The Words of the Roman Family
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The Words of the Roman Family |
Elio is from Queens, NY. He has an MA in Developmental Psychology from Teachers College, Columbia University and is currently working towards a Doctor of Ministry Degree (D. Min.) at the Unification Theological Seminary. This is a segment from an unpublished book entitled: Filial Attendance: The Way Of Filial Piety Of Holy Sons And Daughters Of God.
"The heart of filial attendance is the realm of heart that God has been planning to develop in human beings since even before the beginning of creation."
The second affirmation of the Family Pledge mentions the important virtue of Attendance:
"Our Family, the owner of Cheon Il Guk, pledges to represent and become central to Heaven and- Earth by attending God and True Parents..."
The meaning of this virtue is worthy of its own discussion. In fact, the ideal of Attendance, as understood within Unificationist culture, is crucial in order for human beings to establish the original ideal of creation, the Kingdom of God on earth and in Heaven.
The process for the building of God's Kingdom requires that, first, there should be the maturing of an ideal individual, then second, an ideal family, a tribe, society, nation, world and cosmos. As attendance is developed in a person's character, it significantly will influence one's cognition, attitude, motivation, behaviors, and relationships. It goes almost without saying that in order to nurture the virtue of attendance, it must first be recognized.
Restoration on the individual level and family levels takes place through humans' attendance to God and True Parents. By attending them our heart of attendance begins to be re-created and developed. We begin to inherit all the heavenly blessings and fortune which God intended for His children since the beginning of creation. It has been explained that attendance is the way of inheritance.
Attendance stems from the impulse of love from the object partner to the subject partner. Attendance is a way of life of the object partner in relationship to the subject partner. The standard of behavior of human beings toward God, the Heavenly Parent, is called the "filial attendance of holy sons and daughters of God."
There are ideal standards in the family system. There are ideal standards of behavior between husbands and wives; there are ideal standards of behavior between parents and children. There are ideal standards of behavior between brothers and sisters. These establish the ideal standards and ethics of society. The ideal standard of God the Original Subject partner is to love His children, His object partners. It is the love of God and parents which internally motivate the children to live a life of attendance. The responsibility of subject partners is to love and thereby internally motivate their object partners to respond with attendance.
The Kingdom of God is the Kingdom of ideal relationships. It is about the way of life of subject and object partners in the pair system. It is about the original heart and standard of true subject partners and object partners that God, the Perfect Subject Partner, purposed before the creation in accord with His absolute laws and absolute standards. All pair systems in the eight stages require true subject partners and true object partners.
The heart of filial attendance is the realm of heart that God has been planning to develop in human beings since even before the beginning of creation. This is the primary missing element required for the perfection of human beings and for the establishment of the Kingdom of God. Filial sons and daughters who can attend their Heavenly Father as His perfect object partners need to emerge on the world stage.
Parental love and filial attendance are the origin of true love, true life and true lineage. Without a relationship of Parental love and filial attendance, neither God nor His children can experience the joy and happiness of love. The Parental love of God always has existed. The missing element is the heart of attendance developed in His sons and daughters. God, with patience, long-suffering, and forbearance has been waiting for His sons and daughters of filial piety to appear and mature.
To live for the sake of others means to live a life of service and sacrifice for others, whether it be as a subject partner or as an object partner. Living for the sake of the other as an object partner constitutes attendance. God's Parental love lives for the sake of the children. God is absolutely dedicated and devoted to serving and sacrificing for His children. God's Parental heart is the subject of love. Filial attendance is to live for the sake of God from the position of an object partner. It is to live one's life absolutely dedicated and devoted to God, serving and sacrificing for His sake and for His ideals and goals because of the love and gratitude His children have for Him.
God has been searching for and trying to establish the heart of attendance in human beings for hundreds of thousands of years, through the long process of the creation and restoration. The way of the truly enlightened individual emerges as one begins to understand the value of, searches for, and begins to find and develop the heart of filial attendance.
The heart of attendance develops towards maturity as we practice living a life of attendance to God and True Parents. Children learn to attend God and True Parents by observing how their parents attend God and True Parents. The heart of attendance continues to develop and mature as one learns to live a life of filial piety in the family, and fulfills the calling to be patriots in the nation (Cheon Il Guk), saints in the world, and holy sons and daughters of God in the cosmos.
Since Adam and Eve fell, God has been trying to create filial sons and daughters who live in complete attendance to Him and who establish the originally desired relationship between God, our Heavenly Parents and His sons and daughters.
Filial attendance is the first step, the first stage, the foundational realm of heart and love that the human beings need to realize in order to establish the Culture of Heart of the Kingdom of God. Parental love and filial attendance is a vertical relationship of love between the subject partner and the object partner. Once the heart of filial attendance to God the Father is fulfilled, human beings come to embody the heart and love of God and the oneness of God and His children is established. This is the first blessing, perfection on the individual level, and the foundational realm of the culture of true love of the Kingdom of God.
Having developed their hearts of attendance as filial sons and daughters of God, human beings will have the necessary maturity to be blessed in holy matrimony. As husband and wife they will have the necessary development of heart to live a life of horizontally loving, caring for, and attending each other. The husband and wife live for the sake of each other. They live their lives in vertical attendance to God with total dedication and devotion and horizontally with total dedication and devotion to each other. As partners of love in marriage, the husband and wife multiply horizontally the love of God they have embodied in their vertical relationship with God by loving each other and giving birth to children.
Having developed the heart of filial attendance to God and their parents, all members of the family learn to live a life of attendance to each other and to fulfill the Three Object Purpose and to establish the Four Position Foundation. In the Three Object Purpose of the four position family foundation, one in any of the four positions can take the position of subject partner and the other three positions taking the of role of object partners in attending the subject partner. The four positions in the family are parental love, conjugal love (love between husband and wife), children's love towards parents, and sibling love (love between brothers and sisters.) Thus, it is absolutely necessary that the parents have developed their hearts of attendance to God. By developing their hearts in attending God, husbands and wives learn how to attend each other and subsequently the children learn how to attend God, their parents and their brothers and sisters.
Once the heart of attendance, which is the heart of the object partner, is developed in human beings and the Four Position Foundation which realizes the Three Object Purpose is established, God comes into the mix. God will come and live in such a family. God's purpose of creation has been to establish the ideal and model family which establishes the Four Position Foundation. Without realizing the Three Object Purpose, the Four Position foundation is not perfected. In order to fulfill the Three Object Purpose, each of the four positions must be able to attend the other three positions. This is living for the sake of others from the position of an object partner. When God takes the position of subject partner, the father of the family, the mother and the children attend God by obeying Him and fulfilling His desire.
When the father of the family takes the position of subject partner, God, the mother, and the children attend him by fulfilling his desire. When the mother of the family takes the position of subject partner, God, the father of the family and the children all attend the mother and fulfill her desire. When a child takes the position of subject partner, God, the father, and the mother of the family will seek to fulfill the child's desires. God will fully live directly in such families, and the vertical and horizontal positions will become one. While the Three Object purpose needs to be fulfilled in the family system, the hierarchical identity maintaining positions of the family always must be respected.
After a family establishes a Four Position Foundation which fulfills the Three Object Purpose, a system of attending God, one's parents, one's spouse and brothers and sisters is established in the family. It then would be expanded to three generations in the family. The tradition of the Three Great Kingships would then be established in which vertical attendance would be extended from children, to parents and to grandparents. These are vertical subject partner and object partner relationships of love. Vertical attendance to one's parents and grandparents extends into the spiritual world through the vertical attendance of one's ancestors. God will directly dwell in such a clan and tribe.
Filial attendance in the family is extended to the patriot's attendance to the sovereign of the nation, saintly attendance in the world and filial attendance of the holy sons and daughters to God in the cosmos. Based on the family's vertical traditions a vertical hierarchical family and tribal organization is formed. The vertical hierarchical organization then establishes the proper vertical order of society, the nation, the world and the cosmos in accordance with the absolute laws and absolute standards, as originally intended by God.
Based on the Four Position Foundation, the family's horizontal tradition establishes the model and foundation for the horizontal order of society. In horizontal traditions there is a hierarchical order of attendance between husband and wife and between elder and younger siblings. A system of elder attendance would be established in one's tribe, society, nation, world and cosmos.
The establishment of a hierarchy consisting of vertical order and horizontal order in the family order is then expanded to the clan in the three-generational family, the tribe, society, nation, world and cosmos. These vertical and horizontal hierarchical traditions then are extended to subsequent generations thereby establishing the traditions of the Culture of True Love. Family ethics expands to tribal ethics, societal ethics, national ethics, global ethics and cosmic ethics through future generations.
The law of the cosmos of living for the sake of others would be established throughout the world and one global family of God in a hierarchical vertical and horizontal organization would be established.
After having acquired the heart of filial piety and the way of filial attendance in the family, one's true character and personality continues to develop as one begins to live a public life as a patriot in attendance to the sovereign of the nation and living for the sake of one's nation and its citizens. Development of one's character continues as one begins to live a life of a saint wherein one lives for the sake of the world and its citizens, and by teaching them the universal principles of God and the traditions His Kingdom. The completion of one's character and personality is attained in becoming a holy son or daughter of God living one's life in filial attendance to God and living for the sake of the cosmos (the physical world and the spiritual world.)
Due to the Fall, human beings have become blind to the necessity of the virtue of attendance. No one wants to be an object partner. We do not devote and dedicate all of our life and love towards attending God. Hence we have not learned to live our lives in attendance to others. We have not learned the way of attendance of the true object partner. We need to understand that attendance to God, our Heavenly Parent, is the purpose of our existence and the foundation for the establishment of the Culture of Heart in the Kingdom of God.
Adam and Eve fell. God, in His providence for restoration, has been trying to re-create humankind in order that we may fulfill the original ideal of creation. He has been restoring and re-creating His sons and daughters who can establish the Parent and child relationship by developing the heart of attendance. Development of the virtue and heart of attendance in human beings is absolutely essential for the establishment of the Culture of Love. God has been trying to create filial sons and daughters who live their lives in attendance to God and establish the Parent and child relationship. Without the heart of attendance being developed in human beings, the Culture of Heart can never be established. God has been trying to create the heart of attendance in human beings since the beginning of creation. God is seeking for filial sons and daughters who first live their lives attending Him.
East Asian thinking, rather than Western, holds a possibility for God. Within Oriental thinking, there is the principle of absolute attendance to the parents, and at the same time the idea of following one's elder brothers and sisters. When this idea of attendance is expanded, it can reach to the clan leader, the society leader, or the representative of the nation. Thus we can gain the foundation based on the perfect system of attendance. Otherwise, we can never have a family, clan, society, nation, or world that God desires. You must understand this clearly. (God's Will -- 594, 1983.4.3)