Early Years Going to the hometown

Father speaks of his Early Years

One Hometown

Originally, God wanted the whole human race to have but one hometown, the place where Adam's family was to have lived. Who would be the proprietor of that hometown? The proprietors should be God and True Parents, with God being the center.

If Adam and Eve had not fallen, they would have become one with God and become true parents at that time. Therefore, the place that was based on their realm of love would have become all humanity's hometown. If that had come about, God, the father, the mother and the children would all have become one.

However, the opposite occurred. People became self-centered, centered on Satan's love, and lost that hometown. The human race inherited satanic life through satanic love, and thus people cannot stand in front of God. The human race was expelled; people lost their hometown. Instead of receiving God's life, it was from the devil that humanity received life.

Though born of parents love, they were expelled because their lives were assuredly from the devil. What occurred along with that? The human lineage became stained with the devil's blood. Because human beings were of the devil's lineage, they were expelled and became those who have lost their hometown.

From that perspective, what are God's bitter pain and grief connected to? The hometown! What about Jesus' bitterness and grief? The hometown! What is the hope of the countless righteous people who have lived throughout history? The hometown!

Chongju County, North Pyong-an Province

Next, you must know about the realization of the homeland, which is religious people's hope, humankind's hope. Eden should have been the birthplace of those who were to be true parents, but this was lost through the Fall. Therefore, the owner of Eden should have been the one born to be the second True Father. Since the hometown of all humanity is wherever the True Parents were born, as members of the human race, your hometown must be the True Parents' birthplace. From the providential point of view, Father's birthplace should be your hometown, and that original hometown should be a sacred place.

You should cultivate the feeling that you were originally meant to have, deep within your heart, toward that hometown. Let us cultivate those original, deeply-felt emotions toward that hometown! Where is the hometown toward which we might cultivate those original heart-felt sentiments?

Chongju County. Why Chongju? Why have Chongju and Korea become the hometown and the homeland? It is the conclusive will of God and was determined so that we might win over the world and return to God. In the heart, the starting point and the ending point are the same. Our course should be a balanced one.

The name "Chongju" is good, isn't it? Who determined the place of settlement? God did; God determined it. It was not determined by me or by the Korean people. It was determined by God and without doubt it is the fast road to our hometown. Chongju is really a good name, and it has the qualities to become the hometown of all people.

People from Pyong-an Province are like ferocious jungle tigers. Even people from Russia and China cannot match them. They are people who travel freely beyond boundaries. From that perspective, people from Pyong-an Province are people who can go beyond their boundaries; they also possess good diplomatic skills.

Do you know why people from Pyong-an Province are not given recognition in official positions? Because once given a position, they will take over everything. So don't belittle them. In South Korea today, many of the people from the North are among those with the economic power, and among them, many are from Pyong-an Province. Of course, there are also a few from Gyeongsang Province and Gang-won Province, right? [Laughter]

That is because of God's protection. Everything must be equally distributed. Compared to a fish, they are like the head and the body, while the rest of the people are like the tail. Therefore, the people from Pyong-an Province are enlightened.

Why are they enlightened? Because that is the original birthplace of Korean Christianity, and it is the first place in Korea to absorb Western civilization, thus the people's thinking is quicker.

There were many famous people who emerged from Chongju County in North Pyong-an Province. Chongju is famous. The center of the independence movement is not Seoul. Christianity was at the center of the struggle with Communism. Like many powerful generals on the frontline of a struggle, many famous people emerged from Pyong-an Province.

Even now there may be famous people emerging from there. If Chongju County alone is mobilized, then North Pyong-an Province and the entire North will follow and will be mobilized in turn. Because of that, Kim Il-sung could control everything from Pyongyang.

Dokon Village, Sangsa Hamlet

There is a place called Dokon Village in Chongju County, North Pyong-an Province. That is my birthplace. Six hundred families settled there in an attempt to emerge from poverty. There were approximately three thousand people in those six hundred families. The teaching of the Osan School was the core of Dokon Village, which is why many intellectuals emerged from there. Thus, even though they were fugitives from poverty, their intellectual level was high.

These people formed a villagers' association among themselves. Even though scholarships were offered to the needy, they were refused. Even though they were poor, they would not accept help from the others. Those needy people said, "We will definitely not accept any help; we will solve our problems by ourselves." Also, even if a bag of rice were offered to them because they were poor, they would refuse it.

So the scholarship and the bag of rice would always be left unused. Dokon Village is like that because it is the place I was born, isn't it? [Laughter] Twelve people from there had graduated with a doctoral degree, and quite a few businessmen were from there. When I observed the people from Chongju, I felt moved because their attitude was very good.

I was actually born in Doksong Village, Dokdal District, Chongju County, North Pyong-an Province. The Chinese characters for Chongju County, Dokdal District mean "the place that achieved the standard of morality."

Those for Doksong Village mean "a place that reflects a standard of morality as high as the stars in heaven." The name was later changed to Dokon Village, and "on" in "Dokon" means "gentleman" or "learned person." What knowledge resides in the word "on"? Doesn't that knowledge symbolize the lord? Because it became known as Dokon Village and Sangsa Hamlet, everything there developed.

Rumors spread that Sangsa Hamlet was loyal to South Korea. It's easy to do what everyone else does, but our village was strongly united against communism. That resembles me, doesn't it? Because I have higher thoughts. "Sang" means "high" and "Sa" means "thought," so together it means elevated thinking, which means one must be thinking about God, doesn't it? The place name is Sangsa village, so it developed a reputation for being sympathetic toward South Korea. Ah! All because of a place name...

Thus, people like me who are born there must become people who think about higher things. It means not thinking about one's own home but about the larger reality. Also, we should think that our home address is 2221 Sangsa Hamlet, Dokon Village, Chongju. If we expand on that, it can be limitless.

Going to the hometown

No matter how far a person goes, he cannot leave his origin. The feelings in his heart don't change; he cannot sever the emotional attachment he has to his origin, right? That is because he and his hometown are connected through the spreading roots. No one can live separated from one's roots, so inevitably we long for our hometown. From this perspective, my life is connected to my hometown and it is important as the place where I received 80 percent of my education. Therefore, no one can cut off from one's destined relationship to his or her hometown. Isn't that true?

If I came to my homeland, where would I want to go on arrival at Incheon airport? Even though this is my homeland, I would not go to Seoul, even though it is at the center of my native land. I'd go beyond Seoul, beyond the center of the country, to my village in North Pyong-an Province, in Chongju County, where my house stands in the midst of the hills and nearby streams. That is where I want to go. My journey will end there because that is my origin.

It is all about returning. What is it centered on? We return centering on an emotional standard. But where am I going? What am I doing? To put it simply, I am a person who longs to return to his hometown. Where am I going? If I am asked, the answer is that I'm going home, not to a false hometown but to the true hometown.

I want to use the hometown, where I was born -- the yard that I grew up in, the village that I played in -- as a classroom, a place to enlighten people. Therefore, before you die, you must hear the story directly from me of the time I spent playing at the foot of a mountain. You must have a precise understanding of my history. Once in the spirit world, you will feel ashamed if you haven't visited that place. In the future, those who understand Unification Thought will think of that place as our church's Mecca, as similar to Jerusalem in relation to Christianity.

For you to become a royal citizen of heaven, you must be able to say that you attended the True Parents from the beginning to the end. For that reason, you must visit True Parents' starting point. True Parents only come once in the course of history. At that one time when this occurs, you are in a position to accompany the teacher on a visit to his hometown, the rightful hometown of all humanity. This is precious... You must understand this fact and be determined to go there even if you must look death in the face.

A Moon clan tradition

Is the Unification Church's Rev. Moon the product of any special place? [Laughter] I am the product of Pyong-an Province, am I not? Do you know where the ancestors of the Pyong-an Province Moon clan come from? We are Jeolla Province people; from NamPyung in Jeolla Province [South Korea]. That root hometown, NamPyung, is next to Naju. If you think along those lines, I'm a Jeolla Province man. [Laughter] I said it in that way to help dissolve the grudge borne by people from Jeolla Province. I wouldn't mind if people from Jeolla were to go to Gyeongsan Province and say I must be on their side because my roots go back to the village of NamPyung. That's logical, isn't it? [Laughter]

When I looked into the ancestry of the Moon clan, it struck me that the Moon clan began from an illegitimate child. When we look at the family tree, there was a certain king at the time of the Shilla Dynasty King Ja-bi, who through a prophetic dream learned that a special child had been born in the country. The dream instructed him to go to a certain place, to a rock now called Moon's Rock, where he would find a crying baby. That was how it started. From the providential view, Bal Ju-ja, the founder of Hwarangdo, is from the Moon clan. [A seventh-century martial art and philosophy derived from Buddhism and Confucianism that embraced scholarly and physical training and whose adherents were instrumental in unifying Korea from three warring kingdoms.] We cannot clearly explain how he is, though, because the stories of such complex connections are rather convoluted. Moon Hong-gwan [a church member] has said that King Lee Tae-jo's second son spoke about this.

Because there were many patriots from the Moon clan, an imperial decree later dictated that in the future, descendants of the Moon clan should never be used as servants. There were books written about this. So from the King Lee-jo era onward, the Moon clan never again served as servants. Looking at it providentially, the story somehow fits.

Also, because members of the Moon clan are smart, they have occupied places in important organizations. Moons are intelligent and are also stubborn. They are notably stubborn people. During King Lee-jo's reign, Moons did not occupy official positions. It is not that they could not occupy these positions, but they did not occupy them. Therefore, they did not do so of their own free will. From this perspective, they are a clan with a sense of values and integrity. People in the Moon clan are frighteningly stubborn people with a strong conscience; and they will never deal with anything unrighteous. The descendants of the Moon clan now number four hundred thousand, and it was from that lineage that I was born.

Moon Hong-gwan! [Yes.] What did Confucius say about something coming from the Moon clan? [He said that a saint would emerge from the clan.] What more was said? I don't know if Confucius really said that... [Yes, there are many old sites related to the Moon clan. Each of these sites has its accompanying strange legend. There are stories that come down from the NamPyung Moons, from the tomb of the Chungsook Moons, and the tomb of Grandfather Moon Ickjeom of SanChung that a saint will come from the Moon clan.]

The family tradition of serving guests and beggars

One family tradition that was passed down through the generations is that a hungry guest should never leave empty-handed. Whenever a guest visited us, he would never be turned away empty-handed, even on a celebration day. We had that kind of family tradition.

Thus, we fed so many people from everywhere. During the time of the Japanese occupation, people were robbed of everything, thus they had no choice but to flee to Manchuria for shelter. During that time my mother fed so many of these refugees passing by our house. My mother fed an average of about thirty to forty such people every day. Though she did this almost every day throughout her life, I did not hear her complain even once.

We owned a flour mill. It was very warm because there was a small fire burning. It was occupied most of the time by one poor beggar or another. Though we asked them not to stay there, they would always come back because they could not find anywhere else they would be fed. As a result, I got very close to the beggars.

During the winter, when a beggar came asking for food, either my mother or my sister-in-law would rush to the kitchen to prepare food. If they could not find any food, they would offer the beggar food from their own table. In this way, sometimes they would be left without food themselves.

A family that feeds beggars will never be ruined; it will have descendants who will be welcomed by people everywhere. That is why a person like me was born, isn't it? I am also someone who would feed the people of the world. During my lifetime, I have given countless sets of my clothes away and fed countless people. Why did I do that? This is because I am always thinking about the equality in love and life.

Great-Grandfather Moon Jeong-heul (11.3, 1841 – 11.26. ,918) [All life spans are based on the lunar calendar, which has months that are numbered, not named; thus this is the 11th month, 3rd day of 1841 according to the lunar calendar.]

If you follow me, you must know my history and know about my ancestors, especially the story of my great-grandfather. From my great-grandfather to my generation is four generations. At that time, my great-grandfather moved to our present location, Sangsa Hamlet. His family left its original hometown and later, while enduring many difficulties, was blessed by Heaven and became quite successful.

My great-grandfather had three sons. Among them, my grandfather Moon Ji-kook was the oldest. Next was Moon Shin- kook, followed by Moon Yoon-kook, who lived in Paju. Our house was the eldest son's house and during my great-grandfather's time, they lived quite well. They were quite a respected family in that region because through Heaven's blessing, their inheritance was great. [Later, The body of Moon Yoon-kook was re-interred at the Wonjeon]

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