Hyung Jin Moon
August 7, 2010
Hyung-jin nim spoke at Chung Pyung Training Center on August 7 to a large audience of members attending various summer workshops.
In our blessed families, what kind of words are we using: what do you say to your children, husband to wife, wife to husband, what kind of words do you use? Are they a blessing or a curse? From the same mouth can come a blessing or a curse. "Hey you dope, why can't you study? Why don't you do what your mother tells you to? Come over here, you! I told you not to do that." Isn't that how it is? Or "I'm home! Why isn't my dinner ready?" "Why won't you talk to me?"
What kind of things are going on in most families? We are blessed central families -- not cursed central families, right? What are we giving and receiving within our four-position foundations? This is a very important point.
In our homes, we shouldn't call our children angrily with words such as "Hey, you dope!" You should say, "Hey you, blessing, come here! Hey, blessing, I told you to put that away. Hey blessing, come over here!"
A child becomes what his parents call him. When we are raising our children, there are situations when we are angry, others when we are guiding them, and certainly times when we have to repair mistakes. Parents know they cannot always say nice things to their children: "Oh, you're watching TV again. Good girl! Oh, you're smashing your Father's car windscreen. Good boy!"
You can't say those things, can you? You have to be able to correct them, because they are children. Children need nurturing.
One-on-one with Trees of Life
True Parents are the root of your four-position foundation. Next, you have a husband-and-wife trunk, and then branches, one branch for each child. If you have three children, you have three branches. As branches grow, fruit appears on them, right? The important point is that there are (in this family) three branches. What happens to those branches if you don't nourish them? If you focus on the youngest, he might receive the most love, but all the branches need nurturing.
Children may have good memories of going out for meals together as a family. But the times that the whole family spends together are not what they remember best. It is the one-on-one times they spend with their parents. Think back over your lives. Oh, my father called me once, and he said this, and I remember that. My mom encouraged me in this way once.
Quite often, alas, one-on-one time with children happens when parents are angry. They vent their stress on their children, sometimes only because the children are smaller.
Our children should be able to say proudly to their friends, My father and mother are a blessed couple. But is there much difference? Your child's friend might reply, Your father and mother get angry just like mine; they are stressed out, just like my folks are.
We must be different from secular families, so whenever I visit blessed families, I make some requests. The first is that the parents must manifest the blessing in various ways. The second is that the father and mother must pass the blessing on to their children one by one.
They must make a promise and a plan. They promise to make one day every week "child's day." I have five children. How can we take care of them? We, too, are busy -- up early for the morning training, and when we finish our scheduled activities we get home about 9:30 PM. It's a lifestyle -- every day, going here and there -- where we might almost never be able to see our children.
Even though parents live in the same house as their children, they might ask, Who is this child? What is going on in her heart? They might not know at all. And the children might not even know what their father is doing. Even living in the same house, they might not know each other. A husband and wife, too, may be living side by side but their minds and hearts may be distant from each other. Is God happy or sad to see this? When He was creating the universe, is this what He was planning? Or was He imagining a family based on giving and receiving? The Principle is profound scripture. We have to put this into practice in our lives. We can only do that if the Principle is part of us.
A commitment to devote one-on-one time
We have five children in our family. It is hard to organize. It is hard with so many children once we are home in the evening but we have to do it.
What we do is this: Every week we put aside one day. Nowadays, it is every Wednesday. We have Shin-pal, Shin-man, Shin-goong, Shin-joon and Shin-deuk. So the first week, we make an appointment with Shin-pal. That Wednesday evening is his. Maybe he wants to eat noodles. So let's go to the noodle place! We go to a little restaurant and eat ramen. On Shin-pal's day only Shin-pal comes out with us. The others have to stay home because it's Shin-pal's day.
When we are together with Shin-pal, we don't ask things like, Why can't you study properly? We are focusing on Shin-pal, so we are not going to compare him with his brothers and sister. I might ask, Do you have anything that you'd like your father to pray about for you?
Maybe because he doesn't speak the way other children do, he is being ostracized.' So, maybe, he would ask me to please pray that he will be more accepted. I will also tell him some of the things I am doing with my work and ask him to pray for some points. This is how we do it.
One-on-one time with your children is a time of blessing, a time to pray with each other, or to promise to pray for specific things. It's so important.
So... another week goes by and this week it is our second son's day Shin-man. Now Shin-man and Shin-pal go around together a lot, because they are brothers of similar age. So on Shin-man's day, Shin-pal might say, Daddy, can't I come too on Shin-man's day? No. Today is Shin-man's day.
The following week is Shin-goong's day. She likes pizza. Goong, your dad has a few things going on, please pray for me. Do you have any difficulties at the moment? She might say she has trouble studying at her extracurricular class. Okay, your daddy will pray for you.
Shin-joon is a little more difficult. He has his King Daddy and his Queen Mommy. Joon is not with us at Hannam-dong. On his day, we go to Chung Pyung. Even if both of us cannot go, at least one of us does. We take him to a little place he likes. Each special children's day we must always feel thankful. We ask Joon to say three things that he is grateful for -- such as being able learn new things, or having a younger brother.
These times are also for the parents to enjoy, not just for the child. So, we don't go to a toy-store, for example. The child must take the dad and mom into consideration.
Our youngest is very cute, Shin-deuk. Because he is a very young child, we pray with him. The place is not so important. Spending the time is important. It's important that we nurture our children's spirituality. So let's pray for each other -- you pray for daddy. And we pray together at that time, too.
It takes five weeks to take them all out, one hour a week. It's not impossible. We work from 2:30 in the morning to late in the evening. Eighteen or twenty hours is a normal day for us, but no matter how busy we are, we cannot make excuses. Our child may also say, "Dad, Mom, I am so tired." But in our blessed families, investing our love and nourishing our branches -- each one of our children -- is so important.
My wife and I are making a little book for each of our children. After each child's day, we write a little letter to him or her. We might write, Please think about your grandparents. Please tell your daddy how things are going at school.
We will give them that book when they receive the blessing. Then we hope each child will feel, When my father and mother raised me, they made so much effort.
Why do we make so much effort? Because of True Parents' true love. Because we receive True Parents' true love, we do our best for our children. We are not perfect parents. We have made mistakes, but we've made effort. This is our family training. We have been doing this for a number of years and because of this, I have a personal relationship with each of my children.
Nurturing your grandchildren in advance
As I raise my children in this way, I am already raising my grandsons and granddaughters. I don't have any grandchildren, but I am nurturing them. I was driving in the car with Shin-man. He asked me, "When I have children, I'll have to have special days for them too, right?" He was about eight. If you invest your love into each child, into each branch one by one, it is already having a good influence on that branch's fruit.
How can we apply the Principle in practical terms, in the framework of our busy lives in the present reality, amid the many difficulties we face? This is an important question for Unification Church members. We have to not just listen to what we are taught, but we must practice it because we have to build Cheon II Guk. Right?
Whenever I visit blessed families, I always get them to promise to do this with their children.
Now, after you have had one day for each of your children, the next special day is for the parents. Brothers and sisters, if a couple fights, you are passing on something very bad. Children watch and learn, so if the husband and wife are living joyfully together, that is great. But what if the wife says something disparaging when her husband comes home, such as, "Oh, the old man's back." That's not so good, is it?
Expressing your love in front of your children
The husband must always embrace his wife in front of their children. A blessed couple must always show their children; we must enact a drama of love in front of our sons and daughters -- "My husband!" "My beloved wife!"
You must create the kind of experience that touches their hearts and surprises them. You want your children to receive the blessing, don't you? What is the best education for that? Of course, a candidate will attend workshops organized by the Blessed Family Department, but is that the best education? No. What's best is seeing your father and mother, from when you are a child, expressing love for each other. It's so important. Watching their parents, children will think, I want to live that kind of married life!
That's the best education. Teaching the Principle is not about a book. It is done through our lives. If you know how to practice it, I believe you will bring God and True Parents joy and have a good influence on the Unification Family.
No matter how busy True Parents were, even though they had many children, and even though they were away a lot and could not give us a lot of time, when they were with us, they always made some time. Members may not know this, but even when True Parents were overseas, they always wrote and sent letters to each of us. The returning lord, the king of kings, sending us letters! They always telephoned. They always did their best in the midst of their situation.
Brothers and sisters, we have our children because as blessed families we have inherited that true love. Blessed families should not become cursed families. Please be beautiful blessed families that take on the great task of making this world bright. Become families everyone is envious of, so that all people in the world want to have blessed families.