Celebrating a Re-Imagined Ministry

In Jin Nim
May 13, 2012
Washington, DC

Good morning, Washington, D.C. Happy, happy Mother’s Day, to all of you. Happy Mother’s Day especially to the women in the audience. I’m delighted to be with you this morning. We have two more district pastors to go – Rev. Tengan and Rev. Francis – but I asked Rev. Francis if he would allow me to speak this morning because it would be a wonderful opportunity to congratulate all the mothers in the audience and to wish all women all across the country a happy Mother’s Day. Rev. Francis graciously allowed me to take the pulpit this morning.

The Heart of a Mother

Whenever I am getting ready to come up on stage I so much enjoy listening to the wonderful music by the Lovin’ Life band, and today in addition we had a little taste of the ballroom ministry that Ariana, my daughter, has been investing her heart and soul into.

She came behind stage and said to me, “Mommy, I am so nervous.” I said, “W hy are you so nervous? You’re not dancing.” She said, “Yes, but I’ve never been so nervous because those are my babies out there.” So I said, “W ell, wow. You haven’t found the one yet that you’re going to go to the Blessing with, and you have yet to embark on the next level of your life as a Blessed Couple that will hopefully build a beautiful ideal family so that Mommy can be a grandma real soon.” But seeing how much she loves her babies, that every ounce and every cell in her body and every prayer in her soul is out there with her children on stage, I said, “S ome day you’re going to make a very lucky man really happy and you’re going to be an awesome mom someday.”

Those of us who’ve had children know that is exactly how we feel. When I think about this, and about our Heavenly Parent , I realize this is how much our Heavenly Father and our Heavenly Mother love us, because every one of us is a precious, unique, and divine creation of their love. All of us have infinite and divine value, and the gift of life we’ve been given is an opportunity to make something beautiful out of it, to give back to our wonderful Heavenly Parents, thanking them in an attitude of gratitude for a life well lived and for the fantastic community we have.

As senior pastor or as the mother figure for the country, nothing makes me more proud than to see my team or my children doing so well. I was so tickled pink when GPA came back from the choir competition. After four months of practicing, thanks to Mrs. Kubo and the investment that Mitsuru and the Lovin’ Life Band made, the kids came back with the Number One Gold Medal. It’s amazing.

I know there were moments of difficulty and great mumblings because they had to practice and persevere. They had to work toward the goal. But these kids decided that they are representing America, they are representing all of you, and as representatives they are going to give the different choirs that have been doing this for a very long time their greatest competition . Then I felt that they went with the right spirit.

My philosophy when it comes to the arts is that technique is the bare minimum. A lot of the other choirs had great technique, maybe perhaps better technique. But music and the arts are a medium through which we channel the divine, we channel the spirit, so that we can feel imbued with what God wants to share or partake with all of us.

They didn’t have the best technique, but they had the best attitude and the greatest spirit . They knocked the socks off of a really, really tough Korean audience, and came back with the Gold Medal. This is truly the taste of things to come in America if we can inspire the younger generation to excel, to be externally excellent and internally excellent human beings. Once they have been bitten by their passions and their desire to make life worthwhile, there’s no limit to what our children can accomplish. Therefore, there’s no limit to what we can expect from the future of this great movement and this great community.

“We Must Disturb the Present”

I was so delighted when we got together for the district pastors meeting at the beginning of the year. We all know that the Lovin’ Life Ministry we share every Sunday has been a work in progress for the last three years. W hen I first unveiled the vision, I think a lot of people were not too happy, were not too excited, or did not quite understand what we wanted to accomplish together with our membership here in the United States.

But the beginning of this year was truly an inspiring one for me because this year was the first time that all the district pastors said, “I get it now. I get what you’re trying to do and I’m all in.” With that foundation in place , we came back from Korea with Father’s motto for this year, basically asking all of us to take ownership of our faith and our lives.

One of my favorite quotes is by Catherine Booth, co founder and mother of the Salvation Army, which has done so many great works all across not just her own country where she started, but all around the world. She has touched numerous people, a nd one of the things she used to say is , “I f we are to better the world, we must disturb the present.” In fact, we must make people uncomfortable. We must challenge them ; we must provoke them. We must provoke them to respond in order to better the world. This has been one of my favorite quotes.

W hen my father comes as the messiah, as the anointed one, as the Lord of Lords, he doesn’t come alone: He comes together with our True Mother as the True Parents of all humankind. The messiah does not come to make us comfortable in our own skin or to make us comfortable with familiar things; he comes with the breaking news. He comes to challenge us to do better, to win the gold medals in each part of our lives. He comes to provoke us to think and to re- imagine a world where we can live as one family under God.

The Messiah comes to disturb our preconceived notions of how, for instance, a man and a woman should relate to each other. When Father asks us to take ownership in this year of the Black Dragon – a year in the East when enterprises can come to great fruition and great success – he knows that tremendous fortune comes with this year.

Our True Parents are seizing upon this heavenly fortune and saying, “H ere, take it. Own it. Make it yours. Be all that you can be. Be the empowered individual, the empowered couple and the inspired family that is going to connect to the world and contribute something that will make lives for all of humanity that much better.”

Building a Better Family of Faith

Our True Father has a finger on the pulse of providential history. He knows what’s going to happen. W hen Father asks us to take ownership, then it’s time for the district pastors not just to be familiar in their seat and not just to have the senior pastor do the job, but it’s time for them to own up. It’s time for them not just to say that they’re all in, but to act upon it, so we are not one pastor ministering to the flock but we are a family and team; so we are one family under God working together in the process of building a better world and a better future for our community, for our children, and for the sake of the world.

F or those of us who thought that Lovin’ Life Ministries is all about building the pulpit, or all about building one megachurch, I would say, “ Nay. We have to disturb our preconceived notions of what a ministry is. This is not the building up of one charismatic figure or one senior pastor. Lovin’ Life Ministries is about building the future. It’s about building a family.” A mother’s job is not to always be the mother for the rest of her life, but for her to raise her young children – just as Ariana has done – to make them better than she is. That’s the mother’s job – to have them go forward and represent their community and their faith better than she did. That’s the mother’s job.

So we must disturb our notion of what a ministry or a senior pastor is. This may be making a lot of people uncomfortable, but at the same time, this is the way we make a better community, a better team, and a better family. I want to thank all of you for supporting the district pastors as they have taken the pulpit and experienced the burden of the pulpit at the Manhattan Center.

O nce they have come across the Manhattan Center pulpit, they can understand much better, I believe, how much work goes into building a ministry and putting together a worship service like this. There’s a whole group of people that we must thank every day for their hard work behind the scenes. It’s a family effort, and that’s the most important thing in our lives – our family, our community, our movement, and our humanity.

I think that the foundations we have laid at the beginning of the year, with all the district pastors being all in and all of you being so supportive has provided a wonderful opportunity for a lot of the second-generation who’ve not gone through their own conversion experience to hear how these different district pastors came into their faith, or found God, or found our True Parents. I want to thank all the district pastors who have spoken, but I would like to mention the last three who have spoken: Rev erend Takami, Rev erend Krishnek, and also Rev erend Lamson.

I didn’t know that Rev erend Takami had this wonderful story about an oversized sweater. I had no idea that he was so inspired by his wife knitting him an oversized sweater that he was overcome with the spirit and wanted immediately to start family life, which resulted in five kids much later. It’s those kind of stories that tell you a little bit about the man. Now whenever I think about Rev erend Takami, I’m thinking, “O h, perhaps other wives in the audience might think about knitting their husband an oversized sweater.”

Or Rev erend Krishnek with the wonderful show and tell about Alaska and all the great pictures he shared with our community. And let’s remember Rev erend Lamson making a plea to our community to really be that Lovin’ Life community opening ourselves up – not being judgmental but welcoming the prodigals to come back to the family, to the fold, and also reaching out and bringing a friend to church. It was a wonderful, wonderful message. I must say that I am immensely proud of all of the District Pastors and I want to thank all of them who have spoken thus far.

The Value of True Parents

When I think about the job that I have here at headquarters, I feel so lucky to be part of this American team, and to be living at this time with our True Parents. When I think about all the men and women in history who have gone before and who will come after, I feel like all of us seated here are lottery winners in that we get to live and walk and breathe together with our True Parents, doing the good work that we are doing.

Our True Parents are extreme ly important to our lives and to the world because they come bearing the breaking news. The teachings of our Father, Dr. Rev. Sun Myung Moon, have taught us that Jesus did not come to die on the cross; Jesus dying on the cross is just half the story. Jesus was supposed to live and to find his beautiful wife so that he could be the True Parents of all mankind and help the children of God graft onto the heavenly lineage through the process of the Blessing.

In essence, what Jesus Christ should have done 2,000 years ago is exactly what our True Parents are very well known for all across the world: the mass weddings. The Blessing given at the mass weddings is the portal through which the sinful children of the world can become the divine, holy, and purified children of the world. T his is the gift that our True Parents bring .

The fact that we have True Mother in place, for me as a woman is extreme ly inspiring for me every day. Because I was a student of theology at a divinity school, when I’ve looked at our movement I’ve often thought and said , “O ur movement started in the East, in Korea, and a lot of cultural baggage, the good and the bad, remains with us in our community. When will women finally find equal footing in terms of their eternal value? And when will mothers be recognized as the crucial ingredient that makes a couple into parents? And when will women be supported and nurtured to be the amazing leaders they can be?” These are the questions that I’ve often thought about.

But the great thing about indemnity and restoration and the work of providential history is that Father , together with our True Mother, is taking our providential history forward. Father started as the messiah, coming to deliver the breaking news, coming to find that wife, that beautiful daughter of God, so he can stand together with her as the True Parents of all mankind. But once they started working together, our True Mother – our beautiful True Mother – also started the work of restoration.

Her suffering and determination to see victory in her lifetime now qualifies her to stand as victorious Eve next to victorious Adam, our True Father. S he has cleansed the way for all of us women to break away from the burdens of sins, the burdens of misunderstanding, and the burdens of being relegated as second-class citizens in our lives and in our world.

Because she can stand so victoriously as the original and divine daughter of God together with our True Father, women can find renewed value in themselves. We can lift our heads up high as divine daughters of God, and we can be propelled, supported, and nurtured to do many, many great works, including working actively in the life of faith, together with our fathers, our brothers, and our sons.

God’s True Intention

This is the amazing thing about our True Parents. They have come to tell us that the half story of Jesus’ crucifixion, and thus the paradigm of piety being the life of sacrifice and denial, was not the true intention of our Heavenly Parents when they created Adam and Eve, their son and daughter . The true intention or the true wish that our Heavenly Parents had for all of us is not that we live our lives in denial, all alone, just like Jesus Christ. What they really intended, hoped , and wished was for Jesus to be blessed in marriage , to build an ideal family, to be a parent so he could fully experience the feeling that our Heavenly Parents felt when they created all of us. That’s what God had wanted for Jesus and that’s what God had wanted for all of us.

Had Jesus married 2,000 years ago, all those good Christians, all those good pious people, would not have had to waste away in an ascetic lifestyle, or in a life of denial – many times flagellating themselves because they saw themselves as sinful, worthless, and almost like creatures crawling on the earth, not worthy to lift up their head to the Lord.

We were meant to be much, much greater. We were meant to be the empowered and inspired sons and daughters of God. Had Jesus married, we would have seen families, instead of these single men and women who gave their lives to the faith, foregoing the true intention that God desired for all of them, which is marriage, family, and the experience of parental love through having children of their own.

Had Jesus married, our world would be a very different place. We would have understood that our Heavenly Parent does not want a life of denial for all of us. Our Heavenly Parent wants for all of us to be fulfilled in our lives, in our life of faith, and in building our own ideal family.

So when our True Father comes and says , “Jesus was not supposed to be crucified; he was supposed to have a family, ” the messiah is offering us the wonderful gift of the Blessing.

“R” for Relationships

W henever I think of the gift of the Blessing, I like to think back to a cartoon I saw quite a few months ago. In the cartoon, some pious brothers are working deep inside the earth in a dark and desolate cave . And under the light of a flickering candle these brothers are all huddled together around a wooden table, transcribing and translating manuscripts that contained the words from our Heavenly Father and from our dear brother Jesus Christ.

This is how they lived their life. They’re all crouched over; they’re all wrinkled; and they look miserable, like they have not eaten a decent meal for weeks. Their eyes are googly and bloodshot, but these brothers are so pious. They’re so absolutely determined that they’re going to translate and transcribe these precious words . And these pious brothers are writing down the word celibate. “God is asking us, all of us, to live a life of celibacy.” They’re writing these words and these letters as if they’re the most precious thing.

Then in the midst of all this solemn work a young upstart brother who doesn’t quite have the right haircut comes running down into the cave and says, “B rothers, brothers, we have been wrong.” In the cartoon, the brothers look up and say, “W hat are you talking about?” All of these older men, these solemn, serious, half-starved , and miserable men say, “W hat are you talking about?”

This young upstart replies , “B rothers, brothers, we are transcribing and translating it wrong.” So these other brothers say , “W hat are you talking about? We have been here at work for decades. We’ve been doing this good and great work. What are you talking about?” T hen this young upstart says, “B rothers, you have translated and transcribed the word celibate wrong. It’s not celibate, but God is commanding us to celebrate.” So the young upstart said, “W e forgot the R.” And therefore, all of human history has been stressing the importance of celibacy, a life of denial, an ascetic lifestyle, a life in which we forego the most precious gift in our lives, the Blessing. But the word that God spoke was not for us to be celibate but for us to celebrate. So we forgot the R, the R that stands for relationships .

The reason we need True Parents in our lives is that they bring us the breaking news saying , “L ook, the greatest gift that God is giving to all of us is the Blessing.” And Blessing means not to waste away as a single person, miles and miles down in some dark, solemn cave for decades, but to celebrate our lives by taking that step forward, finding that beautiful wife or that handsome husband, and building something beautiful and awesome, not just wishing for it in our dreams.

I often wonder, “How many of the solemn and starved brothers miles and miles down into the earth have dreamed about a beautiful dance like the one we saw with Jana and Ryan up here ?” I’m sure even if they’re transcribing these solemn words, their innate desire is to experience love, something as beautiful and as glorious as two dancers whirling around on stage, expressing the beauty of being alive with every cell in their body.

I’m sure that these brothers, just like you and me, have often dreamed about these things. But now with our True Parents we have a chance to turn it into reality and to experience it in our own lives. When you pick up a magazine anywhere – at the airport or the mall or a bookstore – and you peruse the different magazines , one of the favorite topics they always come back to is how to make a relationship better : “H ow’s your relationship?” The beauty of the Divine Principle is that it gives us the tools to make your relationship work.

The R word, relationship, is a loaded word and nobody really knew how to go about having a great relationship in the context of a family, or between a husband and wife, or between siblings, colleagues, and friends . Nobody knew how we need to treat each other, to be kind and generous to each other.

Our True Parents come to give us the tools and the understanding of how to work these things out by going through the experience of building ideal families of our own. Our True Father has often mentioned that the family is the textbook of love. That’s where you learn about all the different relationships, the vertical and the horizontal, the relationships between husband and wife, between parents and child, and between siblings. This is how we work on ourselves, by truly rubbing up against each other, honing our skills to be a better human being. This is the gift our True Parents bring .

Those of us who have mistakenly understood “liv ing for the sake of others” as meaning that we need to die for the sake of others can now realize that God’s intention in telling us to celebrate our lives is not that we become a shriveled up human being , like a light bulb that’s not plugged to the circuit in the wall.

Heavenly Father wants us to become a luminous light channeling the magical electrical current coming through the circuit, so that we can brilliantly share our light with the rest of the world. That is what our Heavenly Father wants us to do when he asks us to celebrate.

I f you really think about it , the work of L ovin’ L ife has a couple of things that we need to think about. Lovin’ Life Ministries comes to help us reposition our understanding of our lives. Many of us of the first -generation thought that it had to be a life of denial – it had to be mission and nothing else, mission and no family, mission and no kids, mission above all else. And many of us were burned out along the way.

We need to reposition our thinking to understand that in order to celebrate our lives, or in order to celebrate our faith in our community we need to recognize that God’s original intention is not for us to be living a life of denial to the extent that we can no longer function as healthy, normal, and emotional spiritual human beings. We need to live a life of fulfillment. We need to be alive. We need to be joyful. We need to be happy. We need to share laughter.

The Importance of Having Fun

When I was much younger and we had many Divine-Principle workshops that all of the second -generation were asked to go to , many times the teachers looked at me and said, “T hat girl is truly hopeless. She’s too happy. She’s not serious.” In Korea, if you smile too much in a classroom setting, you’re seen as lightweight. You’re seen as lacking gravitas. You’re seen as being somebody who’s not serious about the matter at hand.

But , when I was younger, I was truly happy. I was happy to be alive, happy to be learning something new. If you were not sitting there gravely, concentrating on the message at hand, however, you were seen as something lightweight. Your face had to be constricted; your body had to be scrunched over and you had to have clenched fists each time to show your faith – if you didn’t, you were seen as somebody who doesn’t understand.

I realized when I became a mother that if you want to raise healthy, competent children, you cannot be constantly looking with furrowed brow; you cannot hold a clenched fist and be serious all the time. If you do that, you ’re going to scare your children away.

I realized, because I home -schooled my kids, that in order to be an effective teacher and an effective mother guiding and nurturing these kids, I had to be fun. I had to laugh. I had to attract them into the classroom to want to learn, and I had to make it interesting. I could not just lecture, I had to make it interactive, to give them a chance to respond and contribute. The greatest learning took place when the kids were having fun.

So when we think about re- branding our church and re positioning our concepts from what they were to what they need to be – from denial to fulfillment, laughter, fun, and excitement – interactive relationships are crucial to the work that we need to do in terms of building healthy families, communities, and the world.

Rethinking Old Concepts

Lovin’ Life is here to help us re think a lot of the old concepts that were stifling, and to help us liberate ourselves from the old concepts or the old models of “W e cannot do this.” “We cannot have rock music as a part of our worship.” Why not? “We cannot have people that don’t look quite right on stage.” Why not? Does the rock band have to all be in three-piece suits, brothers and sisters? “We can’t have a church in a movie theater.” Why not? Lovin’ Life is a music ministry. In a movie theater, you get Dolby surround sound. You get the best sound possible, and the visuals are pretty good, too.

In a movie theater there’s a lobby and an extra room for Lovin’ Life kids. It’s different; it’s new, but why not? So it helps us re think – after all the no’s that we’ve had in our lives – to say, “W ell, why not? Three-piece suits might be great behind a pulpit, but perhaps jeans on stage on the singers would be more natural. It might be more comfortable and more cutting-edge.” These are the things that Lovin’ Life wants to share with all of you.

T he thing that I’m so grateful for is, despite your reservations and apprehensions, all of us and all of you have given it a go. After three years, we can see the difference in that our church community has a lot of young people. W hen you go to other churches, you realize that there aren’t that many young people there. That’s what we want: We want our future to be supported and nurtured in this beautiful thing called our community so the future can be that much brighter.

Lovin’ Life is here to help us restructure our concepts of the wilderness mentality, which was one of mere survival. We were merely trying to survive for the past four or five decades out in the wilderness. We were like these little platoons going into combat – go ing out and coming in under the strong male leadership of a sergeant or a colonel or a general. It’s “command and control” in the wilderness mentality.

But right now we’re in the S ettlement A ge, so the settlement mentality has to be different. The Settlement Age calls for more of a compassionate leadership instead of that male aggressive, command- and -control leadership that we have become accustomed to. In this Age of Settlement we need a different kind of leadership, a compassionate, nurturing, caring, and supportive leadership that inspires and empowers the people to connect, contribute, and inherit the true love of God.

A Compassionate Leadership

The compassionate leadership is more feminine. So when we think about the advent of True Parents in our lives , we come to know how supremely important it is that we have the masculine and the feminine encapsulated in this beautiful partnership called F ather and Mother. They work together. Sometimes Father goes forward, but then sometimes M other goes forward. They rely on each other. They are each other’s best friend and confidante, and they work together because they have a common goal. They want to build a beautiful family, a beautiful family of God.

Th e male leadership that we’ve been so accustomed to is something that our True Parents basically said, “W ell, yes, a lot of you like those old CARP leaders that just told you or commanded you, and all you had to do was obey.” All we had to do was obey. But the next spiritual leader that our True Parents have prepared for us, Dr. Hyung Jin Moon, is truly a symbol of a compassionate leader. His style is very different from the old models of MFT captains or CARP leadership. It’s not like a great aggressive revolution.

H is leadership style is a compassionate one in that he listens and he is not afraid to care. He is not afraid to go down onto his knees to lift up his brothers and sisters ; he is not afraid to be kind, and he is not afraid to be like the zephyr, the calm, soothing northern wind that gives you the airlift so you can expand your wings and truly soar.

That’s the kind of leadership that is required at this time. W hen Father comes as the messiah, and Father and Mother come as the True Parents, they are here to make the world better. They are here to disturb the present. What do they do with the old model of the church? I don’t think that 40 or 50 years ago anyone ever dreamed that a woman would be standing at the pulpit, or that a woman would be leading this country, but there you go. And guess what? It disturbed a lot of us, including me.

That’s how True Parents work. They come to provoke ; they come to move us forward. They come to tell us, “H ave no fear because True Parents are here.” The Bible says in I John 4:18, “T here is no fear in love. Perfect love casteth out fear.”

“Have No Fear, True Parents Are Here”

If we honestly ask ourselves , “W hat are the greatest struggles in my life ?” I think that honestly all of us will have to say that many times when we feel inhibited and feel like there’s an obstacle we cannot overcome, it’s because we are paralyzed by fear. We’re paralyzed in thinking that we’re worthless, we’re not good enough, we just can’t do it.

The great thing about our True Parents is that they are here telling us, “Y ou can absolutely do it. There is nothing you cannot accomplish because you are a divine son or a daughter of God. It doesn’t matter what you’ve done before. It’s about here and now. It’s about what you can do now and what you will do later.” They give us the hope to believe in ourselves, just like the father or mother who is behind most every successful child .

For those of us who have families of our own, we know that when children start to walk one of the things they most like to do as they’re struggling to find their footing, and they’re putting one foot in front of the other trying to take those first precious steps forward is to look into our eyes – the eyes of the father or the mother or the parent or whoever happens to be there. The child is not looking down at his or her feet. The child is not looking at how much progress, or what he or she may trip over. The child is looking into your eyes, and the child knows no fear as long as we are there watching . The child knows, “Because you are there, I can do it. I can do it.”

I t is having you there that gives the child courage to have no fear. Even if the child falls over or tumbles or even nips his or her knees, the child gets up and does it again because the child is looking into your face and saying, “M ommy and Daddy are telling me, ‘I can walk, I can walk.’” That’s how a child learns to try.

But if we’re one of those too-scared parents, not giving the child the latitude or the room to maneuver and make his or her own mistakes and then get up knowing that we’re always there, or if we’re too helpful, too much there and always holding his or her hand, the child will never learn to walk.

Our True Parents are saying, “Listen, America, True Parents will be spending more and more time in Asia and elsewhere, but you guys can learn how to walk because we are here. We are here. Have no fear because True Parents are here, and as long as True Parents are here, there is nothing that we cannot accomplish and nothing we cannot do. The only thing you have to fear is fear itself.”

Work, Wok, Walk

The great thing about our community is that we’re not just Korean and we’re not just Japanese . If you go to a Korean church, everybody is Korean. If you go to many of the churches in Harlem, everybody is black. If you go to a church in Crystal City, everybody may be white. But at Lovin’ Life the great and beautiful thing about our community is that we have all races and all cultures represented here.

A s we go through the process together with Lovin’ Life Ministries in each district all around the country – more than 100 churches altogether – of repositioning our thinking by re thinking the old concepts we’ve had that have kept us petrified over the years, let’s welcome in more creativity and innovative ways of doing things. As we think about restructuring our mentality from that of survival-hood under the wilderness mentality to that of prosperity and growth in the Settlement Age, we realize that in this community we have the added benefit of having not just all different races but also different generations. We have grandparents all the way down to grandchildren.

So you never know. You might be seated next to a beautiful Japanese lady who turns to you after service and says , “ Let’s wak hahd.” And when a Japanese person says, “ Let’s wak hahd,” I know my brain is thinking, “W hat does she mean, wak ?” What does wak mean? I’m sure she’s trying to say, “ Let’s work hard,” but she says, “ Let’s wak hahd.”

But I kind of like that. I kind of dig it, because if you listen carefully to her heart, to what she’s really saying, she’s giving not one but three messages. She’s not telling us just to “work hard ” – just work, work, work – she’s saying “wak hahd.” Maybe she wants us to be like beautiful vegetables sautéing in a beautiful wok somewhere. So we can be creative with our cooking, we can be creating with our ingredients. Let’s “wak hahd” and feed our families, give them the nutrition they need so they can do great things.

Or in saying, “let’s wak hahd, ” she may be reminding us, Don’t forget to take that moment to enjoy the sunshine, to enjoy the blue sky, to have this special time with God, and to say, “Thank you, God. Thank you for this life. Thank you for this ability to work together, hand in hand, with all the beautiful children, your children of the world, whom I can call as my brothers and sisters.”

If we have that kind of a heart and that kind of a mentality, then work becomes “wak ” and it also becomes “walk” all together. T hat’s what Lovin’ Life is all about. W e are here t o do the good work of sharing the breaking news, but we’ve got to do some walking, don’t we? We’ve got to walk every now and then to make sure we have enough sustenance to go on.

This is an incredible time, and this is an incredible place in that America has been specially prepared as one of the greatest superpowers of the world to exercise its ability to influence. As we go about our daily business, we must not forget about our brothers and sisters in Japan who are still fighting to exercise their religious freedom under a constitution that guarantees religious freedom. We must continue to work the good fight, and work together as one family – all of our brothers and sisters from different nations and different countries, so we can not only dream and talk about it, but also do the hard work of building the one family under God that our Heavenly Parent is waiting for all of us to establish.

Invest in Your Community!

Brothers and sisters, please continue your ardent support for both Rev erend Francis, who has been kind of nudged back, and, last but not least, Rev erend Tengan, so that we can have a great East-West unity – America unified under a united ministry, in which we share the same message. H ere in Washington, it’s important to have a united ministry, not just for ourselves, but for our kids.

You can watch the service in the confines of your bedroom, in your jammies and slippers, with a nice hot glass of cocoa, but if you really want to invest in the future, if you really want to invest in your community and in your kids, please remember that no successful family can be an island unto itself. If you want a successful family, you need the help of a successful community.

Community is a natural and an essential ingredient for you and me to have healthy kids. Kids need to interact with each other to be inspired and empowered and to want to connect, contribute, and inherit. Even if you have to trek a good hour or two to make it to Sunday Service every week , it’s the least that we can do as mothers and fathers.

When I was a mother in Boston taking care of classical pianists – my two kids, Rexton and Ariana – I did whatever was necessary to get them the best music lessons possible. We drove hours every day for their lessons and master classes. We drove down to New York City – that’s six or seven hours of driving – for a one- or two-hour lesson every other week, or whatever was required. This is the least that most mothers are willing to do for their child’s classical music education.

Now think about education for the child’s moral, spiritual, and emotional growth. Don’t you think we as parents can do much better than some of the parents who spend six or seven hours in a car every week to drive their child down from Boston to New York City, or Boston to Philly so the child can take master classes at Curtis or at Julliard School? Don’t you think the lessons learned in the context of a community and in the context of worshipping together as a family are much more valuable music lessons?

This is the reason why in Washington I need your support. I need the support of you mothers and fathers out there to go the extra mile for the sake of your kids, and for the sake of your community. T his is a Mother’s Day when mothers can sit back and say, “O kay, Dad, Husband, serve me.” But in the true Lovin’ Life fashion, this is also a time when the mothers can be re energized, re- incentivized, re- empowered to say, “H ey , the sisters are usually the backbone of any ministry. So imagine if the mothers would be inspired to go that extra mile for their child; imagine what that child will be in the future.

There is no reason why our children cannot be the president of the United States. There is no reason why our children should not be winning the Nobel Peace Prize in the future. There is no reason why our children cannot be Yo Yo Ma or give Bono a run for his money. There is nothing that our children cannot do as long as we are here and we’re investing in them. That’s the way we assure the future of the world. That is the way we leave the world in better hands than we found it.

F or those of you who were awake when Rev erend Cutts gave you a couple of pointers to remember, “Leave the plus. Leave the world better than you found it.”

I wish you once again a wonderful and beautiful Mother’s Day. Please go out inspired and empowered. Please connect to the ministries in your district. Please work with your youth pastors and district pastors to make magic happen. United ministry is just the backbone, the core. You are the flesh that makes it real and alive, that makes it inviting and invigorating.

A s we continue the good work of building this ministry, I wish you the greatest love from our True Parents. God bless.