Keeping the Vision for Peace and Love Alive

vision quest

If you have a long-term vision, then small things on the way don’t really matter. If you don’t have a long-term vision, it’s very easy to be brought down. “Oh, man, today was the worst day of my life!” And so forth, you know? It’s easy to lose the desire, it’s easy to lose motivation and just drift along or become complacent.

This week’s message was given by Rev. Hempowicz, from CT

A Vision for Love

We can gain a lot of wisdom from the Bible:

“Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he.” – Proverbs 29:18 KJV

If there’s no vision, people struggle to hold on. What is the point of anything? A long-term vision keeps us going when times are rough – it creates hope. What do you hope for? What does God hope for?

“Why did God create all things? It was to have object partners whom He could love. He wanted to create a realm of object partners with whom to share love. He wanted people to be able to live on earth and then return to the original world and dwell in His eternal, original homeland of love. Man was born for woman, and woman was born for man, all because of love. Why do men and women desire love? It is for the sake of God’s love. This is the truth.” (Rev. Moon, CSG 1986.03.01)

The reason I chose this quote is because I want to ask you, “Who has the longest vision?” If God exists, then God has the longest vision. Don’t you think so? From the Big Bang to today, we know 13 1/2 billion years … nobody knows exactly the length, but 13 1/2 billion is a long time. Humanity has been on Earth 10 million. So, our lives are very short, and God has been waiting a long time to see His/Her vision realized.

We know that ever since humans came into the picture, the situation got pretty bad. We don’t see the world of love. We don’t see the world of happiness, we don’t see the world of prosperity and goodness for everyone. We see a pretty ugly world out there. If God is holding to that vision, there must be a reason.

Let Me Introduce Myself

As I mentioned, I was born in Poland. My mom died when I was 12 years old. My mom was a very strong Catholic woman. She always took me to church. But after she passed away, I had more freedom to kind of examine on my own, and I didn’t go anymore to the church. Even though I felt good in the church, somehow I also felt there was hypocrisy there.

I immigrated to America in 1977 through my sister, again, a very strong Catholic. She also goes to church every Sunday, so I went with her because I was living in her home and she was sponsoring me. Poland was Socialist, almost Communist, and it was like a jail. So I was very grateful to her that she made it possible for me to come here.

Our relationship is quite interesting. My mom had her in a first marriage, and then she divorced. Then Mom married my father and she became my step-sister, and later my adopted sister. Then when my mom passed away, my sister became my mom. Now, she’s 82 years old, so I became her mom, in some way. Not literally, but I take care of her when she needs something.

That’s enough about me, let’s listen to ten minutes of this Ted Talk.

Classical Music is Like the Truth

Benjamin Zander is director of the philharmonic orchestra for youth. He’s a good speaker, and I hope that you enjoy him. He’s going to play the piano and invite us to travel the journey that Chopin composes. And then he makes some very interesting analogies about life. (started video at 9:45 and watched to the end)

I see a lot of similarity between classical music and the truth.

Zander makes a profound point about long-term vision. It’s so important in life because our lives are full of everyday problems. And it’s easy to be caught in those problems. If you don’t have a long-term vision, you might become powerless and depressed.

This reminded me of something. One of the reasons I’m in this church is because in the early days, I heard Rev. Moon say, “The most happy day in my life will be the day when this church is no longer necessary.” I understood that the existence of this church, or movement, is for the sake of something. It’s not for the sake of itself, but it’s for the sake of completing something. When this thing’s accomplished, then the organization is no longer needed.

The vision of this organization is world peace. If you have ever read the autobiography by Rev. Moon, “A Peace Loving Global Citizen”, you will understand. The way he sees himself is like an enabler of people, or doer for the world. And I can join him in that.

If We Could Understand

Many people have small goals. If you can only make four percent of people who like classical music, what would it matter? Zander mentioned, how would those people function in the world? He believes that everybody has the ability to appreciate classical music if they understand it. And I think that’s exactly the same about truth. We need the truth, we want the truth. The problem is sometimes, we don’t understand the truth. Or truth is put to us in a way that we can’t digest. Sometimes it’s just not accessible to us.

Universally, we function on truth and love. If we have those two ingredients, we can live. And if our vision is world peace, the better understanding of truth we have, the better love we can give, the better people we’ll be.

The Conductor is Silent

Zander said, the conductor doesn’t make any noise, but he brings out the potential of the people who play in the orchestra. And I see this as very much the same for God. Because if God could make a peaceful world, he would have made it a long time ago. But he can’t because He has to bring it out of us. And actually, we messed up, as we all know from stories of what happened in the Garden of Eden. We are the ones visionwho did something wrong, so we are the ones who have to turn ourselves around.

When I joined this church in 1979, some of us naively believed that the Kingdom of Heaven will come in three years. So three years come and go, ten years, 30 years or more, and world peace is not here. Because, the trouble is, we’re still trying to understand what we have to do to make it happen. It might take much longer, that actually depends on us. How well will we play in orchestra? God is conducting, but are we watching and playing well?

What are you talking about?

One of the last points Zander made is that words, what we say, matters. That really is true. Because we don’t know if we’re going to see each other again. If you really know me well, you know I’m a very cynical guy. First thing I say: “It ain’t gonna work”. But actually, I realize this attitude is not so good. So, I decided I need to change that if I want to bring goodness out of other people. The way we say things, the way we speak really matters, because we affect others.

The example of the elder sister talking to the younger brother that he lost his shoes, is a good example. It’s kind of natural for sister to scold her brother if he has no shoes, right? But, on a train to concentration camp, and he never survived. So, I can imagine how she felt for the rest of her life. We need to think of the other person before we open our mouth.

Go out and love the world

Most of all we have to learn how to love. Because if we just know the truth, but then we are arrogant about it, it’s not going to help us or anyone else. World peace is important, but it can only happen through love. Because, how people live, how people share, how people exist is either in a loving way or a selfish way. It’s easier to sacrifice small things when you see the big picture. If you have your sight on a goal that is high, that is global, that is universal, you will feel the power to live a bigger life and love more.

So, I want to acknowledge all of you for coming, because on Sunday morning you could have been doing some other exciting thing. But you are here because you’re looking for something. Thank you very much for keeping dream alive. Our destiny is to live in peace, our destiny is to be happy, our destiny is to be brothers and sisters with everybody. Because that’s who we are. I think that we as humanity don’t clearly understand who we are, but that’s changing.

Still, some bad things are happening, real terrible stuff is happening. But, it’s like if you have dirty clothes, you put it into the machine, then you put detergent and water. So, first thing, the dirt has to come out of it, right? For things to be clean, dirt has to come out and then it’s washed away. I think a lot of bad things are happening in world today because it’s a cleaning process. Things have to exposed and rejected. So, I’m very optimistic. Thank you for being here and thank you for inviting me to speak today.

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