The Words of the Colvin Family |
True Love and True Family
Alex Colvin
To begin I would like to ask one question as a brief test of your common sense. What is the one thing that the more you give away, the more you have? Love! That's right. Gee you folks are pretty smart.
Love is the source of infinite joy
The special thing about love is that, when you have someone to receive your love and you give love, then instead of feeling less love you feel more. If you give 100 percent of your love with all of your heart and soul, then you find that you receive back 120%. if you try to empty yourself out of that 120% you find you have 1000%. The more love we give the more we receive until we become intoxicated in the joy of love. Love is the greatest investment. When you make an investment you want to be sure that you'll get a good return. We'll there's no end to the interest you'll earn when you invest in the bonds of love.
Love multiplies. When we receive love, then we want to give love. The more we give the more we receive. This is true in relations between friends, in marriage, and between parents and children.
Friendship
When I was fifteen, I went to a private school in New Jersey. There was a student there who taught me a lesson that I remembered all my life. He was an exceedingly happy young man and very generous, with his time, his energy and his limited allowance. When he had a little money, he would spend more on others than he did himself. He would share with every one. Also, he was nice to everybody most of the time and was always willing to help and liked to talk with people. I remember when I first met him, he told me that he just liked people. And I saw that as a result people liked him. And people liked to do things for him. He wasn't president of the class or anything, but he was a joyful youth and everyone liked having him around. I'm sure that he's a very successful person today. I don't remember most of the things that I learned in school but I remember the lesson that I learned from him.
Years later, I was living in Missoula Montana and a friend of mine, Valerie Jacobsen, introduced me to her grandfather. He was a happy old man. He had founded and run a hotel but was now retired. In the course of the evening he said, "I attribute all of my success to my friends. All my life I tried to help people. Through my life, I found that when ever I had a difficult time there were always people there to help me. I wasn't always prosperous, but I always got by and I am happy." And indeed, he had more than just friends. He had a wonderful family too. There I was meeting him and receiving his wisdom because his remarkable loving granddaughter who adored him had wanted me to meet this person who was a treasure in her life.
Love gives meaning to life
Indeed, living a life based upon the philosophy of love is a very practical path to happiness. Moreover, love gives meaning to life. Victor Frankl was the founder of logotherapy, in which he helped people to overcome personal challenges by discovering meaning in their life. In his book Man's Search for Meaning he shared some of the insights that he gained through his experiences in a Nazi death camp during World War II. Dr. Frankl was sentenced to the camp because he was a Jewish. He described the deprivation and degradation of life in the camp. People were reduced skin and bones, lived in squalid conditions, faced an endless routine of heavy labor and suffered the torment of abuse from sadistic guards and sometimes from favored prisoners. Under these conditions, the physical was not enough to keep one alive. People needed a strong will to survive. According to Frankl, many just gave up. The saw no reason to go on. In order to survive, some greater meaning was needed. And this meaning of necessity needed to be something which transcended the misery of their physical surroundings.
Frankl shared that in his own case, one of the things that enabled him to survive was his love for his wife. This was more than just a feeling or emotion. He dreamed of his wife, he felt her presence, and he communicated with her in spirit. When he felt these experiences he felt an overwhelming love in the midst of the hell that he was living in. In fact, in the midst of the suffering he found joy through this transcendent relationship with his wife. The love between Dr. Frankl and his wife was stronger than death and helped him to survive the concentration camp and indeed inspired him in his life's work.
Think for a moment of the popular music that we listen to every day. Every year thousands of love songs are written. Month after month they become number one on the charts. We never get tired of love songs. We listen to them while we work and as we drive. Even professors sing along -
"Don't know much about history,
Don't know much biology;
But I know that one and one are two
And I know that if you love me too
What a wonderful world it will be."
Love makes the world go around and we all rejoice in the ideal of true love. Could you imagine two young lovers seated in a convertible on a secluded spot overlooking the sea with the full moon rising in the distance listening to Einstein singing about the theory of relativity, or Adolph Hitler singing that he would rule the world, or Bill Gates singing about Windows 98? Obviously not, money and power and knowledge are important but it is love that gives our hearts the deepest joy and puts us in touch with the meaning of life.
Love makes things beautiful
When we are in love, the world suddenly is transformed. Suppose there is a very ugly man; everyone thinks that he is the ugliest man in the world with a big crooked nose, a scar down the side of his face, and his front teeth missing. But to the woman who loves him, he is the most handsome man in the world.
When my wife and I had our first child, we were living in a very small two room apartment on the third floor of a row house in Baltimore. It was summer and we had no air conditioning. The temperature was over a hundred degrees. Our little newborn daughter was a very hungry girl and she would keep us up all night long. It was difficult to get her on a regular schedule for nursing. My wife was breast feeding her and sometimes Hana Lyn, our daughter, wanted milk before the milk was ready. So she would scream and cry and it was my job to calm her down. To do so I would take her on tours. Cradling her in my arms I would walk around pointing to objects in the room and explaining, "Here's a picture on the wall. This is a door. Ah here's a lampshade, see the pretty colors." Suddenly our little rooms became a fascinating world. The baby would become peaceful looking with big eyes at all of the fascinating objects. It was three o'clock in the morning. I got little sleep during this period of time but we both enjoyed these fascinating adventures. My apartment had become a little kingdom and she was the princess. Watching us, my wife would smile and laugh as nature did its work and prepared the milk. Then, the baby fed, we would all journey off into the realm of peaceful dreams.
When Hana Lyn was slightly older - still not quite a toddler, we expanded this tradition and began to explore our block. Seating her in her little Maxi Taxi stroller, we would explore our block. "This is a tree, this is a wall, here's a pretty leaf. Oh look a little bug." Hana Lyn was fascinated by the incredible variety of color and texture and movement in this beautiful world. Our street was just an ordinary street, but transformed through our relationship it became a mysterious wonderful garden of Eden filled with fascination and joy.
Love Creates the Future
Nothing is more beautiful that young love. When a young man and woman are in love the entire universe is alive. The hills are alive with the sound of music. The heart is filled with hope. As a young man and woman's hearts are intoxicated with love there minds are filled with dreams for the future, they begin to think of marriage, they talk about how many children they want to have. The love between man and woman is the power that creates the future. A couple in love lives for the future. Here is one of the tragedies of homosexuality. there are no children. There is no future. There is only the dead end of present gratification.
In order to experience love, we need a partner
When we feel love we know the value of life. Without love, life is empty. In order to experience love, we need a relationship with another person. No one can experience love all by themselves. Love is the greatest source of joy, lack of love is the root of all alienation. In order to experience the fullness of life, we all need someone special to love. As expressed in the song:
Blue moon,
You saw me standing alone
Without a love in my heart
Without a dream of my own.
Blue moon,
You knew just what I was there for
You heard me saying a prayer for
Someone I really could care for.
The law of subject and object is a universal law of the universe. Protons need electrons, anions need cations, positive needs negative, male needs female. Plus and minus unite with one another to form a greater union. Man and woman need one another to experience love, to become one, to have children, to form a family.
Suppose you came in the room and heard me ardently proclaiming, "I love you! You are wonderful! You light up my life!" But when you entered there was no one there but me. You would think that I was crazy. But I were down on my knees before a beautiful woman you would understand. Or even if there were just a tiny baby in a cradle you would understand and you would think that it was beautiful.
The family is the center of the Universe of Love
The human heart grows and experiences the joy of love through relationships of love. It is in the family that these intimate relationships can be experienced and we can learn the joy of true love. Rev. Moon likes to say that there are four great realms of heart - four types of love that can be experienced within the family. They are children's love, brother and sister love, love between husband and wife, and parents love. The family is the school of love. The family is the nucleus of the relationships of love which serve as the basis for all human relationships.
Even before children are born they feel their parents love in the security of the womb. The baby feels the feeling of the mother. The baby hears the voices of the parents. The baby feels how the mother responds to the father. After emerging through birth into an unknown world the baby is reassured in the warmth of the mothers embrace, nourished and nurtured at the mothers breast. Thrilled by daddy tossing him or her into the air. The faces of the parents, the voices of the parents, the embraces of the parents are central to the babies life. The love coming from he parents tells the baby that this is a safe, warm, loving and wonderful world. As the baby grows to an infant and a toddler and a child, the parents guide its steps. As the baby's mind develops and he learns words, the parents are the child's guide to the mysteries of his or her universe. When the child ventures out into the world, the parents are there to support and encourage them in each new endeavor, to put on the Band-Aids, to walk them to the school bus, to help with the homework, to root them on at the ball game.
Even before they venture out into school children begin to learn about relating to others through relationships with brothers and sisters. The older children take some of the responsibility by caring for his younger brothers and sisters. Younger children look up to and model themselves on their older brothers and sisters. Brothers and sisters need to learn to share. When the fight they learn that their parents are less concerned about who is to blame than they are that the children learn how to get along with each other. Blessed are the peacemakers. The lessons learned in the home are carried forth into their relationships with aunts and uncles and cousins and neighborhood friends and schoolmates.
Then adolescence comes. A world of transformation, between childhood and adulthood. Teenagers begin to mature sexually in preparation for marriage. They begin to discover their talents and abilities and to think about and prepare for their life's vocations. They learn more and more about their community, the society, and the world and to define intellectually the world that they live in. They are emerging as individuals, adults in their own right. As they mature and develop their character, they find that the attraction of the opposite sex is suddenly powerfully alluring. Boys who used to be "stupid" are now handsome young men. Girls who used to have "cooties" are suddenly mysterious goddesses who cause a strange mixture of attraction and anxiety.
Finally a young man and woman reach maturity and are ready for marriage, ready to experience the power and intoxication of love between a man an a woman in their own life. In the holy union of marriage they discover a new world filled with wonder. The man is the encapsulation of all of the masculine characteristics of the universe, the woman the encapsulation of all of the feminine. Together they complete the universe. Mysteriously man and woman have been made to fit together perfectly like separate pieces in the picture puzzle of love. In marriage man and woman become one and experience the bliss of conjugal love. It is not only their bodies which come together. There souls come together in the creation of shared dreams and their bodies come together in the creation of children.
Through the power of love man and woman are drawn together to become one. How does this occur? How do men and women become one flesh? Is it through holding hands? That may be a step on the way. Through hugging? Kissing? No doubt these things are nice, but they are not the end in themselves. Indeed they merely excite us more and stimulate the mysterious power within us to journey on to the consummation of love. Then where is conjugal love - the union of man and woman - consummated? Through the sexual organs. God fashioned the sexual organs in the center of our bodies so that the man can enter into the body of the woman and the two can lose themselves and explode together in intoxication of love. Through this union the man and the woman become one and their lives flow together into one stream. Man and woman become one and create the future through their love. They plan their lives together and they support one another and they have children.
Children are born from the love of their parents. As parents, husband and wife enter a new realm of love - parental love. Parental love is totally sacrificial, giving and serving. Loving parents are more concerned for their children than they are for themselves. Think for a moment about changing messy diapers. Changing a diaper is a dirty, smelly job. I wouldn't want to make my living doing it, but as a father, I am proud of the fact that I changed my daughters' diapers. It is one of the memorable accomplishments of my life. But I must admit that my wife is much more accomplished in this regard than I am. I have no idea how many thousands of diapers she changed. As I was preparing for this lecture she laughed and told me - "changing diapers is proof of the power of love." As parents our hearts grow to a new level. Parents are always concerned about the growth and future of their children. Parents want their children to be better than themselves. What drives the home computer business in America - parents buying computers for their children because they want them to succeed.
Parents and children, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives. These are the relationships in which the most intimate nuances and flavors of love are experienced. Indeed the family is an intricate and complex universe of relationships within which human beings can experience the purpose of life - the perfection of love. The family is more than just the school of love The true family is the center of love in the universe. The family is the bridge between the individual and the society. It is in the family that the individual learns to sacrifice for others, it is in the family that he learns that it is in his own interest to live for the sake of others. It is in the family that the individual learns the deepest joys of unselfish love.
Where does love come from?
We are born out of love, we seek love in order to live. The family provides the nucleus for the relationships which immerse us in the experience of love. But let us ask - where does this love come from? Love comes from the origin of the universe. From God. Indeed we read in the Bible that "God is Love." God is the origin and source of all of the universe. Obviously then he is the origin and source of love.
God created us as his partner of love
God created the universe for the sake of love. As we said earlier, in order for us to experience love we need someone to love. Love needs an object to engage in a relationship of giving and receiving. The same is true for God. God is being of love and, in order to experience the joy of love, God created us as his children with the capacity to receive and respond to his divine love. God is our parent and we are His children. Indeed this is the message of Jesus and the prophets.
Moses says in Deuteronomy 32:6, "Do you thus requite the Lord, you foolish and senseless people? Is he not your Father, who created you, who made you, and established you?" In I Chronicles 17:13, God reveals to David through the prophet Nathan concerning Solomon, "I will be his father, and he shall be my son; I will not take my steadfast love from him." In Psalm 68:5, David describes God as the "Father of the fatherless." Isaiah proclaims in 64:8, "Yet, Oh Lord, though art our Father." Jesus taught us to Pray in Matthew 6:9, "Our Father, who art in Heaven." He revealed the longing that God has in His heart through the parable of the prodigal son, and he encouraged us in Matthew 5:48 to love as God loves in order that we might "be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect."
What is True Love?
In carpentry or construction we say that something is true when the vertical line and the horizontal line form a perfect 90 degree angle. Carpenters use a plum line or a square to determine that an angle is true. In the same way, for our love to be true, the horizontal line between our mind and body, or between man and woman, needs to be perfectly harmonized with the vertical love which comes from God. True love is the union of God's love with human love.
How does this come about.? Every individual has the capability of relating to God through our mind and heart. As Paul said we hear the truth of the word of God, the Holy Spirit moves our heart, and our spirit calls out "Abba" or father. Our spirit needs the truth and love of God as the internal, vertical guiding dimension of our life. We need then to express that truth and love through our daily actions. This is our responsibility as children of God - to share in the creation and perfection of our character. As we mature and our mind and body become one centering on the truth and love of God, we develop a loving character and we become true men and women. God wants us to become men and women of true character who embody His love. We are meant to be the temples of God.
When a true man and a true woman who express God's love marry, that is a true marriage. God's love is eternal and unchanging. A marriage that has God's eternal and unchanging love as its center will never end in divorce. A man and a woman who are united by the true love of God, who bear children, and who are capable of raising their children in the true love of God are indeed true parents, and a family united by such unchanging love is indeed a true family.
The True Family is God's Ideal for the perfection of love
God is our loving parent who created us as his loving children to share in the joy of love. It is through the true family rooted in God's love that we grow and perfect ourselves in love. Genesis 1:27 states "So God created Man in his own image, in the image of God He created him, male and female he created them." Jesus said that God created man male and female so that they would come together and become one. In uniting with each other, man and woman become the completed image of God. As parents loving our children, we can experience the same parental love which God, our parent feels for us. In the true family, parents love, love between husband and wife, children's love, and love between brothers and sisters all revolve around, express, and reflect God's infinite love which is at the core of the universe. Thus, the family becomes the central unit in which we, as the children of God, can experience His love and develop that love within ourselves. Jesus said that the Kingdom of God is within us. The kingdom of God is the kingdom of true love and it is within the true family that that love can be realized. The true family becomes the nucleus for a God-centered society. The love within the family is expanded to include grandparents, aunts and uncles, relatives, friends, neighbors, and coworkers, and extends out to the society the nation and the world. In the family is a multifaceted matrix of relationships of love - up and down, front and back, left an right - which becomes the center for ethics and morality for all human relationships.
God's three great blessings to mankind
In Genesis 1:28, the Bible says that God gave three great blessings to mankind. "Be fruitful, multiply, ... and have dominion over the earth." Each individual needs to develop the fruits of the spirit, to become an individual of true character by uniting their mind and body centering on God's truth and love. Men and women then unite in true love to form true families, a culture and society of true love, and a peaceful and harmonious nation and world. Finally, God gave us the power to create a wonderful environment in this world. With a heart inspired by love we can appreciate the vast beauty and wonder of nature which reflects the splendor of God. At the same time, God gave us the ability to understand the essential principles of His creation so that we could use that knowledge to create a prosperous and beautiful environment in which to live.
Love, Freedom, and Moral Principle
Human beings were created by God in his image to share with Him and with each other in a dynamic relationship of love. This is the ultimate source of human value and human rights. As expressed in the Declaration of Independence, penned by Thomas Jefferson, "all men are created equal, they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, and among these rights are the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
As we have been discussing the primary institution for achieving human happiness is the God-centered family. The fulfillment of the true family is indeed central to our purpose of life. True love can only be realized in an environment of freedom. God wanted mankind to be his object of love. He created us in his image and gave us freedom so that we could freely respond to His truth and love.
Freedom has two aspects, internal and external, freedom of the mind and freedom of the body. On the one hand we need to be free to seek the truth in accordance with our own conscience. On the other hand we need to be free to express our ideas and pursue our dreams through our words and actions. True freedom exists only on a moral foundation. If we respond freely to God's truth and love, developing our character, building families of true love and living in harmony with others, our freedom actually increases. Unity of mind and body gives us greater freedom to create and put our ideals into action. The creation of unified families ensures our freedom to give and receive love. The development of a harmonious society provides the foundation for political and economic freedom.
If we violate moral principles, then we actually lose our freedom. An immoral person becomes a slave to his desires. He is not free to fulfill his true potential as a human being. Adultery and promiscuity destroy the foundation of trust which is the necessary condition for the free give and take of love. Destruction of the moral foundation of society gives rise to immorality, violence, and corruption in which citizens become prisoners of fear, plagued by cynicism and resentment. Moral corruption subverts the political and economic foundations of a healthy society resulting in an increase of control and regulation and a loss of freedom.
Freedom and God-centered morality are actually indispensably related to one another. God gave us freedom, but he also gave us our portion of responsibility to use our freedom to live in a righteous way. If we fail to do so we fail to achieve our purpose and we lose our freedom. If we live in freedom and love in freedom in accordance with God's ideal and the principles of morality, then our freedom grows and we enjoy the blessings of love and liberty, living in joy in harmonious relations within our families and our society with God's love as the guiding power and center of our lives.
Eternal Love, Eternal Life
But let us pause. God is eternal. God's love is unchanging and absolute. Furthermore, the scripture says that "with the Lord a day is as a thousand years and a thousand years is as a day."
Surely, if God created as his partners in love, he did not intend for this love to transpire after a mere earthly lifetime. If God's love is eternal and we are to share in that love, then our love must last beyond the grave. Indeed we find that humankind in all cultures from prehistoric times to the present have believed in the survival of the soul after death. As my philosophy professor, Dr. Sebastian Matczak, professor at St. John's University used to say, "all people make graves" dating back to the most ancient of cultures.
Just as there is a world which corresponds to the physical body, so also there is a world which corresponds to the mind and spirit. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:44, "if there is a physical body, there also is a spiritual body." If there is a spiritual body, there also is a spiritual world. Indeed, the spiritual world is a much greater reality than the physical world because it is the world which is to be our eternal home. The spiritual world is the world of cause. This physical world is the world of effect. Man is unique amongst God's creation in that we are made to dwell in both worlds. Our purpose during our short life on earth is to perfect ourselves in love so that we can live eternally with God in the spiritual world.
Our bodies need the elements of food and water and air and sunlight. Likewise, our spirits need love and truth. Just as our body by receiving the nourishment it needs and engaging in physical activity, our spirit grows and our character develops through putting love and truth into action. If we develop a loving character here on earth - if we perfect our love by loving God with all our heart, mind and soul, and loving others as ourselves- then when we die we continue those relationships of love in the spiritual world after physical death. As Jesus said in Matthew 18:18, " What you bind on earth is bound in heaven, and what you lose on earth is loosed in heaven." Or as it says in Ecclesiastes 12:7, "the dust returns to the dust from whence it came and the spirit returns to God…"
Once again, It is through the relationships within the family that our perfection and development in love primarily occurs. As we receive the love of God coming from our parents, as we learn to express horizontal love between brothers and sisters, as we realize the bliss of conjugal love through the holy union of marriage, and as, finally, we achieve the crown of selfless giving through sacrificial parental love for our children, our love deepens and our spirits grow. This is indeed the purpose of our lives and the ideal of true love through the God-centered family.
The realization of this ideal is moreover, the key to solving the many problems which plague our society, nation, and world today.
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