that we could have a world centered on true love, that we could have a world in which altruism was our state of thinking and being. That has really defined me. I feel like I need to go back and look at that time, and I want to share that with you, if I may. I would like to share a bit about how I came to be a part of this church family, and also how Jesus and God led me to True Parents.
I was raised Catholic. At about the age of 9 when I was having my confirmation, it was a very serious time for me. I was funny. I wanted to be Jerry Lewis, and yet at the same time I had a passion for a world that was so much better. I would devour encyclopedias, and I would listen to the world news at 6:00 pm with Peter Jennings or Walter Cronkite or whoever was there. I was the kind of person at that age who really felt that Jesus had given his life for me -- and what better way could there be for me to give back to Jesus than to live a life that was worthy of giving him joy and satisfaction?
I looked around in the Catholic Church and through my friends I looked around in other churches, but I felt that none of the churches were calling us to really be Christ-like. I felt that since Jesus had said, "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do," that it was incumbent upon me and all of us that, once we do come to understand what we did, then we would want to pour everything of ourselves into letting him multiply himself through us.
So at the ages of 9 and 10, I asked Jesus if he would take over my life and live my life vicariously with me. But there was this bugging thing. Every now and then, Jesus would say to me, "Mark, if you lived 2,000 years ago, would you have been able to recognize me? Would you have been able to see me? And if you saw me and if you heard me, Mark, would you have known? And if you had known, would you have latched onto me and held onto me, no matter what?"
From the age of 9 until 19 that question would come back, and every time it came back I would be made so serious by it and really feel, "Would I? Would I be able to recognize you, Jesus?"
We hear a lot about bullying and persecution in schools. It might sound strange, but almost every day of my elementary-school life and almost every day of my middle-school life, I would get called names. I would get called names and I would be persecuted; I just thank God so much that because of the sweet closeness of Jesus I could go to him.
You might wonder what they were calling me. I was raised in Texas. I was raised in neighborhoods that were largely all Anglo, and I was Mexican. I am Mexican plus a bunch of other things thrown in, too, as most Americans are. But my name, Hernandez, identified me as a Mexican. So I got treated like one. In schools where the students were mostly Anglo, you were a standout if you were Hernandez. It's such a common Spanish name.
Also, I was quite effeminate. I didn't realize I was, but everybody said, "Hey, you walk like a girl, you talk like a girl; you do this like a girl, you do that like a girl." And, boy, it made me self-conscious. It made me wonder, what was I? I'm so grateful to Jesus because when I went and asked him, "Well, Jesus, what do you think? Do you think I should look in the mirror and change the way I walk, the way I talk, and the way I do things?" I was so flabbergasted by his answer. He said, "No, Mark, just be yourself. Just be yourself because if you worry about how you walk and how you talk and how you look, you're going to go crazy. Just be yourself."
"Think about it," he said. "People that have to go around calling other people names, bullying other people, have probably been bullied themselves, have probably had someone calling them names, someone denigrating them and they don't know how to deal with it. And what they're doing is passing it on to you." He asked me to please forgive them. He asked me to pray for them, and I did. And I probably could not be standing here if I had not had that sweet closeness.
My father had some advice, much like our national pastor's advice. He said, "Son, they call you Mexican; you show them your excellence. You show them your excellence inside and your excellence outside." So that became my thing. I really wanted to show people that you can't pigeonhole someone. You can't put someone in some kind of classification because they are a Hernandez or because they're black or because they're Asian or whatever. Or because they're an Unificationist or a Moonie, right?
I had the privilege in sixth grade to be the first Mexican American narrator of the Christmas pageant. It was a big thing to narrate the Christmas pageant, with all the singing and the angels dropping down and all that stuff. I was the narrator of it, and I took it to heart and did my best.
My dad was not able to come because he was working two jobs to provide for us what most people made with one job; my dad worked 16 hours a day for almost 30 years to provide for our family. As I was coming down the steps of the stage, a Mexican American gentleman came out. He walked up to me with tears pouring down his face. He said, "That was beautiful. That was wonderful."
And I thought, "Well, maybe he got overcome by the message or something." But then he said, "You showed them. You showed them. You showed them." It was my first experience to realize that my life could represent more than just me or more than just my family, that our lives could represent much more, and that people were looking at me. That call to be excellent, internally and externally, was a very important call.
When I heard In Jin Nim make it her sounding board so often, I thought, "Yes, yes, yes." Our God is excellent, Amen? Our True Parents are excellent, Amen? Our national pastor is excellent. The Lovin' Life band is excellent.
You know, sometimes people say, "Oh, wow, that music, how can you pray to that music?" But I love the music. I don't know how many weeks ago, but there was one week a few weeks ago when they were singing about "I Want to Know What Love Is." Wow. I was already in a prayerful mood, but in that song, "I Want to Know What Love Is," I started trembling. I started shaking in my seat there in Dallas, watching it. I was not even here live in New York.
And all I could feel was God saying, "I want to know what love is. I want to feel what love is. I want to be in you. I want you to be in me." I could not stop crying. I know it sounds like a revolutionary, strange, and heretical concept, that God wants to know what love is. But love requires relationship. Love requires that beautiful give and take, giving and receiving.
When I was about 13 or 14, Jesus came to me and laid another one on me. He said, "I want you to stay pure until further notice." I said, "Jesus, do you know that we're in the midst of the sexual revolution? Free sex is everywhere." He said, "No, I want you to stay pure. I've got some reasons for that, and I want you to pray about that. I want you to search about that." So I did as he told me.
He said, "Look at the state of humanity. Look at the state of the world. Look at the state of marriage and draw some conclusions." I prayed, and what came to me and what also he led me to see was that Adam and Eve, or whoever our first ancestors were, must have sired children when they were quite emotionally immature, when they were not ready to love with a total heart. And because they could only love conditionally, they passed on children who could only love conditionally. I was led to see that Adam and Eve became like a wall that we as human beings have never been able to pierce because we never had the living example of true parental love. He helped me see that Adam and Eve never perfected brother and sister love, and he said to me, "Mark, until you can perfect brother-sister love, I am not going to open the door for marital love. So your homework is that you've got to be able to see every woman as a mother figure, a daughter, a sister, a grandmother. You've got to see them in those eyes before I grant you to see them as a wife."
It made so much sense to me. It made sense to me that if you did not perfect brother-sister love, how could you go on to love someone totally as husband and wife? I got excited. I'm a pretty excitable person, and I had a real close-knit group of friends. We were kind of on the nerdy side, poets and stuff. I shared with them, those that I felt I could share with, one by one. I said, "Let's not just rush into what everybody has always rushed into. In all the history of humankind, people have been rushing into sex, relationships, and passion without first of all developing their capacity to love, and their capacity to respect and see the amazing value in the other human being, to see God in all people." As a result, about five or six of my friends and I made a pact; we signed a pact, not a suicide pact, thank God. It was a pact to stay pure, to be celibate.
Fast-forward to my 19th birthday. I'm at home, I have just finished my first year of college, and Jesus has been laying some heavy things on me. Now he's telling me that if he were to come now, would I be able to recognize him? If I recognized him, would I follow him, would I give him my life? And I seriously told him, "Yes, I would give you my life."
He told me, though, that if I was going to bring more people on board, to bring more people into living a life of ideality -- taking our invisible ideals and bringing them into reality, actualizing our ideals of true love, altruism, and really living for the sake of others, then I had to develop an ideology. Me, develop an ideology? I stayed up nights trying to think of an ideology, trying to think of something. He said, "It can't be all just character-driven. It can't be based only on your personality and your verve or whatever. It's got to be based on an ideology, and that ideology will have to outlive you because people buy into that ideology."
So I was like, "Wow, how could I find an ideology? How could I come up with an ideology?" And then on the afternoon of my 19th birthday, a girl came by our house selling candles for the Unified Family. They didn't have a center in Houston, where I lived; they had a center back in Austin, where I'd gone to school the first year at the University of Texas on a full scholarship. And I said, "What is the Unified Family?"
Now Jesus had been telling me, you have to build an ideal world of true love. So she says, "We're a movement and we're working to build an ideal world of true love." I just about fell off -- I just about died. "What did you say? What did you say? You're in a group of people and they're building an ideal world? Wow. That's what I'm all about." We stayed there and talked for about a half an hour, and I was on Cloud Nine.
Years later she would tell me that she was driving, she got lost, and she just picked this neighborhood. But I know better. I was home for that summer to get a job so I could make some personal spending money. She told me that they were going to have a workshop on Labor Day weekend, but my birthday is in May. "This Labor Day weekend, back in Austin," she told me, "they'd be having a workshop." But I kid you not, all summer long I could not take my mind off the idea that I was going to be with other people who had the same passion as myself. I was going to be with people who wanted to build an ideal world, people who were willing to roll up their sleeves, sweat, and give everything to build an ideal world.
Well, I got to the workshop and I was a pretty arrogant fellow. After all those things that Jesus had downloaded to me, I was pretty full of it. So I was one of those guests you don't really want to have at a workshop. I was one of those guests for whom we're like, "Why did you bring him?" I kept interrupting the lecturer. God bless you, John Doroski. Thank you so much. He's my spiritual grandfather. Thank you, John.
I must have interrupted I don't know how many times. Then I performed the biggest no-no that Unificationists know about. John was going up to the front; he was about to start the Second Advent lecture and I stood up talked to all the other participants in the workshop. "You know what he's about to do, y'all? He's about to tell us that Sun Myung Moon is the Messiah." Uh, oh. Uh, oh. Boy.
We all had come to the workshop site in a van singing songs. Well, I was relegated to a Volkswagen with Beatriz Gonzales and went back to Austin from this wonderful countryside setting in a Volkswagen, arguing with this Mexican-American sister the whole way. And when we got back to the center, all the other guests left, but something in my spirit world, something in my heart, told me, "Mark, you've got to stay here. You've got something to break through."
I love that song, "Break Through." Wasn't that a beautiful song today? Wow, break through. "You've got something to break through, Mark." And the voice said, "These people are much higher than you, Mark. Look at them. Can't you see it?" And it was true. I looked around, and all I could see were people exuding God's love. And the voice said, "You've got to be humble. You've got to be humble, and you've got to listen for the next thing that that man, John Doroski, says." He was just a few years older than me, but I could feel his stature.
So I heard that they were going to have a prayer meeting at 10:00 o'clock, and I begged -- me, the bad guest -- I begged, "Please let me stay for the prayer meeting. Please let me stay for the prayer meeting." I could see John sigh. Was I going to interrupt the prayer meeting somehow?
There was one single candle in the prayer room, and one brother began praying. He began talking to God like a child, like a son of God. And hidden down below in my memory was a time when I was about 7, before my first communion, when I had such a loving relationship with God. Hearing that brother call out to God just broke me down. I hadn't prayed in how many years.
You might say, "How did you love Jesus and have contempt for God?" My answer is, "I could see clearly that Jesus died for me and lived for me. He was a real person, and he had already been talking to me for such a long time. Our talks weren't prayers." But there I was, trying to pray to God. And what I remember is, I said, "God, I don't know if you're really there, but I want to know that you're there. If you're there, if you're real, if you make yourself real to me -- and I know I'm unworthy for you to do that -- but if you could make yourself real to me, you will have me forever. You will. You will have me forever. I know I've blamed so much in my life on you. I've blamed so much in the world on you. But if you could just somehow, even for just a second, show me that you're real, then I will dedicate my life to you."
I'm so grateful to God. It wasn't just a second. Who knows, it may have been a second, but for me it lasted a long time. I was on the floor -- I don't know how I was sitting, on my knees or Indian-style. But suddenly I was in the arms of God, and God was rocking me in his arms, pouring his love into me. I just began sobbing and weeping like a baby, and God began combing his fingers through my hair.
How this happened I do not know. On the other side, maybe I'll get to see it. But every stroke of God's hand in my hair was taking out all this angst, out all this junk, and all that was left was me, totally enraptured in the love of God, totally feeling the love of God. Then I was saying to God, "God, I'm just a 19-year-old nothing. How can you share your love to me so deeply? How can you make yourself so real to me?"
I just sobbed and sobbed. It seemed like it went on for a long time. He showed me that my ancestors had actually paid an immense ransom for me. I cried again when I saw that, when I saw that all my ancestors had poured out all the gold of their heart and all the gold of their actions to bring me to True Parents.
I asked him right then, "Why here? Why in this place did you wake me up? Why here in this place did you show me yourself? You showed me yourself absolutely. I will never doubt you." He said, "I showed you here because my son is here. My son is here, and I want you to follow him. I want you to serve him. I want you to attend him."
Brothers and sisters, I was not brainwashed. I was maybe heart-washed, and it's God who testified in my life to True Parents, to True Father. I'm so grateful because for me, I know that sometimes fellow Christians struggle, are we asking them to replace Jesus with True Father? No. Absolutely not. I never felt that struggle. I felt that Jesus brought me. He brought me to this church. He brought me and introduced me to True Parents.
We've been doing a lot in the education of clergy and our brothers and sisters with the Original Substance of the Divine Principle programs. It is really new wine for this time that we're in. And contrary to what we might think, brothers and sisters, it's not just new wine for them out there and we're excluded. Do you get my drift? It's new wine for us. It's True Father on the foundation of victory starting from 2008 at Hawaii King Garden, pouring out new wine.
But you know what? The same rule applies, the rule that Jesus said. You don't pour new wine into old wineskins. You've got to pour it into new wineskins because wine ferments and expands the wineskin.
I've realized that clearly over these past few weeks, especially in the education of clergy and the education of brothers and sisters, which we began on March 4th. We jumped right into it, Reverend Cotter, and in the Dallas church we made a determination that we would for 21 days have nonstop -- well, not 24 hours a day, but for each day we would have the Divine Principle being taught there. We culminated the first week with a two-day workshop, and we had about 37 guests at that workshop.
From all this what's so amazing is one minister who came to our area after being very well raised by Tim Henning in southern California. This minister is so on fire with the Original Substance of the Divine Principle. Maybe some of you heard him, Rev. Don Peavy. On his Facebook page his status is "If you don't know the Divine Principle, you don't know God."
And the number one thing that he's so on fire about is Shim Jung. Shim Jung. Now, he can't pronounce it right. He goes, "shimjoong, shimjoong," but he knows what it means. For him it means that God has an irrepressible emotional impulse to feel joy in loving his object partner. Don is so excited because he's one of those object partners, and God only has this irrepressible impulse to love him.
If you look at that definition, it's amazing. The emotional impulse that's irrepressible to feel joy through loving one's object partner. It's not to feel joy in what the object partner returns. It's to feel joy in giving, as our national pastor often says, "Just because." Just because.
At the behest of our national pastor, we studied From Good to Great, and it's very interesting. In that book Jim Collins wrote something that really startled me, and I looked at it over and over again, thinking about it in light of the definition of Shim Jung. Collins writes, "Those who turn good to great are motivated by a deep creative urge and an inner compulsion for sheer, unadulterated excellence for its own sake. Those who build and perpetuate mediocrity, in contrast, are motivated by the fear of being left behind."
That's quite amazing: a deep creative urge, an inner compulsion that seeks for excellence for its own sake. Sounds like Shim Jung.
As a district pastor and as a vice regional leader before that, I've had some moments with True Parents in which I sit there and wish that the whole American movement could just jump into my body and be there, hearing the things that I am hearing and experiencing what I am experiencing.
One time, I think it was in 2004 or 2005, we were in East Garden at Hoon Dok Hae in the morning with Father. Most of the people there were from the American movement, and many of us had been around for a long time. Father started out looking around. He said, "Oh, anybody new here?" And there wasn't anybody new there. Then he said, "How many here over 35 years following me?" A few people raised their hands. "How many over 30?" I raised my hand, with a bunch of people. "And how many over 25? How many over 20?"
What was crystallized in that moment for me was how Father was talking with us and to us. It wasn't a time when he was talking and saying, "Do you understand? Do you understand? You don't understand. Do you understand me?" It wasn't like that at all. It was like he was talking to friends, to people who'd gone the same path as he. And he said, "All of you, you went looking for invisible things. You went looking for valuable things but they're invisible to everybody. They're almost imaginary to most people. But you set your sights on those things and made those your priority. Are you glad? Aren't you glad that you did that?" And I could feel that. I was smiling back at Father. "Yes, Father. Yes, Father, I'm so glad. I'm so glad I took this path. I have no regrets."
What's amazing is that about a few months later it was Thanksgiving and the Thanksgiving before that, 2004, had been a really rotten one for me. I had two sons on STF at the time so they missed Thanksgiving, and my father was saying, "You brainwashed them. You brainwashed them so they're on that thing that you call, whatever." It was just a hard one. I wanted to just walk out of Thanksgiving, but thank goodness my brother-in-law, David, had come to me, and just held my arm. He said, "Calm down, Mark. Calm down."
Well, now it is Thanksgiving one year later and we're maybe 10 minutes before prayer time for the meal. David comes and gets me, pulls me out of the den, takes me over to the living room of my parents' house, and along traipses his older sister, Annie. So Annie and David are in the room with me. David is the husband of my older sister, Becky, whom I love incredibly. My brother-in-law says to me, "Mark, I want to say something to you. I've had it on my chest for a long time and I just want to tell you." I said, "What is it, David? What is it?"
He says, "Mark, I respect you so much. I value your life so much. I'm kind of jealous of you, but you're everything that I wanted to be." I was beside myself. I was trying to figure out, what is he talking about? He said, "Mark, you set your sights" -- it was almost verbatim -- "you set your sights on invisible things, on the things like true love and raising a family that can really feel the love of God, of working for peace in this world, of living an altruistic life. You put that as your first priority, and that's what I wanted to do from the time when I was young, but I didn't do that. Instead I followed the path looking for material security, thinking that if I got the material security, yes, I could run back and I could get that spiritual, internal security. But it's always eluded me.
"But when I look at your life, Mark, I'm so proud that you're my brother-in-law and I'm so happy for you. I'm so happy. I feel like we have a special family because you're in this family."
And to whom do I owe that? I owe that to our True Parents. I owe that to Jesus.
Some people say it's better to be a realist, to just put those material things first. But by this age and this time, I'm certain that all of us in this room can say, "Phooey to that," and that it's really better to pursue this ideal life with God, with True Parents, and with our fellow man. But we have much more work to do. You can see it. We have much more work to do, and I'm so concerned about how our church can have the heart to embrace all kinds of people, to show love to all kinds of people.
I mean, we are a pretty narrow place. I had an experience this week that I want to share with you. I'd heard from Reverend Cotter and of course from our national pastor, "Be ready any time to come to New York." But we're never really ready. I kept thinking that maybe God would show me some new experiences that might be part of this message. Voilα! Last Monday and Tuesday I drove to El Paso with our KEA leader, Rev. Jin Hyung Lee. We went there to perform, and I went to officiate, at a Seunghwa for an elder Korean sister. She was about 75 years of age. On the way there Rev. Lee shared her story with me.
I thought I had known her story because we had spoken on the phone many times. But I guess it was just hard for her to communicate to me what her real story was. The story I learned about her blew my mind again about our True Parents. She had been part of that kind of Korean economy around a U.S. military base. Surrounding the base there are bars, clubs, and all kinds of businesses that cater to the lives of those servicemen, and women that cater to those servicemen.
Her family was from southern Korea, from Mokpo, a very historical port city, but she went all the way to a base near Seoul so she could make money and send it back to her family. She made money in the way of Mary Magdalene. She joined about 1970. There in the late 1960s, praise God, Father told members in Korea, "Now is the time. We've got to reach out to all of God's children. We all are sinners. We have to reach out to all of those who are really crushed by sin but want to be liberated from sin."
Isn't that the state of all humankind? Isn't that the state of all of us? Whether we're a prostitute or someone who can't control our anger and rage? So Father said, "Go out. Go out and bring the Mary Magdalenes." I never knew this about Father. She said, "At that time many women came and they would just be blown away in the presence of True Father. They would feel this love from God, pure love coming to them." They were loved in a way they'd never been loved before. And they gave their lives and their hearts to our True Parents.
But even then Father gave them a difficult road. He said to them, "Because of your lifestyle, please understand I can't just bless you in a regular Blessing. I can't just bless you. Do you understand?" It's so amazing. These women understood. This woman understood clearly. He said, "I want you to go and find a spiritual child, raise him up, show him about God, show him God's love, show him True Parents' love, teach him the Principle, and bring him to the Blessing."
This Korean sister did just that. And, sure, it took her a long time, but she found an American serviceman. His name is Don Richards. Don was a trombonist in the Army band, a very simple-hearted man. He'd been longing to have a family, but he was kind of so simple and nerdy, he turned most people off. She loved him and raised him, and by the time I met him, about 12 years ago, he just could not stop singing the praises of True Parents. They had one whole wall of their house like a church devoted to pictures, because they're in El Paso and at that time we didn't have anything in El Paso. They were close to Fort Bliss.
But going back to her Seunghwa, I felt so honored that I could be at the Seunghwa of a story that began with our father saying, "Now is the time." I mean, what's a further thing in our value system as Unificationists than prostitution? What's the furthest thing?
To usher in a cosmic spring, to truly really take this time we have in 2012, I would like to share with you a motto I made for myself this year. It's, "Mark, unleash your true self in 2012." It doesn't completely rhyme, but, "Unleash yourself in 2012." To unleash my true self, I've really got to practice Shim Jung. We've got to practice this. We've got to pray that we're new wineskins to receive this new wine. We should be so blown away by the concept of Shim Jung. And we should be so blown away that God and our True Parents have saved this precious truth for now.
I'm so grateful to John Doroski. One of the things he taught us back in those days was that to make a growing church you had to keep growing inside as a person, and I really believe that. The pulse that I get with my members when I travel in my district is that we have some old fears. We have some old misgivings about this church, about one another, and about the sincerity of others. And we are letting them be barriers and excuses for us to remain in our cave.
If we stay in the cave, brothers and sisters, we will miss the cosmic spring that we've lived for, that we've hungered for. Shim Jung is not about being objective. It's about being subjective. It's not about something that's conditional or circumstantial: "Okay, when everything's all fantastic and good, I'll come back to this church and I'll invest myself." It's quite the contrary. It's that striving, that inner compulsion to strive for excellence for its own sake.
I'm so grateful that three years ago our national pastor's ministry began. I say to myself, "Wow, our national pastor must have already been thinking for quite a long time as a mother, 'What does this church need? What does this movement need?'" She came out at first and just listened to us. She listened to our young people. She listened to what made you buzz and also what made you depressed.
Our greatest legacy is that we've been given lives through which we can seek for ideals; we can take those ideals that we've been given by God and True Parents and bring them into reality. It's truly our most precious gift.
So, let's not let ourselves be looking backward. Let's not let ourselves stay in the cave; otherwise, we cannot be a growing church. We've got to get out of the cave. We've got to make ourselves into new wineskins. And I know I'm the first among those who has to do that: to make myself to be a new wineskin, to stretch myself, to humble myself, and to commit myself.
Father has often said that women seem almost closer to God than men because women are in that mother's role of loving, loving, loving and loving. That's why God is so enamored of women and so in love with our True Mother. Don't you think he's so in love with True Mother?
I came out here today ready to sing some songs. I'm kind of Broadway-esque a little bit. I was so pleased a number of months ago when In Jin Nim asked all the district pastors to perform at an open mike because I believe that music is such a powerful thing.
I was in Korea at a Hoon Dok Hae with True Parents about four or five years ago, and suddenly there appeared two old people in the room. They were advanced in age, in their 80s, and they introduced themselves to Father and bowed to him. Later I found out that the man's name was Mr. Pak.
He had been a high school student with Father, someone who was junior to Father in high school. Mr. Pak came with his wife. A leaders' meeting was underway, and you couldn't get up to the Cheon Jung Gung on any given day. Luckily that was the day that I drew the lottery to go there. This was one of those experiences, brothers and sisters, when I wish all of you could have just crammed in my body and been there.
They came forward and told Father they'd been always looking for him, but, dang it, he had changed his name. He wasn't Yong Young Moon; he was Sun Myung Moon. They had been trying to convince different church leaders that they knew Father from his childhood, and the leaders were like, "Sure, sure." But somehow they finally made it through, were brought to the Cheon Jung Gung, and they came in. The man spoke to Father, saying, "Father, you are so special. I always wanted to follow you. I always wanted to be with you. When you came back through Seoul" -- and that was the time when Father had come out of Hungnam, gone to Pyongyang and then to Seoul to look for followers. And he had gone back to the area in southern Seoul where he had been a Sunday-school teacher and gone to school. At that time Father had found Mr. Pak.
Mr. Pak said, "You came to me. You found me. And I wouldn't follow you. I joined the army instead." He said, "I've always regretted that, to this day. I've always regretted, Father, that I did not follow you because you're so special."
It was so amazing. Father didn't judge him; Father said to him, "Hey, do you remember that song that we used to sing in high school?" I was like, what?! And Mr. Pak started singing this song. Then Father started singing with him, and I was crying and thinking, "Wow, if I had been able to go to school with Father and I had sung songs with Father!" But this man -- you could see that his soul was being healed instantly by Father. Father had never changed. Father is the embodiment of God. Father's heart had never changed and wasn't judging him up and down. Father just wanted to sing with him. And they sang a beautiful song together.
Then Father said, "Who's that lady there? Who's that lady with you? Is that your wife?" And Mr. Pak said, "Yes, that's my wife." Then Father looked at her and goes, "Oh!" And Father recognized that he knew her, too, that she was part of that high school. "And so, oh, oh, you married!" Then Father said to her, "Do you remember that song that you used to sing?" Amazing!
You know, the True Parents of all humankind and they're asking this person, "Do you remember that song that you used to sing?"
There I was, thinking, "Wow, is this real? Is this real? I even called Dr. Yang last night to see if it was really real, if it was a real memory because it was just so amazing. And he confirmed it. He said, "Yes," and he told me the name of the man, Mr. Pak. I hadn't caught that part. Father began singing with her. Oh, my heavens. Our True Father, singing with this high school sister.
And then all three of them began singing. Oh my God. They all began singing. And there I was, "Wooooo." I was just bawling. Because that's what music is, that's what music does. It takes us to places we can't go just by talking.
Brothers and sisters, I hope you have a great week. I'm going to end with a song. Is that okay? It's not an original song. I think it would be too hard for me to sing my original song right now, but this is a song that was a Hollywood song back in the 1970s, and I made it into a song that I dedicated to True Father. It goes like this. It's from the musical Applause.
Who is it that we're living
for?
Father, Father.
Nothing I know brings on the glow
Like
our Father.
You're thinking you're through
That nobody
cares.
Then suddenly you
Hear him calling
And somehow you're
in charge again.
And it's a ball.
Trumpets all sing, life seems
to swing
And you're the king of it all
'Cause
You've had a taste of
His
wonderful love.
Father, Father, Father
When I was 18, a student
in college,
In the campus library
I met a girl full of
knowledge.
She whispered to me,
Dinner program at 7:00.
I
shook my head, yes.
It tasted like heaven.
It's better than
eating.
It's better than sleeping.
It's better than living just
for yourself.
We work 'til we're dead.
It ain't for the
bread.
Call us out of our head
|Like our Father.
Your bank
account's bare
You're losing your hair. (I'm not!)
Then you
hear him
That happy sound rolls over you.
And just like
that
Everything's right.
This is the night (morning)
Love
hits you right where you're at
'Cause you've had a taste of -- let
me hear it --
His wonderful love, love, love.
Father, Father,
Father.
Thank you, everyone.
i·de·al·i·ty (d-l-t)
n. pl. i·de·al·i·ties
1. The state or quality of being ideal.
2. Existence in idea
only.