The Words of In Jin Moon from 2009
|
|
The Words of In Jin Moon from 2009 |
Good morning, brothers and sisters. How is everyone this morning? Have you been fired up by the band? The thing I appreciate the most about working as senior pastor in Lovin’ Life Ministries is that I get to work with great men and women here. Not only are these men and women super talented in what they do -- you just saw the performers -- but behind the scenes there are lots of great, talented men and women also working to make sure that this worship experience is a phenomenal one. These people are really putting their hearts into everything that they do here.
In particular, these super talented musicians here on stage, if they have the right to become arrogant and strut their stuff even at Manhattan Center, they could very well do that. But they are so humble; their spirit of cooperation and their desire to work together as a team here always move me every time.
After they perform every Sunday, one of the things they have to do is take all this equipment back to various studios or to their homes. It’s so heartwarming for me to see all the singers and musicians really helping the crew onstage move all the equipment away, in the spirit of really helping each other and working as a team here. Whenever I see that, I always get the warm fuzzies because I realize that these are not just talented individuals who’ve been touched by God in a very special way, but they’re so beautiful as men and women and as sons and daughters of God. It is they who make my life worth living. Today is no exception. Chris Alan and the band gave such a phenomenal performance, yet I feel they are such a great support for me, for this ministry, and for everybody here in the room. I hope you felt that way as well.
Here at Lovin’ Life Ministries, we are constantly in the process of developing new programs to get people connected to the breaking news that our True Parents are here with us and that they are walking together with us, breathing together with us, smiling and sharing in our triumphs, being supportive when we maybe trip and fall and skin our knees. They’re always here.
I started thinking about a new program because my daughter Ariana is a fine ballroom dancer as well as a classical pianist. When she dances, she just comes alive; the movements are so beautiful, but the smile on her face is priceless. I thought maybe we should make dancing one of our own programs here at the Learning Center on 43rd Street. This last Wednesday was the kickoff for ballroom dancing. I hear it was a huge success. Reverend Sakamoto used to be the reigning champion of ballroom dancing in Japan, but then he joined our community and wanted to live his life in service of others. So he sacrificed his great talent and put all his trophies in the closet, even though he was quite famous in Japan.
Now we’ve asked him to dust those trophies off because we have a new program here. He was so energized and elated, saying to us, “I wanted to give up my great love of dancing in service to God and in service to humanity, in service to all the people who might want to experience my great love. But I realize that God works in mysterious ways, and here I am, after two decades of living a sacrificial life for God, True Parents, and humanity, coming full circle.” He taught the class, together with my daughter Ariana. I know he felt the mysterious power of God working with him that Wednesday. I was delighted to hear back from different people who participated in the program that they felt it was one of the best programs we had going.
I think just yesterday they had the second class, and I hear it was just as well attended. This whole spirit of allowing ourselves to express our love for the universal language, which is music, means that now we not only have the chance to audibly enjoy, but to allow the music to flow through us and express itself in the beauty of the human form, in human movement.
The great thing about ballroom dancing is it’s so cultural, a very prestigious and an upper class thing to do. Everyone has formal ways to approach the partner. How wonderful it is in this “ice age of the heart” for a young man to approach a young woman, saying, “May I have this dance?” instead of saying, “Want to grind on the dance floor?” Don’t you think there’s a difference here?
The different steps are formal and structured, but when you get used to these movements, you can roll around and float around on the dance stage. It’s such a graceful thing to watch. I think it’s a healthy way for young people, especially kids going through their difficult adolescent years, to approach the opposite sex in a respectful, beautiful, and enjoyable way: for each other to appreciate the partner and the distance between the partners, as well as the closeness.
I feel many times our community is paralyzed by fear of what our children are doing if they just hang out together, but we don’t realize that we are suffocating our youth by not allowing them to express their God-given divinity in many ways. If you can find a constructive and beautiful outlet where they can learn etiquette and social protocol, and at the same time have a great time, I think that’s a beautiful thing.
I know I have great support from many of you out there, but there are also some who question what this woman is up to. She wants to institute dancing classes, of all things, at the learning center? But I’d be the first one to say, “Why not?” Dance is an expression of the universal language.
Unbeknownst to me, my husband is a fantastic ballroom dancer. When we were growing up, going through our teenage years, whenever we had a dance set for blessed children, everyone shied away from my husband because he was well known for being the smartest kid on the block but also the worst dancer on the planet. He was famous for one move, which I don’t think I can replicate right now. The other girls immediately shied away. He had a knack of somehow wanting to dance with me. At occasions like that, he would come toward me, and I would try my best to dance away from him because I didn’t want to be attacked by the famous Jin Sung move.
For somebody who’s been well known in our community as a miserable dancer -- God works in mysterious ways. Before we got married, I knew his younger sister attended the Royal School of Ballet in Monaco, and he went over there to visit. The ballet teachers saw him and thought he was a dancer because he has the perfect physique. He has no waist; it’s all legs, and he is very thin for a man. For a dancer, it’s perfect. But when the teacher asked his sister, Hoon Sook said, “Yes, I know he has a perfect body and a natural turnout, which is priceless for a ballet dancer. but one thing about him is that he’s not flexible”. He has perfect form but he’s extremely rigid. When you ask him to bend over, the only thing you see moving are his arms, but the head doesn’t move. That’s how inflexible he is. So his parents could not help him to become a ballet dancer.
But here we are. I’ve known him all my life as a miserable dancer. My daughter, who discovered ballroom dancing when she got to Harvard, said to me, “Omma, there were a lot of people that came on Wednesday, but only one or two stood out.” I asked, who are they? She said, “Omma, you’re not going to believe me”. I listed all the names, but lo and behold she said, “Dad is a fantastic ballroom dancer.” I said, maybe it’s beginner’s luck; you’d better wait until Saturday. Then yesterday she came back and said, no, he’s really good. Again I was thinking how God works in mysterious ways because I thought one of the things I had to give up in my marriage was the ability to enjoy dancing with a partner. But through my daughter maybe this is one way I can enjoy dancing again.
I’m hoping that all the parents, all the husbands and wives, might want to come to this class. Sometimes the day-to-day difficulties can leave us feeling isolated, even in a marriage, and lonely and unappreciated. But I hope with different programs like this, not only can the young people enjoy themselves, but this might be an opportunity for married couples to enjoy another spark in their life or find a common hobby or love they can share together.
As a community, here we are in this modern day, wanting to share with the world the beauty of true love and the importance of understanding the historical significance of this providential time-frame when we have our True Parents. We talk about the power of love all the time, and even in my father’s speeches he says, “People talk about love, about breaking down different barriers and creating unity.” But how are we going to go about that in a community such as ours? We have all different races and religions. People come with all different cultural or religious baggage, or emotional baggage. Here we’re trying to live as one family under God. How do we go about that? How do we infuse our environment with this feeling of love?
I often think about how I can inspire my children at the beginning of the day -- and I’m always taking one day at a time, realizing my responsibility as a mother and as a wife, as somebody who grounds the family and drives the family, like what a bass player does for the band. Usually I like to start my morning with a bit of meditation, a bit of silence, and then report to our Heavenly Parent what I would like to do for the day. During those moments, one of the things that I remind myself constantly is that words are incredibly important.
In the Bible, James 3: 6-9 [1], which I shared with you earlier, it talks about the responsibility of the tongue, how with our tongue we bless and we honor God, our Heavenly Parent, but also with our tongue we curse each other. This is something I think about every day because I’m a firm believer that words are vehicles of emotion. Used properly, they can inspire your children, inspire your spouse, and empower them to want to do great things. It can be used to support them in times of difficulty. But I also know that words can become a vehicle of emotion that can be extremely destructive when misused and abused, when used with malicious intent.
We want to create a peaceful world, but my father always says that in order to create a peaceful world, we have to begin with ourselves. When we address our loved ones within the context of the family, it’s probably one of the greatest responsibilities we must think about.
I’ve heard countless times over the last year that I’ve held this post people coming to me for advice and saying, “My spouse is so abusive to me.” There are many forms of abuse -- physical, emotional, spiritual. When I hear different people’s experiences and opinions on the matter, it always comes down to the same thing. They say that words are like knives when misused. Words are like daggers. When you’re constantly being stabbed every day with these words that feel like a knife wounding your heart, it’s difficult to love and difficult to be inspired.
But I’ve also met couples who have told me, “My difficulty is that I’m not attracted to my spouse; I don’t find my spouse exciting.” When I ask them to tell me something wonderful about their spouse, they always tell me, “Even though I have my own battles to overcome, one of the things I truly appreciate about my spouse is that he or she always tries to say something meaningful or thoughtful. Like a simple thank you or a simple remark like, ‘You look wonderful,’ or, 'You did that really well.'" Those simple, kind words become a vehicle of emotion in which the other person feels totally understood, embraced, welcomed in the home. With this feeling of being comforted and embraced, then he or she can go on toward the next day, overcoming their struggles of the day.
I’ve always wondered, since I’m still a home-schooling mother, what would be the best way to inspire my teenage kids to strive to be better students, to invest themselves in their studies? My mind turns to the Russian method of teaching. I have two children who are quite good -- actually, they’re fantastic -- in classical piano. I found a Russian music teacher who specializes in musical prodigies. She doesn’t take just anybody. If she decides to take you, it means she knows your kids have something special. Since the music educational system in communist Russia was organized by the government, these teachers are very adept at picking out talent because they’ve had to do it year after year with thousands and thousands of students. There are particular things that they look for to evaluate whether someone is going to be a talented musician or not.
When I took my kids for their interview with this Russian teacher, she asked them a simple question: “What keys do you like on the piano?” She played them phrases in a couple of minor keys and in a couple of major keys and asked, “Which ones do you like?” My second son, Rexton, said, “Well, I like the minor key.” My daughter in her interview also said, “I like the minor key.” The teacher asked them each, “Why do you like the minor key?” They said, “Because it’s sad. It makes you want to cry.” Then the teacher asked them each to play a scale, from C to C and back. And she watched very carefully how nimble their fingers were. That was it.
I thought, okay, here she is, a very prestigious teacher -- it’s very difficult to get an interview with this woman -- who specializes in children. All she wanted to know was whether they liked the minor or the major key, and then she wanted to see their fingers on the piano. After they went out, she turned to me and said, “Tatiana, I want your kids.”
At first I was very happy that she wanted to take my kids. I asked her, “Why do you want to take my kids?” I just had to ask, “How do you know that they’re talented?” She said, “I know.” The Russians have a manner, like, “How dare you ask me this question? I know!”
I said, “I’m sorry but I’m just curious. How do you know?” She said, “Why do you ask?!” I replied, “If I’m going to commit to bringing my kids to lessons with you, I just want to know. I need to know that I’m going to support them in an area that they’re talented in.” She said, they’re very talented. So I said, “Okay, how do you distinguish my children from the other children who come to interview with you?” She said, “Your kids love sad music. Musicians, if they don’t know how to feel sadness, they cannot feel happiness. If they don’t understand what it sounds like, the notes that play suffering, they will not understand what notes sound like when they inspire. Your kids have incredible, nimble fingers. That’s all I need.”
Then she put them into the Russian method program. It was basically six months of scales and different arpeggios, four-octave scales. In the beginning it was very difficult. But they kept on consistently applying all their effort and all their dedication into their art. Before we knew it, their fingers were literally flying on the piano, and it looked almost effortless.
My husband, having played 10 years of classical piano, was transfixed every time he came home and saw them practice their scales. He asked them, “How do you play so freely?” The Russian teacher said, “The faster you play, the more relaxed you need to be. The problem with a lot of musicians is that you want speed, you want more control. But when you know that you have the fundamentals, then the more speed you want, the more you have to relax your muscles and let your brain take over.”
My husband said, “How come my piano teacher never taught me that?” He could never get up to the four-octave scale because he wanted to emphasize each note so much that in emphasizing each note he forgot the whole picture. Even in a simple exercise like doing your scales every morning, details are extremely important, but keeping a sense of the big picture is important as well. The faster we want to go, instead of thinking the more controlling we have to be, the more relaxed our muscles need to be. I feel that as a movement we need to relax a little bit. Our muscles need to be a little bit more flexible, and that is how we’re going to get more speed: and incredibly, interestingly, more precision.
The reason why I’m telling you this story about the piano teacher is because she was very masterful with her encouragement and her discipline. She knew my kids were very talented; within a year, they received an invitation to perform at the Gnessin School in Moscow, which is a school for child prodigies. But whenever they were in a class with her, she would be very strict, very formal, and very organized in terms of her compliments. After they played their pieces, she told them, “Yes, that was good. Now work on this.” And if the kids played extremely well, she said, “Yes, that was very good. Now do this. It was always a compliment, but not flamboyant, elaborate, or totally effusive with emotion. She was very stoic, almost, and very serious. But her words -- it was good, it’s very good -- -- could be understood as, “You’ve finished Level One. Now let’s go on to Level Two.” It was not like, “You are so awesome, fantastic,” that the child is glowing with excitement and floating off the ground with feet no longer touching the ground, becoming maybe arrogant. The Russian teacher was very grounded in that she complimented the child each time along the way, but she was very serious, and each compliment meant an invitation to go a step further.
In some instances when she was watching the kids, she was really happy. I noticed that she would say, “Yes, that’s good,” and she would make comments, but her jaw would start to flicker up and down. She was literally biting her jaw. In the beginning I looked at her surreptitiously so she wasn’t aware that I was looking at her, but as time went on I realized that when she started biting her jaw with her lips closed, it was because she was trying to suppress a smile. When the kids got to be really, really good and she had other teachers come to watch their practice sessions, I would see a lot of jaw movement. Sometimes the other teachers would be looking at my kids in amazement, like they couldn’t believe what they saw. But there she was, sitting in her chair, “Very good, yes, do the next one. Very good,” but she’d be chomping on her jaws like this.
Then I realized she would do this when my children would start playing really well. At first I was thinking, “Why is she doing that? Maybe she’s suffering from an involuntary movement of the jaw or something, or maybe it’s a bad habit.” But later I found out that the reason she did this every time the kids played really well is because she didn’t want the kids to see her smiling. She didn’t want the kids to see that she was so happy. It was her way of making everything calm, serious, focused. When the lesson finished she would try to give them hugs, and she would smile before she sent them off. I watched this with a great deal of interest.
Here we are, in this liberal age when children literally run over their parents and pretty much have their way in the house. Many times parents have lost their position as parents in the home. But the Russian education tradition is that the vertical tradition of what the teacher is, or what the parent is, is extremely clear. When you are in the classroom, when you are working, it’s extremely clear who the teacher is and who the student is. But when you leave the classroom, then the teacher may become loving and start to laugh and enjoy.
In really loving and supporting our children, we have to be there for them constantly, and be there with our love. But I realized the importance of our language in the classroom or in the home. Maybe the parents should think about how it might not be a good idea to be called by their first names. Maybe there is wisdom in maintaining this vertical tradition of a parent being a parent, so it’s always Mom and Dad in the home and elsewhere.
The wonderful thing about our community is that not only do we have Eastern notions of duty, honor, obedience and respect, but we have the Western component here that stresses communication, sharing, and cooperation. When we put these things together in a household, we get a wonderful mix, or what I call the heavenly tradition ingredients that really can make a house a wonderful home for the kids. That is, the parents, from the day the children are born until the day they are delivered back to their Heavenly Parent, are and always be the parents.
There is no need to relinquish our position as disciplinarian or almost a martinet of the scheduling that needs to take place to make the house run efficiently. In fact, children seem to thrive in a structured environment far better than in an environment with no structure at all.
If we can teach our children the importance of honoring their parents, maintaining the parents’ position and yet at the same time teaching them to not just talk but also to listen to their parents and to work together really as a team, then there’s hope of creating a wonderful environment for every member of the family.
I’m from a family of 14 brothers and sisters: seven brothers and seven sisters. My husband always says, “You guys all are blessed and cursed with the Moon blood in that you tend to be extremely talented in different fields and you tend to follow your passions. But at the same time you’re cursed because you are so stubborn and so obsessive, just like your father.”
Anybody who knows my father knows that he has a 24-7 obsession with God, our Heavenly Parent. That’s not necessarily an easy recipe for somebody like my mother to deal with. Noah’s wife had to go through over a hundred years of her husband building an ark for God. He was literally obsessed about building the ark. My father is obsessed about seeing world peace realized in his lifetime. So being his wife has not always been easy.
I know that many times because my father had to do so many different things, he has not always been there for my mother. But the most incredible thing about my mother is that, despite all her difficulties and despite the boxes and boxes of Kleenex tissues she has used over the years, she has maintained an image and persona of elegance and dignity. She is my model for what I would like to be in terms of my goals as a wise mother. I would like to be like her. If I could be even a little bit like her, I would be extremely satisfied.
My mother understood the power of the word. She was raised without a father in her life. Her mother was very busy trying to raise her up, and I’m sure she did her best. But my mother would tell me, “Sometimes I really wish I could have heard my father tell me, ‘You’re God’s daughter. There’s nothing you cannot do, and you will be as great as you believe yourself to be.’”
My mother said this to me many years ago. She may not have had a father to say these lovely words to her, but she certainly made sure that she said these words to all her children, and in particular to all her daughters. So she and her words made me feel that there is nothing I cannot do, that my sex doesn’t limit me in any way from doing God’s work. In fact, she said, “The best is yet to come. There’s going to be a time when you and your sisters are going to do many, many great things, not just for the country of Korea. (She always made a point of saying that.) You have to be the representative of Korea and of God and True Parents to the world. You need to remember that not only are you a daughter of Korea, not only a daughter of Rev. and Mrs. Sun Myung Moon, but you are a daughter of God, our Heavenly Parent, and that you must never forget that.”
So her words were incredibly empowering. My family was brought over here in the winter of 1973 and thrown into unfamiliar schools, not speaking a word of English. Soon thereafter our church went through the backlash from being a successful movement, meaning there was a great deal of persecution. We children were like little reeds in the wind. That’s what we felt like, constantly blown this way and that by all these forces that did not wish the best for us because we were Moonies. We belonged to a strange cult. We came from a strange country. There was a great deal of persecution that my family had to endure.
At different moments of my life, when I was confronted with “Moonie, Moonie, Moonie!” droning in my ear, I had to find a way to overcome my difficulty with that word. Again, it was the power of a word itself. The word moonie in Korean means “a beautiful design.” So every time somebody called me a Moonie, I would say, “Thank you. It’s not every day that you get to be called beautiful 20 or 30 times a day. What a blessing it is to be called a Moonie, that I’m a beautiful design” in the world, or in my school, or in my classroom, or wherever I happened to be at that time.
I remember leaving my classmates aghast: “I knew she was a little different, but boy, maybe she doesn’t really fully understand English. Every time we try to make fun of her by calling her Moonie, she says, thank you.” I understood that word, and even though they projected it to me in a negative way, because I interpreted the word to mean something beautiful in my native tongue, it became a source of great inspiration. So the more people tried to put me down, the more strength I got from that, and the more empowered I became in who I needed to be.
When I was growing up, not only did we have difficulties outside the home because I belonged to this very interesting religion, but growing up with 14 siblings was not a walk in the park. Especially when you have a lot of brothers, there is a lot of testosterone trying out manhood that’s fed by the barbells clanking each and every day. Sometimes brothers can be so cruel.
One of the closest relationships I have in my family is with my older brother Hyo Jin oppa, who passed away. He was instrumental in understanding my father’s vision for the Manhattan Center. He and I had an interesting and unique relationship. He’s my older brother, a couple of years older, and we always grew up together. My first living memory of him is of him hosing me down. In this little courtyard that we grew up in in Korea, we had a hose for the garden, and every time he saw me, it didn’t matter if I was getting ready for school with my uniform on, he would start spraying me with the hose. I don’t know many times I would just cry because I didn’t know what to do. He was such a difficult older brother.
But then I realized that little boys often have difficulty expressing love to anyone. Many times it’s expressed in the form of cruelty. When I arrived in America, I went into third grade. Looking at yearbooks from that time now, I notice a beautiful German boy. I didn’t speak a word of English. Back then miniskirts were in vogue, and he used to follow me around, always pulling up my skirt, sometimes with tape to stick it to my back. He would make me cry all the time at school. I would try to avoid this boy whenever I saw him.
In Korea we don’t have Valentine’s Day, but when my first February in America came around, this boy who just tortured me mercilessly, following me down the hallways, putting up my skirt all the time and making me cry, gave me a big box of chocolate and a huge bouquet of flowers. I was barely learning how to speak English. I just looked at him, “What are you doing?” I thought maybe the chocolates were poisoned, and maybe the flowers had some fragrance that would make me start to cry. I couldn’t believe that this was a heartistic gift. When I went home I opened the box and saw a handwritten note, “I love you! XOXO In Jin.” That was when I realized that little boys show that they care for you in very strange ways.
In time I realized that this older brother, who was always hosing me down and giving me a difficult time, was doing that because he really, really loved me. My brother was not well known for writing letters. In fact, he only wrote cards to our True Parents on special occasions, but he rarely expressed his emotions by putting pen to paper. But I realized over the years that he consistently wrote to me, telling me how much I meant to him. Now those precious letters are my life’s treasures.
Of course, as we grew up, then he would verbally tell me how much I meant to him, how much he loved me. But in those beginnings, when we were in elementary school, there was a great deal of difficulty. My older brother would make fun of me, saying, “You’re the only snake in the family,” meaning, I’m the only one born in the year of the snake in Chinese astrology. Imagine being the only snake in the family, growing up in a religious movement like ours where the serpent is not highly esteemed.
So many times he would reduce me to tears because he would say, “You’re a s-s-s-s-snake. S-s-s-s-s-s!” I just didn’t know what to do. One day I was crying so much that I refused to come out when my parents were looking for me. Again I felt the power of the words because my mother called me into the room and said, “What’s wrong?” I said, “My brother called me a snake again and I don’t like it and it’s painful. It makes me feel I’m the worst thing because I’m the something that caused the Fall and caused all of us to suffer, so I must be really horrible.”
I remember my mother grabbing my arm, pulling me to her. She said these beautiful words that liberated me for the rest of my life. She said, In Jin, first of all, your brother loves you. And you know what? Being born in the snake year is a very lucky thing. Your brothers might make fun of you because snakes have a forked tongue. (That’s what they always said, “Your tongue is split in two, so you’re a s-s-s-s-snake. You’re just something not worth living.”) But a, forked tongue can mean different things. You’re very good in the languages that you’re learning and speaking. Because it’s forked means you speak more than one language.”
For me, the light bulb went on. Not only did the forked tongue become something positive, but she emphasized the talent that I had and made me feel so liberated, so empowered, and so embraced and understood. To this day, when we get together as a family and just as a joke “you’re a s-s-s-snake” would come up, I remember what my mother said. It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy and so loved.
We as human beings have this really great gift that God has given us. Not everything that God created has the ability to speak and to enjoy words, which I call vehicles of emotion. Just as words can be a vehicle to inspire and to give life, words as a vehicle can be used to destroy and to crush somebody’s soul forever. We have an incredible opportunity to decide how we want to use our words, every day -- whether we are going to use our words to uplift or to suppress, whether we are going to use our words to inspire or abuse, whether we’re going to use our words to empower and love and not to destroy and to kill.
Think, maybe when you start out each day, “How am I going to drive today?” Not your car, but how are you going to drive today, meaning utilizing your words. How will you drive your family? Will you drive your family with the emotion that will destroy and be abusive, or will you drive and ground your family with the power to empower, to inspire, and to love? I’m hoping that you will make the same decision that I make each and every day, and that is that I want my words to empower, to really exercise this power of love that my father is talking about, so that instead of talking in haste (which might be the cause of all the world’s ills, as that poem indicated earlier), maybe we can take a step back and breathe a little and realize that, yes, it’s important to express ourselves, but in order to really love each other as a community and as a family, it might be a good idea to really practice love.
For me, love means a couple of things. When you truly love somebody, you’re listening to that person. You’re letting that person know that he or she is being heard and understood. And when you truly love somebody, you are open with that person, willing to decide to open up your heart. When you truly, truly love someone, you’re willing to be vulnerable, absolutely vulnerable. You’re willing to have the courage to love. You’re willing to even risk rejection, but you’re willing to love just because. When you truly love somebody, you always have, as your foundation, the eternal love of God, which is absolute, unchanging, unique, and eternal. What more could we want out of life than to simply and elegantly practice what love is all about?
On this beautiful Sunday, thank you for being with me here at the Manhattan Center. I encourage all of you, together with me, to walk this road of building a world of peace by starting with ourselves and our families. I believe that the best way to create a wonderful environment where we can truly work out the process of building ideal families starts with the environment that we create with our words. Words are incredibly powerful, so use them wisely and use them lovingly. And use them to truly empower and encourage each other.
I hope that all of you can take this day to appreciate that every Sunday here at Lovin’ Life Ministry is an invitation to celebrate our lives. And we concentrate on the word celebrate because it really is a celebration because we are so grateful that we have been given this opportunity to live out our lives in the company of God, our Heavenly Parent, and True Parents.
So God bless you, and have a wonderful, wonderful week. I hope you can go forward truly loving your brothers and sisters. Thank you.
Notes:
6: And the tongue is a fire. The
tongue is an unrighteous world among our members, staining the whole
body, setting on fire the cycle of nature, and set on fire by hell.
7: For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature,
can be tamed and has been tamed by humankind,
8: but no human
being can tame the tongue -- a restless evil, full of deadly poison.
9: With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse
men, who are made in the likeness of God.