The Words of the Kazakos Family
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The Words of the Kazakos Family |
Hello, everybody! Welcome to Sunday service! Hello, America. God bless.
I feel very blessed from God and True Parents and from our senior pastor, In Jin Nim, that I get the opportunity to be here together with you. What an incredible honor. Thank you, everybody.
I used to work here with Headquarters at the Manhattan Center, and my role – one of them – on Sunday was to wash this podium. I wanted to make it impeccable for our senior pastor, and then I used to cue her on stage and pray backstage and make sure every little piece was just impeccable to make a space for her to come onstage. You have no idea what it feels like to be standing here. I'm very humbled and honored to be here with you.
So, together let's invite God because there's no better time than right now for God to speak through us, today. Not tomorrow, but right now. I want to create that invitation together with all of you.
Some of you saw me on the 12-city tour when I introduced In Jin Nim, and I shared at that time that I first met her in the early 1990s, when I was a new member. I was a little apprehensive to join. I was new to the movement. And then I got a chance to go to In Jin Nim's house and a BBQ with her and her family and play volleyball.
At that time I was listening closely to In Jin Nim. It's amazing that a lot of the things she was talking about back then are things I'm seeing happen right now through Lovin' Life Ministries. I'm just so extremely grateful. Internal and external excellence, and a lot of these things that she's been coaching us on are things she's been thinking about for a long time. What a ministry we have, Lovin' Life Ministries! Let's give that a hand. Hello. It's beautiful.
Also, having our senior pastor as a woman, as a lady, I think makes a difference. Many times I've heard the director of this program, David Eaton, say the paradigm is truth, beauty, and goodness. Yet, sometimes with masculine leadership we focus more on truth and goodness. Now In Jin Nim is bringing the beauty – the music, the aesthetic, the feel, the kindness, the care, and the motherly heart. I know that right now we have a comprehensive ministry because it deals with all those different capacities. And that's a wonderful thing.
Another thing that In Jin Nim has brought here is clarification on this point we've been debating as an organization for a long time: Are we a church, or are we a movement? Now, of course, we're both, but which one's the priority? In Jin Nim has talked about this question, and I remember in particular one meeting in which she addressed it directly. She said, "If you look at the civil rights movement, they built a very powerful movement because they were highly motivated and supported by the church and by the young people in college." So, In Jin Nim's coaching to us is that if we focus on ministry and have a very powerful community and very empowered families, then it's not a big step to bring forward a powerful movement that can make a difference in this world.
I felt for the first time in 20 years, since I've been involved, that this is that time. In a way I feel that we're going to look back at this time and see this current time as a golden age or a watershed moment when we can focus on our families. Then by our families being shining lights, we'll give light to the world. I totally believe that. Right? Yes, you can give me a hand for that!
In
Jin Moon and Ye Jin Moon May 1, 2011
A little less than a week ago I got a phone call from In Jin Nim asking me to come today, so we had a good talk. I'm the pastor now in Los Angeles, and we just opened a Lovin' Life satellite center in a brand-new movie theater. In Jin Nim's very excited about that. As she was talking to me, she was asking many questions, and she expressed her hope that this new development can go around the country.
One of the reasons she called and asked me to come here today is that she wanted me to address the idea some people have that Lovin' Life Ministries is just a Sunday service we come to watch on a screen around the country. Of course to a certain degree, that's true. But In Jin Nim calls it Lovin' Life Ministry because she's thinking about our entire lives, everything from A to Z.
So two hours a week we all come together and unite as a country – but that's just two hours, brothers and sisters. In the rest of the week, In Jin Nim is encouraging us to be creative: to think of new ideas, to explore different things and build the different ministries.
We have a relationship seminar in Los Angeles because we have someone who's strongly called to do it. If I didn't have him there, we wouldn't have it. So then each church can be a little bit different because of the different profiles of the different people in developing different ministries. This is why she asked me to come here today: to talk about the whole experience of Lovin' Life Ministry in addition to the very center part, which is the Sunday service.
Today I'd like to ask your permission to talk about basic, simple things. When I tested into a music school, because I had experience playing in a theater and with jazz and rock groups, I tested out of something called the labs. Testing out of the labs means that when you test and audition and are scored with a number based on how good of a player you are, if you do well, you get to play in the band. If you don't do well, you have to go to the labs. There you find, for example, about 30 bass players going doong, doong, doong, and it's just plain boring. I was so happy I tested out of those labs.
I didn't know it at the time, but I had a kind of arrogant mind. At some level I was thinking, "Oh, God, I'm glad I'm not in there, and I'm playing with all these bands instead." I had that kind of attitude with many things in school. I wanted to do the most difficult transcriptions, the most complicated compositions, and try to push the envelope. But as I graduated, I noticed that all those guys I was looking down on in the labs had passed me and I had the same score as a player that I had when I was a freshman.
The lesson I took from that was not about knowing the basics but about mastering the basics. At that time I just focused on doing scales and working with a metronome, doing the simplest things. In the same way, in spiritual life we can easily look at our spiritual life and say, "Oh, I know that. I know a certain amount of Divine Principle. I know what to do." But it's in mastering those basic things that we make a foundation for doing the big things.
So today I want to talk, in one sense, about many things you already know about. But I'd like to explore them in a new way. I'd like to unpack them and invite you – especially now that we have started this new quarter and we've had Launch Pad – to be involved with different things.
But even before that, what's important to recognize and know, I think, is that Jin Nim has brought huge cultural changes to our movement through Lovin' Life. These cultural shifts are very subtle and may be a little abstract, but they make a world of difference when we fully take them on.
For example, there's the idea of needing or sacrificing to do God's will or go to church as opposed to just choosing to come. In Jin Nim talks about "just because" and how powerful it is if we do things "just because." Not, "We need to," not "We come to church to sacrifice," or "I need to come to church."
If you think about Jaga, he does not come with the capacity to tithe because he's sacrificing or he feels he needs to. He is absolutely – I mean, you can tell with Jaga – he is powerfully tithing and giving to God because he chooses to. Do you feel that in Jaga? Do you feel that difference? It's huge. And it's like I said, "It's subtle and abstract but that little bit makes a world of difference."
When In Jin Nim talks about these different stages, she starts with the first stage of the rocket in which there's a lot of rumble and we're pushing up. In that first stage, we're in an emergency mode. In emergency mode there's a lot of top-down in terms of organizational structure because if there's an emergency, we need to move quickly. There's no time to debate. If there's a fire here, we need to go.
So True Parents needed to fuel this huge, epic movement. As Hyung Jin Nim has said, "It's the fastest growing religious organization in the time of its founder," and that's because of the tremendous sacrifice True Parents have made – and True Children and you as well. That's why In Jin Nim calls you heroes. Let's give a hand for that, sure.
But now we're moving into the settlement time. Now is a time to build our communities. In doing that the leadership provides the vision, and the membership determines the mission. So leadership is giving us the feel. Just as In Jin Nim is giving us a feel – "It should feel like this, look like that." And then in all our locations, even here in Connecticut and New York and New Jersey, or in Los Angeles, Boston, everywhere, then you can express it there in your specific way.
One thing I heard In Jin Nim talk about in a small meeting time – which is another cultural shift – was that many times we've led and introduced our movement with our theory, and not even theory but more theology and worldview. She said, "Of course that has touched all our lives and transformed us all, and that's why we're here today," but then she said, "What if we show who we are first, and then people say, 'Wow, who are you and what motivates you?' Then when you show the theology or show our teachings, people go, 'Oh, I get it! That's what it's about.'"
You remember the story In Jin Nim told about the boy at UTS who met some people coming like tourists wanting to see the grounds there. This boy – not a little boy, but probably a teenager – was so excited as he guided them all over the grounds. And this couple was just so moved by who this boy was being in the world. They're asking, "Who are you? Why are you the way you are?" His answer was classic. He said, "Remember in Life magazine when you saw that huge wedding? I'm one of the children from that wedding." And the couple's response was "Wow, that's really inspiring."
So in that way In Jin Nim is talking about natural witnessing. Natural witnessing is all about who you're being, who I'm being, every single moment of the day. And then when we meet people, they can't help but be touched. They're not touched by you or by me; they're touched by God and True Parents, right? That's absolutely true.
I was on the phone for about 45 minutes with my AT&T rep, and all of a sudden I was telling her, "You've got to wait for the right person." Then she started crying on the phone and we were talking and talking. I was telling her about God. She says, "I think God sent you." Of course at the end I said, "You've really got to give me a good plan now."
But anyway, when we just open our mouth – because we've been touched by God, by the truth, and by True Parents – just who we are being is the testimony and then we can show, "Well, here's why."
The last point in a cultural shift, which I think is extremely important, is that because of the emergency mode we've been all-or-nothing. Sometimes what that leads to later on is the way of thinking that "This period is my time for God and in that period I've got to do my thing." Is everyone feeling that? Do you know what I mean by that? That all-or-nothing way of thinking is opposed to the thinking for this new age of having a balance and bringing God into the center of everything we do.
One time I read True Parents' speech about having God in the center, even in your workplace. We all basically have very busy lives. We have almost no room to do a lot of things now, so the only way is to bring God into everything we do and make everything into an offering.
There are five modalities in Lovin' Life. There are a lot of things available through these five modalities, and a lot of these are very basic but essential things. In my going around the country, as I have told In Jin Nim, I have met a lot of people who have heard of Inspire, Empower, Connect, Contribute, and Inherit, but are not quite sure what all these things mean and how to apply them in life. And again, if I could repeat, that's why In Jin Nim has asked me to come today.
The first modality is Inspire. That's here where you are right now, right here in our Sunday service where we come together, get inspired, and attend God. If you look at the background and the history – and many things, of course, influence church – even way back in the Old Testament starting with the Ark of the Covenant, the Ark of the Covenant was a representative of God and of the messiah to come. And through history as they took the Ark of the Covenant around with them, it eventually became the basis for the Temple. Then the Temple became the place that represented God and the messiah, and the Jewish people at the time believed that God dwelled in the Temple. Of course, as we know that is really representative of True Parents and the messiah to come.
Then of course as Christianity developed, the Christians adopted a way of having a sanctuary. I was visiting one of my friends who attends a Catholic church, and I was just walking around the church. I walked up on the sanctuary, and he exclaimed, "Don't walk there!" I was like, "What's the problem?" "That's a holy place!" "Oh, I'm sorry!" And I backed out."
So, we have the church building, and that's the function of church. We come and we worship in that church as it's a dwelling for God.
Now in this New Age – even though we're coming to church, and in many ways it looks similar to a Christian church liturgy, and in many ways it is – this is also fundamentally different because now we come as representatives of True Parents and as children of God. You are the temple of God. The building is not holy, but all of you, the representatives of True Parents, are holy.
Then that begs the question, "Why even come to church? What's the point of coming to church?" You can tithe from home; you can send a check. We'll always accept that. You can pray from home, you can read from home. Why come here? What's the point? The reason why we come together is very different. We come together as a people to attend God, True Parents, and True Children. That's why we come. That's what it means to say that we are the realm of the royal family. We are the children of God and we come as the realm of the royal family.
Because you're children of God, that means you're royalty, together with True Parents. So in that capacity, we gather as a people, and not only as a family but as an extended family, we together to attend God. Reverend Moon has asked, "Why do we attend?" He also has given a very simple answer. He says, "We attend to be blessed and to be loved."
Sometimes some of your children call me Uncle George. Whenever they do, it brings me into a whole different capacity in relating with them. Then I know, "Wow, they have honored me as their elder; I want to love them even more and give them even more." Do you know what I mean? Are you feeling that?
So you can imagine how much God wants to bless you with abundance. Through attendance, there's a space and a place for God to bless you even more. That's one reason we come to church. It's very different and unique.
And we come also as a family. Some of you don't have a family yet, but don't worry; you'll get one soon, or one day at least. Coming together as a family makes an enormous difference. My family used to travel an hour every Sunday to go to the Greek Orthodox Church in Portland. And to this day I don't remember any of the theology. It was usually sung in Greek, I didn't understand any of it, and I sat in a very hard pew. But I learned from my parents how they would attend God by coming. I learned by that example as we came to church together as a family.
Today with Lovin' Life we need the same experience. This way we can develop also an emotional connection and a love and heart connection with our senior pastor who we know is connected to True Parents. That brings us closer. There are many ways we can get closer to True Parents and God, but if we want to learn how to play the guitar, we learn from a guitarist. So, too, if we want to learn how to be a child of God, we can learn that best from someone who's as amazing an example of a child of God as In Jin Nim is.
My son one day wanted to bring hot dogs to church. He was six years old, and I thought it was kind of cute. I said, "You want to bring hot dogs to church?" He said, "Yeah." I kind of went along with it and said, "Well, why do you want to bring hot dogs to church?" He says, "I want to give them to In Jin Nim." He loves hot dogs, so he wants to bring them to In Jin Nim.
But I dug a little further and found out the reason why he wanted to bring the hot dogs to church. It was because of the sermon we saw recently about how Mother Moon made the gochuchang-pickle-hot-dog-and-rice dish. My son remembered that sermon, and because he has developed a relationship with In Jin Nim by seeing her every week, he thought it would be a good idea to bring hot dogs because she liked them.
I was so happy that my child could make that connection with her. That may be a connection that will last his whole life. So that's Inspire, and that's what's available through coming for worship service here at Lovin' Life and all the different locations all over the country.
The next modality is Empower. What's available with Empower? It's all about being cleansed and strengthened by the word of God. We know that all day and every single day we're constantly bombarded with images – advertising images, information in school, people we talk to. We're constantly inputting data and information into our mind and our heart, and that affects our attitude, which will then affect our behavior, which then affects the quality of our life.
Being constantly in a relationship with the word of God is what brings us closer to God. The stumbling block is that we can feel, "I already know that," and to one degree we do know. Certainly there are parts of the Principle that I know. "I know about dual characteristics," or "I know that the fruit was symbolic." So over time maybe we wouldn't have as much give and take with those things.
God's word is not as much about knowing as it is about making a practice and a relationship with the word of God. Do you understand the difference? Making a practice and a relationship with the word of God is more important than even knowing it – because then it fills us every day. And that's what mind-body unity is; it's about receiving the word of God, practicing it, and having our thoughts and our actions as one, centered on the word of God.
Another thing In Jin Nim talks about that I think is really important is the practice of sending our kids to the church and hoping the church will educate our kids. She has said, "Yes, to a certain degree that will work, but it's actually not enough." One time when I was in In Jin Nim's office, she talked for about 40 minutes about this one point. She said, "To have effective children's education, you need a parent, a teacher, and a child together – the three of them together. That's going to make a huge difference because there's an inroad a teacher has that a parent doesn't and there's an inroad a parent has that the teacher doesn't for education for our children." We have just started doing this in LA very recently.
Sometimes in order to try to encourage our kids to be involved with more than education, we have a lot of social events and then we mix social events with education. But I'd like to make a suggestion: It's way more effective to divide those two, to separate social events from education. When we do something social, let's do something that's highly engaging and connecting socially in a fellowship way. Then when it's time for learning, do something that's highly immersive and age-appropriate.
We already have our camps and all these wonderful activities, including our weekly fellowship through which people, together with the staff, create a certain culture. All of this can be preparation for us to immerse ourselves in education.
I was in Albuquerque, New Mexico, a couple of weeks ago, where I met a wonderful community and we did something called a Divine Principle forum. This is an immersive educational approach that is complementary to the modality of learning in which we receive information through a lecture. The Divine Principle forum is a contrast and complement to that in which we, of course, study Divine Principle, but then we debate about it, talk about it. Sometimes we'll end up talking a long, long time about only one point.
For example, if we were studying the chapter on Christology that talks about rebirth, I might ask the youth there, "What's the experience of rebirth?" "Well, like, I don't know." And they would ask me, "Well, what is that?" "I don't know, either. You tell me." And then we could get into a conversation and then process all these aspects of Divine Principle in Father's words.
Also recently – well, about three years ago – when I was attending a meeting with True Parents in Hawaii, Father said something that changed my life. He said, "You can bypass religion, Cain-Abel, and everything, and go straight to heaven if you completely live the Family Pledge." The Family Pledge is an oath we take as families. And of course I realized I didn't even know what the Family Pledge means.
I put those words from Father into practice, so now, even though my schedule is extremely busy, I spend about four hours a week studying the Family Pledge. This has made an enormous difference for me in gaining an understanding of what is my covenant, what is a Blessed Family's covenant with God, and how can we come under heavenly fortune and receive blessing from God? God wants to give so much blessing to us. The message was always there in the Family Pledge, a document that I had looked at many, many times, but I didn't recognize the message until I decided to peek in deeper and spend time with it every single day. I have a small study group that I study with both online and by talking on the phone.
Learning is a life-long process, and UTS now has a great learning program that you can join from any part of the country. You don't have to fly to UTS. You can do learning online. Our Empower modality is here to help you find creative and practical ways in your community for you to pursue lifelong learning not just for the purpose of knowing the word of God but for the purpose of creating a practice and relationship as a community. That's what's available with Empower.
Sun
Myung Moon, Hak Ja Han, Kook Jin Moon, and Hyung Jin Moon January 23,
2012
The next modality with Lovin' Life is Connect, which is all about the small group. I'd like to say, and this is just my opinion, that it's hard to fully experience Lovin' Life if you're not in a small group. A small group is almost like the other half or the other part of Lovin' Life. A small group is where we get to share together as a community, process what was talked about on Sunday, support each other, fellowship together, and even minister to each other.
It's impossible, as you can imagine, for Father Moon or Reverend In Jin Moon, or any pastor for that matter, to visit every single home. Of course, participating in a small group takes time, but it's possible every week in a small group for us to minister to each other. I remember one time when I was going through a severe challenge in my life and I didn't want help. But someone who I was talking to insisted that I get help about this thing I was dealing with. In that way this person really stood for me.
You don't have to be well-read in small groups, and you don't have to have a big group. Just invite someone over for dinner. It's amazing the conversation you can share. I recently visited the home of a brother named Nicolai and it really opened by eyes. He lives near the beach in Los Angeles and it was such a simple meeting. He invited me over for dinner, and our kids talked about Pokémon and Legos; they dug that. Then we talked about our life of faith and what we believe in. This was a brother who had been just an acquaintance for me, but in a short time he and I really got close. So it doesn't need to be complicated.
This week invite someone over for dinner, and you've nailed small group. That's all you need. Then the rest is – you can read all the literature about it if you want to. But it's as easy as making a burrito and coming over and talking and sharing together.
The other kind of small group that we have in Lovin' Life Ministry is the affinity group. You've probably seen this on the announcements. That's like, for example, the sailing club or the bridge club or the karate club. It's very easy to discount those things because they may look like, "Well, that's just superficial fun." But is the affinity groups are not just superficial fun.
When In Jin Nim went city by city, do you remember what she asked all of you? She asked, "What are you excited to do? What are you passionate about? What do you feel called to do?" So these affinity groups are about what you feel impassioned to do.
For a long time – for a good 20 years – I stopped doing music, and then In Jin Nim asked me, "Why?" She said it just like that? I said, "Yeah, well, I guess I thought I really have to do a lot of things for God, and I wanted to abandon my music." And she said, "No, you should be doing your music." I'm like, "Okay."
But when I thought about it I realized, "I want to do my music for God." That's like, "God, what a novel idea." It's so simple. So then, when I was here in New York I created an advertisement on the Internet and I formed a small group of musicians who supported each other in the projects that we wanted to do. We were going to do a lot of things, and seven people joined from the Internet.
Now, as I come back and forth to New York a couple of times, I see that some of them are still coming to 43rd Street, and I've even seen them here at the service a couple of times. They all joined from the Internet. First they felt an affinity with the same thing I liked, which was music, and then they saw what was available with Lovin' Life. So that's what's available with the affinity groups and with Connect.
The next modality, Contribute, is all about applying your talents and gifts by giving them out and making a difference in the world. Have you ever had the experience of your pastor coming up to you with a very, very big smile and saying, "I need you to volunteer for something?" Everyone say, "Hello." You know that experience, right? So what's the conversation that can sometimes happen in your head? Maybe it goes like this: "I'd love to but I don't have time."
We know by now that the better you are at volunteering, probably the more you're going to get asked. The good thing about the Contribute modality is that it's very different. Specifically, there are two things that make it distinct and different. One is that, more important than ushering or holding a camera is the coming together as a group to actionize your faith continually.
When we first joined we had programs to actionize our faith. Maybe it was fund-raising, or maybe it was doing different events. And what did we do? We got together in a group, we made an internal goal and maybe an external goal, and then at the end we'd come together and close and talk about how it went. In that way we ratcheted up our spirituality, just like a young person can ratchet up a heavy car with a jack lift. So little by little we did that.
But somewhere along the way we stopped that actionizing. In many ways our lives got overly busy. So the purpose of the Contribute modality is to actionize our faith together as a group because we get to hold each other accountable. Many times there are a lot of things we want to do and a lot of things we want to be in life, but we may falter because we don't have an accountability partner. That's not a sign out of weakness. It's a sign of strength when I ask someone else to hold myself accountable.
The other distinctive aspect of this ministry is that it can only work when everyone does a little, as opposed to a few people doing a lot. Do you know what I mean by that? So after service today you have to run to Pastor Grodner and Dr. Ann and say, "What can I do? Give me something." Or, "I'm good at this. I'd like to do this." When I came to Jersey, for example, they didn't have a good PA system so I wanted to make a better production there and that's what I did. That was something that I could offer, and I felt empowered because that was my expertise? I'm not good at a lot of things, but that's one thing that I'm good at and I felt like I could contribute.
I'm sure you have a lot of talents and things that you can do. So after church today, why don't you go meet them and say, "I'm ready; let's roll. I want to join the volunteer ministry." Because then when all of us do a little, one plus one is, what? Three. You get more, right, if we all work, eleven, thank you. One plus one is eleven. Very good, Jamal. That's right. Amen.
In Los Angeles we have developed our "Lovin' Life Dream Team" and these guys are actualizing in Los Angeles what I had seen in New Jersey. The New Jersey Church brought in a whole bunch of young people and I said, "I want to do that, too." So I brought in a whole bunch of young people. Now we have this amazing group of young people called the Lovin' Life Dream Team, and they're on fire. They give me strength. Every time when I meet them on Tuesday, I feel like I can go another week. Maybe they look like they're getting, but actually they're giving to me. So we empower each other and we all chip in just a little bit.
The fifth and last part of the five modalities in Lovin' Life is Inherit. The reason we do Inspire, Empower, Connect, and Contribute is so that we can come to Inherit. Let's think for a minute about what is the vision for Unification Church Lovin' Life Ministry as it's illustrated by Hyung Jin Nim and In Jin Nim. It's very simple. We're here so we can inherit the true love of God. That is our purpose in being here.
So how can we inherit the true love of God? What does that mean? What does that look like? In my studies in the Family Pledge, I now see that Pledge Number One is the vision, and Pledge Two through Eight are the mission. Pledge Number One talks about the same thing that we're talking about: inheriting the true love of God. It says two things primarily. Number one is restoring or creating the ideal of creation by restoring the original homeland.
What is the ideal of creation? Reverend Moon asks, "What is the Kingdom of Heaven?" And he answers, "It's simply when two become one." It's almost like the Japanese haiku poems that are very simple and profound. You could think about that for a very long time, "When two become one." God created the world because everything was within God – all masculinity and femininity and all internal and external, all these things. God created the earth to have everything separate so we can choose to interact and come together.
Out of everything in the creation, what is the closest to God is you and your family. So to restore the ideal of creation, building the Kingdom of Heaven, is two things. Number one, it's being an anointed blessed family, in which we experience vertical and horizontal relationships: Vertical meaning that we give our love and authority to our parents and to our older brothers and sisters, and our parents and older brothers and sisters give us love and blessing.
If the anointed blessed family manifests only horizontal love, it's all mushy. If it manifests only vertical love, it's very authoritative and no one wants to be a part of that. But as In Jin Nim says, when you combine them together you get this beautiful contrast of authority and love. If you take away love, the authority becomes tyranny. If you take away the authority, love has no way of fully expressing itself; it doesn't have a backbone and it can't experience that contrast.
To support our blessed families, Launch Pad for this quarter is developing our new ministry called BlessedLife, Love as God Intended. Three departments will be created, and I'd like you to develop these three in your local area, whether you have a big church or a very small one. These departments are in the areas of education, counseling, and marriage preparation, so we can equip people going into marriage to be Blessed, and also equip people after they get Blessed, because life has a way of being messy, doesn't it? True or true? I'm glad you agree.
Marriage counseling can be amazing. I know it made an amazing difference for my wife and me one time when we went to a program with Betsy Jones. She had a big group; we discussed together; and we found out, "Wow, everyone's going through this." We were richly empowered by that meeting, which was quite a long time ago.
Restoring the ideal of creation is inheriting the true love of God by being a Blessed Family. But how does it say that in the Pledge? It says, "Restore the ideal of creation by restoring the original homeland." What does that mean? The original homeland is where God settles in the love of the True Family and the True Parents – and right now that place is Korea. However, as we're representatives of the True Parents and we're children of God, we who are way over here can spread the original homeland out to New Jersey, to Los Angeles, to Boston, to Albuquerque, New Mexico – and all over this land by making a difference in our communities. We can be the representatives of True Parents and give God's love and truth. And we can give the Blessing for people.
By sharing all these things we make life compelling. Imagine if you went to heaven all by yourself. Hello. You're wondering, "Where is everybody?" In LA we have a beautiful home for our True Parents that is also the parsonage where I stay. One time I was in the swimming pool, and I was all by myself in this beautiful mansion. Nobody else was there and I totally had a bad time swimming. So the beauty is that you can only go to heaven if you bring all your friends. You can only go to heaven if you come with Mom and Dad. Right now my mother and father are in Boston. Hi, Mom; hi, Dad.
And then bring all your relatives. What about all your friends? What about all your neighbors? You can have them all come together and bring them up for the party. In that way we are extensions of the original homeland out to our hometowns. In that sense we become messianic, in that we've been touched by God, we've been given this gift from God, and then we get the opportunity just to give it all away. How beautiful that is.
And that's why Lovin' Life Ministry is really the best gift for us to bring people to. I don't know about you, but I genuinely feel proud of Lovin' Life Ministry. I'm very excited about what's available. Yes, give that a hand. Yeah, you got it. Someone's out there waving. Right. I feel it.
So in conclusion, as you know, there's a lot to do. And I know what that feels like. Sometimes you feel, "Gosh, we have a lot of responsibility, don't we?" But there's more than one way to relate with responsibility. We can think of responsibility as something we have a relationship with. Sometimes we can relate with responsibility as burden, blame, guilt, sacrifice: "I've got to do it. I need to do it." That works to a certain degree, but that is by no means a powerful place to come from.
But what is responsibility? The way I'd word it is, "Responsibility is a gift you give yourself to be the CEO of your life and then you get to be in charge of your life." When you take charge of your life, you can make things happen.
When we stand on blame – "It's because of this thing that my life's like this," or "Because of this situation my life's like this," or "Because of this person my life's like this" – that's why we're not happy. But from my experience, I have found that whenever I stand on blame it's just a little permission slip to get me off the hook of taking responsibility and getting on with being happy. Sometimes we forfeit our happiness when just to get ourselves off the hook we blame somebody else.
But when we enter into a new relationship with responsibility, we realize that responsibility gives us access to be free. When we're free, we can love. When we can love, we can be happy. It's really counter-intuitive.
So then we can find creative solutions. In Los Angeles, some people challenged me when I said, "Let's bring our Lovin' Life into a movie theater." One person said to me, "What about fellowship and what about education?" And I said, "Well, let's just make more fellowship and education." In other words, we don't have to follow the old pattern. We can always create things with responsibility. So now we get together monthly at a big BBQ and we have fellowship before service. Now we have more opportunity for fellowship, and more opportunity for education than we ever had before because we together applied our creative capacities. We're ramping up.
You know, everyone, we're in 2012, and we know what that means. 2013 is right around the corner. It's coming close. And this is our opportunity to show the world. We don't have to worry, brothers and sisters. We have heavenly fortune. We've got it. Just by coming here today we're uniting with the True Children. Just by coming here today we're uniting with True Parents, so we've got heavenly fortune. All we have to do is open our mouths and share.
Share what moves you. Don't try to tell people what they should do or what's good for them. People are touched deeply when you share what touches you about your relationship with God and your life of faith.
Recently I've been going out with our sister Era Thompson in Los Angeles – Hello, Era. She's out there in the movie theater right now. She passes out Father's autobiography, but she has her own style of doing it. I said, "I want you to teach me," and I learned that she uses a very slow style. She just shares with people: "This man's life touched me in many ways and affected my life." I'm amazed. In about two seconds people are already talking to her, "Wow, I'd like to read that book. Really, he did that for you?"
So I learned from Era, and then just recently I met a girl named Natalie and another girl named Alejandra, who live right beside where I live. They're my next-door neighbors. I went next door and shared the autobiography with Natalie, but I did it Era-style, really slowly. I just met these wonderful people, and they're listening to me. I realized that we just have to open our mouths. We just have to share. Years ago, we didn't have anything to share. We just had a theory. Now we have so much to share.
Don't worry, brothers and sisters. I know life is at times up and down. We're wondering what's going on with our movement, doing this or doing that. Or we may feel our family's going this way and then that way. But all in all, we have to understand that we are amazing people because of True Parents. And we can be totally confident in that – and that's not arrogance or self-pride. We're proud, and we can say, "Yes, I'm great because of God." We have dignity, right? Give a hand for that.
In Jin Nim said one time, "If you come across too desperate, it's seriously going to flop. Just be yourself. Be grateful, and be grateful for no reason. Be grateful 'just because.'"
True Parents have given us the goal to accomplish the full 12,000 people finishing the two-day workshop. We brought 3,000 people last year, so we have to reach 9,000 people this year.
Thank you, Dr. Ann. "No problem." Right on.
If we think in the capacity of reality, coming from the viewpoint of reality, that is just so boring, isn't it? It's really boring if we think from the capacity of reality. But if we think from the capacity of what could we invent to make that possible, then it becomes exciting? I don't even know what the answer is, but guess what? I bet if I talk to you, we can figure it out, right? So this is an amazing opportunity.
For me – and I take a lot of risk in saying this right now – I'm not motivated by growing a church per se. That doesn't motivate me personally. Do you know what motivates me personally? What motivates me is simply sharing love. When I heard the Divine Principle, I got so clear about my life, I felt like it wasn't information that came into my head. It was more like something in me that could finally come out. I had a powerful experience with the Principle.
I know that because of my history and all the mistakes I made in my life, I don't deserve to be blessed at all. But God blessed me when he blessed me with my wife, and I totally understood that God was blessing me and giving me a new chance. Now that's what I'm interested in sharing. If that grows our church, well, that's wonderful. But that's what I'm excited about.
For those of you who know me, I need to ask you to forgive me because every time I'm in a workshop I always tell this story. But because I'm in front of 10,000 people now I get a chance to share it again. For those of you, who know this story, please just bear with me.
I had the opportunity to receive a box of Godiva chocolates from Mother Moon. Isn't that cool? There were about eight or twelve of them. They were these big truffles. And here's what she said. She said, "These chocolates taste so good. Every time you eat one, you've got to say, 'true love.'" And she said, "Scream out, 'True love!'" And I was thinking, "I am so doing that."
I said to myself, "You know what? I'm not going to be gluttonous. I'm just going to eat one a day." I ate my chocolate each day for breakfast. I'd open the fridge with intention, reach in there, and grab the truffle. Then my wife would just be rolling her eyes because she knew what was coming next. I'd throw it into my mouth and loudly mumble, "trfuve love" as I'd be eating this truffle.
Every day I was so disciplined. The first thing instead of eggs I had my truffle. And next morning again I'd loudly mumble "trfuve love" and again the next day, "trfuve love." Every day. There were about eight or twelve of them. About two weeks later I was thinking, "Wow, I really did it." She told me to eat that truffle and say "true love" and I united.
Then as I thought about it I went, "Wait a minute. I ate all those chocolates. I said 'true love,' and I never shared one with anybody. What kind of true love is that? Imagine what it would be like if I said – What's your name, sir, in the blue? "Rodney." – What if I said, "Rodney, I've got a chocolate that came from Mother Moon. Do you want one?" And then I would have said, "true love." That would have been true love.
So what is the chocolate? You're blessed. You're all blessed. Hello. You're all blessed. You've got the chocolate. You've got it. Now imagine if you kept that chocolate in your refrigerator. Hello. Let's go out and let's share that chocolate.
You know what another chocolate is? One is your family. Another chocolate is God's grace. Another chocolate is the truth. And another chocolate is Lovin' Life Ministry. You don't have to share Lovin' Life Ministry and all those other chocolates because you have to. Just share the chocolate "just because." Thank you very much.