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Buenos Aires, Argentina—A special “Honoring a Peace Legacy” Zoom meeting took place on September 14. On the occasion of the eighth anniversary of Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s passing to the spiritual realm, we read thoughts of the UPF co-founder.
After the opening prayer by Inderveer Kaur from the Sikh Dharma community in Argentina, Emanuel Sayavedra, president of Youth and Students for Peace-Argentina, and Rosetta Conti, president of Women’s Federation for World Peace-Argentina, gave a presentation with images that showed milestones in the development of UPF’s founders and their various organizations.
I shared food and slept with workers in Tokyo; I shared with beggars the pain of hunger; I learnt about tough life and got a doctorate in the philosophy of suffering. Only then I could understand God’s will while He works to bring humanity to salvation.
The pain hunger produces can only be understood by those who have experienced it. It is difficult to believe that one grain of rice can stimulate the body so much, but when you are really hungry, you feel a certain nostalgia that makes you cry. When you are well fed, the world seems big to you, but for a hungry person, a grain of rice is bigger than the Earth.
Powdered fish meal can be easily transported and conserved, even in hot and humid weathers. Fish meal contains 98% protein, one of the highest amounts in any food product. This is why it can be used to save starving people. It can also be used to make bread. Oceans have abundant food, but the best method to save humanity from the food crisis is fish farming.
Love is not for our personal good; happiness and peace are also not for ourselves. Nothing can be achieved by being alone. We cannot be happy nor talk about peace in solitude. Since a partner is who allows us to achieve peace and happiness, our partner is more important than us.
The world of the future will be a world of reconciliation and peace, based on maternal character and women’s love and sociability. This is the time in which women’s power will save the world. The women organizations that my wife leads seek to achieve peace on the foundation that women work united, lead the way, and help each other. They need to overcome the traditional divisions of race, culture and religion to raise healthy families who become the cornerstone of a peace culture.
The family is the only institution created by God. It is the school of love where human beings can learn to love each other and live together in peace, and it is the school where we practice how to build a peace palace in the world. It is the place where we learn to be husbands who live for their spouse’s sake and who walk together the eternal path of love.
For decades, I have invested in promoting interreligious harmony. On the foundation of such effort, we built confidence with relevant religious leaders for them to travel to Israel during the Intifada or to New York after the 9/11 attacks. Finally, we earned the trust of Arafat and Israeli officers, who allowed us to be mediators during the violent outbreaks in the Middle East.
The line dividing North and South Korea was traced by human beings. The Earth can be divided in this way, but not its people. The fact that we do not forget and we still long for each other, even after more than 50 years of separation, shows we are still one people.
The International Peace Highway is a global, integral project to unite the world. Being united means more than connecting continents with tunnels and bridges. It means that we balance the level of life in the world . . . . The world can only be completely united when we achieve physical and heart communication.
In 1963, we used the money we had saved to select 17 girls and create a children’s dance company named Little Angels. My plan was that these girls learn how to dance and make them travel around the world. Many only knew that Korea was a poor country which had been liberated from a terrible war. I wanted to show them the beautiful Korean dances so they would understand that Koreans are people of culture. We could insist all we wanted that we were people of culture with a 5,000-year tradition, but no one would believe us if we had nothing to share.
After the readings, Julio Nardini, member of UPF-Argentina’s Peace Council, offered a reflection on the content, enriched with his own life experiences: “It is really exciting to have the delicacy to honor the Peace Legacy through this remembrance, which is to flow through Sun Myung Moon’s definite spiritual level. In this third stage of my life, which is the age of wisdom (this is how I call old age, with the context that old people should be the wise ones), I have learnt to honor my ancestors, the deceased, who have walked and built the society I live in and who have also transmitted the thread of family life that makes me alive.”
Carlos Varga, president of the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification-Argentina, ended by reading words of UPF Co-Founder Dr. Hak Ja Han. “If Heavenly Parent is at the center of a community of people united under the values of interdependence, mutual prosperity and universal values, all problems can be solved. Unfortunately, the world today is characterized by self-centeredness, nationalism and numerous organizations and institutions distant from Heaven.” This was an extract shared from the speech given at the Rally of Hope on August 9, 2020.
The special “Honoring a Peace Legacy” Session 22 (we began these Reading and Reflection meetings on April 20) was moderated by Miguel Werner, secretary general of UPF-Argentina. There were opening and closing artistic performances prepared by the youth of the Family Federation.
To see the webinar in Spanish, click here.