Reflections on the Blessing WS 2024: Let us honour our parents
The history of religion can be said to be a history of ‘remembering’; facing the inevitable gravity of day-to-day life, and still choosing to look behind the traditions that have formed our current reality.
But in our hope for a better future, it seems appropriate to focus on what’s next: how will ‘providence’ be? What’s the next step in God’s plan? What is our role in the current state of events? However, without honouring the roots of our lineage (in the broadest sense: spiritually and physically), there’s no opportunity for a deep understanding of our origin, no connection to our present, and therefore no connection to what our future may be like.
It’s good to understand that looking back doesn’t necessarily mean to be stuck in the past. So often we simply think of past times as better times. We can romanticise the past as if ‘that what has been before will always be better than anything to come’. But that’s not what’s asked of us when we think of our roots. Our origins manifest the heart of the starting point; without this heart we wouldn’t be here.
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We cannot understand our reality as Blessed Children without remembering and reconnecting to our parents, our roots, our dear first generation.
For most of us it is not even a question of remembering, it’s a matter of discovering. Through this Blessing workshop, we’ve been confronted by a painful reality: we as BCs don’t understand enough of our parents’ course. Geros Kunkel, the main lecturer of this workshop, took us on a condensed but thorough journey of what the first generation had to go through in order to receive re-birth and engraft into God’s lineage.
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Understanding the origin of things is to take a strong look at the heart of those initial steps. True Parents, the inventors of The Blessing, had to educate the first generation in their process of shifting their “fallen” realms to an “original” one. Going through all the ceremonies that allowed this process possible, (all the conditions, all the required time), the so-called formula course, has been an enlightening discovery for many of us.
For some of us, something was finally unlocked in our understanding of our parents. We often define the first generation as “the faithful ones”; those who embarked on a wilderness course by following the liberator of their slavery, but at the same time leaving behind all comforts and security. This is the archetypal trajectory of God’s call: to abandon what is known, in order to jump into the unknown. That required a great amount of faith, and our parents’ generation is a textbook example of this deep faith and love for God.
But we discovered more than faith in this journey to be engrafted in God’s original plan. We understood the “step-by-step” process that True Parents established for them in that time, and therefore everything that was required of them, all of which carried incredible weight and meaning.
To fundraise in order to take dominion over the creation (what was lost in the Fall), to witness and become spiritual parents and give spiritual life to other brothers and sisters, to follow and be matched by the Messiah and become one in faith and heart, to partake in the stick ceremony in order to leave any past behind and not have resentment as a blessed couple, to offer a separation period and grow as brother and sister, to start family life and finalise the change of God’s lineage through a final act of offering and not just self-fulfilling desire…
We’ve had the chance to have access to the spirit and heart of those times, and we’re humbled as BC’s. We want to make the conscious effort to inherit that heart and bring it into our own blessings. We won’t go through the same ceremonies or circumstances, but we can resonate in heart towards our parents; our dear first generation.
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Of course, our parents are not perfect. Even after the change of lineage (if not more than before), they struggled, they faced their challenges, they fell short, they doubted, made mistakes, repented, wished things would be different…But so do we.
We’re all in the path of dealing with our fallen nature, the long history of evil invading our divine potential. The tension of restoration defines a big part of our path towards God, and understanding that common theme between first and second generation shouldn’t be something to deny, but to acknowledge and work together. That’s family restoration.
We do want to look at our parents with dignity and gratitude, and make them part of this divine process of matching and blessing, whatever the circumstances. If anything, understanding those vulnerabilities from our parents makes us both more human, truer to the sensitivities of the heart, and the hopes of wanting a better reality, a fruitful life, an ideal to be fulfilled. Regardless of the levels of practical involvement that our parents can take in our matching journeys, our homework as filial sons and daughters is to honour them, connect to their hearts and become trustworthy in their eyes.
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Father points out the mistakes that the Israelites made once they settled in Canaan: they forgot who they were, the chosen people of God. They forgot the course of their lineage; they forgot their spiritual parents.
We don’t want to fail as the Israelites did in Canaan, “conforming” into the pre-existing culture. More than ever, the culture of the western world is one that threatens the family in all dimensions. And our responsibility is to be clear in such an environment, to be clear where we come from and why we came into this world.
We will be the generation who will remember their parents. We will be the generation who inherits the desire of their parents. Our roots won’t be forgotten, the Blessing will continue with us.
God bless you.
Javier B. (on behalf of the ESGD team)
