The Words of In Jin Moon from 2010
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The Words of In Jin Moon from 2010 |
Good morning, brothers and sisters. How is everyone? I'm delighted to meet you this morning. Welcome to the Hammerstein.
Today is a wonderful Sunday. Many of you attended Hoon Dok Hae with our True Parents. Father is spending a great deal of time here in the United States, really giving his heart and his love to this great country of America. He will be leaving tomorrow. I do hope that those of you who can make it to East Garden can be there tomorrow to send our True Parents off.
This is an incredible time, when our True Parents have been very busy. Last weekend here at the Manhattan Center we had the good fortune of celebrating the world assembly with our True Parents and many of our brothers and sisters from overseas. It's interesting that the month of July in America is symbolized by Independence Day, July 4. That's something the Pilgrims fought for: They came to this country with the hope of exercising their religious freedom and forming the kind of society that they wanted to be a part of.
But July is also the same month reflecting the good work of our True Mother because she first pushed the idea of creating a Parents Day as a national holiday in the United States, and it was finally passed unanimously through both houses in 1994. Our True Parents are not just gracing this country with their words or with their presence, but they have been actively changing the landscape, making sure that something as wonderful as Parents Day became a national holiday.
This week on Friday we celebrated the 16th such Parents Day here at the Manhattan Center. Truly it was a time for our Ambassadors for Peace and different generations to come together to remember this important day and to celebrate together, enjoying great dancing and great music. I was delighted to see so many of the Japanese mothers being led to the ballroom dance floor by their children. It was a moving experience to see these shy Japanese ladies, who have been truly the backbone of our American movement, enjoying a lovely dance with their beautiful son or daughter and being honored as parents. I'm sure it was a moving experience for those mothers as well.
When I was watching this interplay between the generations as our community came together and celebrated Parents Day, I was thinking to myself, our Heavenly Father must be so pleased to finally see a community that understands his heart. When God first created the universe and he wanted to experience love, he created his children, Adam and Eve. I'm sure he and she waited, just as we all do when we become parents, to gaze upon these little bundles of joy, expecting many great things to come in their lives.
We wait for the day when our children can grow up and become beautiful eternal sons and daughters, awesome, successful, and excellent adults. We wait for them to return the love that we've showered them with, to give it back to their parents and really honor them.
Our True Parents have taught us who our Heavenly Parent is, that our Heavenly Parent is our Father and Mother up in heaven. They helped us through the beautiful gift of the holy blessing to experience what a parental heart is all about. When I think about my parents, when I think about them being the father and mother of 14 sons and daughters, 7 sons and 7 daughters, I'm sure that every time they gazed into the face of a new child they were so happy, so elated, and yet at the same time wanting so many great things for that child with a very prayerful mind.
Sometimes I say to my friends, "Heavenly Parent has a wonderful way of tricking us to have more babies. They're so adorable, and they're so cute, and they can do no wrong. They're smiling or crying, but everything that they do is so precious." Of course when they're so innocent and charming at two, three, or four years of age, we as parents are not thinking about the later years when they become teenagers, start high school, thinking about all the different things they would like to explore, the rebellion they would like to try out, and all the questioning that we'll be bombarded with.
Heavenly Parent created these cute bundles of joy, so precious, and that's what we vibe on when we're thinking about building a wonderful family -- having many kids. Before we know it, we are mothers and fathers of four, five, or six kids. In the beginning, it's very wonderful. All you have to do is take care of their physical needs and make sure their emotional needs of growth are taken care of. But as they move on through the different stages, you realize that their needs become more complicated. We do not fully prepare ourselves to be those effective parents that we would like to be.
When I canvass the three decades of the Unification Church experience here in America, I see many wonderful points to our church history, but there are a lot of points that can be improved. As the senior pastor of this movement, I'm always thinking, "How do we make it better? How do we take what we have and make it better than it is? How do we keep the First Generation excited: how do we renew and invigorate that spark of life that they first had when they joined? At the same time, how do we encourage the Second Generation -- who were born in the church, who have never gone through the conversion experience -- to own up to their decision in terms of their life of faith, and help them grow into people who will be great parents to beautiful children?" These are the questions I ask myself and struggle with every day.
Whenever I find myself asking these questions, I remind myself to go back to the centrality of our True Parents. When you pray and reflect about our True Parents, first and foremost you realize how incredibly precious they are. You come to understand that for the first time we have a man and a woman who have overcome trials and tribulations, and indemnified and restored different obstacles to stand in the victorious position of perfected Adam and Eve. Together as the True Parents they inspire the world community to understand themselves as belonging to one family as eternal sons and daughters of God.
We have a precious gift in our midst, and they are not just any regular type of people. These are extraordinary people who have come with an extraordinary message. These are incredibly passionate people who are absolutely persistent, dedicated, and devoted to the work that they are doing each day.
When I think about our True Parents, they, just like us, experience pain and difficulties, but also just like us they experience love, joy, and celebration. One of the things I notice as their daughter is that they always concentrate on their health, not just their physical but their emotional and spiritual health as parents to us children. From time to time our True Mother has emphasized to us children that because life is difficult and being in the public eye we are hit with trials and suffering that most people do not go through, we have to be responsible for our emotional, physical, and spiritual health.
She has encouraged all of us to not just keep our spiritual lives healthy by prayer, reflection, and doing good works, but also our physical well-being, emphasizing that our bodies are heavenly vessels. She encouraged all of us to be mindful, to be physically healthy and to be emotionally healthy. I look at my parents and see all the things that they're hit with, yet they never waver; they are so consistent in their mission.
Something I realized from a very young age is how seriously my father takes his own health. He always told his children that you have to take care of what God has given you: You have to exercise. You have to eat right. You have to maintain your health so that God can work through you to do many great things.
Last week I traveled to Washington, D.C., where I visited Capitol Hill. On the flight down, I was seated next to a friendly, animated lady who was very big. She asked me about myself, and she explained about a new diet program that she was on. I've heard before about the diet she described one that incorporates lemon juice and honey.
She was quite knowledgeable about nutrition and showed me a big book about different programs she was considering. When she found out I had five children, she asked me what program I was on. I said, "I'm not really on a program." She said, "You must be on some program. You look too young to be the mother of five children. Where are your post-pregnancy handles?" I said, "Well, I have a bit around my waist." She insisted again, "What program do you use in your life? I really want to be a healthy person and have lost so much weight on this program I use. I think health is my new religion. If I can be a success with this program, I want to share this new religion I've found with as many people as I can."
She described different exercises she does, different food she can eat at different times of day. At the end I felt quite dizzy. I asked her, "Are you sure it's healthy to lose 25 pounds in two weeks?" She said, "I feel healthy, and I have more energy now." I asked her, "Is this the kind of program you can follow for the rest of your life?" She just looked at me blankly, and said, "I only have to stay on the program until I reach my desired weight." I replied, "Then what program will you be on?" She said, "If I accomplish my goal, then I can take a break and eat whatever I want, not exercise, and sleep as much as I want. If I find myself ballooning, I'll go back on another program."
I
said, "Lately a couple of my children have tried a new fad
exercise program called the Insanity Program, and they've lost
a lot of weight on this program. But as somebody who grew up in this
country, constantly bombarded by hidden messages through
advertisements about how we must look, how we must carry ourselves, I
myself have succumbed to different programs as well. But when you get
to be my age, you realize that all these programs might provide a
service in that this excruciatingly intense program called Insanity
might help you lose 10 or 15 pounds, but it's called Insanity
for a reason. You cannot maintain that insanity for the rest of
your life."
It's intense, it's passionate, it's difficult. You suffer through it, and you feel good about it. Some people need that kind of regimen to make themselves feel like they've accomplished something. I saw this look of delight in my children's eyes, that the Insanity Program really works: "My thighs are now stuck to my bones; I feel stronger than ever. I can dance all night at a ballroom gala. I have so much energy." These are all wonderful things.
Just as there are serial daters, there are serial programmers in that they go from one program to the other, one diet after another. This poor woman had tried all the different types of diets I could name. She was so hungry for the right program in her life: that one exercise program that will change her life, that will give her happiness, that will give her the emotional, spiritual, physical sense of being a well-rounded, healthy person.
One of the things I notice about a lot of dieters is that many times the hunger they deal with in trying to stick to a program is not always physical hunger. Often people eat because they're emotionally or spiritually starved and they don't know how to fill this void, to satisfy this hunger. That's why they reach for the nearest piece of candy or cookies. What they really need is not more food. What they're seeking is an emotional well-being that comes through understanding that we are God's children, that we are divine beings with a special purpose in our lives. This hunger that we fight with is not always physical. That's why many diet programs never really work.
When different people encounter our children and our community, many of them respond by saying things like "Your community is so beautiful. How come everybody in your church looks ten years younger than they really are?" When I tell people the ages of my coworkers like Reverend Cotter -- he is quite old! I don't want to state the number, but he is quite old. But people think he's in his 40s. I'm pretty up there, too, but people think I'm much younger. Many times, looking at Reverend Rendel, people think, "He's only 50 at the most." Ten years get knocked off because we understand who we are; we understand that we are eternal sons and daughters. We need to satisfy not just physical hunger but the emotional and spiritual hunger that can be satisfied only with our relationship with our Heavenly Parent in heaven and our True Parents here on earth with us.
When this woman asked me about the different programs she thought I must be on, I told her that I'm not on any program but I am on a lifestyle. It is not a program that keeps us healthy, but a certain lifestyle that we choose for ourselves that helps keep us healthy physically, emotionally, and spiritually.
I've always thought the word health is interesting. A unique aspect of our community is that we have elements of the East as well as of the West. Many times "true love" becomes "tlue rub," as Reverend Sudo articulates it. That's how I understood true love to mean truly practicing and applying true love by rubbing up against my eternal relationships. These eternal relationships are with family. Once you're born into a family, it doesn't matter whether someone goes to spirit world before or after you; your relationship in the context of that family is an eternal one.
When I hear Mr. Sudo say, "tlue rub," it's a reminder for me that the purpose of my life in the context of my family is to rub up against my parents, my siblings, and my children to become the bigger person, the deeper person that I can be.
Many Japanese sisters know about new health fads; I know the ones at East Garden keep up with all of them. They're always trying different things. They say, "Helss food." But when they say the word health as helss, it kind of sounds like hell's food. And some of the healthy food that they served us really tasted like hell's food. But the thing is, the word health means the soundness of body and mind.
But when you experience that word in Japanese pronunciation and you hear health as helss, you realize that depending on the lifestyle choice, it can be something truly wonderful that will maintain the soundness of your constitution and will keep your body and mind in wonderful working order. But if you choose the wrong kind of lifestyle, it will be like hell.
That made me think about a lot of things, especially the example of how my father and mother take everything in their lives so seriously. When my father starts his meal with a prayer, he gives thanks to all the different little platters on his table. He is so meticulous about being grateful. He never goes a day without his exercises. The first thing he does, without fail, when he gets up in the morning is his exercise for 30 minutes, sometimes an hour. Every day.
When I see that kind of discipline, I realize he is exercising a couple of principles in his daily life. That lifestyle allows him to be emotionally healthy, spiritually healthy, and physically healthy. Unlike this woman who was a serial dieter, my father, number one, takes responsibility for his constitution, for where he is in life. This woman did not want to take responsibility. She started her life story by telling me, "I come from a lineage of obese people. That's why I'm obese." She was accepting that she will be big. But she was not really taking responsibility in that she's looking for quick fixes here and there. She kept giving me reasons why the different diets did not work. There was always somebody to be blamed for why a particular program didn't work. It might have been that her best friend sabotaged her in the middle of her program by bringing a beautiful apple tart à la mode that she could not resist. Or it was her duties as a mother that made it difficult for her to stick to the program; so it was her children's fault why she could not successfully complete a program.
But more importantly, I heard her say over and over again, "It's my spouse who says discouraging things," which made her feel so uninspired about her situation that she would fall short. By shifting blame to others, she never could take responsibility for her own physical, spiritual, or emotional health. She was so busy making excuses why she could not be successful. She was always saying, "When I become size 8, then I will be a wonderful wife, a wonderful mother, a wonderful friend. But while I'm on this program," she jokingly said to me, "my friends have to put up with my bitchiness. If you're my friend, you have to put up with my irritability."
She was so focused on where she wanted to go, on her destination in life to fit into a size 8 wardrobe, that she did not realize that she was forgetting to enjoy the process, to enjoy life, to focus on the actual journey she was taking as a human being. Because she was so fixated on her goal, she was always irritable, not happy, always complaining about somebody or someone because it will be a long time before she gets to where she wants to go. As long as she does not get there, she told herself, "I have a legitimate reason why I don't have to enjoy my life and relationships with my family, why I don't have to be grateful for my life."
This kind of attitude, this inability to enjoy the journey that we're on, reminds me of the Bible verse that says, "Do not conform to the patterns of this world." [Romans 12:2] The Bible reminds us that we need to be true to ourselves, to stop thinking that the size 8 will make us happy, that a wonderful car or house will make us happy. Then we cannot concentrate on what we have now, which is possibly a work in progress with a group of people we rub up against, in the form of a spouse, of children, of colleagues or friends.
When we cannot enjoy our journey, then we forget to keep our humor. This is one of the most important things I notice about Father and Mother, no matter where they are in life. Father would be sitting in Danbury prison, but when we went there to visit him, he was always encouraging us, imploring us to work harder and try our best, but most of the time he was cracking jokes. This man sitting in prison, unjustly sentenced, was keeping up the humor, not forgetting to laugh. That's something that I've realized is the key to survival.
For instance, I think of my job as senior pastor. When you're in a public position, so many things come at you all at once. The thing is, you can never do everything right and you can never do more than what you're doing. Even though people are happy you are making changes, there are always complaints and criticism. Dealing with the constant criticism, constant analysis, constant back-talking and gossip is very wearing. I'm sure it wears Father and Mother down. It must have been excruciatingly difficult to be the True Parents of humankind, with people looking at you and saying, "You're not good enough. Why are you the True Parents? Why are the True Parents like this? Why are the True Parents not like that? Why don't you do more of this? Why don't you do more of that? Why don't you fix this?" Very rarely do they get a simple thank-you from a lot of us.
When I became a mother I learned that what we as parents want from our children is to receive the love that we've given to them, coming back freely and voluntarily. Then I realized the importance of keeping a smile on my face and thanking Father and Mother, no matter whether they are angry or happy with me, always thanking them. Whether they're angry or happy, I can always learn something.
Instead of being like the dieter who wants to shift blame onto different people, if God wants to be angry with you, all right. Perhaps God had a tough day: "Bring it on, God. I will still love you, I will still honor you; I will still follow you. If you want to share your love with me, bring it on. I will gladly welcome that with open arms."
If you are in a leadership position like True Parents are, you must know how incredibly important it is for Father to be laughing. He pokes fun at himself all the time. He laughs about his children; he pokes fun at us. And he laughs about the leaders and pokes fun at them, keeping his humor alive.
Proverbs 17:22 says, "Keep a cheerful heart. A cheerful heart is good medicine." Being able to laugh, being able to invite humor into our lives is a wonderful thing. It's good medicine for life and for all the difficult things that we deal with on different levels of our human experience.
When I think of True Parents, I realize that things change all the time. My father has been in and out of prison over six times. He is well over 90 years of age. He started out his ministry in North Korea. He lived through the Korean War. He went abroad to study at Waseda University in Japan but then went back to Korea to start his ministry. Then he came to America, and he has traveled all around the world, establishing our movement in each country. My father is a man who has seen many changes. He has experienced so many sudden shifts in his life. But the way he has remained healthy spiritually, physically and emotionally is by remembering who he really is as an eternal son of our Heavenly Parent who is responsible for all the things around him.
One of the times I was very moved in my life was once with my younger brother Heung Jin. A naughty bunch of us as teenagers made a lot of ruckus in the kitchen while making something, and we broke a couple of pieces of fine china that Mother had set aside for a special celebration. All of us partook in the gaiety, but then Mother entered the kitchen to ask, "What happened, who did this?" The immature thing to do is point to someone else: "He did it; they did it." All of us stood there quietly.
My younger brother stepped forward, almost like a representative of this motley crew, and said to her, "Mother, I did it. It was my fault, and I'm so sorry." This younger brother took responsibility for everyone else's problems. That's what our True Father does, over and over again. He takes responsibility for all humanity. And as the True Father, he struggles on, plows on, at the same time empowering, imploring, and encouraging us to be great because he wants to be responsible.
As the children, how wonderful it would be if we stopped saying, "He did it. She did it. They did it," and started taking responsibility for things that we can touch, that we can change, that we can be responsible for?
When a department leader has a problem, say, a young intern has made a couple of mistakes and perhaps the brochure looks awful, there is nothing more heart-warming for me, as somebody who's running HSA, to see that department head take full responsibility and apologize on his team's behalf. There's a certain nobility, a sense of dignity, in a person willing to own up and to be responsible for the things that he or she can influence.
That's one thing our True Father has done consistently. He has always taken responsibility. In the midst of all these sudden changes that have been taking place in these last two years, with so much confusion in our church, so many things being thrown at different people, what Father does is to focus on the journey at hand. Of course, he has an eye on where he needs to go and what he needs to be, but he is here enjoying the process with us each and every day.
Just as we appreciate how valuable they are to us, we need to know that our True Parents look upon all of us as their special, precious children. When Father comes to spend time with you at Hoon Dok Hae, he's not interested in my brothers and sisters or me. He wants to see his babies. He wants to see the brothers and sisters. That's the way he has been for his whole life. He wants to enjoy the process with each and every one of us. No matter where he is, he makes us cry, he makes us laugh, he shares in our celebrations and in our suffering. But he never forgets to keep good humor.
This morning at Hoon Dok Hae he spent a great deal of time sharing a speech he gave in 1960, one that talks about the lonely and suffering course of Jesus Christ. When I heard that speech, I was reminded once again why Father is determined to love life. When you remember that Jesus had to go the way of the cross because people did not believe in him, that his disciples turned against him in that crucial hour and he was left all alone, and that he never had a chance to find a wonderful wife and experience parental heart by having beautiful children of his own, you realize why our True Father and True Mother are so determined to love life, to celebrate life, to live with a cheerful heart.
Father wants for us to have what Jesus did not have as that lonely figure in religious history. What True Father and True Mother want us to experience is the completed picture, the beautiful picture of a family that Jesus never had a chance to have.
The Parents Day gala here was a good occasion to remember that we are being given a chance to experience something incredibly profound, historic, and monumental. We have that chance to experience the most rewarding but also most difficult experience of becoming a parent. This is not a time when we should be worrying, nit-picking, or criticizing each other. This should be a time for us to ask ourselves: "In the responsibility that I've been given, am I doing my best? Am I performing to the best of my abilities? And if not, how can I do better? How can I pray and meditate about it so I can do better, making the people around me better human beings?"
Our musical director shared with me a story. He was once obsessed with wanting to be a great jazz guitarist. He revered several instrumentalists and had the experience of performing with several of them. During practice and performance, Joe realized that these people were awesome, phenomenal players in that they had no ego, no sense of "I have a Ph.D. in music. I know everything and you don't know anything. I know better than you."
When we're talking music, we're talking about a universal language, just like love. Every human being has the capacity to understand it, to experience it, to create it, because we're all divine. This iconic jazz player turned to Joe, who was amazed that such a phenomenal player could be so down to earth, so humble in his craft, and so willing to go out of his way to make the others sound better. This player said to Joe something that we need to think about as a community: "The whole point of playing together, of being in a band, is to make everybody sound better than you." That's how you get a phenomenal band, how you get a phenomenal team, how we get a phenomenal movement.
If every one of us sitting in the auditorium is thinking about truly applying this principle -- not just studying, reading, conceptually titillating our minds with this "live for the sake of others" philosophy, but applying it and practicing it in our daily lives, it comes down to that simple understanding that this iconic jazz player shared with Joe: "Our job as great musicians is to make the other sound better."
Our job is to make each other sound better and to be better. It's my job as senior pastor to make sure all of you are better than me. That's how I know that I'm doing a good job: when the Second Generation, the Third Generation, and the First Generation get more fired up than I am and become better than I am. If we can look at each other with that kind of eye, wanting the best for them, wishing the best for them, wanting everybody to be better than us, that's the Kingdom of Heaven, don't you think?
In this Year of the Tiger, we have a great many things taking place. Soon my younger brother, the international president, will be making a world tour. He was just in Nepal and Southeast Asia, meeting with dignitaries there. Soon he'll be in Europe. Our movement is making a profound impact wherever we go. As we grow, let's maintain the philosophy of living for the sake of others, of wanting to make the other person better than us. Let's practice a couple of things: being responsible for ourselves; focusing on the journey, on the process and being grateful for the process; keeping a sense of humor and at the same time realizing how incredibly blessed we are. Then there is no limit to the things we can accomplish as a community.
Here at Lovin' Life I'm always trying to up the level in terms of our production, our performance, our unity in bringing a team spirit. If we as a movement can see ourselves as wishing the other to be better than ourselves, then it will be a wonderful world, after all.
Brothers and sisters, I am truly so grateful that we were able to have our True Parents with us for such a long time in the United States.
Have a wonderful Sunday and a great week. Thank you.
1: I appeal to you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.
2: Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.
3: For by the grace given to me I bid every one among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith which God has assigned him.
4: For as in one body we have many members, and all the members do not have the same function,
5: so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another.
6: Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith;
7: if service, in our serving; he who teaches, in his teaching;
8: he who exhorts, in his exhortation; he who contributes, in liberality; he who gives aid, with zeal; he who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness.
9: Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good;
10: love one another with brotherly affection; outdo one another in showing honor.
11: Never flag in zeal, be aglow with the Spirit, serve the Lord.
12: Rejoice in your hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer.
13: Contribute to the needs of the saints, practice hospitality.
14: Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them.
15: Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.
16: Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; never be conceited.
17: Repay no one evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all.
18: If possible, so far as it depends upon you, live peaceably with all.
19: Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God; for it is written, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord."
20: No, "if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals upon his head."
21: Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
1: Better is a dry morsel with quiet
than a house full of
feasting with strife.
2: A slave who deals wisely will rule over a son who acts
shamefully,
and will share the inheritance as one of the brothers.
3: The crucible is for silver, and the furnace is for gold,
and
the LORD tries hearts.
4: An evildoer listens to wicked lips;
and a liar gives heed to
a mischievous tongue.
5: He who mocks the poor insults his Maker;
he who is glad at
calamity will not go unpunished.
6: Grandchildren are the crown of the aged,
and the glory of
sons is their fathers.
7: Fine speech is not becoming to a fool;
still less is false
speech to a prince.
8: A bribe is like a magic stone in the eyes of him who gives
it;
wherever he turns he prospers.
9: He who forgives an offense seeks love,
but he who repeats a
matter alienates a friend.
10: A rebuke goes deeper into a man of understanding
than a
hundred blows into a fool.
11: An evil man seeks only rebellion,
and a cruel messenger
will be sent against him.
12: Let a man meet a she-bear robbed of her cubs,
rather than a
fool in his folly.
13: If a man returns evil for good,
evil will not depart from
his house.
14: The beginning of strife is like letting out water;
so quit
before the quarrel breaks out.
15: He who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the
righteous
are both alike an abomination to the LORD.
16: Why should a fool have a price in his hand to buy wisdom,
when
he has no mind?
17: A friend loves at all times,
and a brother is born for
adversity.
18: A man without sense gives a pledge,
and becomes surety in
the presence of his neighbor.
19: He who loves transgression loves strife;
he who makes his
door high seeks destruction.
20: A man of crooked mind does not prosper,
and one with a
perverse tongue falls into calamity.
21: A stupid son is a grief to a father;
and the father of a
fool has no joy.
22: A cheerful heart is a good medicine,
but a downcast
spirit dries up the bones.
23: A wicked man accepts a bribe from the bosom
to pervert the
ways of justice.
24: A man of understanding sets his face toward wisdom,
but the
eyes of a fool are on the ends of the earth.
25: A foolish son is a grief to his father
and bitterness to
her who bore him.
26: To impose a fine on a righteous man is not good;
to flog
noble men is wrong.
27: He who restrains his words has knowledge,
and he who has a
cool spirit is a man of understanding.
28: Even a fool who keeps silent is considered wise;
when he
closes his lips, he is deemed intelligent.