Community and Providence For Boston, MA Unification Church

To the best of my knowledge, the Unification project is the first time in history to attempt calling a “family” the founder of a religion.

Every religion is founded by a person, not a family. Jesus, Buddha, Prophet Muhammad, even founders who were married with family, none has ever sought to have the whole family found their religion.

A family is a relational unit built on the seven cardinal points of a sphere, and the infinite shades and qualities of love that flow along four key axes. These are taught in Unification language as “The Four Great Realms of Heart. And the three Great Kingships.”

Presuming to build a stable religion with something as complex and unpredictable as a family as its “founder” is wildly risky to say the very least. In a certain way, you’re just begging for trouble, and indeed trouble we have.

What are the 4 Great Realms of heart? Parental, Filial, Conjugal, and Sibling. Imagine the sheer folly of thinking that “founding” a whole religion on the assumption that

those four axes will just fall into place like a walk in the park, and everything will be hunky dory. All members of the True Family are all perfectly Godly, they all love each other like nobody’s business, and the Unification church lived happily ever after.

The first signs that these unlikely outcomes might not pan out were when a trusted disciple of True Parents decided that they were superior to True Parents. This is the Hong couple, a sophisticated, established couple whose first two children were both married to True Parents first two children. Jin Hwi Hong to Ye Jin Nim and Nansook Hong to Hyo Jin Nim. The entire family abandoned their commitments to True Parents and the Unification path, and Hyo Jin Nim’s struggles blended badly with the Hong family’s growing disillusionment and hostility to True Parents and Unification. Nansook eventually hooked up with leaders of the anti-Cult movement to convert her pain into a story they believed would finally succeed in destroying True Parents and the Unification Church. A Boston Globe anti-cult journalist ghost wrote Nansook’s book In the Shadow of the Moons, and this book profoundly disturbed the faith of a huge sector of the first gen. This was in 1998, meaning that almost the whole BC population grew up in a badly crippled faith community.

Despite extreme inner challenges, and constant attack and persecution from outside, a great many members of the Unification family persevered in a humble and honorable effort trying to make sense of their lives, while trying to pursue the extremely high Unification ideals of love and sacrifice.

Under these struggles, a high number of BCs eventually came to try to divorce themselves from the Unification family in some fashion or another. Most often in a soft and gentle way, maintaining loving relationships with their parents and siblings. Most such people who did that live relatively successful lives when measured by common standards.

Apart from that fairly widespread phenomenon, a tiny few departed BCs became very vocal. I find these people to be highly intelligent, creative, passionate, and relentlessly committed on a self-destructive crusade of hurt and blame. They have some success in darkening the hearts of their fellow BCs as headquarters and breaking news for real and imagined flaws in the Unification effort.

I think this breakdown of types and different groups coming out of an intense religion (or any intense, high commitment thing) is probably very natural.

The great thing however is, how many remarkable BCs continue with pure hearts and sincerity to serve and seek the ideal of The Divine Principle, God’s Providence, and the Unification family (I am not talking about narrow institutional affiliation). I myself know literally hundreds of such people. For me, these are among the world’s finest people. The best people to spend time with. That path is NOT easy, yet so many walk this way with such honor and integrity. I mostly want to talk about this group.

What then is the Unification community in the present moment?

In my view it is this:

1. It is an elder community of saintly types, most of whom have a genuine familiarity with the Living God, but also with some non-constructive habits that come from having led a genuinely difficult and challenging life.

2. Secondly it is a brilliant, talented, physically gorgeous, uncommonly virtuous community of young people, who genuinely desire to honor the legacy of their parents, the saints of Unification history, and the True Parents themselves (though the latter most category - True

Parents, is somewhat conceptual and abstract. The first two categories is more real)

The elders to whom I refer, in my humble opinion, should seek God’s guidance immediately on how exactly to serve the BCs who demonstrate willingness to take up the beautiful mission of trying to realize the Principle. Young people are willing to do what it takes to realize and substantiate the ideal of creation by embodying and living the Principle of Restoration, knowledgeable and proud of how far we’ve come so far.

The community that we need to pay attention to right now are the BCs (Tragically too many first gen won’t yield, won’t train, won’t mentor). This to me is not healthy.

So when I speak on Community and Providence, my primary mental image when I say community, are BCs.

Whether or not Unification believers and families will remain central to God’s Providence, imo depends entirely on whether or not BCs will be able to forge a tough, courageous, valiant, battle-hardened community that is genuinely devoted to caring for our world and its people.

This is hard work that needs women and men of courage, valor and honor.

There are four bases upon which BCs can forge community.

1. What I call ethnic or racial (which I’ll explain in a minute) 2. What I call cultural 3. What I call values driven 4. What I call Providence

I think the first two (Ethnicity and Culture) abound in spades, the third (Values) represents a constant effort by both First and BC generations to attain a higher, more elevated basis for community, and the fourth (Providence), I believe is THE most necessary. I consider this 4th element almost totally absent, which I consider a matter of great danger for our community.

Here’s a quick explanation of these categories. (I could present this for several days, but these are the simple summaries)

Ethnic or racial. This is the most basic unthinking, not deliberately chosen ground of considering oneself a

member of a community. It’s what black people call themselves, or Maori, or Slavs, or Tajik, etc. etc.

This indeed makes a community but it says quite honestly nothing. There can be two Tajiks standing side by side. Look the same, same race, same blood, same genes, and one might be a cruel bastard, the other a saint whose life is pure glory. Both Tajiks.

This is what I call the ethnicity of BCs (same blood lineage - God’s blood lineage. Same race). This is the beginning of a new ethnicity. We stick together, we stand up for each other, we recognize our common bonds and common heritage. One race.

The second is cultural. Because I’m black (say in New York), I eat like this, I walk like this, I wear these kinds of clothes etc. This is what I call culture.

Again like race, we can recognize each other. It’s fun. It’s cool. I feel at home. People understand me. We have the same nutty stories, that we can only tell each other when we’re together with each other [example]

That’s BC culture. Take a BC from Tanzania and one from California, and its crazy. BOOM - stories, your mom was like that. Yes yes yes

One culture. That makes a community.

But these both are unchosen. They’re inherited. They’re fun. We feel at home at last.

But both of these are not purposeful. Like I said. People who feel at home from culture and ethnicity, don’t necessarily accomplish anything good for anyone.

The third starts to take us higher. Shared Values. Now we’re talking about choices. We’re talking about deliberate community. And that’s where the Principle comes in. That’s why we frequently go to workshops. We learn the Principle. We learn the ideal of God. We learn human purpose. We choose to live that way. I stay with my peeps, not because we look alike, or because our moms was nuts in the exact same way.

Rather we stay together by deliberate choice because what I believe and what I value is shared by my people. By this a brother and sister. This is higher.

Providence. Providence is something radical compared even to shared values. Being bound by common commitment to “providence,” takes massive trust and massive bonds.

It’s one thing to all agree that we all need to raise our children to love God and respect elders (for example). But it doesn’t force cooperation especially.

Sharing while more elevated and deliberate compared to blood and culture, nevertheless is a soft bond.

It’s a whole other thing to consider that our small coterie is bound in a hard way. We jump when God says jump. Lay low when God says stop. Stop building a school in Luzna and give that money to build a dam in Chile. We have three days to finish that damn. Why? I don’t know why? I’ll find out in three days. To lead representing Providence it takes a divinity that is hard to find and hard to claim.

The Unification family once lived in Providence. Jump. Stop. Alaska, Chile. The coach says drop back, play defense for the last 6 minutes of the first half. Why? I don’t know why. Coach sees something. Drop back.

God led the Israelites out of Egypt, God led the Christians beyond the Lions in the Roman circuses. God led the Unificationists beyond the bloodlust of Soviet Communism. The highest, purest, fiercest community is the one God builds to carry out His providence.

God is trying to end human suffering. It’s not easy. He needs a team he can count on.

Such a team is the only thing that can withstand what it takes to continue work toward a good world. Whether that can be found among current Unification people remains to be seen.

I am sure though that this tip of the speak for freeing God and people will arise from Unification people. It just depends on when.

There was a bad recording of the delivered sermon. I can find it if you like. But I think watching it does not add to what is written above