Rearing Monarchs #1:

The Realms of True Love
Unification Thoughts, June 2021

In the Principle (p. 38), three kinds of “original love” are mentioned: parental love, conjugal love and children’s love. And in Family Pledge #3 “Four Realms of Heart” are mentioned; the fourth one being siblings’ love.

But New Essentials of Unification Thought goes into some depth about yet another form of love: grandparents’ love (p. 44, 146, 161, 281, 286, 509, 524, 543-547). It states:

“Since grandparents stand in the position of God in a family, a family four position foundation can also be seen as consisting of father, mother, and children, all centering on grandparents.” • Theory of Ethics, p. 281

“…the four position foundation centered on God as explained in the Divine Principle is also the four position foundation centered on grandparents in the original world. Therefore, from now on, grandparents will be the center of the family four position foundation, representing God and the True Parents of humankind. Hence, the position of grandparents is that of God, which is the highest in the family…” • Appendix, p. 544

This textbook was available in English in 2006 and it really made an impression on me because of my mother’s influence on us. At that time, we lived together as a three-generation family because of my folks’ need for care, my being their only child and my wife’s deeply Confucian sense of duty (she grew up in a 4-generation family). True Father had opened the door for that when he told us in Belvedere one Sunday that we should take care of our parents, and if we couldn’t, then we should find some old people to move in and take care of! So in 1992, we did just that. We all found and bought a house together. Dad and Mom had the master bedroom, the children and my wife and I had our own.

Dad was an honorably discharged war vet, then a diplomat, and he’d been very athletic. However he now had lukemia and he passed on in a year. Mom was legally blind. Mom was the matriarch of her family of five surviving siblings (one had died in WWII); she was a devout Catholic, with a daily regimen of the rosary and a year-long regimen of daily Bible reading. She was the spiritual center of her clan, praying daily for her siblings and their children. They sometimes came to her for guidance and other kinds of help, which she gave wisely and generously.

As I read Unification Thought’s explanation of the centrality of grandparents, I reflected on our three-generation family’s experience living together. One example is that I’d come home from a badly troubled day at work. I greeted my Mom, she asked what was wrong and I told her. Her answer was priceless: “Is that all it is? Son, I’ve been through two World Wars and the Great Depression and I can tell you that God is always behind you.” Mom wasn’t talking from faith, but from experience – there was a certainty in her words. If she hadn’t been there, I’d have come home with anxiety about supporting my family, and it would have been much more stressful. But because of her, I could quickly find encouragement and regain confidence.

The other experience was my son. Ever since he was little, he’d go to her room every day after school for his daily dose of Grandmommy’s Love. He’d report and she’d respond and she’d always end by reminding him to “never forget the One upstairs”, wagging her index finder upwards and smiling seriously at him. That went on through his childhood and teen years until he moved to the dorm at his university. When he moved out, I braced myself, just in case his values and his faith would change. It happens, and it doesn’t matter what faith the young person comes from.

Long story short, after five years living in the dorms, he graduated and never lost his faith. So I asked him how he’d kept his faith in God. He said, “yeh, I never doubted God’s existence, even though I attended engineering school. I wondered if something was wrong with me.” I asked the reason. He thought a moment and then confidently said one word: “Grandmommy.” Her impact on him was similar to her impact on me: her experience with God had made a very deep impression on our souls. So I could not only understand, but really resonate with Unification Thought’s assertion that grandparents are the center of the Four Position Foundation.

And then, wouldn’t you know it, in 2014 a new version of Cheon Seong Gyeong was published in English. Book 3 is entitled True Love and in that book is an entire section of the Realms of True Love. There are five of them, and number one is Grandparents’ Love. So I could see where Dr. Sang Hun Lee got the information about grandparents that he wrote up in the New Essentials of Unification Thought textbook: He had much earlier access to the 600+ volumes of True Parents’ speeches that our mere three volumes in English represent.

So I think that this time in my life – when I could become a grandparent – could be the most important time in my life, the biggest “mission” of all: to be as God to my grandchildren, even as my Mom was so important to my son and I. I would wish that all Golden Agers would understand this hope that God has for people our age, so that we could have God’s viewpoint on this time in our lives, rather than a worldly view that we are “past our prime”, “over the hill”, “best years behind us”, etc., etc., etc. According to Godism, that’s just wrong and this time in our lives could be when we could do a most important thing for our families, ourselves, our community and even HP.

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