The Words of the Hendricks Family
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The Words of the Hendricks Family |
The smell of salt spray, the sound of water lapping against boats and moorings, the sight of sails and masts, tugs and trawlers. Pleasant restaurants, rocky coves, delightful air, the romance of the sea... aahhh, tourism. For the seaman, however, the fisherman, the lobsterman, the deckhand... the sea is a grinding confrontation with nature and nature's god, the theater of a struggle for survival. A few days of bilge water, rusting equipment, rocky waters and rotting fish rubs the romance off any restaurant-window imagination. It is a tough life, and those who pursue it are not renowned for tactful courtesy, diplomacy and polite conversation over tea and cookies.
Gloucester, Massachusetts, has been the home of fishermen since 1623. The residents of Gloucester were among the first to declare independence from the Puritan holy commonwealth of Boston. They came here to fish, they said, not to build God's city. No one has convinced them to build God's city since then. Fishing, out on the waters all day every day... it brings one into a harsh gut of reality from which religious pretentions are seen for just what they are. Perhaps fishermen meet God in a place beyond the pale play, of ministers' visions. Fishermen possess God and embrace God intimately every day; the ocean forces them into His arms.
But unfortunately their God has never taken them beyond their world. He is the God immanent in storm and calm, in prevailing winds and a good day's catch. When they seek to transcend that salty religion, it is usually through either strong drink or alternate employment. Fishermen have a toughness which is good, but, as is true of every good of this world, their toughness can be an obstacle when it becomes resistance to an historical providential change. The ways of tradition can be set too deeply. The fisherman learns from the sea itself: change is constant, but it is only on the surface. Fair weather breeds foul, and foul fair, and life goes on.
Enter Reverend Moon. Raised in a village six miles from the Yellow Sea. When he came to America he spent his time on evangelical tours and fishing. The tours have stopped; the fishing goes on. Could it be that Father likes fishermen? That he likes their life? That he loves their world? He is out there Sunday morning, fishing with the rest of them. Does he want to bring them into the Kingdom, not with theology or love but with $3.00 a pound for Atlantic Bluefin Tuna? Such seems to be the case. And they're coming to our docks to sell their tuna.
And with their tuna, with their boats and with their 4:00 a.m. coffee-clouded mornings that get them to the tuna ground... come their hearts?
We have been out on the tuna grounds in force for four or five years now. The tuna grounds... a small city of boats, a microcosmic social world of desires that conflict, and compassion, which unites. Each boat is here to mine the gold flashing 100 feet under at thirty miles per hour. Two hundred, three hundred boats crammed into an area the size of our Belvedere Estate, cheek to cheek, line to line, hook to hook, and when you hook up, that tuna might run you anywhere and you've got nothing to do but chase after it, no matter who or what is in your way. Tempers flare. Lines are cut. Apologies come later.
In the middle of the grounds is Father on the New Hope, surveying it all, and interspersed within his sight lie 30 Good-Gos manned by Moonies. Why does he bring us here -- seminary grads, European members, Japanese leaders, Korean professors... even his own children? And what about me... a freshly graduated Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University, on the way to prominence in the world of restored intellectualizing, director of the Sun Myung Moon Institute, slated to join the faculty at Barry- town... Why am I here? Could it be that Father wants us to taste, chew, swallow and digest this desperate, dogged fishing world?
He has said, if you can win victory on the ocean, you can win victory everywhere. If you can lead people on the ocean, you can lead people anywhere. If you fulfill even 50 to 75 percent of Father's fishing tradition in your mission on land, you will win a victory. Therefore Father brings us here. Dispel your illusions. Take responsibility as an individual and as part of a crew. Conserve your energies; focus them on the objective of fishing for tuna. Love the fishermen.
They aren't college kids with backpacks, but underneath the surface pocked with gruff curses you can find the Principle. "The fisherman lives the Principle," says Allan Hokanson, captain of the New Hope, "He has to live it or he won't survive. But it takes the fishermen 30 years to come to that understanding, and even then he can never formalize it and easily pass it on."
Unity on the boat -- Cain/Abel relationships. Unity with nature -- reading her signals. Unity with self -- pushing the body another four hours, six hours, twenty hours, because the fish are running now and they won't be tomorrow.
Who can speak to the fisherman, in language he will listen to? Father can, and he wants us to be able to as well. There's only one way: be there with them, live their life and resurrect it through Father. Resurrect it through your own faith and sweat. Overcome the us/them division; become one with the Godly, Principled essence of the fishing life; reject the sin and corruption of it, and connect it with God. If one can speak to a fisherman, one can speak to anyone.
Your life may be a highway, or a sea lane, for others to traverse to Canaan. "When the sailor who has completed his voyage in search of external truth under the sail of science comes into contact with the sea-route to internal truth, under the sail of religion, he will be able to end his voyage in the ideal world, which is the goal of the original mind's desire" (Divine Principle, p. 5). Is the "sea-route" metaphor accidental? Or the image of Jesus leading the whole of mankind "across the troubled sea of this world" (Divine Principle, p. 290)? Or the "waters" of the Book of Revelation 17:15 being interpreted as "fallen man"? (Divine Principle, p. 514) What will be the impact, hundreds of years hence, of the fact that our Father spent so much time on the oceans?
This world was created by God two- thirds ocean. We find God in mountains, flowers and sunsets, but we must find two-thirds of Him in the ocean. Yet to most of us the ocean means beaches and surf. How few know the moods of the ocean! The elements of water, wind and sun comprise an infinite canvas, a world far more variegated than the dry land; a world that imposes itself upon our senses with a subjectivity greater than that encountered within the dry protected world of human artifice. Playfulness, powerful anger, calm repose, a million indescribable moods and shadings impress the ocean-goer's existence. The ocean will exhaust you; it will restore you.
The ocean acts without respect to persons. One unexpected wave and you are drenched in salt-water, head to toe.' One unexpected wave and an oil tanker may be snapped in two pieces. The human and the human manufacture are vulnerable. Fish swim languidly below. They are there by God's Principle, without effort. We are there by our own effort. Nowhere is the human "five percent" more tested than on the ocean. Who can win victory on the ocean? Father surely wants to find the person who can....
We are 30 days into Ocean Challenge, with 40 more to go. Strains appear. Broken down boats, broken down relationships. Struggles in adjusting for the long haul. The seas are becoming rougher, the weather cooler, the daylight hours shorter. Father is with us; and he has pioneered this course so many times. We will persevere, overcome, last until the end, and win victory each one. I asked one member if Ocean Challenge is difficult. She said, "It's a challenge." Another I asked had caught a tuna two days in a row this week. "Yes," she said, "it's difficult... but it's fun. It's joyful pain. Everything's hard, but it's so much fun. If it were easy we probably wouldn't enjoy it as much."
There are 35 boats, most of them Good-Gos made by Master Marine, here in Ocean Challenge. Seventy members run them -- half from Ocean Church half from CARP, MFT, state centers and UTS. We are pleased to host guests from a number of church departments, including the Korean Evangelical Association, the IOWC, the New York Tribune, Performing Arts department, the World Mission Center, various state centers, and the churches in Korea and Japan.
We want to serve our church, as well as the nation and world. That same something that our Father finds on the ocean -- we want to open the way for all members to find, too. What is found will probably be a little different for each of us. The ocean touches every shore; one ocean unites the world. It is the same ocean everywhere; it doesn't change in all the world, in all history. Father wants to take us there.