Mother's Day

In Jin Moon
May 10, 2009

The following is a transcription of Rev. In Jin Moon’s sermon at Lovin' Life Ministries held at the Manhattan Center in New York City on May 10, 2009.

Good morning, brothers and sisters. Good morning to those of you at New Jerusalem and West Rock communities who are joining us via broadcast. We’re delighted to be with all of you on this precious Mother’s Day. The month of May is a very special month for our movement.

We just celebrated on May 1st the 55th anniversary of Foundation Day, the founding of HSA-UWC, the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity, in 1954. It’s interesting to note that May 1st in communist countries is the International Workers Day, which is like a national holiday for them. So the founding of our movement and the International Workers Day that is celebrated in communist countries were dueling it out as we went on throughout the years.

But also in the month of May we have this wonderful day when we honor the mothers of the world. Today is the day to honor the women in our lives, especially mothers. When I wake up in the morning and think about how I’m going to live that day, and take a little time to meditate, thinking about our Heavenly Parent, our True Parents, and our community, my mind and heart always turn to my mother and what she means to me. In my family, my mother is truly the fertile soil, the foundation on which the family stands. A mother is the field where God can plant his beautiful garden, the starting point of the children. Hers is the first voice that we hear, the first embrace that we feel. Her milk is the first nourishment that we taste. These are the things that start us off on this journey called life.

We just heard a great performance from the band, didn’t we? A band has drums, bass, piano, singers, keyboards, and guitars. But the true foundation of the band is the bass. The bass grounds the band and at the same time drives it. In the family, the mother is like the bass in a band, what grounds the family and at the same time drives it.

When I’m thinking about the sound of bass and the concept of foundation, my mind usually goes to one of my favorite classical composers, Johann Sebastian Bach. He wrote a beautiful aria as part of a cantata that translates into English as Lord, Do Not Go in Judgment. It’s a beautiful piece that comes with a text for the choir. It paints a story of sinners seated before the throne of God. The music of the different instruments creates a visual imagery of what we’re listening to, which is like a fire and brimstone message of the sinners. You hear the sinners accusing and attacking each other, even while they’re seated in front of God.

Then you hear an incredibly lovely oboe accompaniment, a little phrase, an aria that is repeated throughout the cantata. It represents the sinners and their sins being played over and over again. Just as the sinners are trembling before the seat of God, the oboe also trembles as it continually plays this same phrase.

The interesting thing, though, about this piece is that there is no bass, so there is no foundation. Even as this piece is being played out, you know something is missing, something is deeply wrong. You feel it in your emotion because your emotion is energy in motion. Then there is a constant battle between the sinners going on and the different instruments coming in. But the overarching thing that juxtaposes itself to this fire and brimstone text is the tone of the aria. The tone is one of pity, a feeling of being sorry for the sinners.

It’s a beautiful piece, but then you realize that it is like a band without a bass, a family without a mother. You feel it in your soul, and you feel sad because something is missing, something that grounds the music and drives it.

In music we can see how different feelings and emotions may be played out. Particularly in that Bach piece, I’ve often felt the feeling of emptiness, of being almost lost, even though there is this continuous phrase that’s repeated over and over again with tremolo. And I realize, my goodness, a mother is so crucial to a family.

For a lot of us growing up, our mother represents the conscience of the family. I don’t know how many times when I was young and beginning to understand who I was, or what I wanted my identity to be, I realized that sometimes I was good and sometimes I was naughty. But the most difficult thing that my mother put upon me and my siblings was that she constantly told us, “I love you and I trust you.” Of course initially it sounds wonderful, but when you become a teenager and maybe want to break that curfew every now and then and see that double feature or see what a party or club is like, you hear this voice of conscience, the voice of my mother, saying, “In Jin, I trust you.” That was awful because you couldn’t do anything that you couldn’t come back to Mama and be proud of.

When you’re young, you want to do so many things. The world is like your oyster. You want to go exploring; you want to do different things. But at the same time you want to be a really, really good girl, you want to honor God, you want to respect your parents, and you want to be a dutiful child. You know your mother trusts you so completely, and you don’t want to mess that up. You don’t want to lose that.

It was incredibly difficult for my siblings and me growing up as teenagers in this country, with so many different things to try out. In the back of our minds, there was our mother, saying, “I trust you.” You wanted to honor that trust. I have a younger sister who is two years younger than I am. We were raised like twins -- given the same haircut, put in the same clothing, almost like a uniform. If Mother bought something for me, she bought the same dress in a smaller size for my sister. Whenever we went out into the world, people always asked, “Are you guys twins?” We were dressed alike, our haircuts were alike, and we looked alike. We would always be busy saying, “No, we’re not twins. We’re sisters.” But that’s how we were raised.

Even our names are almost the same: My name is In Jin and her name is Un Jin. Many times my parents would mix us up. We would say, “Mother, wouldn’t it be far easier if you dressed us in different clothing? It might help you to remember our names.” But she was insistent on us being sisters and looking alike and doing everything together.

We grew up sharing a bedroom. One of the things my mother always stressed to the kids was “Clean minds, clean room. Clean environment, clean spirit.” She was very diligent with us girls from a very young age. “You need to clean up your room; leave it better than you found it.”

She would have us vacuum, clean, and dust, rubbing everything until it shone incredibly beautifully. Having a mother like this and growing up in this kind of an environment, my sister really took ceaning to an art form. She would clean her side of the room. She would draw a line down the center and say, “This is my side, and that is your side, sister.” She would take incredible care of her furniture and her clothing. She would vacuum so diligently, just her side of the room. She would take Fantastik and Windex and clean all the windows, then dust and shine everything. Then she would simply put all the cleaning agents and the vacuum on my side of the room after she was done. And any other stuff that she didn’t want on her side she would leave on my side.

I don’t know many times, no matter how hard I tried, I always got in trouble. My younger sister had a knack of knowing exactly when my mother would come in. Her side would be absolutely gorgeous, beautiful, so pristine. My side looked like Clutter City. I’d be furiously trying to clean up as fast as possible. Many times when my mother came in, she said, “In Jin, why does the older sister’s side of the room look dirtier than the younger sister’s? Could you please clean up?” Then she would leave.

Then I would be totally crushed, thinking murderous thoughts. I would look at my sister and say, “How can you do this to me? How could you?” She would be sitting on the chair, smiling at me. It was very difficult for me to overcome my anger, which wanted so badly to volcanically erupt toward her. I often prayed about it, “Okay, I live with this person, she’s my sister, I have to take care of her, I have to love her. And yet she gets me in trouble all the time. How do I overcome it?”

Then I would hear a voice in the back of my mind, my mother’s voice, saying, “In Jin, I trust you.” And it’s awful because even though you want to be angry, you have this mother saying, “I trust you.” And you want to be good, and you want to try your best.

The years went on like that. Finally, when we became teenagers, my mother got the idea, “Let’s put the two girls in two separate rooms with a shared bathroom.” But even when we got our separate rooms, it was interesting how her room would be just absolutely immaculate. I would try my best to keep my room as clean as possible. But when she wanted to rest, she would always come into my room and sleep on my bed, bringing Doritos and crumbly cookies and eating them in my chair and making a mess on my desk.

She even had this fabulous way of vacuuming. You know that when you pull the vacuum one way the carpet looks darker and when you push, it looks lighter? She figured out the perfect way of vacuuming her room so it was all light. Then she would come into my room to do her thing, to spend her day. Sometimes the people taking care of our clothes would put my identical outfit in her closet, so I would have to go into her closet. I wanted to do it discreetly, to check if my things are there, and then come out. Because she cleaned her carpet in such a way that it’s all light, you could not walk on it carpet without her knowing. And you could not open her closet door without it creating an arc like half a snow angel.

This is what I had to deal with. One day I said to myself, “Okay, Mother, I hear your voice. You’re telling me you trust me, but you know what? Being a good girl is not easy. One of these days I want to express to my sister what I’m feeling.” There was one instance when a missionary couple came to our house and brought a lot of gifts from Japan. On this special day they gave my sister and me animated-figure pencil cases. They were beautiful, pink, with a picture of a beautiful girl. My sister got one, and I got one. We were both enjoying our presents.

I left the room to get something for the guests to drink. When I came back, my pencil case was in my sister’s hand and her pencil case was in front of my seat. It really didn’t matter so much because the pencil cases almost looked identical to me. But on this day, I just couldn’t hold it in. I screamed, “Un Jin!” like I’ve never screamed before. I said, “Give me my pencil case back,” and I took it from her hand, and gave hers back.

You know what happened? These two poor missionaries who brought us the gift were looking at me, frozen in fear, seeing this 10-year-old girl screaming at the top of her lungs because she wanted to take something from her 8-year-old sister, not knowing what had just happened. Then, because I grabbed it so furiously out of her hand, my younger sister started to cry. I felt absolutely miserable. Even though this happened to me many years ago, I’ve never forgotten that story. I never forgot how precious and incredibly important it is to listen to that inner voice, to listen to my mother saying, “I trust you.” Had I held in my temper or let this one pass, it would have been an opportunity for God to give me a chance to develop a deeper love for my sister.

After this incident I apologized profusely to my sister, and I even gave her my pencil case back, the one that she wanted. But it would never be the same to her, and it would never be the same to this poor Japanese missionary couple that brought us this gift. They must have gone away thinking, “Holy cow, that was quite a volcanic eruption we witnessed today!” I’ve often wondered what they must have been thinking or how ghastly I must have looked.

I’ve often thought, what would my mother have done in that situation? She would have asked me to be patient, she would have asked me to forgive, and she would have asked me to love. These are the lessons that my mother has taught me time and time again. Even though I was naughty sometimes (and that outburst was a naughty thing to do), her love for me never, ever wavered. It was absolute, it was unchanging, and it was eternal. She became a person who validated who I was. She was somebody that I could go to. She was like a sounding board to listen to some of the things that I was feeling. At the same time, she was somebody who made me feel like there’s nothing that I could not do.

She often told me a story about herself when she was a teenager, before she was married to my father when she was 17 years old. She said, “My model, my ideal woman, was Brigitte Bardot.” I said, “What?!” She said, “Yes, my ideal woman was Brigitte Bardot.” I said, “Mom, she’s a sex symbol.” She said, “No, no, not that part.” She had seen a movie in which Brigitte Bardot played a part in the Russian saga War and Peace. She was energized by this character, this heroine’s revolutionary spirit that she was going to change the world. My mom said that inspired her. And coming from an Asian culture, where women have always been repressed and kept hidden away, she said, “Wow, I want to be like that woman.” I said, “Mom, no wonder you married my dad. If you wanted to be a revolutionary, you certainly found one in my father.”

She made me feel like there’s no limit to what I can accomplish. She made me feel like because I’m a girl, because I am God’s daughter, I can be just as great as a child of God, just as great as my brothers. When my brothers were pushed to learn martial arts, she enrolled all her daughters in martial arts. When she bought my brother a cross-country motorcycle, she bought all her daughters motorcycles. And she said, “Don’t let your brother beat you.” When she sent us to school, she told me, "There is nothing that you cannot study and do well. Don’t let anyone make you feel like you cannot do something because you’re a girl."

She said to me from time to time that the time is coming when women will be in a place to reclaim their proper role in the family, in society, and in the world. The world that we’re suffering in right now is from the Fall. But my mom always reminded me that the time is coming when women will stand on equal footing as a man. “There is nothing that you cannot do that your brothers can do.”

This environment, with her constant validation and empowering of my sisters and me, allowed us to excel. It’s interesting that perhaps because my mother pushed us to excel in school and in different arts, the girls in my family were always the straight-A students. The boys were interested in other things, but because we felt like it was such an incredible opportunity for us to be able to do what many of our sisters in Asian or Middle Eastern cultures are still not allowed to do, that is have the opportunity to gain an education, we took it to heart. For us it became almost like a mission because we were given something that is still denied to our sisters in some parts of the world.

Maybe that’s why the brothers didn’t take it as seriously as we did. Maybe they took it for granted because they are men and of course they would be allowed an education. I’ve often thought, why is it that in America we have the best educational systems, and it’s the American students who are floundering while students coming from abroad, from countries like India, the former Soviet Union and China, are doing incredibly well, getting their PhDs, and becoming successful in the different areas that they have chosen for their profession? It’s because they understand the value of education. They understand that it’s a gift, an opportunity, and they’ve had to overcome a great deal of adversity to be given this chance.

Professor Alan Bloom of the University of Chicago pointed out in his book called The Closing of the American Mind the decomposition of the educational system in the United States and the apathetic attitude of the students toward their studies. Maybe it’s because Americans, having been blessed with so much, are taking it for granted. It’s not so important, or they don’t feel like they have to overcome adversity as much as do the students who are coming from abroad.

For the daughters in our family we had to excel. My mother was always there to empower us to keep on going, to keep on marching on. She became our validation point in the family. Just recently my husband showed me another interesting YouTube clip, a shot of valet parking. The valet, whose job was to park all the cars in the lot, had a little table with a long line. The people came up one at a time, and the valet was validating the people: To one person, he said, “You are lovely”; to the next person, “You are intelligent”; To the next person, “You are the child of God” to the next one, “You can be everything and anything that you can be.” The valet was turning into a validation point; all these people were coming not just to park their cars but to be validated by this valet, who was saying that they are awesome people, they are incredible, they are magnificent, they are beautiful.

Isn’t that what a mother does? We tell our children how beautiful and awesome they are. And our belief in them allows them to achieve absolutely incredible things. So when I think about my mother, not only is she the foundation of the family, not only is she the conscience of the family, but she is a validating point. She has been, she is, and she always will be. That’s why she’s so precious.

She taught us daughters two words, and she said for us to try to live our lives remembering these two words. She said, “Live your life with simple elegance.” That was something my mother said to me long ago. She probably forgot about it, but I never did. That became the motto for my life. Every day I tried to live my life with simple elegance. The way I understood those words as a young child and a daughter of God was to concentrate on the basics. What are the basics for a good life? It’s remembering God. It’s remembering family. It’s remembering service and living for the sake of others.

What are the other simple things in life? My mother always told me, “Stick to the classics.” Fashion fads will come and go but stick to the classics because they stand the test of time. She always taught me to look for simple lines, simple designs. Your creativity is what you do with those designs by putting your wardrobe together. She reminded me about the simple things in our daily life. One’s life needs to be clutter-free. It needs to be well organized. It needs to have a schedule. It not only should be a pristine room, the way my sister so diligently and so wonderfully kept her room immaculate, but it’s also in the organization of our complex lives by creating a schedule so that we can live simply.

When I ponder on the word elegance, I’ve often thought about music, about the life of an artist. I really do believe that true elegance is a life lived like an artist. When my son and daughter were practicing the piano, it began as cacophony: horrible sounds that later on turned into beautiful waterfalls. It’s the daily practicing, applying the values that you have in your life, applying the techniques that you have when you’re practicing piano each and every day that allow you to do something so difficult and arduous, and then turn it into something so graceful, so profound, and so elegant.

The goal of an artist is to make the performance seem effortless, natural, and graceful. But we know that when you look behind the performance, you see how the artist has committed to practicing daily, practicing through the tough days as well as the good days, going through this torturous process, the furnace of creativity that one has to go through to produce a work of art that is truly profound. It’s a really difficult thing to do. But it’s going through that difficulty, going through the practicing sessions, going through the singing lessons each and every day that allow us to perform like Chris Alan, from our ministry band, did today -- beautiful, profound, powerful, and sublime.

Isn’t that what the life of a religious person is? We’re looking to experience a communion with God in which we can literally transcend the material, the things that keep us attached, and experience nirvana, or transcendence. It’s a feeling of ecstasy that comes at the end of a religious life well lived. And it’s that incredible transcendental performance, like the one we witnessed here earlier today, that comes because of endless hours spent at the piano going through the lessons, going through the exercises, playing scales, arpeggios, octaves, double arpeggios, and so on.

This is the elegance that we see in my mother, the elegance of truly great women like Rosa Parks, who silently but so elegantly defined the people who were treating the African-Americans in a wrong way. Through her sheer determination, a beautiful and elegant person started the Montgomery bus boycott and inspired a whole new generation of young people to march together with the great civil rights leaders to change the world.

My mother has always told me it’s not fire and brimstone that’s going to change the world but quiet and persistent determination. Many times I saw that example in my mother, in how she carried herself as the wife of Reverend Moon, the man who cares only about living for the sake of others. I’ve often thought, “I wonder if my mom is lonely. I wonder if she might need a little more attention. I wonder if she sometimes is sad.”

I remember once when I went in to greet my parents in the morning, my father was in the restroom and my mother was cleaning up the room. But next to her desk was a pile of crumpled tissue, and her eyes were red. But she didn’t say anything as to how or why the tissues got there. Because she saw my face, her face lit up, she greeted me with a smile, she hugged me, and she said, “Are you going off to school?” I said, “Yes, Mother,” and just kept on looking at the tissue on the side. But she wouldn’t say a word. Then she said, “Don’t forget to be grateful, and have a wonderful day at school.”

My mother and I never talked about it, but now that I have become a mother with five children of my own, and I am working to create what I call this ideal family (meaning I’m dealing with all the things that come with family, to truly make it into a successful family), I’ve thought about that day and I realize my mother must have been crying. In fact, she must have been crying quite profusely because the mound of tissue was quite high. But that’s the heart of a mother. She never complained. She never said anything negative. The only thing she did was empower me to go on and have a good day at school. She gave me an offering of a beautiful smile. And she urged me on to have a great day.

For me, now that I am a mother, every time I’m confronted with a crisis or an obstacle, which I understand to be an opportunity for allowing me to become a victorious woman, I remember my mother saying to me, “I trust you and I love you.” I remember that mound of tissues and think about how difficult it must have been for my mother from time to time living with a man who thinks 24/7 only about saving the world, serving the world, and living for the sake of others, I constantly remind myself that I must follow the example of my mother in that I should not complain or be bitter. In fact, the more I suffer, the greater an opportunity it can be to help me grow as a more profound and deeper person.

I remember my mother’s offering of a smile and also remember her saying, “No matter how difficult your day is, no matter how much people persecute you, no matter how much people do not understand you, start with the offering of a smile. Then don’t forget to breathe. Remember that human beings are breathing 20,000 liters of air each and every day. It’s something that we cannot see, but it’s something that we cannot live without. It’s like God. It’s something that we don’t see every day of our lives, but it’s something that we cannot live without.

She said, “You need to breathe: remember not just to inhale but to exhale. It doesn’t matter how great you are: If you’re just saying, ‘I just want to inhale all the time,’ you’re not going to last very long. Or if you want to say, ‘I want to exhale all the time,’ you’re not going to last very long, either.” So it’s in remembering to breathe that we think about inhaling and exhaling, and we remember how important it is to have this give and receive action that is ongoing all the time but that many times we forget and take for granted. But it’s a wonderful way of remembering how we should live our lives.

She has often encouraged me, after realizing how incredible it is to be alive at this moment, that it’s always important to do something positive. She always encouraged her children to say, “Thank you,” no matter how difficult a situation might be.

I remember one instance with my younger brother, who passed away when he was 17 years old. When we first came to America, I was 8 years old and he was 7. None of us could speak a word of English. The only thing we could say was yes and hello. You can imagine how difficult it must have been. On top of that, the American people soon woke up to the fact that Reverend Moon was gaining too much power because so many young people were following his messages of love and of building an ideal family as the cornerstone of a powerful and God-centered society. We witnessed the backlash against our movement. The late 1970s and early 1980s were probably the worst years. Going to school as Reverend Moon’s children was very difficult. We were pounded and called Moonies [in a negative tone]. Because my brothers were boys, a lot of other boys would try to beat them up simply because they were Moonies.

There was one instance when my brother was perhaps 13 years old. When he came home, his hair was wet and he was wearing gym clothing. He went to bow to my mother to greet her, saying, “Mother, I just came back home from school.” But obviously something terrible had happened because his face was swollen and he was crying. My mother asked him, “What happened, Heung-jin?” It took such a long time for her to get the story out as she was holding his hand. Finally when the story did come out, we were all horribly shocked.

At school a bunch of high school kids cornered my 13-year-old brother because he was a Moonie. These were big kids, and they pinned him against the wall in the boys’ bathroom. One of the boys peed on him, and all the while the other boys taunted him, “You’re a bleeping Moonie. Moonie.” My brother was so traumatized and so incensed; he really didn’t know what to do. He had to wait until they all left. He didn’t really know how society works or even a school system works, so he didn’t think about going to the principal or filing a complaint. He was just traumatized that somebody could do something like that just because his faith was different.

So he went to the gym lockers, took a shower there, put on his gym clothing, came home, and told this story to my mother. My mother said to him, “Heung-jin, thank God you’re all right. They could have done you greater harm. Thank God. Something like this is something you can wash off. But if it truly made you angry, do not respond with greater anger but try to respond with greater love. And remember how much it infuriated you, how much it traumatized you, how much it denigrated you, but take those negative feelings and try your best to turn it into positive energy. So instead of going down to their debased level, you can rise up from this incredibly horrific situation, like a phoenix rising from the ashes, and become a great person. It’s adversity that will turn you into a heavenly champion.”

My mom said, “Any time someone belittles you because they think you’re a Moonie, be grateful because what Satan is doing is putting adversity smack in front of you to remind you that it’s something you need to overcome, it’s something that you can be victorious over and become a true son or a true daughter of God.” My mother said, “As difficult as it is, let’s smile.” So the three of us held hands, and we smiled. Then my mother said, “Let’s breathe. Let’s remember to inhale, to exhale.” So the three of us held hands, and we inhaled and exhaled, remembering that we were breathing in 20,000 liters of air, breathing in God each and every day. And we remembered the importance of giving but also receiving and creating this circuitry so that the power of love could overcome anything.

Then my mother said, “Let’s express our thanks.” So the three of us held hands and said, “Thank you, God, our Heavenly Parent. Thank you for helping us, teaching us, and showing us how to overcome adversity and still be a grateful person and become a strong son and daughter of God.”

It’s these lessons that my mom has taught throughout our lives that make me remember who I am. I am a daughter of God. I’m a Moonie, yes, I am. But I am a daughter of God. I am reminded that what our parents most want is for us to shine our divinity to the world, to share the beauty of our divinity to the world. Human beings are like light bulbs. No matter how grand or expensive a light bulb we are, if we’re not connected to the real source of love, which is God, we will not shine as brilliantly as we were meant to shine.

When you’re an adolescent, you hope that you’re cool. You never pass a mirror without looking at yourself once or twice. Oftentimes when I go walking in the city, sometimes window-shopping with my kids, I’m counting, oh, my son Preston looked in that mirror, three, four, five times. My daughter was checking out her shoes. Or, my son was checking the back of his hair as he walked by. We become very self-conscious of how we look on the outside.

But see, no matter how beautiful we are on the outside, if the inner light, the filament in the light bulb, is not working properly, the electrical current that comes from God, this incredible thing called true love, can’t make the filament glow. Therefore, the light bulb will not be able to cast its light out into the world.

I feel that the mothers have an incredible role. I saw my mother for many years standing behind my father, then slowly coming up next to my father, and then finally taking the lead and leaving my father behind. It is she who is standing in the position of leadership in our movement. It is she who is spearheading different projects, starting different organizations, giving public speeches. To see my mother transformed into the incredible woman that she is now gives me incredible hope that I can play a part in being an agent of change just like my mother, to make this country, our communities and my family into something great.

I feel that the world is ready for women in leadership. In the 1970s and the 1980s, the big threat was communism. My father invested so many of his resources to combat communism, building and supporting the Washington Times so that together with Ronald Reagan he could usher in a time of perestroika and glasnost and see the walls come down, the Soviet empire crumble, and communism go away.

But the great threat now to our lives, our communities, and our nation is terrorism. It’s a war of religions, if you will. With a mother’s heart, the women are going to play a crucial role in bringing together these siblings, like the sons and daughters of God, reminding these different religions of the True Parents, that God as our heavenly parent and that we belong to one family that needs to love and to take care of each other, not just tolerate and coexist. I don’t want to be in a family where I’m just tolerated by my husband. In fact, if he wrote me a beautiful anniversary card, saying, “Dear In Jin, thank you for being my wife all these years. I truly tolerate you, I want to spend the rest of my life coexisting with you,” I think I would have another volcanic eruption, and it would be fair to do so.

But if he were to say to me, “I love you with all my heart, I want to give everything I have to you so that we can establish and grow and nurture an incredible family,” then I would want to spend the rest of my life with this man forever. That’s the power of love. It’s the greatest force in the universe. Only through love can we solve the problems of our society, and only through love can we solve this threat called terrorism that is plaguing our lives each and every day.

As long as I am a mother, I cannot sit idle while the world is fighting, while the brothers and sisters of God, the different religions are fighting. We do not need another terrorist attack. In fact, it must be a mother’s heart -- the heart of love, the heart of living for the sake of others, the heart of service and the heart of excellence -- that educates, that creates the desire to raise up a young generation, a generation that can name its own as a generation of peace and to usher in a new millennium, a world where we no longer have to worry about violence, hatred, anger, and frustration but where we can celebrate life and honor and respect each other as divine human beings, as divine sons and daughters, so that we can truly be the brilliant light that God wants us to be.

So, brothers and sisters, happy Mother’s Day. Please honor your wife, and, children in the audience, please love your mother and honor her because there is nothing like coming home to a nice bowl of chicken soup, right? Not only is chicken soup good penicillin for the body, but it’s truly something that nourishes the heart and inspires us to become great men and women of God.

So God bless, and happy Mother’s Day.