Everyone wants to live a peaceful life. But peace is often elusive. One of my favorite children’s books is “Five Minutes’ Peace.” It’s the very relatable story of the Large family; a family of elephants that include a group of exuberant baby elephants that simply don’t allow “mom” to enjoy five minutes of peace. At one point in the story she is literally bargaining for just one minute of peace. We have all been there! But elephants and family chaos aside, we all desire that elusive moment of calm in our lives.
Having calm in our lives is important because stilling the spirit allows us to hear the “still, small voice of God.” I heard an interview this week with the writer of Vengeance Road, a novel for teens. The interviewer asked the author how she dreamed up such an authentic story. It was as if it were someone’s real life. The author said that she had been so frustrated because she was searching for the voice of her main character and couldn’t discern it, but one day in the shower it came to her so clearly. It was almost like a revelation. She heard the opening sentence of the book and from there it flowed. We are often searching for something and can’t make it out but in a meditative moment we might just hear it. It’s like the ripples on the pond that are only discernable when the water is calm.
Can you really calm the waves?
Learning how to calm the waters in our lives is essential if we want to hear God’s voice and feel His presence. The story of Jesus calming the storm appears in three Gospels. Mark expresses it like this:
“As evening came, Jesus said to his disciples, “Let’s cross to the other side of the lake.” So they took Jesus in the boat and started out, leaving the crowds behind (although other boats followed). But soon a fierce storm came up. High waves were breaking into the boat, and it began to fill with water.
Jesus was sleeping at the back of the boat with his head on a cushion. The disciples woke him up, shouting, “Teacher, don’t you care that we’re going to drown?”
When Jesus woke up, he rebuked the wind and said to the waves, “Peace! Be still!” Suddenly the wind stopped, and there was a great calm. Then he asked them, “Why are you afraid? Do you still have no faith?”
The disciples were absolutely terrified. “Who is this man?” they asked each other. “Even the wind and waves obey him!”
This is an interesting story for a number of reasons. Jesus was sleeping and the disciples woke him, immediately accusing him, “Don’t you care?” Nobody in their right mind, especially the people who lived with Jesus, day-in and day-out and saw the way he treated people would have the audacity to scream, “Don’t you care?” The disciples were wound up. Have you ever lost it in the heat of the moment, and later reflected, I kind of went overboard there! I know I have. It’s one of those moments when the amygdala in our brain takes over and suddenly we are in the middle of a sea of emotions, screaming for help.
Jesus gets up and faces the storm. He commands, “Peace, be still” and the waves die down.
Searching for our own miracle
You don’t have to be in a boat to face a raging sea. Sometimes we are engulfed in the storms of life. This fact is not lost on Jesus who says, “Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33)
The question is how do you quell the raging storm and overcome the world? That’s definitely a $64 million dollar question. It has to start by understanding yourself.
I’d say that Jesus understood himself and he also understood the people he was with. He was always asking, “Why are you afraid” or “Do you still not have faith?” It’s says a curious thing in John 2:25:
“….for Jesus knew all men. He did not need man’s testimony about man, for he knew what was in a man.” He understood human nature.
The Power of the Word
This verse struck me because I thought that the secret to overcoming the world, and especially my world, would be to understand what I am up against. To quell the raging sea, Jesus spoke truth into power. He told the storm to be still!
On another occasion he met a woman at a well who needed the salvation of the living water he was willing to offer. He didn’t mince words. He spoke truth into power.
Jesus told her she needed to go home and get her husband (he wanted to Bless and give salvation to them as a couple.) She replied that she didn’t have a husband. Jesus affirmed that she was indeed telling the truth, after all, she had five husbands in the course of her life and was currently living with a man. Talk about being exposed! Jesus definitely understood the turmoil in her life and wanted to calm her storm.
The root of our problems
If it’s about truth to power then it’s important to be able to pinpoint the cause of our struggles. Genesis explains that humanity’s problems began in the Garden of Eden. The tricky thing is, it doesn’t give much detail. The first ancestors ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and were consequently barred from the Tree of Life. This gave rise to all the problems we see in the world today.
But if we think about all the problems in the world today, we are likely to get overwhelmed. It’s too much! It’s like the disciples facing the storm. How do you conquer every wave? They keep coming at you, relentlessly. Maybe you duck under the hatch and escape greed, only to be engulfed in jealousy five minutes later. Like mama elephant, you just want five minutes peace.
Power in the Principle
The Divine Principle provides truth to power because it doesn’t cite a long list of corrupt natures – the kind Jesus saw “For he knew what was in a man.”
The Divine Principle goes deeper and explains where all these perverse qualities come from. The good news is you don’t have to be overwhelmed by each wave as it rolls in; you can instead calm the raging sea.
Because of what religion calls the fall, humankind lost their original nature and gained a corrupted or misdirected nature which has four different aspects. Firstly, the original man and woman, the progenitors of humanity (the Bible names Adam and Eve) lost faith in God’s point of view. They were impatient and just a little distrusting when it 
mattered most. Whether we like it or not, we have inherited this tendency. We don’t value or appreciate each other or even ourselves. The glass is forever half empty. This is the root of racism and all the other isms.
Secondly, the first man and woman, whose seed we inherited, left the position God gave them, consequently people in this world frequently don’t live up to their positions and disregard their obligations and responsibilities. Too often we have a chance to serve someone but do something to promote ourselves instead. Or we allow a deceptive statement to stand in order to get credit for something we don’t have a right to. In short, we’d rather get what we want than do the right thing.
Thirdly, we desire to dominate others. Instead of being humble to God we want to be in control and do it our way, without thought to the consequences for others. Corruption of power is tragic. The Fall is the origin of all the disorder and oppression we see in the world.
The fourth aspect of fallen nature is multiplication of evil. The story goes that the snake gave the cursed fruit to Eve, who then gave it to Adam. No one in the chain of events thought maybe I shouldn’t do this. Each character felt better by inducing someone else to replicate the wrong they had done. Sound familiar? People often seduce others to commit immoral and unethical behavior. It’s eerie how we love to share guilt and multiply bad actions. This inherited, corrupted nature shows up in every generation. It’s part of our spiritual DNA until we apply a little Eugenics through the Blessing of God.
Blaming God
Because every person has been profoundly ignorant of God, most people do not see that it is humankind’s enemy, not God, who is behind the tragedies and suffering that everyone experiences. Sadly, people blame God for being cruel or uncaring. When someone young dies or an accident occurs, we say “How could God let such a thing happen?” But it wasn’t God who killed the child. It isn’t God who breaks our hearts.
Creating your own miracle
If you want to calm the sea it helps to speak truth into power. For example, it’s powerful to ‘call it’ when you are putting someone or yourself down by declaring “I’m not seeing from God’s point of view. I’m not loving as God loves.” That cuts through the fog!!
The story in Mark detailed that Jesus rebuked the waves and commanded them to be still. He commanded, “Peace!” We need to speak into our lives the good we want to see. This is where the Divine Principle is both powerful and practical.
Reversing corruption
It starts with looking for God’s viewpoint. Try asking God to show you how he feels about the person who is upsetting you or the person you cannot forgive. It’s easy to judge Adam and Eve with what they should or should not have done. But the real test comes when we challenge ourselves to control our jealousy or resentment by loving as God loves. It’s the opportunity to go beyond rationalizing everything or having to be right all the time.
Next, we can reverse the tendency to be irresponsible by living with integrity and prioritizing the needs of others, or as Father and Mother Moon would say, living for the sake of others. We can choose to do the right thing and take responsibility. We can live an ethical and moral life and have real pride as God’s sons and daughters.
Humankind separated from God when we sought to have dominion over others, wanting to control everything as opposed to allowing God’s order of love to flow in the family and society. Instead of always putting people down we have to learn how to lift others up. We need to have the consciousness that we are one family under God and allow love to circulate throughout the entire family.
Finally, we have to learn how to multiply goodness, instead of evil. We are so used to just seeing bad things multiply that we forget just how infectious goodness can be.
Babette Rothschild said “All emotions are contagious…both the ones that are pleasant and the ones that are unpleasant.”
We need a great contagion of goodness in this world and instead of gossiping and complaining we have to have to live an uplifting, positive life.
Connecting to the root
The real secret to calming the waves and overcoming our own corruption is to connect to God’s love in a substantial way. That’s why Jesus often talked about the peace within himself. And in the Gospel of Mark he actually used the word “peace” to calm the waves. Jesus’ life was anything but peaceful. Nevertheless, he found peace because he knew 
the love of God. He was connected to the root, God. Rev. Moon spoke of this in a sermon:
“Imagine a huge tree which is really beautiful to behold. Although you can’t see its roots, they will be deeply laid. The tip of its root is small and lies hundreds of feet below the surface. Can you see that the tiniest leaf on the top is connected to that root? It is so high in one direction and so deep in the other that the connection is hard to see. Yet, without a relationship with the root, the leaf will eventually die.”
By the same token, if we human beings say, “I don’t care about my roots; they are separate from me.” Then we too will start to die. We absolutely need God in our lives. This week, speak truth into power in your life and perform your own miracle by calming the waves that threaten to drown you. With the clarity of the Principle the storm can be calmed.
