Synonyms: parentage, derivation, genealogy, tribe, clan

Schoolboy/girl, student, paper-boy, footballer, dancer, musician, gamer, Englishman, Irishman, Scotsman, butcher, baker, candlestick maker, tinker, tailor, soldier, spy – take your pick, I could go on.

A few weeks ago the nation held a minuets silence in remembrance of those who fought and died so that this country and others might be free. This made me think about my own very mixed heritage (I’m applying for my first ever British passport). Among my ancestors are English, Swiss, Hungarian, Jewish, Australian and Scottish and I have relatives in Israel, France and Germany. They were Christians, Jews, vicars, doctors, jewelers, yeoman farmers, skilled glass-blowers, missionaries among other things and I stand as one of the fruits of their lineage.

Here is what Sun Myung Moon says in one of the Peace Messages:

Without lineage, neither life nor love can endure. You strive to set a good tradition, but it will endure only through your lineage. Lineage is the bridge allowing the parents’ spirit to carry through subsequent generations.

As the youth of this movement we stand not just as the inheritors of our direct ancestors but also of Sun Myung Moon. Who was he? An all-rounder, machine-tools maker, fisherman, football club owner, folk dance patron, freedom fighter, ginseng fan, Korean dude, tunnel-builder, singer, newspaper owner, man of peace.

He is Adam. He is the kind of man who would stay up all night in tearful prayer at the age of sixteen. A man who knows God. He sacrificed everything time and again for God’s Will, in his marriage, in his family, in the movement he created. We are the product of that determined heart. Our parents got married because they were inspired by that and wanted to build a tradition of families rooted in love for God and for humanity. What extraordinary people. This is where we come from.