It's December and signs of Christmas are everywhere. I had planned to buy my son a baseball bat, ball and glove. You see, we have moved from Texas to Ohio, close to the home where I grew up, the home of the first baseball team in America--the Cincinnati Reds. I wanted so much to take him to see my old team play, but the season was cut short before we could obtain tickets. Due to grandiose schemes and sheer simple greed, the owners and players of the game left diamonds to our imagination.

That is how this article came to be. I have spent the last few months working on sermon material dealing with the 4-position foundation and the 3 Blessings. The 4-position foundation is, after all, diamond shaped, and will someday be known as the greatest diamond discovery ever made.

Until the Divine Principle explanation of the 4-position foundation, we had only a vague idea of what those obscure verses in Genesis referring to the "blessings" meant. However, once we saw the diamond shaped diagram of the 4-position foundation on the blackboard (more recently on the slide projection or video screen), we began to have a much more clear and dynamic understanding of the phrase "3 Blessings." Father will someday be accredited his due as a genius for so clearly articulating God's original ideal fulfilled in the 3 Blessings through the 4-position foundation. Likewise for his uncovering the motivation and process of the fall of humankind and thus, revealing the way of re-creation or restoration.

The 4-position foundation has 3 levels. Let's think about that diamond shaped diagram for a moment. The first level is the top point (origin) which is where God exists in perfect subject-object harmony. The second level consists of two complementary opposite points (division) which is the horizontal subject and object relationship. The third level is the bottom point (union) where God is reflected in a new creation.

The 4-position foundation is one of the best descriptions of eternity I've ever come across. When you get to the bottom point, you've arrived at the same place as the top point. For example, in the first blessing of individual completion, the bottom point represents an individual whose mind and body is united in complete subject-object harmony. Such a person is the perfect reflection of the top point. When God looks down at that person, God sees either the subject masculine nature or object feminine nature without any flaw or blemish.

In the second blessing, the bottom point represents the children's position. The whole purpose of being together in love between a man and a woman is for the sake of that bottom point. If it isn't, we have to stop and consider what our coming together is about. We have to consider what kind of love is drawing us together and for what purpose we want to express that love. It's a serious issue between a man and a woman.

We want a child that reflects the highest point of love. Does that happen automatically? Do we just physically come together, conceive a child and then that child reflects the highest love of God in heaven? When the child is born, does it automatically understand God's love? Without the parents, how can the child understand it's origin? When babies are first born they don't understand anything. Sometimes their eyes are out of focus for a few days. They just turn their head towards the direction of their mother's or father's voice.

In the last few years, Mother declared "True Parents and the Completed Testament Age" around the world to hundreds of thousands of people. Not that everyone is at ease with this new concept, but it has taken hold in many thoughtful and academic people throughout the world. Support for the idea, for the need of this world to have model parents, is growing. We are beginning to understand that without both a model father and mother, we cannot grasp a complete relationship with God. Without God, we cannot solve the problems of this world.

In Father's own eloquent words: "Let us imagine the first human couple, Adam and Eve. They were created as the true children of God; God was their Father [Parent]. But due to the human fall, the love between them was cut off. Adam and Eve would have shed tears of joy when they fulfilled God's will. But instead they shed tears of sorrow in leaving God. It was a most miserable situation. Adam and Eve left God with no hope of return. Without this hope, how much greater their sorrow was. Imagine what fear they would have felt."

In the same speech, (The Formula for God's Providence, 1973), he prefaced this tragic reality with what the ideal should have been: "The individual receives love as a child, vertically, from God. Husband and wife have give and take of love horizontally. When they give birth to their children, their vertical love goes to them. In the love of their children a couple experience God's love for His children. With ourselves as the center, we receive God's love from above, vertically. Man and wife love each other, and they play the role of father and mother, giving love to their children. If that tie is unchanging and strong, God is right there in the family, and He will be always there. He will dwell with that family forever. If this kind of life had been realized in the beginning of history, there would have been no need of faith or prayer to believe in things that we cannot see or feel or touch. Our human ancestors were deprived of the pattern of how their families should have been."

We are at that time in history when it is once again possible to fulfill the 4-position foundation of each blessing. We can vertically receive God's love through the example of True Parents. We can horizontally love each other as husband and wife. We can vertically give love to our children and also to the creation. We can now experience God's love in every aspect of our lives. It's so exciting and stimulating!

We are witnesses to the dawning of a new day. The light is just visible over the horizon. And yet. We are often still standing in the shadows of the night before. We can see that the Tribal Messiah way of life is the responsibility to fulfill the 3 Blessings. At the same time, we also realize that without some success in the Unification restoration course, we cannot easily step into the Tribal Messiah way of life.

The Unification restoration course is sometimes demanding, even painful. However, for those who take it seriously, the promise of life as a true son and daughter will come true. I once asked my husband, "What does it mean for you to be a man? " He replied, "To love God, to love you, to love my children and this world." When further asked, "What does it mean to be a true man?" he answered, "To be willing to sacrifice everything I am and everything I have to fulfill God's providence."

He paused and added quietly, "You know, to be a man, to be a woman is one thing. To be a true man, a true woman is yet another." I nodded my head in agreement and we sat together in thoughtful silence. We can see in the True Children that it is not easy to reach from one level to the next. Their desire is even stronger to obtain that goal because they are living derivatives of the true parental example itself. As they strive before us to become true men and women, they are amazingly honest in revealing to us the kind of dedication it takes to reflect God's heart in the human frame.

The Unification community can be thought of as a practice environment. It's a re-creation or restoration "garden." Father stands in the garden as the "tree of life." Fortunately, this time Mother also stands in the garden as the "tree of knowledge of goodness." We enter into the garden, so to speak, and take a restorational position, either as representatives of the fallen archangel or fallen Eve. The pattern of restoration in this case is symbolized by and should culminate in the Holy Wine Ceremony.

After the Holy Wine Ceremony, we should be able to stand in front of True Parents as true sons and daughters. However, this isn't the case. We know this isn't the case because we still relate to each other as fallen children. (Remember Cain and Abel?). We have to become successful in the realm of fallen children before we can overcome the difficulties between the archangel and Eve. Only then can we recreate our marriage as a true love relationship between original Adam and original Eve.

That is why the Unification restoration course is demanding and painful at times. It confronts us. When we are honest about it, it's clear who we represent and where we stand in the garden. At the same time, our Unification restoration course is also God's grace for us. It is our practice course before we step out to actually fulfill our responsibility as Tribal Messiahs. The title "messiah," no matter what level is an awesome one to contemplate. One cannot as easily make mistakes in this realm of responsibility.

It took several years for us to emerge into the role of Tribal Messiah. Actually, God set us up for a 6 year testing course from start to finish in the deep south of the United States. God knew we had a great deal of restoration work left to do! Because we understand this point, wherever we go as Tribal Messiahs, we keep one foot in our practice garden environment and work as much as possible in unity with fellow church members and leaders.

Down in the deep south, our relationship came to a serious turning point with repentance, then gratitude tears. We often return to that point when we face difficult circumstances. God is always there to grace our relationship. It seems simple, but a great deal of pretense and junk has to be stripped down and taken off before one comes to that point. It's the bottom line point where one lets God become the vertical subject over one's heart. When that happens, all other blessings can come about.

Professional baseball pales by comparison to all of this. There's a better game in town folks. When you hit a home run in the 4-position foundation diamond, it reverberates through 3 great blessings and back. It goes all the way to eternity. Hey, batter, batter, swing!

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