The Significance of Danbury

Hyo Jin Moon August 20, 1988 World Mission Center

I am sure all of you know that today is the third anniversary of the victory of Danbury. What are you feeling on this occasion? Are you feeling grateful? It is important for us to know the significance of Danbury and what it has to do with us.

You have heard in many testimonies from our elder brothers and sisters how Father's life was a path of much suffering. He went to prison six times, and the reasons why he went were always the same. I wasn't there during those times, but I have learned about them and I know those experiences were very deep and painful. The time Father spent ii- Danbury was a turning point in my own life, honestly speaking, because of what I saw Father go through. After I started to understand Father more, I saw a deeper side of Father's life and the reason for his suffering.

There is a difference between Father's realization of the Principle and my understanding of the Principle. Father started out with the desire to find the ideal. He received a revelation from Heavenly Father, the understanding of the purpose of life, and he determined to live according to that standard. We in True Parents' family have been following the example set by True Parents, and only as we grow are we gradually coming to understand the essence of what Father has been teaching us. As the days go by, I am realizing more and more of the depth of the Principle.

The Way of Supreme Sacrifice

Most of you know that after Danbury, the American people's attitude toward Father changed almost overnight. Prior to Danbury, people were saying that Rev. Moon had to have an ulterior, selfish purpose behind all his idealistic desires to save the people of America. The people didn't think they needed anyone to tell them to change. They said, "How can we believe Rev. Moon? Isn't he just like all those other 'prophets' who manipulate their followers under the guise of ideals?"

But after Father went to Danbury, the people no longer had a case to prove his manipulation. Why? Because Father voluntarily decided to go through the trial that led him to Danbury. There were options left; he could have avoided going to prison, but he didn't. That is the significant thing. He knew he had to let the American people know exactly where he stood. He was in America for a reason: to bring about the fulfillment of Heavenly Father's will, the Kingdom of Heaven, and to propagate the message of God at the cost of any sacrifice to himself. He had a purpose and he was determined to carry it out. To secular eyes, choosing to go to prison is crazy. When people compared that supreme sacrifice with their own standards, they were stunned. In many philosophies, both Eastern and Western, there is the concept of yin and yang, of two opposites becoming one. Continuity comes from circular motion. A man needs a woman to start a relationship. Let's be frank. When do we feel happiness? It's when we are making love with our husband or wife, right? Lovemaking brings us joy. People want that physical give and take of love in marriage. Let's face it, that is pure joy, because in that act a man and woman literally become one.

But in America today, the value of a relationship is so small, so external. Divorce is so wide-spread that people are starting to think of divorce as a norm, as a part of life. If a relationship doesn't work out, you just leave and start a new one. But a relationship that doesn't have an eternal base cannot last. We want to avoid this. When we step into marriage, our vows are meant to last forever. People just don't understand the meaning of eternal value, that absolute, unchanging value -- which is true love.

Our Lives Have to Be Based On an Ideal

Do you think a relationship can function without the ideal true love value? For many American couples, sex is the most important part of marriage. Communication, forgiving, understanding -- these are not seen as essential. But in order to bring us joy, our relationships have to be based on an ideal. If I am a composer writing a song, and the notes I write do not satisfy my original mind absolutely, I cannot get any joy out of it. But if I work hard enough to reach that ideal in a song, then I can feel happiness. If your ideal is based purely on the physical, then when you are satisfied physically, you feel temporarily happy. When that ideal starts to deteriorate, you are not satisfied anymore. But if your ideal is true love and that is your emphasis, then once you are absolutely united with that goal, your happiness and joy will be eternal. Obtaining that absolute goal of "true love, isn't easy, is it? What was the fall? It was an individual effort without an absolute standard.

Heavenly Father needs a substantial created world to build the Kingdom of Heaven. If God's ideal is goodness, joy, happiness, and all those blissful things we dream about and desire, God must substantialize this. Unless we ourselves create our lives to have the magnitude of God and choose to live the way of goodness, His Kingdom will never come. Our consciousness, our awareness, our imagination, is unbounded. An evil person can think of a hundred ways to commit murder, but we can be creative in obeying Heavenly Father's will; that is what Heavenly Father needs.

Since Heavenly Father created the creation and gave us the Three Blessings, He obviously wanted to be a part of it. He doesn't want to be left out. His goal is to build the Kingdom of Heaven through a substantiation of true love on the earth.

To the child, parents are the representation of love, the embodiment of love. The conception of a child comes from the father's and mother's love and is a product of their love. As the child grows, he learns from his parents about the essential quality of a human being -- true love. Through Adam and Eve, God's love was meant to propagate. Through the love of the first parents, the seed of Heavenly Father was to be planted and spread through all the people of the world. Through the marriage of the children of Adam and Eve with the children of those around Adam and Eve, the true blood lineage of God would have literally passed to all the others, and that process would have gone on and on.

But because Adam and Eve failed to listen to Heavenly Father's commandment, they took the fruit of good and evil and fell. This means they united as one without Heavenly Father being present. That is deviation from the path of absolute goodness. You must understand that only with Heavenly Father can the way of goodness, the true love way, be substantiated. The only other way is the way of evil.

You Are the One Who Decides

Our desire always motivates us to seek the greatest thing in life. What is the greatest thing? It is love. If we can perceive and understand the ideal value of true love, then through our desire we will reach it. Our desire is put there for our own sake, so we will be motivated to find Heavenly Father's true love. Through our responsibility, we will create a way to reach that standard of goodness. We might be trampled on along the way, and we might feel great pain, but we will go on; we will not hesitate or stop, because our strongest desire is to seek that happiness. The other things don't mean much if there is no love. When we get to our final destination, all the pain and suffering we went through will have been worth it. I hen we can accept everything in our life as having been a good experience.

Heavenly Father, as the Creator, wants to give us love; He wants to reciprocate with us, so we must give back to Him. That means we have to create something of our own. That's why we are endowed with the abilities of the Creator; and that's why we have responsibility. Of course this means we can also fall.

You are the one who decides whether to go this path or not. If you choose to unite with Heavenly Father, then you are creating something ideal. The effort needed to create is not easy. You have to apply yourself 100 percent. You have to invest every ounce of your mind and body. But through taking that responsibility, you will earn your way to become children of God. You will become the recipients of Heavenly Father's love.

Try to visualize Eve's struggle. She made effort, but she fell for Satan's temptation. In order to take a step, to go anywhere, you have to know where you're going. I am sure all of you sitting here want to know where you're going. Without knowing, it's very hard to follow, right? There has to be a commitment of some sort. The person making the effort has to follow the ideal he knows to be right. Eve decided to follow Satan's path. So without the absolute standard, your effort doesn't mean anything. I hope you understand this.

What I Can Do, You Can Do

Think about it -- if the moon shifted its orbit, we'd be in big trouble. We'd probably get sucked out of space or something. Our existence is quite fragile. But because of the absolute standard, the Principle, we can function and maintain our existence.

I will not deviate from Father's path. Whatever I did wrong, I will set it straight. Nobody helped me get to this point. That much I can say for myself. I got here to this point by myself. I am proud of that. I am saying this because I am no different from you. What I can do, you can do.

The problem we face is that everybody has his own interpretation of the Principle. Within the Unification Church, everyone has his own values and standards.

We don't want that here. America's pluralistic system doesn't work. You have to draw a line; you have to set an absolute standard at some point. Even among Christians there are so many different interpretations of the Bible. Many people say, "Oh, Rev. Moon is saying the same thing as So-and-So," or "There is the same kind of philosophy in the Orient." But Father is explaining the exact causes behind this earthly reality.

He is telling us exactly what went wrong, and exactly what to avoid. Knowing the cause is very important, especially the cause of the fall, which resulted in all this mess, confusion, and chaos. Without knowing the cause, you can never cure it.

We do not have some kind of vague relationship with Heavenly Father; it is an intimate relationship. A body follows the intention of the heart. You must find the right path, which your body must then follow.

Goodness Is Not "Anything Goes"

All of you have the desire to obtain happiness. If there is a barrier in front of you, you want to go over that barrier, don't you? Parents have to scold their children when their words aren't being heeded. As a last resort, parents have to spank their children when their awareness is too limited. That's because parents want their children to do what is right and good. Goodness is a specific function; it is not "anything goes."

Being spanked is painful. A child doesn't want pain; he wants joy and happiness. So you are, in a sense, putting up an artificial barrier by spanking your children which your children will hopefully respect if they don't want to get spanked again. They don't understand why right away, but they will obey their father's or mother's dÄ sire. As they continue to do what is good, their consciousness will develop. They will realize what you, their parents, were trying to accomplish during those times, during those struggles. You must understand -- parents have to discipline their children in order to let them know that they have responsibility. You must be responsible in order to become the children of God.

Once a person realizes what h has done wrong and changes, I will embrace him, I will forgive him. As long as you stay on the course and follow the principled path, I will love you as much as I love any person that I have a relationship with. Even though I may not know you personally, I will love you just as much. Love goes beyond time and space. But you must follow the principled path. That's the only way you can eternally feel joy and happiness. If you deviate from it, there will be a barrier waiting for you. You must face the barrier. That is the Principle. It's absolute.

We must know the significance of Danbury. Danbury to us means that Father, himself, always followed the Principle course. He showed us that even he himself has to live precisely according to the Principle in order for Heavenly Father's ideals to come true. We must unite with that idea absolutely. Adam and Eve's responsibility was to absolutely obey. Showing obedience is an act of love. You must understand -- Heavenly Father's purpose is love. That's why He suffered at the fall, and that's why He's still suffering.

The true way of life, the way of goodness, has to be physically demonstrated to us in order for us to follow; that's why we value tradition. I know many times the standard is hard to follow; it's hard to substantialize true subject / object relationships in our daily life. But we must do this for the sake of love, especially for the sake of our children. We want to do away with humanistic, superficial relationships. We really want deep, heartistic relationships -- something that goes beyond our external perceptions. In order to reach that depth, we have to strive for the eternal, heartistic, and absolute value.

Apply the Tradition in Your Life

This course is not easy. In order to reach the ideal in this life we must fight. Heavenly Father will persevere until He accomplishes the ideal. As long as this world exists, fighting will go on; that is guaranteed. If we die, Heavenly Father will find someone else to carry out His mission. I don't like to fight, so that's why I'm fighting now -- to end this war quickly.

It's a struggle for me to stand here, but it's because this is a battle. I'm fighting with your old concepts and trying to give you a new standard. Even I have to follow it. It's a struggle for me, too, but we have to become ideal individuals, because that's what we really want, deep in our hearts.

This is why I ask you to follow the Principle course. Know about the tradition and apply it in your life. Fight every day. Deal with Satan. Control the falsity in your life. You will overcome. Eventually you yourselves will be standing here at this podium speaking this truth all over the world. Father wants to give you that love. Because only through this way can we change the world. There is no other way! People have tried, but there is no other way. Father went to Danbury for the sake of that ideal. He did not hesitate even for a single moment. He went through that path of suffering and overcame the barriers and brought about the realization of true love.

We will give our utmost effort to break all the external barriers that Satan has brought into this world. We will build a bridge right over those barriers; and we will even break directly through them. Starting from you, this effort has to generate out. But we have to be clear enough and pure enough to reflect Heavenly Father's light of love clearly. Father set the tradition and we will follow it. If we make that ideal foundation of substance, we will eradicate Satan from our life. That's what we all want. Live for true love.

In carrying out what I have to do, many times I struggle because of my physical body. I get frustrated sometimes. I'm very hot-tempered, and I become over-stressed very easily. I often have to suppress my feelings. If I let those feelings linger around me, it will affect my work, so I have to find a way to get rid of all that excess energy. I've heard from some people that when they get angry, they go fundraising. That's a great outlet!

When I was younger, I did a lot of martial arts. In order to get rid of my angry feelings, I drained myself literally to the point of exhaustion. The first thing I'd do in the morning was exercise for an hour. That's how I could maintain my sanity in school. After school I used to go and work out to the point of exhaustion again. But nowadays I find other ways: I play my guitar or I do target practice or I go hunting. More often now, I go and talk with the blessed children. I try to make that my outlet.

The main thing is to always be thinking: How can I fulfill my responsibility? I want to fulfill my goals, so what do I lack? You have to find some way to work this out constructively, not destructively. Always be aware of your situation. Awareness is the key to combatting your struggles. Mobilize all the qualities that heavenly Father has given you and direct them in a way that will bring some fruitful result.

Understand what you should do and do it! Heavenly Father has given you everything you need to become children of God -- to reach that ideal point. You can be the next leaders of America. Your belief system is very important. A leader must stand for something; so stand for true love value. If you become an embodiment of that value, you will lead the next generation. Don't you have that desire? It's up to you. I know it's up to me. So make a choice -- decide clearly and decisively.

Please live up to your ideals and be a reflection of your beliefs. Those of you who can promise this to True Parents and to True Parents' family, please raise your hands.

Thank you.