The Words the Hose Family
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The Words the Hose Family |
David
and Takeko Hose with John and Nanette Doroski
Ushering in a new generation of international training sessions, the Philippines family, under the guiding hand of John and Nanette Doroski, hosted a 40-day workshop for about a hundred members from the Philippines, Southeast Asia and Oceania. Previous 40-day workshops for international members had been held in New York at the World Mission Center, but Rev. David Hose flew to Manila to begin on October 1, 1981, the first held overseas.
These interviews with David Hose and his wife Takeko (pronounced Tacco) report about the training, but more importantly, allow a closer look at the internal quality of leadership. The guidance emerging from their words shares their hope and gives direction to us all for our children's course.
The first thing I realized was that this is a whole new "generation" or level of training sessions that we are starting. I expected only the unexpectable. I knew it was going to be a totally different level from what we had been doing in New York. As a leader, one can reach the point of knowing what is going to happen, and then it's possible to lose a certain freshness. When I went to the Philippines, I was very much aware that this was liberation for me, too. I look forward to every workshop this coming year because I know that each one will help me to serve as a servant to our members.
I really feel the children's course coming up, and it's not the course for individuals, but the course for blessed couples and families. My wife joined me midway in the 40 days, and I feel that serving in the Philippines as a couple was particularly significant for us as a couple and for our marriage. I feel much meaning in working with her. It opened up a whole new realm of service to God for us.
The village where we held the workshop was called Antipolo; there the weather was warm and humid, even at the higher elevation. There are many little open-air shops, and vendors line the streets selling fried bananas, sweet potatoes, nuts of one kind or another. People are dressed in traditional sories (wrap-around garments) or jeans and tee shirts. Everywhere are gaudily-painted vehicles called jeepneys (a jeep with an extended back, with benches for passengers). Houses are often times wooden with a thatched roof; the main living portion is raised up from the ground, due to frequent storms and flooding. Little kids everywhere, running up and down the street, and people living pretty much outside their houses, repairing vehicles in front of their homes, playing in the streets, puppy dogs playing underfoot. It's very much a sidewalk culture.
We lived away from the main section of the village, walking down a sort of jungle trail lined with banana and palm trees, crossing a creek on a little foot bridge, and following a muddy path to get to the house where the workshop was held.
For 40 days our coordinator was John Doroski, the leader of the Philippines; his wife Nanette worked like a mother figure. My wife was counseling while Mrs. Doroski was taking care of the kitchen, looking after the members and resolving any problems which came up. We worked together very well. Group leaders were chosen from among the participants in the training session.
From Father's own words, the goals of the workshop are:
1. to inherit Father's tradition. That means to really inherit his way of being. We cannot each become exactly like his personality, but in the framework of living, we can inherit his conviction, his faith and his heart.
2. to discover the Principle within ourselves and bring it out, to really make it our own.
We are still experimenting with the best way to combine classroom study with activities, within this new framework of regional training.
When we go to Africa in January, we will take another step forward. I find the interrelationship between academic work and personal experience is very important, so therefore I try to intersperse the lecture sessions with really good open-group gatherings. Sometimes at a "pregnant" moment, we slide the tables over to one side and gather in a big circle and say, "Let's do some talking!"
Our goal must be to really help people deal with the meaning of the Principle as it applies to their own lives. No concepts . . . talk about experience. The objective is to get the Principle kind of dove-tailed into a more real fit with each member's own life. Do they really know in life what they learned in the book? Usually we find out how ignorant we all are, myself included.
I try to make myself accessible, not just physically, but emotionally as well. Also, in terms of counseling, I try to make it clear that they can come to me with anything and we can talk about it.
We have a good structure of activities, and yet the guidelines are not drawn so rigidly that it becomes sterile. Every day we try to be sensitive to what is happening, to "listen to the silence," you might say. We follow our intuition, day to day. We have a schedule for each day, of course, but also I know that life does not always go a routine way.
Our church in the Philippines has been growing very quickly. There are now 160 members living in the centers, and a total of 200 who have accepted True Parents, including students. Up until now, they have been gathering mainly young people. In addition to street witnessing, they want to start working with professors and doing more public affairs activities. Strengthening the economic foundation is important also, and perhaps some businesses will be started.
With the culmination of the 40-day workshop, the Doroskis want to form a team of members to work among university students. Professors are openly teaching a Christian-Marxist doctrine on many campuses, so there is a need to offer the Divine Principle perspective in academic fields.
Another goal of the workshop was to help the members get a new perspective on the internal aspect of church life. They all know the lectures; the Philippine members are extremely acute in retention of the material. I found that the Philippine mind absorbs concepts easily and can respond very fast.
As in any part of the world, our members are hungry for answers to practical questions such as, "What is the true meaning of a good Cain and Abel relationship?" "What should he our attitude toward suspected Chapter II problems, and how should we respond when they come up in the center?" "Is developing friendship among brothers and sisters important, or do we just charge ahead and do our mission?" All kinds of questions came up when we began to discuss internal guidance. I could tell it was time to move to a new level of understanding and to greater maturity as a family, in terms of personal relationships.
One of the values of 40-day training is the emphasis and time we can give to internal guidance. I deeply felt the way the 40 days can supplement the Divine Principle studies and center life. Bringing in lecturers from New York helps bridge the long distance between here and there. In many ways, my wife and I felt we were bridging the world of headquarters with the world of the mission, represented by the Philippines.
Through the internal guidance portion of 40 days, members can go through a healing process. In my understanding, the key to transformation, the key to taking responsibility, lies in the individual. Not every participant in any given training session makes an equal step ahead. Spiritual growth doesn't go from a mass inspiration to a giant leap ahead.
For me, the key is the individual. I basically try to help members get beyond the level of seeing the problem as originating in someone else. Each individual should come to recognize that the real issue is always "me." Spiritual growth results when you can see the problem in yourself and then begin to see the solution also, as coming from yourself.
This may be a little controversial, but I feel that a healing process needs to take place between the Third World and America. This may be part of the historical restorational process. Imperialism is a common communist charge against America, and I would say America has actually been imperialistic, in certain ways, taking advantage of the Third World.
With this serious awareness in my mind, I didn't want to be seen as "another American" -- I hoped the members would see me as a brother. But sometimes we have to make mistakes first before we can see the problem within ourselves and make a change.
This became a quiet issue in the workshop. You see, the kitchen was cooking us special food. Almost every day, the meal was white rice and vegetables, with water to drink; however, the members from Australia, New Zealand and Tacco and I got two eggs every morning, while the Filipinos got none. The cooks tried to treat us well, because our stomachs weren't adapted to the local diet, but I felt so bad because not everybody got eggs. It wasn't enough to try to be a nice guy and pass the eggs around.
In the final reflection of the workshop, one member expressed something like this: "Our country has been a colony for over 300 years, but the members of the 'First World' have never felt that. We respect you as our elder brother and our teacher and know that because you are not used to our diet, you need special food. But still we are sensitive to the whole colonial past. For the next workshop, we just wish somehow that we could all have eggs!
Actually, our family in the Philippines has followed a very sacrificial path throughout its history, first of all because of the poverty in the country and secondly because the Doroskis have consciously chosen a very sacrificial path. I really came away with great admiration for them, because they are deeply serious about doing God's will there.
We were renting the house of a former senator, but all around us was poverty. For example, one brother's parents did not have a dollar to buy him a pair of sandals to go to school, so as a boy he went to classes barefoot. A very poignant problem is that our members suffer internally when they think of their families, who sometimes barely have enough to live on. The family unit in the Philippines is very strong, and children are expected to earn money to help support their parents. In a family which has gone through suffering together, when one member leaves, it is a wrenching experience for the whole family, not merely financially, but heartistically.
I was deeply shocked to realize how ignorant I was about poverty. In coming back to America, I will never be the same. Generally, people in the United States are ignorant about the poverty in the Third World -- not ignorant in our heads, because of course we can watch the six o'clock news and see the documentaries about the suffering in Uganda, the hunger in Somalia, etc. But until you see the people's daily diet, the skinny kids, the skinny dogs and cats -- even the cockroaches are skinny -- you just don't awaken to the real meaning of it.
As an American, I think I had unconsciously tried to pull a veil around myself and not deal with that kind of reality. But in the Philippines I became ashamed of myself; suddenly I found myself wanting to understand the Third World, and I even felt a deep calling to remain there. Inside me I didn't want to return to America.
Back in New York, I went one morning to give a talk about my experiences to a group of members, and after the talk I realized I felt resentment towards those who were listening to me. They loved the speech, but I felt like saying, "You just don't know what's out there."
Then I realized that I didn't know much either. For 40 days I had lived in one little neighborhood of one country, where I met some hungry people, and I came back with some strong feelings. Experiencing that was valuable in itself, because it could teach me something.
A few days after returning home I went to a Burger King restaurant with my kids. For the first time in my life I didn't order a "Whopper," but rather a junior-sized burger and a sugarless drink -- and no French fries. Sitting there, I looked around at the fat people with their fat children and thought, "My gosh, this country is so incredibly well off, and people just take it for granted." In the booth next to us a woman was telling her son, "You don't get any French fries until you eat your hamburger." It just struck me that in many places there are no hamburgers or French fries. There are many people who don't care about the flavor of the food they eat -- they just care if there is food. For many Americans, food is enjoyment; for people in many parts of the world, it is just basic energy for their bodies.
Many times we are caught up in our normal daily lives and don't see the true scale of the reality that we are living in. All of us need a context in which to operate, but often the context we create for ourselves is somewhat artificial.
In the American family, for instance, we sometimes argue over which is most important, indemnity or joy. But we are sadly unaware of what our brothers and sisters are doing in the Philippines or Botswana or India or wherever. Each is dealing with a totally different reality. We need to be more conscious of their serious situations and not dwell so much on minor theoretical points.
We should include the Third World situation in our reality, because it affects the relative importance we place on joy or indemnity and especially how we look at ourselves as a nation.
In the beginning of this new 21-year period, it is so important for the directors, lecturers, and any elder members of the church who are in a position to influence brothers and sisters, to be honest, growing, living people -- and not just a walking Principle dictionary. In the light of my recent experience, I realize that the course of restoration lying before us is a truly huge undertaking.
In a wealthy nation like America, I think restoration is often very "mental." We seldom worry about how to get some food for Mrs. Jones next door; she has a whole refrigerator full. We are concerned about how to teach her the Principle. But even though I've been taught that the most important thing people need is spiritual guidance, my heart was so touched when I saw how hungry people can really be. I just wanted to go to the village store and spend all my money on groceries and pass them around the community, even though I knew that Principle is the most important thing and they would be hungry again tomorrow.
I realized we have a mandate to find the ways and means to help the world feed itself and purify its waters and many other practical things. On any given day, the stream behind our house was a different color, because of the factory up the way. One day the water would be dark blue, another day muddy brown. Little children were playing in the muddy water, and downstream the women were washing clothes.
My mind is being forcibly expanded into new and unexplored areas. I really want to be able to convey something of what I went through to our brothers and sisters. It's a challenge I've taken up. When I came back to America and talked to Rev. Kwak about these things, he just knowingly smiled at me, because he already understands; he has traveled to many different countries in recent years.
"My life changed," I told Rev. Kwak. He replied, "Well, when you go to Africa, it's going to change again." He added that if every one of our American members would spend three months in Africa, their lives would totally change, spiritually, physically and emotionally.
I think that we Americans need to enter a new level of restoration, developing a larger and more realistic idea about what it means. In the next 21 years we are going to be forced to greatly expand our thinking.
It is so easy to see why the United States has been blessed so much; it needs to serve the world. I have no doubt about it. Everything we have is for the world. And when a country loses that vision and complacently keeps its riches for itself, it kind of folds back on itself and rots.
Educators in our church have to be educated! Before being teachers, we are students, and before we can help anybody else come to life and begin to mature, we have to be vitally alive and growing ourselves. For me this has been the most important realization and one of the really significant steps in my own history as a member.
I don't think it's just a question of how to "reform" our movement in America; reform is always a hot subject. But there is usually a very silent process going on behind the scenes, while everybody is talking about change. Few people see it, and few pick up on it. While people are going through profound changes, they seldom say much. These are the people I look for.
I've met some MFT members, for instance, who are deeply respectable people; they are living, growing people, and they are the ones who hold the future. One day that kind of person will emerge and become a great leader, not because of what he or she says, but because of who he or she is.
Over the past three years, the 40-day international workshops which I have been leading have completely changed my life, my perceptions of the world and my role in it. Teaching is what I did, but the learning is what deeply affected me, through the many people who came and the precious experiences we shared. Those workshops were a valuable foundation for the future, but all last year I felt we had to begin taking the workshops to where the members are.
I am talking here about a different kind of learning -- a "becoming" type of learning. If you offer someone a lot of learning, but he doesn't realize his own need to change his motivation, fears or immaturities, that learning will often become corrupted. However, the learning which can bring a genuine change in a person's inner being is the kind of learning we can trust. I realize that my whole life has to be involved in this kind of learning. Some generation has to do it -- and if not ours, then whose?
Reform did not come from Jesus' words, it came out of his being. Likewise, it's what Father is that has influenced us, probably even more than what he has said. And even what he says come out of what he is.
Now, after one workshop, I feel like a little kid again. Sometimes we go through rebirth. To some people, rebirth is a great and joyous experience, but to me it is starting again. It doesn't mean negating the past, but rather saying, "Yeah, that was good, but this is a new path."