The Words of the Grodner Family
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The Words of the Grodner Family |
Good morning. Thank you for that warm welcome and greeting. I just want to greet you and also to convey a message from Las Vegas. Did anybody hear yet? The Little Angels performance was a great success, a tremendous success. We had 3,000 people in Caesar's Palace. Many were Korean War veterans. Of course, not so many of them are left, but they were there. Father was sitting in the front row with them. In Jin Nim gave an incredible welcome and also she testified strongly to the veterans about True Parents.
After the performance, Father came up to the stage and greeted all the Korean War veterans, and the Little Angels gave them the Korean hero awards – and of course that comes with a kiss, right? Those little kisses from those little angels! I'm sure these Korean War veterans will never forget the love from our True Parents, who have concerned themselves so much for those who have paid the ultimate price.
They're next going to Los Angeles and San Diego. And earlier they were here, right here downstairs. Last summer we had four shows of the Little Angels, and it was tremendous. This is all part of Father's way of saying, "Thank you," to the world, and especially to the 16 nations that have offered and sacrificed themselves for the sake of this little nation that no one knew about back then. But today people do know a lot about Korea. And we know that it's a very special nation. It is the nation that produced our True Parents. It's the nation that we call our homeland.
So I just wanted to give a shout-out to Las Vegas and say, "Thank you." Let's all thank Las Vegas for all the work that they've done there: Not only have they given out 120,000 autobiographies of our True Father, but they've been trying to maintain their vigilance, to change Las Vegas. They need our help.
Of course Las Vegas really needs God's help. It is the epitome of all that is not good in our culture. It is our Achilles heel. But as we have talked about with our second-generation in relation to the Blessing coming up, and as our first-generation knows from experience, this profound investment in Las Vegas is our statement that we can change the world by changing ourselves. That's the key point. We have to change ourselves.
When I think about Lovin' Life and about what In Jin Nim is doing and what she has done for all of us, I see that she is basically helping to change our lives. Amen! We've been following our True Parents and we've been doing many wonderful things for the last 30 years, some of us for 40 years. I know the 1,800 couples just had their anniversary in this past week. In following and being obedient to our True Parents, and sometimes doing heavy lifting, we were often trying to copy them or emulate them.
Oftentimes, however, we didn't have the same heart, the same content or the same experience in our life as our True Parents, so at the end of the day many of us have been highly challenged because we haven't learned to love. We haven't lived for the sake of others, and we haven't done exactly what True Parents have done. It seems that we may have been trying to: If I have the saying right, "Fake it until you make it." But In Jin Nim is reaching down into each of us and grabbing ahold of the heart that desperately needs to be processed and to love.
I want to share a story to help you understand our value, especially the Second Generation's value. This is a real story of something I experienced firsthand. Sometimes we don't know who we are. Sometimes we don't know who we're around. Sometimes everybody looks the same, and we can't really differentiate.
Many years ago I was asked to find a camp, and so I did. I found a camp at Harriman State Park. We signed a contract. There were over 30 camps in the park, and they knew that the Moonies were in town. I'm sure it was really a shock. I'm shocked that they actually gave us a permit to be there and rent one of the largest – the second-largest facility in Harriman State Park. Out of all 38, ours was the second largest property. I knew it was God who made this possible, and I knew God was doing something different. We were looking for a place to do our workshops and seminars, a place to bring our young people, our second-generation so they could have camp and workshops and receive education.
I'll never forget the second year we were there. I had heard about something called a regatta. Does anybody know what that regatta was about? I'm sure around the country some of you were at that regatta. It's a boat race.
Our camp was really never into boating. We timed our boats: one boat was good for 15 minutes before it sank, and another one was good for 30 minutes. We had some very old boats, and how long they would float depended on how thick the tar was on the bottom of the boat. But when we heard about this regatta, we said, "You know, we really need to go." And so we trained – the day before.
Some of those camps trained the whole summer. This regatta was the focus of their summer. This is what they would do. They competed to win, to be Number One. We didn't know that. We just knew we were going to have fun. So we went there. We had our boats, we got there and they gave us a slot. "Here's where your camp goes." We had to make a little logo for each of our boats so we could recognize if our boat was close to First Place or something. Anyway, it usually wasn't.
But we had songs, and we had cheers. And I just want to tell you an amazing story. We watched our boats race – and most of them lost except for one. We had one boat that flipped over. Usually when you learn about canoeing and paddling and things, one of the first things you learn is how to flip a boat back over. Well, we didn't have time for that – to teach about flipping it back over.
So I'll never forget. Some of our second-generation were on this boat. We had two of them. There's a four-man race, a two-man race and one-man. Also, there were races for four women, two women and one woman. This was two-man race. The boat flipped over, the race was going on and there at the end of the race were our two second-generation on top of the bottom of the boat. There were 800 participants, and a couple thousand people there. I think they'd never seen that before.
So we were singing; we were cheering. In every race we were looking toward the front because we were hoping that our boat was there. I remember my head was going here, here, here – all the way down to the last or second to last. But our singing was spectacular. Actually, it was so good that some of the other campers came over to sing with us because we didn't have the same spirit like the others, that "We're just going to destroy you and beat you," and all these things. Although we did want to win. They really liked our spirit.
At the end of the entire regatta a gentleman came over and said to me, "Hi, I'm director of two camps here. I was right next to you. You don't know about me, and you don't know about our camp. But the reason you were put in this slot here was because nobody wants to be next to us. Our spirit is so dominating and our singing is so loud that the morale of the other teams that always are next to us gets very depressed."
We didn't know that. He said to me, "Who are these kids?" I said, "These are the children of Rev. Moon's mass weddings." His jaw totally dropped. It looked like he just took a big bite of a big watermelon, and he just couldn't say anything. He knew that we were the Unification Church members. He knew that the Moonies had come to town, like everybody else did, but he had never met our second-generation. He had never seen that kind of spirit. He said, "If any of these older kids want a job at my camp, they're hired."
Sometimes we don't realize that we're so different. But I think In Jin Nim realizes it all the time. When she went on the listening tour around the country, she really wanted to hear the messages. She wanted to hear the second-generation's story or their passion, what they wanted to do – and she's committed to making that happen.
This whole idea of Lovin' Life Ministry is so foreign to some of us first-generation who were rats living in the desert, wandering aimlessly, trying to build the Kingdom of Heaven. I have told my wife this. I'm convinced I can help build the Kingdom of Heaven; living in it is another story. I'm not sure I can live in the Kingdom of Heaven. How do we do this? If we just build it, or work toward building it, but we can't live in it, then what happens?
So In Jin Nim has looked at us and said to the first-generation, "I am so grateful because you saved our True Parents. Because of you, True Parents are alive." I am so grateful to In Jin Nim because she has come at this time of settlement, the Age of Settlement. So we have to learn how to settle. We have to learn how to build real, ongoing relationships because the Kingdom is a place of relationships. It's a place of deep and profound relationships with our Heavenly Father, and of course our True Parents: to be filial sons and daughters of our Parents, which is what aligns us so we can be good people.
In
Jin Moon November 20, 2011
And as Father said many times, we have to look at elders as our parents or grandparents, look at middle-aged people as our uncles and aunts, and look at young people as our nieces and nephews. We have to build this Kingdom of Heaven. We have to build this one world family that's centered on God.
I just want to say personally how grateful I am that In Jin Nim has completely retooled our movement in America. I still remember when In Jin Nim began her ministry and she called all of us from all over the country. She said, "Please come to New York. I'd like to meet with you."
As I sat there and I listened to her vision of what she wanted to do, I thought, "This is so profound." Last week she talked about the idea that "This isn't about her" – and it's not about her. It's about imparting and sharing the love of True Parents with America. Who better than True Children can teach about their parents? Who better than the sons and daughters who are absolutely filial to True Parents can teach America about the love of their parents? The True Children have suffered a lot. They've suffered because our True Parents lived for the sake of the world.
And so not only did the True Children have to process their pain, but they had to come out the other end, and they had to see their parents as being great. That's not easy. From pain, oftentimes you get stuck there. From the oldest children on down, how much they went through! I remember seeing Hyo Jin Nim many times up in Barrytown. He would be just by himself on a motorcycle or a horse when I was in a 120-day conference or workshop. He would take his motorcycle and make a lot of noise just outside by our windows, and we're like, "We wish we were out there on a motorcycle with you but we're here."
He was so lonely because he had the father who could love more than anybody else. He had the parents who could give and embrace more than anyone else in the world, but each one of these children missed out on that. Father said, "If I could have spent five minutes a day – five minutes a day – with my children, we would have had none of these problems. There would be no problems."
I understand when I read Father's words about how he had to live his life in the world of restoration, in the world of wandering, building a foundation so that someday we could actually live properly, in the way God had originally designed. Father knows so clearly the original design.
When we heard Divine Principle – and many of us heard Divine Principle many years ago – when I heard these principles, it was over my head. I was not religious; I didn't believe in God; I didn't believe in Satan; I didn't believe in an ideal world. Yet, here I was sitting in a workshop, trying to understand – trying to understand because I knew I was looking for something of value and virtue, like all of us, just as all of humanity is looking for something of supreme value.
But we come from so many different angles. And the angle I came from was that I honestly didn't believe there was a God. I must have asked the question, "If there's a God, how could this world be so divided and suffering?" But I met these truly wonderful and great people who believed in these ideals, in this principle. And every one of my questions began to get answered – even the fact that God exists.
I knew something existed because I had had a profound experience before meeting this movement. I had one of those out-of-body experiences. My spirit was gone out of my body. Wherever I was and whatever was happening, it was so powerful and so real and so good, but could I call this being God? No, I couldn't. I couldn't believe in evil or Satan, but I had an experience that Satan existed.
And I had an experience that there was a possibility of an ideal world. I was literally driving my car right by Forty-Third Street. I'm from New York, by the way. I was born here. I'm a New Yorker. And I was driving around Forty-Third Street, and when I was stopped at a red light, all of a sudden it seemed like something changed the channel. I was there, but I wasn't there. I wasn't sleeping, but I wasn't dreaming. I was in another zone.
And I had a question, this nagging question: "Is it possible to build an ideal world?" I'd been studying about this, but I never believed it was possible. And all of a sudden I'm at this place – at the time, I didn't know that the New Yorker existed, but I was at the New Yorker Hotel. I saw that building as clear as day, and I heard people laughing with a joy and a laughter that was beyond any joy and laughter I had ever heard before. They were talking with words that I had never heard before because they were so sincere. And artists were on the sidewalk painting such beautiful artwork.
As I was walking down this sidewalk, I came across a long-haired gentleman, and I didn't know who he was. But as I was passing him, I kind of bowed to him, looked into his eyes, and there was no end to his eyes. There was no end. And then I realized this was Jesus. And he was saying, "We've done it. The Kingdom of Heaven is here. This is the Kingdom of Heaven." And I tasted it so deeply.
So I try to understand True Parents who are so seriously trying their best to help us to understand that there is a real world that God intended, a real ideal, not just some kind of fiction, but a real intention. When we see and listen to our elder sister In Jin Nim, and she conveys the messages from her parents, and from her own experiences with Parents, about how unchanging and unbending they are in their unconditional love, then we begin to see, little by little, that this is a reality.
We've never had this experience, in all the years I have worked with many leaders and many people who have been with Father Moon for many years. I thought they knew our True Parents so well. Maybe some of you remember the elders when they were going around. They were IWs, itinerant workers. They became leaders of our regions. I remember the first time one of these elders came by. He was a 36 blessed couple. I was saying to myself, "This man must be just like Father." So we were waiting with a heightened expectation that Father was coming to live with us.
And when he got there, I was shocked because I couldn't find anything that resembled Father. But then I said, "Heavenly Father, please show me something, something that is just like Father. If I can find one thing, that's all I need." So I had a dream. And in this dream I realized that this man's will, his faith, and his loyalty to True Parents were unbending. So I said, "You know, no matter what, no matter what he says (and he said a lot of things) and no matter what he does (and he did a lot of things that weren't exactly what I thought were the right thing), when it came down to his faith and his loyalty to True Parents, that's what I want." And that's what he had.
I have realized that until we started working with True Children, and in particular In Jin Nim at this time, we hadn't seen or experienced the real deal. This is the real McCoy. She also understands America profoundly. When I think about how Lovin' Life is so prepared to welcome so many people into this chapel, into the chapels around the country and into the small homes wherever people are watching, I realize that we can change this nation. We can indeed change this nation because this nation is looking for true love. Everyone is looking for true love.
And if we happen to resemble true love, if we happen to become the people who align ourselves with that standard of love, then we will be the most attractive people to people in all of New York, in all of California, in all of Las Vegas, in all of Florida, and in all of every nation in the world.
Just the other day I was looking at the Mayan calendar. It's amazing. There is no history after 2012. There is no prophecy after 2012. Everything comes to an end. What is this end? Some people are preparing for this end now, in a real, physical, catastrophic way. And then there's another kind of end and a possible new beginning.
I think that's our job to look toward the bright side of this new day, January 13, 2013, because in that day we're going to see something magnificent take place. But it won't take place if we don't build the nation, if we don't become the people that we have to become.
We just heard recently, and we've heard this many times, that even our Blessing is conditional, our own Blessing. We have no right. We didn't process all the things that we needed to process to be properly blessed in marriage, to be some of the first people in all of human history who were permitted to be married under God's original ideal. We were permitted to be Blessed. It was conditional.
But on January 13, 2013, there will be another blessing for us. And will we be there? Will we be prepared? Will we be the people who have changed ourselves and aligned ourselves with what needs to get done inside of ourselves, and who have then built ourselves to be ones who can give others the grace and experience of God's love?
I believe that this is our chance, and God has given us one very amazing woman to lead our congregation throughout America. She also did say that there will be people coming up in her stead. That's why I'm here right now. I'm in her stead. I know that we really need to unite with these True Children because they are united with True Parents. So all we have to do is find the way to be united with them.
What does it mean to be united? And what is the benefit of being united? Do I have to work harder? I don't think so. Do you know the little analogy from geese that teaches us about the value of unity? Have you ever heard the story about why geese fly in a V formation? Do you know that they can fly 71 percent further because they're in that V formation? That the birds in the front give uplift that helps the birds behind them to be able to fly much more easily? When one bird in the lead gets tired, it moves back and another bird takes its position. It's amazing. If one bird goes out of this formation, the others feel the difficulty of flying, and they find that when they come back into formation it is so much easier to fly.
Another thing that I thought was very interesting about geese is that when one gets sick or gets shot by a hunter's shotgun, two geese will go down and stay with that goose until it either gets well or it dies. And then they'll join another flock and try to catch up with their own flock.
I think if we look at the analogies of the geese and us, we can say that we have to fly in that formation, and that is unity: Working together, flying together for the sake of building this family and this ideal, and letting the stronger be the one to lead.
I'm looking forward to the time when the second-generation – and it's happening even now all over the country – are taking their rightful positions. They're growing. They're no longer children on those canoes who were so cute; they have grown up. I have to ask myself, "When did they grow up? And how did they grow up?" But they've grown up, and they're here.
It's In Jin Nim who said, "If we don't work with them, if we don't retool our movement, then we will have no movement." As we get older, all of the legacy, all of the traditions must be passed down to that next generation. So it is our job as first-generation to pass on that legacy to the second-generation. It is our job to give them encouragement and give them power to fulfill responsibility so that they can then fly in the front. And they have stronger arms and wings to fly with.
If In Jin Nim didn't come when she came, I have no idea what would have taken place. I remember one conversation years ago with one of our leaders, who said, "Yes, we have three openings for interns." And I was thinking, "But we have 500 second-generation in college. It doesn't fit. It can't be that we're just trying to find the place for them. But we have to create the movement that they can buy into, that they can own, that it can be theirs." And so In Jin Nim with her brilliance and with her love has built a movement that is for you guys, for the young people.
I know some people come in here with their earplugs. I remember in the beginning, one of our leaders said, "I don't like the music." But then he came back again, and he said, "But my kid sure does." I said, "Good. It's not for you. It's for him. And drive him, take him." If the kids find hope, ownership and partnership in this, then we've done a good job. And if In Jin Nim can continue to be creative and take the lead on so many of the things that she wants to roll out, we really want to help her.
I want to really ask all of the first-generation to unite with her. We must unite with True Children, and we must really substantiate, develop and enhance all the things she's doing. So I just want to say thank-you to the first-generation because I know she has thanked us on many occasions, but it's time. It's time for the second-generation to move and to take the lead in so many ways.
So as we celebrate today, as we look forward to Valentine's Day, and as we continue to build our movement and build momentum, I ask each of us to work together, help each other, and become a team. In the building of those teams, in the building of the small groups and the building of the care communities and the building of little teams that are working to reach out, to give Father's autobiography out, to let people know the breaking news, it is an amazing time.
I hope that each of us can feel that we are part of this amazing time so that everybody can have a sense that there is an ideal world coming, there is a kingdom that is to be built, and it is not just for a small group of people, not for one small church, but for all of humankind.
So I want to thank you very much. Let us work together to build that kingdom together. Thank you, brothers and sisters.