God’s Will and the Ocean: Episode 71

God’s Will and the Ocean
True Father Speaks on: Tuna Fishing and the Way of Life, page 228-233
July 5, 1984, Morning Garden 

Become Worthy to Inherit from the Best

Another thing for you to remember is to get hold of the top person. Get hold of the top fisherman. Don't worry so much about the mediocre ones. You have to have a sufficient interest in fishing in order to approach the best person in your area. Even if you have a great deal of interest, you must also have a solid preparation within yourself before you can invite him over for dinner and talk with him. It's important to connect to the top people if you want to get things done. If you want to influence history, you have to become a quality person and be able to move the high quality people in your area. In order to reach these people, you have to be serious and study and be able to gain success in some area. Then, you can move the minds of people who are making the same kind of effort in their lives.

People who accomplish things in life want to have someone whom they respect to inherit those things. Who can they respect?  They will respect the person with these qualities: the one who is serious and willing to study or research, and then make a real effort to apply what he learns. This is the one who will gain such respect. You have to become like that.

Around the top person are usually four or five people and you have to study them. Each one has some good characteristics. One of them might work hard, but when his time is up, he's immediately gone. Another one might spend more time, but he doesn't work as hard. A third one might spend less time, but he is so serious and his sincerity tops them all. From them, you can figure out which patterns to follow. You take the best habits from all of them. For three years, don't say anything. Talking just drains your energy and takes away your concentration. Just put things into action. Be silent and learn. You must become one of the people to be missed. When you aren't there, the top man will ask, "Where is he today?" And the others will ask the same question as well. They have to become interested in you and they really have to need you to be around. Everyone should miss you. I look at all of you. I am thinking about someone whose face I want to see. This year I don't see someone's face which I remember from years before and I miss him. If I don't miss you, it's because you are not a needed person for the tuna season. That isn't so good is it? The one who has been fishing for a few years and is eager to teach things to others, is the one who has learned something the difficult way and wants to share with others. That person will have little tricks of how to do things and he will be able to teach about many different aspects of fishing that he found out for himself.

You will see someone who is faithful to his own job, but not so serious about the sake of the whole purpose. Then, you will see another one who doesn't spend so much time on his own job, but is more concerned about the whole group and how everyone else is doing. Some people are very faithful to their own boat and they don't pay attention to what others are doing. Such people think that is the best way of life for them. On the other hand, another person comes around, giving a hand to other boats and giving suggestions on how to improve things. The second person in both examples is the more precious person. The second kind of person never seems to bicker with other boats. He has already done his share on his own boat and with his extra time wants to help other boats. He isn't thinking of just his own boat, so how can he be in conflict with another boat? He is interested in all the boats. This way he keeps clear of all the little arguments that can come up.

All of us must become such a person that other people want to have around helping them. This doesn't mean you don't accomplish your own work. That's not it. It means that after you finish your own work, you are free to help others with theirs. You must learn how to be quick and efficient. I have practiced this since I was very young. As a student I developed these habits. In school, no one wanted to do the cleaning jobs, but I always took those jobs. In my school, I helped the teacher with more cleaning jobs than anyone else.

When I go to the toilet and find some litter I always pick up that litter without anyone seeing me and throw it away. When you make a habit of that, the difference will show up later on. Don't only do your own share, but be interested in others doing as well as you. Then, you will really contribute to the effort of the whole class.

I recently came back to Morning Garden after being gone for four years, and immediately I could tell whether the caretaker of this house had been doing a good job or had been neglecting the small things. In the boat it is the same. I never look at the boats on the first day out. On the first day, everyone is meticulous, but the day you finish is when I go to take a look. Some of the boats are really messy by then. The boat which is as clean on the last day as it is on the first day is the winner.

I have that strong standard of judgment in everything. Recently, I was looking through a machine shop. There were veterans of twenty and thirty years working there. I gave them some very strict comments, but each time, they were humble to what I said because they had only thought so far and not beyond that. They recognized that I had thought way beyond their thinking. This impressed them.

People who build boats think they build pretty good boats, but I go through their shop and pin-point things they had not thought about. Not a single point is a mistake on my part. I apply this kind of serious thought to everything. For example, the Washington Times newspaper won twenty awards this year in an international competition. Not just one, but twenty awards, and it's just beginning, just in its first few years of existence. This did not come about by accident. The people at the Washington Times know it was my serious attitude which produced this result. They don't think they could have put such a thing together on their own.

Basically, this tuna fishing is not just to go out and get the tuna and make some money. That is not the central point at all. This is good basic training for the rest of your life. If you apply the principles you learn faithfully, you can make a success out of your life. Do you understand? Like anything else you do in your life, you have to put a lot of time in. Study everything, discuss it with others and read it again, then put in concentrated effort.

Actually, I didn't have the time to come here, but I felt so much that I wanted to give you a good start, so I came yesterday and went fishing at four o'clock in the morning. Today I am here with you. Tomorrow I may go out too, but that will be the last day. I cannot stay with you all summer, so please, do your best. The last ten years, I devoted every single day of the season out on the ocean. Rain or shine, I went out. Literally, rain or shine. There were storm warnings and still I went out. One time there was a storm coming and everyone could see it clearly, but in the middle of the night I said, "Let's go." The captain obeyed and we went out. I've gone out in the midst of a frenzied ocean and endured it. And then, in the morning I came back in, having won over that.

While I was in the boat waiting for the tuna to come, I thought over and over again about the providence in America and planned what to do. I thought about the problem of world hunger and planned what to do step by step. I didn't just think one or two years ahead, not like that. Instead, I thought about hundreds of years to come and what to do to prepare for that. I thought about how to farm the tuna and how it could be nurtured and used for millions of pounds of nutritional food in the future. I thought like that all the time. There is nothing that I didn't think of in the long hours while I was waiting for the tuna to come.

Every morning I went out, no matter how early. I was always full of hope and expectation for that day. I came back when the sun was setting, returning with elation that I had done my very best for that day and wondering what the next day had in store for me. I expect you to take pride and to go the same path that I have gone. You are now privileged to tread the very same path that I have walked these past ten years.

Everything you do here is directly involved with me. Many things I have invented myself. I have paved the road and pioneered everything for you. Take that as your pride, and just as every rock along the pathway has witnessed what I have done, so your footsteps will also be recorded. All that we do has a deep religious significance. Don't just go out and catch fish like other fishermen, tie it up and bring it home. Please don't fish like this, not in any way like this. This is a very precious opportunity. Don't be discouraged. Do you think that in my time of fishing there were moments that were difficult? Sure, there were. There were up times, and down times of doubt and worry. When you are very happy and elated, when you are catching the tuna, think of what kind of experience I had in the same moment. Would I have just thought about getting one more tuna, or would I have been happy because one more aspect of creation, of the world, was coming under the influence of God's love?

You have to relate the experiences you have to how I would have thought and experienced things when I was fishing. The success of your own mission is tied to all the other One Hope boats. Not just in this area, but wherever they are, all along the coast, even down into South America. When you are operating the Good Go boat think to yourself, "We made this boat with our own hands. Brothers and sisters made this boat." Also realize that we will make larger boats with our own hands as well. Someday there will be hundreds of ocean-going vessels that we will have made with our own hands.

These dreams all began here. They are realized here. The New Hope and the Flying Phoenix were the modest beginning of the future fishing fleet which will go all over the world. The first time I put my foot into Gloucester they all rose up against me. In a sense, it was ridiculous because they didn't know me at all. Anyway, in ten years they have seen more of us and they know how hard we are working to make the fishing industry successful in the future. Now, some are thinking, "What if Reverend Moon were to quit now like we once kept telling him to?”