The Words of In Jin Moon from 2011
|
|
The Words of In Jin Moon from 2011 |
Good morning, brothers and sisters. How is everyone this morning? I bring you greetings from our True Parents. They've just left Las Vegas for Korea. On the 18th we celebrated the dedication of the Won Mo boat, with many guests and dignitaries in Las Vegas, together with our True Parents. It was a time for the guests to realize what a remarkable genius our True Father is, in that, yes, he is a spiritual leader, but by training he is a scientist.
Won
Mo Boat
He designed the Won Mo boat, which utilizes helium tanks so that it's faster, lighter, and saves a whole lot of fuel. In our True Parents' desire to reclaim leisure for the sake of the family, Father is encouraging families to own one of these boats, to enjoy their time with their family. Father wants to give each family a chance to come together and experience something quite profound and beautiful. And yet at the same time, in line with his ocean providence and his desire to end world hunger, this is evidence of Father's way of innovating all the pre-existing things that we have taken for granted, making them technologically better. He is making boats work a whole lot better for us so we can be free to have a great time, go fishing at the same time, and bring something back that the family can enjoy together.
It was an amazing time. Our True Parents were delighted and in good spirits. Every time I see my father and mother, our True Parents, I am so taken aback by their desire to give something of themselves to the world, to present something to the world as a gift to make humanity that much better.
In the name of the boat Won Mo, the Chinese character for Won means circle, round, and Mo means mother. It is extremely interesting how Father wanted to have the Won Mo dedication ceremony after a special meeting of all the women gathered there for this event. Father asked for a special workshop with all the women present, again stressing the importance of the Pacific Rim Era and the importance of women reclaiming their own dignity as eternal daughters of God, to lead humanity in the right direction toward a world of peace, harmony, and love.
When you take these two Chinese characters together, Won and Mo, what Father envisions for the boat is really the symbol of the universality of our True Parents. When you look at the dynamic, circular relationship between a man and a woman, you realize that it becomes complete when the man finally finds a beautiful wife, somebody who can be a beautiful mother to the children. You realize that circle and the family becomes complete when the feminine is honored, when the feminine is also represented.
Again hearkening the theme of Pacific Rim Era, the women have to finish the circle of humanity. What the world witnessed in terms of the power, might, and strength of the masculine must end in a beautiful circle, with women in different positions of leadership in their families, their society, and their nation. Women are to be the kind of people who can usher in the new millennium by emphasizing the importance of compassion, love, and living for the sake of others, and in doing so help raise men to be great eternal sons of God and great fathers. By working together, women and men are to create a world where they can reclaim their heavenly worth, their equal dignity as eternal sons and daughters, and share the world with everyone who thinks of each other as having similar value and dignity.
When our True Father named this boat Won Mo, I felt that he is signaling a time when the women have to come to the forefront as agents of change, claiming their dignity and raising up all the brothers, fathers, and sons to become better people.
One of the most important missions our Father has engaged in is developing the ocean providence, finding different ways to manufacture fine fish products, as he has also emphasized the importance of fishing. Unlike farming, in which you have a process of planting seeds, waiting for them to grow, and waiting for the autumn before we can share in the harvest of plenty, my father is thinking about feeding the world every day. He sees the ocean as a treasure of incredible natural resources that we have yet to really understand.
Our True Parents' desire is for humanity to be healthy and to find its way out of poverty, out of the hungry existence that a lot of men, women, and children are still suffering from. Yes, in this modern day we see the effects of spiritual starvation, but in vast areas of the world many millions of people still suffer from physical starvation. This is what our True Parents want to address through the ocean providence.
As I was experiencing the Won Mo boat dedication ceremony, thinking back about all that our Father has done, I recalled how he single-handedly brought in the sushi revolution here in America. Before True Parents, nobody knew what eating raw fish was all about. Twenty years ago, if you'd suggested going to a restaurant to eat raw fish, people would have looked at you as if you were mad. But now, with all the different fisheries that Father created, all the hundreds of sushi restaurants he has created around this country, sushi has become the "in" food, the food that's healthy, that all the "beautiful" people enjoy. It's a fashionable thing to eat nowadays.
Our True Father has made amazing innovations, even in the method of fishing. I've shared with brothers and sisters how our True Father has introduced hand-line fishing when it comes to catching bluefin tuna, which is still utilized to this day. With the constant design genius of our True Father, he continues at the ripe old age of 92 to design and manufacture boats that are so much more efficient and effective. He's trying single-handedly to be the agent of change that can give the world something and take it to a better place.
When I think about the world we are immersed in – this technologically incredible and powerful world – we have everything at our fingertips in this superpower of America. The Internet has given us access to a lot of different things that we never had access to before. If we want things, we can get them instantaneously. We can look for things and find them on the Internet. The things that were even taboo are available on the Internet. We're flooded with all these opportunities.
The only thing that a lot of us feel we need to do is satisfy our hunger. Yes, we have our physical hunger, we have our emotional hunger, and, yes, we have our spiritual hunger. In one form or another, a lot of men and women in our world are suffering from hunger. When I thought about this, about the difficult economic recession we are living through, I did a little research on the Internet, wanting to find out – in this hungry state of humankind immersed in one of the worst economic recessions of our time – what continues to be successful? What is the most profitable thing during these times?
My research yielded two things that I found highly interesting. The two things that continue to grow and prosper in terms of making huge profit in times of difficulty and economic recession are churches and human trafficking. I thought it was interesting in that, yes, many times in this modern day people feel somewhat at odds with the fast-paced, cold, technologically advanced world, and they're seeking for some spiritual comfort food, spiritual soul food. They go to churches because they crave this comfort of the soul.
The church is in the business of saving souls. The spiritual deprivation, the coldness of the world that people might feel is somewhat taken care of when people go to church. The promise that somehow the divine would always look after every one of us is a wonderful promise to a lot of people, and that's why they go to church, they tithe, and they want to hope for something better.
But when we're talking about brothels or human trafficking becoming extremely profitable at a time when we are suffering severe economic recession, we realize that this is an area of our society that exploits the soul. It destroys the soul of individuals and turns them into empty carcasses, the living dead that we see all around.
I was thinking of my friend who is a famous documentary filmmaker who produces a lot of shows for the major networks, especially HBO. One of his friends is a musician who was invited to perform in Moscow, and he went there to perform at one of the clubs. While there he met a Russian translator who was 17 or 18. She was extremely excited to meet someone from America. She said, "I was just approached by this management company that wanted to take care of me, set me up in a place where I can live, and put me up with different people who can give me a legitimate job. I can find my own way working in conjunction with this management company and I'm scheduled to go to the United States."
As the musician was listening to this girl's story, he felt something was not right. When he came back to America, he did a little research and realized that this management company was a scam, a way of bringing girls into the seamy world of human trafficking. Being a musician, he wanted to give voice to these young girls who didn't have a voice and who were pushed into this slavery-like existence, being herded like cattle into work that abuses them, uses them, and throws them out. He turned it into his calling to write music about human trafficking and the atrocities that are taking place. He connected with some journalists whom he implored to put their lives on the line and go above and beyond the journalistic ethic of not getting emotionally involved in any of their stories, and he persuaded them to go undercover to the places where the exploitation is taking place.
My friend was asked to create a documentary video on human trafficking. He did just that, and he sent me his work, wanting my input. When I saw the gravity of the exploitation that is taking place, I was totally shocked. We hear bits and pieces about sex slaves and the sex trade, sometimes in a New York Times column or a little subtitle under a picture in the Daily News. But it's something very far from us, or so we think. We definitely empathize with the people who are suffering, but we don't do anything about it because it's something seemingly so alien to most of us who are going about our daily business of raising families, wanting to provide a good home for our children.
But it was no longer remote when I looked at the documented exploitation that is taking place. We're talking about girls as young as three years old being sold as sex slaves. The video reveals the alley that connects to the storefront, and behind the storefront we see men in dark and dimly lit rooms where there are 20 to 30 young girls, aged four to eight, and each of them is hoping she will be sold to one of these men. The men were asking the girls unbelievable things.
These girls were painfully young, of the age to be playing at Gymboree, a McDonald's playground, or a playground in Central Park. But they had been herded like animals into this dimly lit room and they had been taught the "important" English, the kind that would get them selected to be sold for that moment.
Because they're tiny children, the men customers, the johns, are encouraged to ask these girls, "Do you 'boom-boom'?" They are asking, "Do you 'boom-boom'?" to a 4-, 5-, 6-, 7- or 8-year old girl, meaning, "Do you have sexual intercourse with whomever wants to buy you?" These girls are saying, "Yes, yes, 'I boom-boom'" in English. "I 'boom-boom' really good. Pick me, 'boom-boom'." This is not a fictional movie. This is reality of what is taking place in the lives of a lot of young girls all across the world.
As you're watching this, you realize why they're using baby language like "boom-boom." The young girls who don't know anything else, who don't know it's wrong, are thinking, "It's something I have to do in order to get food, to have a place to stay." The journalist was asking, "So you 'boom-boom'?" "Yes, I 'boom-boom' good. Good boom-boom." The journalist also asked, "Do you 'yum-yum'?" Meaning, do you provide oral sex? And three girls rushed toward the journalist, grabbed his leg and said, "Yes, 'yum-yum.' I 'yum-yum' really good."
When I saw that, I could not help but cry my eyes out because I realized that something like this is taking place in the world. The age at which these little girls are being asked to "boom-boom" and "yum-yum" in different places like Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, and the Philippines is getting younger each year. Their users and abusers come to them from home countries far away. So the Johns are away from their societies and families. They're away because they're afraid of what their colleagues might say. They go to these countries to exploit young girls. This is taking place with men who may be our husbands, our sons, or our fathers.
When we see what is taking place in the world, we shouldn't be lulled into thinking that this only takes place in far-away lands. One of the fastest-growing problems in America is human trafficking, even in the capital of our country, Washington, D.C., in the suburbs. Young girls are being bought and sold right before our eyes.
When we think about the kind of exploitation that is taking place, we have to ask ourselves a couple of things. We have to ask ourselves, "Who are these men, these johns? Who are the people who are giving money to these businesses that allow the businesses not just to exist but to thrive incredibly – so much so that there's a continual flow of innocent young girls, and boys, being thrown into this kind of life. Their chances for a decent life are ravaged from them at a very young age.
When we think about how the moral fiber of society has degenerated to such an extent that we look the other way while all of this is taking place, we have to ask ourselves some hard questions. If we really want to change the world, if we really want to build ideal families, if we really want to help people develop moral character – which is really the only way we're going to solve these problems – how are we going to do that? A lot of politicians say, "Well, let's try a program where any time a john gets caught in the act, we send a report to his family. Maybe that might have the john suffer the consequences of his actions and make sure he doesn't do it anymore."
Different countries have tried that method, trying to fix the problem by punishing the effects of moral degeneration, and the end result is always the same. Not only does it not stop the crime – the johns continue doing what they're doing – but it drives the operators and the brothels undercover. So these girls are put in more severe situations that are worse and more difficult.
Small children being held in brothels is part of the larger interconnected global sex industry. A lot of countries have had to take a good look at themselves and ask, "How are we going to solve this problem?" It's one of the biggest problems in every country in our modern day, especially with the advent of the Internet. When my generation was growing up and a young person wanted access to pornography, it would have required the courage to go to a shop and steal the magazine, or to get your friends to give it to you, or to do something out of the ordinary to obtain materials like that. But now on the Internet, pornography can be right at the fingertips of any child.
I think a lot of parents are in denial when they think, "My son is a healthy young man. Of course he would not buy things like that, or look at things like that." Even though they're thinking that might happen, many parents don't own up to the reality of the situation or work through it with their son or daughter.
What we really need to do is to educate about what pornography does to our civilization and where pornography comes from. Do our children know where their money is going when they buy different services on the Internet because they want a quick couple of hours of access to all kinds of pornography? Do they know that it's helping to fund the industry that continually exploits young men and young women, as young as three years old?
We as a family need to talk to our children, to help them morally reason through their immediate impulse of doing whatever they want on the Internet. We need to help them think through the consequences of their actions. Our children need to realize that every time they click on the computer, go to that site, and buy some time, they are giving money to people all around the world to continue to exploit, abuse, and murder these young people who are starved for love and affection, and often for physical food. Their families sell these young people for a quick profit to put food on the table. Their families are actually the ones that seize them as something to be exploited. We need to be cognizant of what we are doing.
True Father often talks about how the greatest power in the universe is love. Our church emphasizes the importance of the blessing, and of having a loving relationship with your spouse and your family. We emphasize the importance of preparing to be a great spouse to the man or woman whom you are going to call your eternal partner.
Father and Mother are giving something to the world that is absolutely necessary. Every child that I saw being exploited in that documentary film was born as an eternal son or daughter of God. They are no different from you and me. They are no different from our children. They could be your child's playmate. They could be the ones you see on the playground. Because this industry that continually preys and feasts on young men and women exists, we as a society need to ask ourselves, "How do we tackle this monster? Do we try to put it in ball and chains?" If we put it in ball and chains, it will fight harder. It will fight more violently and viciously to break out of the chains."
The only way we're going to solve this societal problem is by addressing the root of the problem. The root of the problem is the dysfunctionality of the home, the degeneration of the home because within the home there is no concept of each individual as being a holy son or daughter of God, of each child, every one of them, being the handiwork of God.
If we are going to be a movement that's trying to usher in a world of peace, love, and harmony, we need to be a movement that exemplifies what we're saying. We need to give our children moral education that helps them to reason through morally the consequences of their actions. We need to help them realize that true love is much more important than simply the gratification of sexual desire apart from true love. In the context of a beautiful relationship between a husband and wife, sexual love can be the most beautiful, most fulfilling, most satisfying. But that's just it: in the right context.
Our young people are inundated every day by different advertising campaigns that tell them, "This is what a woman should look like. This is what you need to be looking at when you look at a man." The problem with pornography is that not only does it exploit men, women, and young children, but it also teaches the watcher, the audience, the viewer to look at human beings as body parts and not a temple of God. Pornography perniciously and falsely repudiates the truth that the human body is a divine temple where something as beautiful as sexual love can be communicated and shared in the context of a loving and beautiful relationship.
If we inundate ourselves with constant visual imagery of everybody having sex – in pornography everybody is having sex – it lowers our inhibitions. It makes us think that everybody is doing it and therefore I should do it. It makes us think and teaches us to look at another human being not as a human being, but as an object that is a means of gratifying our own sexual impulses.
When pornography consumption is left unfettered, then pretty soon a person can start thinking, "Okay, the Internet doesn't give me an adrenaline rush any more. Let me go toward the real thing. Oh, well, I want to travel abroad and basically take a tour." There are sex tours available that take people to these countries for the sole purpose of gratifying sexual desires and exploiting these children from different countries. Many times people learn to think, "Well, they don't look like me, so they're not really like me. They're not my race, so maybe that other race was made to please me, to gratify me, for me to exploit." There's a failure to realize that the person you're exploiting happens to be a child of God as well.
When we see what is taking place, we have to ask ourselves, "What's going to happen in the lives of these victims?" Victims come in all forms and sizes. It doesn't matter where you are. Things like this are taking place every day. What can the victims do? How are they going to rise up and get away from what they have suffered through, and not turn into a ball of hate that hates the world and the life that they're in, but somehow rise above it to look at another day as an opportunity for life?
When we really think about what we need to do in terms of helping these victims, we realize that the most important thing when we're dealing with our family, with adolescents, with kids who might have a severe problem with pornography, is that we as parents must communicate directly with our children about their problem. We need to take them aside and say, "You're a young healthy male or female, and we know you're curious about your sexuality. But you need to think about what you are doing. We need to talk through what you are doing every time you log onto the Internet and you buy their services. We need to ask ourselves hypothetically, what would you do if that happened to be your daughter 20 years from now? What would you do if the person that is turning you on on the Internet is your sister? Would you want your sister to be in that production? Would you want your sister or your family or your daughters to be exploited like that?"
We have to help our children through a hypothetical of how they might feel if what they are watching were to involve somebody who is wonderfully dear to us. "If that production company was exploiting my mother, my daughters, my sisters, how would I feel?"
We need to own up to the fact that if we want to change the world, we have to be the agent of change. In the context of a family in which we deal with the different issues that arise as we are trying to become the glowing family that we so desire, we have to ask our children and our young people to have a willingness to forgive themselves. That is the first step in being the agent of change when you're dealing with a monster like pornography on the Internet.
Healthy young men and women are going to be curious about sexuality, but there's a difference between being curious and being addicted to the problem. When we find ourselves being addicted to the problem, we have to have the courage to look our fears and insecurities in the face and say to ourselves, "I forgive you. I forgive me for having done those things. But now that I have gone through the moral reasoning as to why I do not want to do it, even if my impulse is extremely powerful, I now know that every time I log on, every time I buy the service, I am giving money to worldwide institutionalized human trafficking, and I am helping and supporting the exploitation of young men, young women, and children."
If we take a moment to think through what that tap on the computer is going to do, by affecting hundreds and thousands of people's lives all around the world, then any decent, conscientious person is going to think twice about it. And any decent, conscientious person is going to want to work through the addiction and difficulties so that he or she can become a whole and healthy person preparing to have a healthy sexual relationship with a very important and precious person who will be his or her spouse. With that spouse, he or she is going to build a beautiful family that is free of incest and abuse, and filled with love in a nurturing, supportive environment that can usher in and raise children who are worthy of bringing in this new millennium.
So brothers and sisters, we need to help our young people and our husbands, our brothers, and our fathers think through what is taking place in their lives if they choose to touch that button, if they choose to throw money that way. We need to make them face the reality, "Do you really want to support an industry that teaches a 4-, 5-, 6-, 7-, 8-year-old child, 'I boom-boom well' and 'I yum-yum well'?"
Any decent person, anybody with a conscience, no matter how powerful your sexual desire at that time might be, cannot say, "I don't care about those young girls, I don't care about those young boys." Anybody who has a conscience, who knows him- or her-self as an eternal son or daughter of God, cannot say, "I don't care."
So, there has to be a willingness, first and foremost, to look my problem in the face and forgive myself. I need to forgive before I can make the next step.
And for the next step, we have to tell ourselves, "Living for the sake of others is really an opportunity to practice mind over body." We have to practice mind over body, and one of the most difficult things is dealing with sexual desire. How do I practice mind over body? Instead of looking at that woman as body parts, I look at that woman as a beautiful daughter of God, as somebody's sister, as somebody's future mother, as somebody who deserves to be honored for her dignity as a divine child of God.
How do we practice that in our daily lives? We practice that by applying and practicing and exercising mind over body. That's why Lovin' Life Ministries has introduced ballroom dancing, and for the first time in our church encourages male and female contact. Basically what we are trying to do is to help young people look at each other not as body parts, not as something to be taken, abused, manipulated, and used for personal exploitation, but as beautiful children of God, beautiful sisters and brothers with whom a wonderful time can be had so long as there is a mutual honoring of each other as a beautiful handiwork of God.
Yes, when you put a whole group of attractive young men and women together, there are going to be crushes. They are going to be checking each other out; they are going to be looking. But if we can encourage healthy social interaction with the opposite sex, stressing at the same time the need to look at each other not as something to exploit but something to honor, something to respect, something to celebrate, then we can teach our young people not to look at each other as body parts, but to appreciate a sister and a brother as a partner for a wonderful time together on the dance floor. Young men can learn how to talk to a woman, and young women can learn how to talk to a man, so socially and emotionally they can be prepared for a healthy relationship when they go towards the blessing.
I've known a lot of blessed couples and blessed children who have no ability to communicate once they are married because they've never had any social interaction with the opposite sex. Many of them before the blessing have gone through periods when they were severely addicted to pornography. They were feeling overwhelmingly guilty and unable to forgive themselves, so they didn't know how to rid themselves of their problem. When such people are blessed, their problem follows them into the marriage, into the new relationship, into a blessed relationship.
So healthy interactions and learning how to look at the power of sexuality in a healthy, holistic way are necessary to prepare our children to have great experience and loving relationships in the context of a marriage. Let's all move in that direction by encouraging our youth and our fathers, mothers, sisters, and brothers, first and foremost to be agents of change. "Be your own change that you want to see in the world," says Gandhi.
Tell yourself, "I am going to practice mind over body. I am going to practice love. I am going to apply true love in my life by learning to be a person who is not like a radioactive substance let loose out in the wilderness. I am going to be that contained, properly channeled, powerful source of energy and love that I want to share with the world. And I want to start loving. I want to start practicing true love in my life by deciding first and foremost to forgive myself."
Another thing we all need to think about in raising families and combating this problem that we're all dealing with on different levels and in different segments of our lives is the importance of realizing that once we forgive and once we decide to practice true love, there has to be a level of commitment, mind over body. Not only are we going to practice love, but we're going to practice commitment to this decision that we made every day.
What else are we going to do other than forgive and love? We're going to learn how to unite – in the sense that we are going to learn how to work together with the opposite sex in a healthy way. We're going to learn how to work as fathers and mothers, as brothers and sisters, as different members of the family, respecting each others' divinity, respecting each other as a temple of God. Instead of thinking, "How can I exploit this relationship? How can I manipulate the situation," we're going to think of ways we can work together to deal with problems, including addiction to pornography.
We're going to start telling ourselves, "I am going to start changing my life. I am going to forgive myself first and foremost. I am going to release myself from the bondage of guilt that I have placed myself under. Then I am going to take myself out of the closet, look my guilt and insecurity in the face, and say, 'You know what? Starting from today I'm going to love. I am going to love those girls who have no future. I am going to love those girls who have no voice. I am going to love them as my divine sister, as my divine daughter, as my divine mother – and I'm going to do that by honoring them as the beautiful feminine that they are. I am going to decide not to further exploit them by basically utilizing them to satisfy my immediate sexual impulses – whether in that day or that hour or that minute.
"Then I'm going to tell myself, 'Not only am I going to love them, I'm going to unite my family around me. I'm going to unite my society around me. I'm going to unite my world around me, and I'm going to stress the importance of moral education and moral reasoning, the ability to think through what we are confronted with, the ability to act not just impulsively but after asking ourselves the question, if we act, what will it result in?"
And if we clearly know that exploitation of this kind results in 4-, 5-, 6-, and 7-year-old girls learning what "boom-boom" and "yum-yum" means, then we have to work together as a society to raise healthy young men and women who have the ability to practice mind over body, and the power and depth to deal with their impulses by pushing that energy through a constructive channel in the context of a beautiful loving relationship. That is the only way we are going to change the world. That is the only way we are going to liberate these women and men.
Brothers and sisters, the human trafficking problems in the Philippines, Thailand, the Southeast Asian countries, and Africa are not worlds apart, because we all belong to one family. When one is exploited, we are all exploited. When one is abused, we all are abused. When one is manipulated, we all are manipulated, because that suffering person is not just an island unto him-or herself. That person has friends, colleagues, and families who are affected by that person's life.
The documentary was especially heart-wrenching in the scene where my friend zoomed in on one girl who is 12 years old, who'd been set to work ever since she was five. He filmed her in the squalor of this extremely tiny room with painfully dirty, dingy, sheets looking like they had not been washed for centuries. But he zoomed in on this girl because she had her walls filled with all the great singers of the world – Brittany Spears, Michael Jackson, Bruce Springsteen, and others. When you see the walls, you realize she's no different from any other 12-year-old girl who is excited about her favorite artist, her favorite singer.
This girl in this dingy, squalid room was living a reality that was fantasy for her. It was something she conjured up. It's like the movie Matrix, in which we don't know what is true and what is not true; we don't know what is reality and what is not reality. When we are hooked up to a pod, we think that's the real existence, but then everything that we see or experience in the movie Matrix is a manufactured or created reality that we experience as real. In one sense what the girl is doing was exactly like that.
The life in a brothel, the life of a young child prostitute is like being hooked up to a pod through which you're not really living. You're basically sleeping your life away. She's like the walking dead. That world is so foreign to her, so she has manufactured this alternative reality, where she lives in a fantasy world, where she's being entertained by these different artists. You realize more and more that not just this girl in a brothel somewhere in Southeast Asia but a lot of our youngsters are living that Matrix-like existence, in the sense that the real world is too painful, too difficult. It's much easier to lie apart and sleep life away while you live a fantasy life that you manufacture for yourself.
Sooner or later each of has to deal with the question, when does fantasy override reality? When does reality cease to exist? When do I cease to exist? Because without my fantasy I am in essence dead, I am in essence not living. We realize that the pod can represent many different things for a lot of people. It can represent a life that we no longer are facing because it's just too difficult. Some of the issues that arise in the family are too difficult. It's much easier to sleep in our pod, to sleep through our reality because we've created this alter-fantasy-like reality where we don't really tackle the problems that are in our family. We don't tackle the problems that exist amongst our kids because we've created a world where we don't have to.
But the whole point of developing and building ideal families is that we have to unhook ourselves from the past and start living the reality that we want to substantiate. That pod can be an addiction of sorts, to denial. That pod can represent total denial of what's taking place in our families. It can represent maybe a career that we are so engrossed in but we're not really living. We are functioning, but we're not really living.
But what God invests for and hopes for in all of us is for us to fulfill the destiny or blueprint that he had for every one of us. We were not meant to just sleep through our lives, hooked up to some kind of pod. We were not meant to just create fantasies out of our realities. We were meant to create a reality, a real life, real life that is tangible, with the good and the bad, with the joys along with the tribulations. We were meant to create a reality that helps us rub up against each other and helps us grow as deep, strong, compassionate, and profound sons and daughters of God.
The Bible says in Isaiah 40:31, "For those of you who have hope will have renewed strength. You will soar like the eagle, you will run without growing weary, and you will walk without growing faint."
The Bible means by this that there is a way out of our obsessive and addictive behaviors. The change starts in finding hope in the Lord, by developing a relationship with the divine, by reclaiming our relationship with our heavenly Father, and then we will soar on the wings of eagles. We will have the courage to soar. And the interesting thing about eagles is that eagles do not fly in flocks. They have the courage to fly alone, to face their fears and fly alone.
Regardless of what we struggle through in life, there are moments when we do things together as a group, or as a family. But sometimes when we're dealing with our own demons, really working on our own mind and body unity, we need to learn how to fly, how to soar alone, majestically like an eagle. We need to run toward the destinies that are waiting for us and not grow weary. And we need to learn how to walk without growing faint.
I often like to say, "Whenever I decide to take a walk because I would like some fresh air, the initial feeling of walking away from home is wonderfully liberating, but after a fantastic walk there is nothing like the feeling you get when you're on your way home, when you've decided, I'm going to come home." At another level, there is nothing like the feeling you get when you've decided, I'm going to forgive myself; I'm going to reclaim my relationship with my God, my Heavenly Parent, and I am going to run back home to my Heavenly Father, or I am going to walk my way back home to my Heavenly Father. I am going to have the courage to work on myself, to fly solo, to work on my individual responsibility for mind over body. We all can know these feelings because ultimately it doesn't matter where we are in life or where we go, we always want to come back home.
Sun
Myung Moon, Hak Ja Han, and Hyung Jin Moon, May 21, 2011
Brothers and sisters, we need to realize that we are living in an incredible time with our True Parents, the incredible time of the breaking news. But we also need to realize that this is not just the time when we are to share the breaking news, it's also the time when we need to start looking at the different things we're dealing with and give each other the tools to work through these problems. We need to encourage our youth to forgive, love and unite, and help them overcome their difficulties or their addiction or their obsession by helping them to walk the road of moral reasoning to realize that their actions may be ones that support, feed, and give money to an industry that preys on the future of our world. Children are our future. They need to be a generation of peace, not a generation of exploited young men and women.
This is the reason why True Parents are so extremely important at this time. They're not here to bandage the effects of the problems society is dealing with; they are here to address the roots of the problem. They're here to clean up from the beginning, from the root of all the societal ills that result from dysfunctional families. So the work that we all do in dealing with our families is strongly contributing to building this ideal world because if we can be responsible for each family, one family at a time, as a cornerstone or building block of our society, then the world that we so long for is within our hands.
Brothers and sisters, talk to your family. Encourage your family. Encourage everyone to forgive, love and unite, and know that we are living in a blessed time. This is a time when we can heal, when we can actually heal the wounds that are separating our children, that are separating us from our parents and from our relatives. A whole lot of healing needs to take place if we want to usher the world toward that beautiful world of peace, love, and harmony.
There's a wonderful quote that the famous Persian poet, Rumi, said to his beloved. He said, "There's a moon in all of us. Learn how to live with it as your companion." There is a moon in all of us in that our father and mother, the Rev. Sun Myung Moon and Dr. Hak Ja Han Moon, have taught us well, and their teachings live in all of our lives. All we have to do is to appreciate those teachings, become a great companion to them, grow together, start building something wonderful, and change our world in the process by changing ourselves.
So brothers and sisters, have a wonderful Sunday, and let's all go home to our Heavenly Parent. Thank you.
1: Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.
2: Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
and cry to her
that her
warfare is ended,
that her iniquity is pardoned,
that she has
received from the LORD's hand
double for all her sins.
3: A voice cries:
"In the wilderness prepare the way of
the LORD,
make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
4: Every valley shall be lifted up,
and every mountain and hill
be made low;
the uneven ground shall become level,
and the
rough places a plain.
5: And the glory of the LORD shall be revealed,
and all flesh
shall see it together,
for the mouth of the LORD has spoken."
6: A voice says, "Cry!"
And I said, "What shall
I cry?"
All flesh is grass,
and all its beauty is like the
flower of the field.
7: The grass withers, the flower fades,
when the breath of the
LORD blows upon it;
surely the people is grass.
8: The grass withers, the flower fades;
but the word of our God
will stand for ever.
9: Get you up to a high mountain,
O Zion, herald of good
tidings;
lift up your voice with strength,
O Jerusalem, herald
of good tidings,
lift it up, fear not;
say to the cities of
Judah,
"Behold your God!"
10: Behold, the Lord GOD comes with might,
and his arm rules
for him;
behold, his reward is with him,
and his recompense
before him.
11: He will feed his flock like a shepherd,
he will gather the
lambs in his arms,
he will carry them in his bosom,
and gently
lead those that are with young.
12: Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand
and
marked off the heavens with a span,
enclosed the dust of the earth
in a measure
and weighed the mountains in scales
and the hills
in a balance?
13: Who has directed the Spirit of the LORD,
or as his
counselor has instructed him?
14: Whom did he consult for his enlightenment,
and who taught
him the path of justice,
and taught him knowledge,
and showed
him the way of understanding?
15: Behold, the nations are like a drop from a bucket,
and are
accounted as the dust on the scales;
behold, he takes up the isles
like fine dust.
16: Lebanon would not suffice for fuel,
nor are its beasts
enough for a burnt offering.
17: All the nations are as nothing before him,
they are
accounted by him as less than nothing and emptiness.
18: To whom then will you liken God,
or what likeness compare
with him?
19: The idol! a workman casts it,
and a goldsmith overlays it
with gold,
and casts for it silver chains.
20: He who is impoverished chooses for an offering
wood that
will not rot;
he seeks out a skilful craftsman
to set up an
image that will not move.
21: Have you not known? Have you not heard?
Has it not been
told you from the beginning?
Have you not understood from the
foundations of the earth?
22: It is he who sits above the circle of the earth,
and its
inhabitants are like grasshoppers;
who stretches out the heavens
like a curtain,
and spreads them like a tent to dwell in;
23: who brings princes to nought,
and makes the rulers of the
earth as nothing.
24: Scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown,
scarcely has
their stem taken root in the earth,
when he blows upon them, and
they wither,
and the tempest carries them off like stubble.
25: To whom then will you compare me,
that I should be like
him? says the Holy One.
26: Lift up your eyes on high and see:
who created these?
He
who brings out their host by number,
calling them all by name;
by
the greatness of his might,
and because he is strong in power
not
one is missing.
27: Why do you say, O Jacob,
and speak, O Israel,
"My
way is hid from the LORD,
and my right is disregarded by my God"?
28: Have you not known? Have you not heard?
The LORD is the
everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He does
not faint or grow weary,
his understanding is unsearchable.
29: He gives power to the faint,
and to him who has no might he
increases strength.
30: Even youths shall faint and be weary,
and young men shall
fall exhausted;
31: but they who wait for the LORD shall renew their
strength,
they shall mount up with wings like eagles,
they
shall run and not be weary,
they shall walk and not faint.