Category: Education

God Has Been Homeless

By Tyler Hendricks

A homeless shelter. Eww, who wants to go to a homeless shelter? Who wants to be with beggars, vagrants and derelicts?

That was my attitude toward the homeless my entire life if I so much as ventured to think on the subject. So, here I am, living in the upscale town of Milford, CT, a beach town on Long Island Sound, full of pricey Airbnb’s, a village green, quaint neighborhoods, and picturesque churches.

Oh-oh, I see a homeless person. He’s got a shopping cart full of plastic bags stuffed with who knows what. He is on a corner with a sign asking for help, for prayer. Oh, wow, glad it’s a green light.

This spring, I returned from Korea, moving from a lovely mission assigned by True Mother, with her permission. She agreed that, at this point, I have work to do in the United States. My lovely mission now is under a new central figure, our local pastor, Simone Doroski.

Milford is a place to make the Principle real and the theory into reality. So, I get involved in the community. I ended up meeting the director of the local homeless shelter, the Beth-El Center, and participating in one of their weekly meetings for spiritual guidance.

Grace at the Beth-El Center

A woman named Tess led the spiritual guidance meeting, and seven women with three little children participated. It was noisy, unorganized, informal. We set up chairs as needed, no refreshments, no music, just sitting in a circle in the shelter’s kitchen.

In that one hour, I heard twenty sermons from them. Some of them knew the Bible quite well, although one did mix up Corinthians with Chronicles. They all shared their real heart, the grit and grime of life, and drew lessons from a poem by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, read by the hostess. The poem was about patience, that God works slowly. I realize that these homeless people are just like all of us. And their hearts are eloquent.

Based on that experience, I had a realization: God is homeless. I recently heard someone say that God did not kick Adam and Eve out of the Garden; they kicked God out. I agree. God is our Heavenly Parent, and parents do not kick out their children. I used to think that God lived in a palace, and once in a while, I had a glimpse and experience of it. No. God is in the darkness just as I am. God experiences the light and love together with me. Love and light come through give and take. God is my light, and I am God’s light. True Father expressed this well:

“God’s joy remains dormant until He can have full give and take with us. So far in Christianity, many churches placed God so high up in heaven and pushed humanity so low in hell that there has been an uncrossable gap between us and God.” (God’s Warning to the World, pp. 7, 12)

We left God homeless, and True Father was no stranger to homelessness. Of his life as a refugee in Pusan, he said:

Continue reading “God Has Been Homeless” →

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Unificationist Perspectives on the LGBTQ Phenomenon

By Mark Lincoln

About ten years ago, I was working for a large corporation in my hometown of Omaha, Nebraska. The company, like many large corporations, was eager to develop a reputation for diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) by supporting groups within the company. Groups already existed for veterans, African-American employees, and those with disabilities. A new employee resource group for gays and lesbians had just been created.

While the campaign for gay rights had been framed as a civil rights issue, I had always seen it as a moral issue. I let my views be made known in our online company chat room. At one point, my manager called me to his office to explain that if I continued airing my views in the company chat room, I could be in danger of losing my job.

Preferring not to interrupt my breadwinner status for my family, I ended my participation in the online discussion. So ended my first public experience with the LGBTQ phenomenon. The issue was highly emotional and politicized; a hot topic with little middle ground.

About five years later, I approached a middle-aged lady in the Family Dollar parking lot asking if she would help us with our One Million Family Blessing campaign. She immediately asked me what I thought about gay people. I told her I felt sorry for them because they could not have children. That offended her. She became upset and complained to the manager. He came out to talk to me because he could see how upset the lady was, but he had received the Blessing a few days before.

So ended my second experience with the LBGTQ phenomenon leaving me dissatisfied regarding my ability to relate with the people of that community.

A few years later, after I retired, I was doing American Clergy Leadership Conference (ACLC) ministerial outreach at an Episcopal Church. I was aware that this denomination had a very liberal policy on gay ordination and marriage. Father John, the pastor, was kind enough to sit down with me for a chat. I brought up the topic of the need for the body of Christ (i.e., all Christian churches) to unite as one and use their combined strength to fight evil in the world. Seemingly out-of-the-blue, Father John asked me what I thought about homosexuals. 

This time, I was not in a parking lot talking to a local shopper. We were two ministers with a background in Biblical scriptures; a strong common base, I thought. When I answered that the Bible is very clear about homosexuality calling it wrong (Lev. 18:22), he disagreed with me, arguing that “God is a God of love, not judgment.” 

I chose the word “phenomenon” in my title because a “phenomenon” is defined as a fact or situation that is observed to exist or happen, especially one whose cause or explanation is in question. If I have learned anything about the LGBTQ phenomenon, it is that the phenomenon is very complex with a constellation of issues. 

Continue reading “Unificationist Perspectives on the LGBTQ Phenomenon” →

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Mental Health is a Spiritual Topic

By Esfand Zahedi

What comes to mind when we hear the term “mental health?” We often consider mental unwellness to mean the presence of undesirable qualities such as anger, depression, guilt, or other negative emotions. Being mentally ill might also mean being a threat to oneself or others.

If these tendencies are not present, suppressed, or visible, we may consider a person to be in a more or less healthy state. This is a narrow way of discussing mental health because we are defining it by a negative condition. To say that mental health consists of the presence of good characteristics is to define it in positive terms. We will understand mental health better if we have a positive and objective definition of mental well-being.

Jesus described this health in terms of a person either “having life” or being “dead,” terms used to refer to people alive from a physical point of view. A person who is truly alive and fruitful is exceptional, and these individuals are the light of the world. Spiritual vitality and not belief in a doctrine is what “having life” means. Many people who are about their worldly business in truth resemble a barren fig tree and are not truly aware and therefore not healthy. Mental health in this sense is not the norm but the exception. The goal of conventional psychology it seems, is not true mental health but adjustment to a minimum standard.

Let us expand our concept of mental wellness to that of well-being for the whole person. This considers the entirety of what it means for a person to be well, embracing the body and mind as well as the character and spiritual state of the individual. In light of this definition, we can understand mental health in relation to other things, including excellence, integrity, productivity, intelligence, and self-control. Moral and spiritual is mental health. A morally and mentally healthy person is one who expresses excellence. An excellent person does not merely pass a test of mental health, but flourishes and stands out as unique, capable, and successful. 

Mental illness in today’s world is increasing and is not improving by treatment with medications or by a true understanding of psychology. This means that many medical practices are based on error and must be discontinued and replaced with sound practices. Whether mental illness is produced by the negative influence of new technologies, the lack of a God-centered culture, or the overeating of processed food (who knows the real cause?), we will not solve it by watching the news, increasing funds, or putting more trust in the medical establishment. 

What is certain is that our human problems will not be helped by clinging to the latest form of technology or a new medication as the long-sought solution. We must change our ideas. A human problem needs a human solution, and the solution will involve a true understanding of what it means to be human and structuring everyday life after the pattern of the unchanging truth.

Continue reading “Mental Health is a Spiritual Topic” →

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Authenticity, Sincerity and 21st Century Witnessing

By John Redmond

Recently, we have been called to resume witnessing in the Unification Movement in order to recapture the spirit of the 1970s, a time when most of its American members joined.

I’m a veteran of those days and have come to the conclusion they are firmly behind us.  However, I am strangely optimistic about the future of our movement and of witnessing in general.

What do I mean by “witnessing?”

In the Christian ideal, it is a communication of a personal, deeply spiritual event which has affected one so positively that one feels compelled to offer that insight to others so they can achieve that experience as well.  Christianity testifies to individual salvation: your conversion and life of faith is between you, God and the Holy Spirit.

Saints in Christian tradition are individuals, both men and women, who have modeled in their lives evidence of a transcendent, loving God.

In Buddhism, one is encouraged to reach a higher consciousness, step out of the day-to-day grind, control the thoughts circling in your head, and try to feel and be aware of a higher, universal interconnectedness and add that reality to your daily life. The monks and nuns in Buddhism model that ideal.

In Unificationism, we witness to the Three Blessings and the three generation family.  Individual salvation is not enough, and creating an individual spiritual success is only the foundation for a multi-generational family and wealth.  Our salvation is not complete until we have accomplished all three goals. It stands to reason then, that our challenge is higher and deeper than individual witnessing and will require creativity and honest evaluation and persistence.

In my experience, all successful witnessing is done by example. Many of my generation joined our movement because of who they met, not because of what was said.

An English member recently told me of walking through Boston and meeting another Englishman who invited him to an event and he politely declined.  Later he met a Japanese woman who couldn’t speak English and had a confusing flyer but he went to the program anyway; he just trusted her. The Principle gets you to stay and commit, but the character of the people and their spiritual foundation allow you to listen.

Continue reading “Authenticity, Sincerity and 21st Century Witnessing” →

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Anyone Can Have a Mystical Experience

By Ron Pappalardo

The mission statement of HJ International Graduate School (formerly Unification Theological Seminary) says one of its goals is to help its students “enhance their relationship with God.”

The founder, Rev. Sun Myung Moon, in his 1985 commencement address to UTS said, “I have also endeavored for this campus to be a place where the students can develop deep personal faith and authentic spiritual communication with the Spirit of God.”

Most religious people long for a deeper relationship with God, hoping to have their own personal mystical experience, but oftentimes become discouraged because of how difficult that can be.

After having a few experiences myself, years ago I began teaching others. In addition to writing, I have conducted classes, workshops and training seminars around the world demonstrating techniques shown to facilitate mystical experiences.

The three main techniques I use are the practice of hands-on healing, guided meditations, and a writing technique I call “Journaling with God.”

Three Techniques that Can Trigger a Mystical Experience

Hands-on healing: For this technique, I divide a group into pairs. One person sits in a chair, and the other person stands behind the chair and lays their hands on the sitter’s shoulders. Then I lead those standing to imagine that divine white light is flowing down their arms and through their hands into the sitter while repeating the following mantra: “God’s love is flowing through me, for the purpose of healing [sitter’s name] now.” After a few minutes, each couple reverses positions, and the mantra is repeated again.

Guided meditation: I employ several different guided meditations; here I describe the one I use most often during my workshops. After giving patient and detailed instructions to the participants, I invite them to close their eyes and imagine they are sitting alone on a beautiful beach. It’s a bright sunny day, and I call their attention to the warm sun on their skin, the feel of the sand on their toes, and the peaceful rhythm of the waves coming up to their feet and then retreating back down the shore. Next, they focus on the bright sun right in front of them, high above the ocean. The meditation culminates with each participant imagining they are sending a beam of light from the center of their heart out and up towards the bright sun in the sky. The moment their beam of light connects to the sun is often when the mystical experience is triggered.

Continue reading “Anyone Can Have a Mystical Experience” →

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The AU Blog Is Transitioning to a Member-Led Organization

Dear Applied Unificationism Blog readers, contributors and supporters,

As our Editorial Committee posted in its open letter, “We Had a Great Run. And We Thank Our Readers,” Unification Theological Seminary has become the HJ International Graduate School for Peace and Public Leadership and decided that the AU Blog it sponsored since 2013 no longer matches its new mission. Therefore, the Applied Unificationism Blog has a chance to evolve as well.

We have been having meetings among the Editorial Committee seeking to identify the next iteration of the Blog.  HJI President Dr. Thomas Walsh said he is happy to support transitioning the AU Blog to a new home provided we find a responsible steward.  While seeking sponsorship from church-affiliated organs is often the typical path, in this era it seems we should take more initiative.  As the Elder Son Nation and in the Age of Ownership, it seems it is time to try to make it on our own.

I have volunteered to take on the editorial duties for the AU Blog for one year to see if we can transition the AU Blog to a member-led organization that can operate in a collegial fashion while keeping the intellectual, social and academic standards that have made the AU Blog a success for the past 10 years.

Dr. Mark P. Barry, who served as managing editor for the past then years, has agreed to assist with the transition; and I have requested the current Editorial Committee to stay in place, at least for the time being.

I have several offers of donors willing to cover the cost of hosting the site and we will maintain the current standard of publishing for the immediate future to ensure continuity and quality.

However, I would like to see the AU Blog carefully evolve.  Here are some areas I think we could strengthen our appeal and effective outreach:

  1. Broaden our audience. We need to attract younger contributors and readers.  I think that there are many young people at work, especially in the social sciences, who can incorporate Unificationist values and models into their field.  Education, social work, psychology, and health care seem like disciplines that are accessible to Unification thought.
  2. Create a membership structure that includes voting and fundraising.  I like the model of the intellectual societies of Europe during the Enlightenment.  Regardless, it is in our collective interest to develop and model governance structures that are a place for mature Unificationists to thrive.
  3. Experiment with other formats.  Perhaps a short essay section, e.g., op-eds of 800 words, where single topics can be broached and developed.
  4. More dialogue. Give and take creates new ideas, so a moderated forum is envisioned that allows vigorous debate without descending into the rancor and polarization that characterizes much current online discussion elsewhere.

If you would like to be part of this new effort or if you have questions, please email me at AUBlogEditor@gmail.com; if you have overall thoughts of encouragement or suggestions, please post them in a comment below.  I will organize a Zoom call to launch this new effort in coming days.

Our About page has been updated, including revised Applied Unification Blog editorial guidelines.

I look forward to an interesting year and am excited to see what we can build together in that time.

Best Regards,

John Redmond
Executive Editor, Applied Unificationism Blog

Photo at top by Timothy Eberly (courtesy Unsplash)

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Patient Love Is More Important Than Doctrine

By John Redmond

When I was a shiny new member of our Unification Family, I was completely entranced with the Divine Principle.

I had spent the previous several years seeking an intellectual framework that could bridge the gap between Catholicism and the scientific method.  I flirted with Marxism until I got to know some of the “leadership” of the campus Marxists and was not impressed with their sense of self-importance.

However, I didn’t have any constructive way to respond to the arguments they advanced — until I encountered the Principle.

The second thing that impressed me about this group of fellow seekers, who believed as I did, was we could be a model of the things we were talking about, and together, we could heal God’s broken heart, and significantly improve the world.  Those people, currently both in and out of the various parts of the movement, remain my best and most admired friends.

I still believe that living our ideal is the primary providential responsibility of our rank-and-file members.

I fired out of three weeks of workshops with a conviction that anyone who could hear this new truth would instantly be overwhelmed and brought to the realization that we could indeed, as one elder assured me, “reach perfection in three years if we were sincere.”

I started out as a good fundraiser but frequently would get drawn into long involved discussions with interesting individuals, Christians, communists, rabbis, and drunks, frequently resulting in me missing my pickup time and my captain having to send team members into stops on my run and reminding me about what I was supposed to be focused on.

At evening programs, and in workshops, I was the guy locked in detailed arguments with guests about how “Jesus didn’t come to die” or why dialectical materialism was a limited point of view.

As Jonah Goldberg recently wrote, I was a captive of reification:

 “…’the act of treating something abstract, such as an idea, relation, system, quality, etc., as if it were a concrete object.’ This confusion of words for things is a great peeve of mine. In logic, there’s a reification fallacy, in which we confuse the model for the reality: The map isn’t the territory.”

As I came to understand, no matter how clever the argument, how powerfully and clearly stated, no one could “hear” the Principle until they were understood and accepted it as a person.  A few precepts come to mind:  “Actions speak louder than words,” “I can’t hear what you are saying because of what you are doing,” and “Always be witnessing, and sometimes use words.”

A second round of this understanding was deepened by my children.  I came to understand that “free will” is not a political concept, but the primary spiritual gift from God to all His/Her children — including mine.  Our family is now on the 400-year plan to create unity.  It may take less time but it won’t be because I explained about the Principle one more time to anyone.

As a family, we have decided that love is more important than doctrine, and that a successful defense of God is through a lifelong example rather than clever lectures.

This same lesson is now coming to our Unification Family.  The Divine Principle explains that objects grow vertically through three stages of growth and make horizontal progress through Origin, Division, Union action.

Continue reading “Patient Love Is More Important Than Doctrine” →

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We Had a Great Run. And We Thank Our Readers

The Applied Unificationism Blog went live on May 1, 2013, sponsored by Unification Theological Seminary (UTS). Over more than ten years, the AU Blog has explored the application of Unificationism to the wider world.

Since that time, the AU Blog has posted 400 articles and over 4,500 comments. We have received over 472,000 page views from 228,000 unique visitors in 215 countries and territories around the world. Since 2015, 80 of our articles have been re-posted on a sister site, the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification international headquarters website in Korea, which has greatly increased our visibility.

We deeply appreciate our loyal readers, whether you followed Applied Unificationism since the beginning a decade ago or only discovered us this year.

Unification Theological Seminary has decided to conclude its sponsorship of the Applied Unificationism Blog at the end of its fiscal year on June 30. On July 1, UTS will adopt a new institutional name. In addition, UTS will be initiating some new projects that may include a new journal and a conference series.

The Applied Unificationism Blog will remain live as a site through the end of 2023 and at least into early 2024. Comments submitted to any article after June 30 may continue to be posted after moderation. However, the AU Blog will no longer be accepting new article submissions for publication after that date. This could change if a new sponsor is found.

We invite you to express your thoughts and reflections about the Applied Unificationism Blog in the comments section below.

In closing, we express our appreciation to UTS for its generous support of Applied Unificationism over the years.

Sincerely and with gratitude,

The editorial committee of Applied Unificationism:

Mark P. Barry, Managing Editor
Michael Mickler
Keisuke Noda
Andrew Wilson
Kathy Winings

 

Photo at top: By Melissa Cassar (courtesy Unsplash)

14

What Can Be Done About Violence in Society?

By Alice Fleisher

There have been 23 school shootings this year that resulted in injuries or deaths, according to a recent Education Week analysis. There have been 167 such shootings since 2018.

It’s very alarming that such incidents are becoming increasingly prevalent. How are we to understand violence in society and, more importantly, to correct this disturbing trend?

Certainly, an approach must be immediate and include responses by those tasked with public safety — law enforcement, legislators, nonprofit civic action groups, and those in the judicial branch.

But tackling social problems through those venues will not result in the longer term and more comprehensive solutions we need. Such a strategy could be likened to EMTs, paramedics, and emergency room staff treating superficial wounds while ignoring underlying organ or other bodily system damage.

Surely efforts must be made to identify underlying factors that contribute to this troubling social trend weakening our societies. Those factors include, but are not limited to, the perpetration of violence upon the innocent and vulnerable, the venting of frustration and anger through violence, and the inability of people to curb their destructive impulses. Even more deadly are the bullying and dominance of individuals, groups, and larger levels of society based on a perceived division between them and us that is rampant within society.

This article has been informed by the works of scholars I encountered as part of my current graduate degree pursuit at UTS. I present my own views at the conclusion.

One scholar, Wolfhart Pannenberg (1996), notes that currently the religious and spiritual dimension of human beings has been marginalized in the public sphere. He traces this to the thinking behind and actions of the French Revolution, which, among other revolutionary initiatives, included the beheading of those in the monarchy and aristocracy who could not flee the wrath poured upon them, pitted reason against faith, and scapegoated religious institutions (generally the Catholic Church) as sources of repression and injustice, enacting a strict separation of church and state.

In this scenario, the church and religion were seen as the source of problems, not solutions. The separation of church and state in the United States is not as contentious as in many European nations, since the U.S. doesn’t have the antagonistic backstory found in Europe. In the U.S., while religion and government are separated by the Constitution, religion is still considered a potential source of social help and beneficial public service.

While the U.S. is at its core a religious (essentially a Christian) nation (see Himmelfarb, 2004), religion’s presence in the public sphere is noticeably missing. Pannenberg claims that in societies where religion has been reduced in prominence, a profound and debilitating loss of meaning can be found, which he ties to the presence of personal and social violence.

In the last two or three decades, however, it has become evident that secularization (or, as some prefer, progressive modernization) faces severe problems. The thoroughly secularized social order gives rise to feelings of meaninglessness: there is a vacuum in the public square of political and cultural life, and this invites violent outbreaks of dissatisfaction.

Continue reading “What Can Be Done About Violence in Society?” →

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