A New Vision of Peace for Canada

Hyun Jin Moon
October 4, 2008
GPF Founder
Ottawa, Canada

Excerpts of keynote address at the Global Peace Festival

Esteemed dignitaries, family, friends, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Global Peace Festival in beautiful Ottawa, Canada. It is a great honor and pleasure to be with you today.

Today I want to share a vision of peace. To begin with, we must admit that we will have to be bold and break new ground in our search for peace and prosperity, if we are to really go beyond the failures of our past.

We only need to look back to the last century to recognize the futility of tackling the world’s problems through the same old military, economic, political, diplomatic and scientific solutions. Dealing with only the symptoms of global crisis and conflict and ignoring the root cause will not work. That is why even the grand vision behind the League of Nations and, later, the United Nations was unable to prevent the 20th century from being the bloodiest era in human history.

The world needs a new vision of peace for the 21st Century. Unlike the secular thinking of our recent past, it should be a spiritual vision, rooted in time-enduring values. That vision is “One Family under God!”

The one who has taken on the mantle to champion this vision around the world is none other than my father, the Reverend Dr. Sun Myung Moon. He has devoted his entire life, resources and wealth to the fulfillment of that dream.

The dream to build “One Family under God” is not the dream of just one man, woman or family but belongs to all humanity and, most of all, to God. As my father explained in one of his recent peace messages, "God, the Creator of all things under the sun, is the true parent of all humanity. He is not a parent in the parochial sense, existing only for a certain religion, a certain race, or the residents of a certain region."

You may call Him by any name, be it Jehovah, Allah, Heaven, or any other. What is important is that He certainly exists, lives as the true parent of all people, and is carrying on the great work of Creation.

Why is the family is the fundamental building block for peace? First and foremost, the family is universal. Regardless of race, ethnicity, nationality and religious affiliations, we are all members of families. Secondly, the family represents the most intimate of human relationships. We use familial terms to describe the closeness of any relationship, saying “that person is like my father, like my mother, like my brother, like my sister, like my son and like my daughter.” Most importantly, the family is the school of love. I believe that the three-generational model of grandparents, parents and children is the paragon of family virtue.

Those generations represent the past, present and future living in harmony in one family, thus encapsulating the continuum of time and setting the basis of establishing everlasting peace centered upon true love.

Before we call ourselves Buddhist, Christian, or Muslim, before we see ourselves as black, white, or Asian, before we identify ourselves as Canadians, Americans, Russian, or Chinese, we are first and foremost the eternal sons and daughters of God and members of his eternal family. Therefore, we should own the dream to realize “One Family under God” one family at a time, by uplifting all families beyond race, nationality or creed.

Undecided territorial, ethnic and national divisions and broken economic and social ties all provoke instability, uncertainty and violence. If Canada could own the vision of “One Family under God,” it could inspire many nations to look beyond their narrow interests and recognize their common heritage and, thereby, their common future. Will you take on this challenge?

Creating a culture of service is necessary for peace to exist, and the Global Peace Festival has created a new spirit of volunteerism in many countries around the world.

At the Global Peace Festival in Paraguay, more than 10,000 high school and college students spent several weeks cleaning almost every park in the capital city of Asunción. At the Global Peace Festival in Washington, DC, we worked with President George H. Bush’s Points of Light Institute and held a food drive to feed the hungry in the nation’s capital. In Kenya more than 25,000 volunteers helped clean the polluted banks of the Nairobi River. In Mongolia, volunteers from Service for Peace and a dozen other agencies worked to make the city of Ulaanbaatar a place of beauty and harmony for all its residents.

To all those who participated in these acts of service and kindness, I want to say a heartfelt “thank you!” I’d like to see Canada’s volunteers and service partners joining with other nations, such as the United States, Russia, China, Europe, and Asia to establish a Global Peace Corps. Imagine if young people from enemy nations worked side by side in service with the heart of “living for the sake of others.” Any misunderstandings and hatred that existed would fade away as they sweat, cry and laugh together with a common vision to build “One Family under God.”

Another goal of the Global Peace Festival is to celebrate the common universal values shared by all faiths. Religious and spiritual leaders must lead the peace process. Instead of advocating their own narrow doctrinal perspective, they must lead all people of faith to recognize the shared values and principles that come from our common heritage in one God.

I would like to suggest that all nations second the motion that my father made in the United Nations to establish an Inter-religious Council of faith leaders, similar to the UN Security Council. This new UN council could be the forum for all faiths to find common ground and lead the peace process.

Today, I invite you to aspire to an even greater dream. That dream is “One Family under God.” It should be the clarion call for our age. The power of one human family united can quell the turmoil of conflict throughout the world -- from the conflict in the Middle East, to the final remnant of the Cold War on the Korean Peninsula, to the poverty and disease of Africa and to the civil, ethnic and national strife of Eurasia.

As we stand under the steadfast gaze of our ancestors, let us make a solemn pledge to lead the world to peace by realizing the dream to create “One Family under God.” Then, as surely as light overcomes the darkness, an era of peace and prosperity will emerge from the depths of distrust and hatred both at home and in the far corners of our world.

Together, we can dare to dream the greatest dream of all! Let us own the dream to create “One Family under God.” May God bless you and your families, this great nation, and all the nations represented here. Thank you very much!