Parental love is the paradigm of true love 12 There is no limit to the love parents feel for their children. In one sense a baby is like an enemy to the mother. The infant is an enemy who takes a siphon and sucks out its mother’s flesh and blood. However, through her baby a woman gains new hope as a mother and finds new stimulus in her husband. In that place there is an unspoken understanding. That place is not a result of regulations. It is connected to absolute love. So, by the power of true love, parents have the strongest standard of love, love that is absolute, not for them, but for God and for the whole. So you pledge to God that you will serve for the sake of the whole. If you are not standing on that standard, your speaking and listening and looking and promising count for nothing; all those things can change at any time. (49-053, 1971.10.03)
13 Parents cannot discard their own children. They are the community of love. It is because the children are the fruit of love. Everything bears fruit. Everything seeks fruit. There is nothing that can deny fruit. No tree will deny its own fruit. Fruit sustains eternity. The parents’ fruit draws all the elements of love from a father and mother. It mobilizes everything. That is why when they look at it they say it’s good. Within me there is an eternal me, there is a history of me, and there is a developing me. Love in the present and future is connected in me. There is no principle allowing attacks on the love between parents and children. It cannot be struck. The universe naturally protects it. The law of the universe does not permit an attack on the place where loving parents embrace their loving children; rather, it gives natural protection. (130-152, 1984.01.08)
14 To satisfy a baby’s hunger, its mother’s breasts swell with milk. When the milk accumulates, the breasts begin to hurt and the mother’s entire body feels pressure. The feeling of a mother as she embraces and breastfeeds her child is beyond expression. When the swollen breasts empty, the mother feels relieved and happy. Only mothers can understand this feeling. Moreover, as a mother watches her baby nurse at her breast and caresses it, love springs up in her heart. At that time, joy and sadness intertwine in a mother’s heart in a way that only a mother can comprehend. (187-100, 1989.01.06)
15 Original love is the love that enables parents to sacrifice their life for their children. Their love goes beyond their own life. The origin of the universe was not for the sake of life. It was created for the sake of love, and therefore love comes first. Thus it is life that appears from love, not love that appears from life. Thus, genuine love can sacrifice life and go beyond life. This is the love of Heaven, a love that can connect with the universe. In the universe, parents who sacrifice their life for their children are unmatched true parents. (132-153, 1984.05.31)
16 We can observe that parents who have raised many children have hearts that are wide, deep and large. People who have raised many children cannot strike even their enemies. It is because they stand on a mysterious, broad foundation and live according to that broad and expansive law. (51-318, 1971.12.05)
17 When a baby is born, it follows the electric current of love and automatically seeks out its mother’s nipple. Whether its mother is ugly or beautiful by worldly standards doesn’t matter. This is truly an image of supreme harmony and holiness. People are born in love and grow up by receiving love. Each of us is the fruit of our parents’ love. We are the visible, real fruit of our mother and father’s love. Because I am the fruit of my parents’ love, they cannot help but love me. Through this fruit, infinite love will bear fruit yet again. This is the path whereby we can connect to individual love, family love, tribal love, national love, global love, universal love and even to the fundamental love of God. (298-305, 1999.01.17)
18 The love between parents and children comes from the parents. We receive our parents’ love from the moment of birth. As long as our parents are alive, we receive our parents’ love no matter what age we reach. This is true when we are children, through our youth, and into the prime of our life. We receive our parents’ love and grow up, and it is a matter of course that each of us then engages in the horizontal love between husband and wife. In order for the love of a husband and wife to continue, they must have children. If a husband and wife have no children, they don’t know love in its fullness. We can feel true love only when there is an object partner to love. Brothers and sisters grow up not understanding what parental love is, but when they reach maturity, marry and have children, they begin to understand parental love. In other words, we come to know parental love only when we experience the cycle that is started by our parents and is completed when we become parents ourselves. Therefore we can say that only after we have children do we become truly mature people. (066-119, 1973.04.18)
19 Children, after becoming mature and experiencing conjugal love, attain the power to create, like God. God gave us a loving heart with which to love our children so we could experience His happiness when He created human beings as His children. God poured the best of everything into us. God created human beings with the expectation that we would live in the Garden of Eden, in happiness and contentment, one with His eternal love. In this way the original state meant for humankind was for all people to live happily as the eternal object partners of the absolute God. Centered on that love, it is impossible to be separated from Him. (52-321, 1972.02.03) |