Realizing the Dream of One Global Family

Sun Jin Moon, FFWPU International President, shared the following message on February 13 on the occasion of True Parents’ Birthday.

Excellencies, distinguished delegates from around the world, including more than 150 current members of parliament, and for more than 50 nations, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, happy True Parents’ Birthday. It is my special privilege and honor to share a few words with you today on this very, very special occasion. Today, in the presence of True Mother, we honor and celebrate the birthdays of both my father and my mother. True Father would be 96 years old today and True Mother is a very young 73 years old.

On this glorious day, we celebrate their amazing life, legacy, and true lineage. The starting point of true peace, true love and the restoration of all humankind, we celebrate the both of True Parents. True Father was born in 1920 in a CheongJu township in North Korea during the Japanese occupation. He lived almost a century witnessing a world in a constant state of conflict, from the Korean War, the two World Wars, the Vietnam War, the Middle East Conflict, terrorism, 9/11, and every manner of global crises in between a steady stream of turmoil, suffering and confusion. Yet despite his war-torn childhood, imprisonment and religious persecution, he overcame every temptation to become bitter, cynical, or resentful. Rather, he committed himself gratefully to God’s Providence and began to teach and travel the world, bringing to light the principles of peace, true love, forgiving ones enemies, and living for the sake of others.

The first line of the autobiography tells a stoic vision of peace he embraced even as a child. He writes:

“I have lived my life with just one thought. I wanted to bring about a world where there were no wars. Where humankind lives in love. Perhaps some say, ‘How is that possible? You are thinking about peace when you are a child?’ Is it so astonishing that a child would dream of peace? Perhaps for people who experience these horrors of bloody bodies and broken bones, peace has been something that could only be imagined in a dream. Peace, though, is not difficult to accomplish. To begin with, we can find peace in the air, the natural environment, and in the people around us.”

Please take this moment to look and meet your neighbour who are all peace loving global citizens. True Father’s dreams of peace live in each and every one of you. During the nearly 80 years of his public ministry, he gathered and witnessed to millions of people from around the globe uplifting and inspiring them to an awareness of a higher purpose and conscientious of the universe, and an understanding of the true heart and nature of our Heavenly Parent.  He taught that we are all Heavenly Parent’s children and that at the root of all life there is true love. As such, we must honor each life as sacred. He opened churches, schools, and businesses all to spread this message of peace and oneness with each other and all of creation.

He writes:

“The truth of the universe is that we must acknowledge each other and help each other. The principle of the universe is for everyone to live together for the sake of one another. Anyone who deviates from this will face a certain ruin. If nationalities and religions continue to attack each other maliciously, humanity has no future. There will be an endless cycle of terror and warfare until one day we become but extinct, but we are not without hope. There is clearly hope. I have kept this dream of hope and always kept this dream of peace alive. What I want is to wipe away completely the walls and fences that divide the world in myriad of ways, and to create a world of unity. I want to tear down the walls between religions and races and fill in the gap between the rich and the poor. Once that is done, we can reestablish the world of peace that God created in the beginning. I am talking about a world where no one goes hungry, where no one sheds tears. I am talking about healing a world where there is no hope, which is lacking in love. We need to go back to the pure hearts that we had as children, to shed our desire to possess ever increasing amounts of material wealth and restore our beautiful essence back to the human beings. We need to go back to the principles of peace and the breath of love we learned as we were being carried on our father’s backs.”

This passage is from True Father’s first chapter of his autobiography, a section entitled, “What I Learned About Peace While Being Carried On My Father’s Back”. In this section, he tells a story of when he was a young boy and he would go off to play in the forest and in the hills, and being so completely immersed in nature that night would fall and he would fall asleep in the woods.

He writes:

“My father would be forced to come find me. When I heard my father shouting in the distance, ‘Yong Myong! Yong Myong!’ I couldn’t help but smile, even as I slept. My name as a child was Yong Myong. The sound of his voice would awaken me, but I would pretend to be asleep. He would hoist me on his back and carry me home. That feeling I had as he carried me down the hill feeling completely secure and able to let my heart beat completely at ease, that was peace. That is how I first learned about peace while being carried on my father’s back.”

That peace was true parental love. This unconditional, eternal love a parent has that calls out and stumbles through the dark to find his children and to carry them home.

Throughout history, such love is a love of God, our Heavenly Parent. The same love that True Father and True Mother have been giving blessed family members worldwide. The selfless, sleepless, caring love, carrying us all home to Cheon Il Guk on their backs as God’s children in complete security and peace. This is true love and these are our True Parents. This is the truth of our Heavenly Parent. Being given this gift of love, we need to make this dream of peace, which True Father had as a child, a living reality. Let us be like children again, sons and daughters who live to spread true love and carry on our backs all the children of the world. We must open our hearts and experience the same eternal peace of being lovingly carried by Heavenly Parent’s back. We must pass down this precious lineage and tradition to future generations.

Thank you True Father. We wish you the happiest 96th birthday. Aju.

True Mother was born in 1943 in Ahnju Township of North Korea. She was only eight years old when the Korean War broke out. As a young child, she witnessed gruesome deaths, incomprehensible destruction of her homeland and its people. She harrowingly fled for her life with her grandmother and her mother, and miraculously was reunited with her uncle, who was stationed in an army base in Daegu, South Korea. Despite all the horrors she encountered in her early years, True Mother was the embodiment of peace, an unscathed purity, piety, and goodness. In 1960, she was engaged and Blessed to True Father on April 11th. From that day, she has walked the hilly parental path with our True Father. Today they carry the world’s children on their backs and bring them in peace and love back home.

In True Father’s autobiography, he writes about True Mother:

“My wife’s dream is to see all women raised as true daughters with filial hearts who could create peace at home, in our communities, in our nations, and in our world. The women’s movement being carried out by my wife serves a goal of true families which are the root of peace in all areas of life. Throughout history, women have been persecuted, but I predict this will change. The coming world will be one of reconciliation and peace based on women’s maternal character, love, and sociability. The time is coming when the power of women will save the world. Mother had to become True Mother, a true wife, and a true daughter. To complete even one of these three missions, is difficult, but Mother has completed them all. Also, she had to be a mother by giving birth to 14 sons and daughters. To this day, no one has known Mother. I invested myself in her three stages, formation, growth, and completion because it is time to seek sons and daughters in a perfected world devoid of the Fall. You can proclaim that True Father is Sun Myung Moon and True Mother is Hak Ja Han.”

They are our eternal True Parents and on this day we sincerely offer them both our eternal gratitude and love for carrying us all and teaching us what it means to have true love and world peace. I pray that all of you can learn more deeply about them, and study True Parents lives and their great works. For these few passages, I have only read the tip of the iceberg of their long history of living for the sake of others. My hope and my prayer is that we can take their love and their wisdom and pay it forward to future generations, and to all people of the world who have yet to have felt the parental love of being carried safely home securely, peacefully with true love. Wishing our True Parents the happiest birthdays. May Heaven’s blessing pour forth on each one of you, your families, and your nations. Happy True Parents’ Birthday!