The Words of the Johnson Family
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The Words of the Johnson Family |
With our editor Joy in San Francisco these few months, I feel her presence, her spirit and her discerning judgment here in New York even more than before.
It's wondrous to go about our detailed work of preparing speeches and reports, and to have budding inside a little voice saying, "Now if Joy were here, she'd want it to be just so...." And thus I am challenged to go beyond my limited style and effort, in other words, to edit myself.
Task by task we are striving to keep the magazine up to her standard of perfection, and it means internalizing her -- not just her skills or knowledge, but her patience and creative self-reliance, her sensitivity to God, and especially her sympathetic embracive care for brothers and sisters far away.
In quiet moments coinciding with regret at my own inadequacies, I feel the anguish our editor must feel leaving Today's World in the hands of such unseasoned magazine-makers as we are. To replace one Joy Pople will take half a dozen -- and we are not enough.
Within me the awesome realization is dawning of Father's situation; how he must raise up successors to take the reins, not of just one magazine, but of today's world, literally. Sometimes I look back at those glorious projects which blossomed and bore promising fruits... until the one leader was called away by circumstance... and the entire project for which he received praises collapsed in a debt-ridden heap!
I cannot help but thank God that those days of primitive tribal level of our movement are coming to an end. Isn't there a bit of folk wisdom saying "Don't put all your eggs in one basket"? Perhaps there is a time when the concentration of talents into one person is desirable, but very soon comes the time when distribution of those talents and responsibilities is of greater value. In this light, the opening of a position for associate editor came as a brilliant stroke for growth and progress, since the variety of skills needed to put out a magazine is endless. In the same sense that we could, presumably, create one good copy of the magazine and just keep passing it around... we could keep the system of having one good editor, and keep passing her around, too. On the other hand, why not duplicate Joy Pople into another couple copies and pass her around more quickly? Surely God wouldn't mind.
Leaders truly investing everything into the task of raising up members will usher in an era of greater stability, and greater rewards for our efforts, and it will mean those glorious projects which can do so much for God's providence will survive and thrive, instead of being, battered to pieces by the winds of change.
The challenge facing us as Unification members today is to cultivate others to succeed us and exceed us in every way. Satisfaction should come not when we are praised for a job well done, but when greater praise comes to those who tread in our footprints, as we tread those of Sun Myung Moon. As for him, I believe his greatest role will not be recorded just as "True Father," but as the teacher who taught all men to also be.
As for me, it's more than a full time occupation trying to follow the footprints of Joy.