President's Corner
Dear friends,
Happy March and Happy Spring!
As this new year is already well underway, the coronavirus that broke out in December 2019 is now affecting the entire world community. It therefore can truly be considered a major miracle that our WFWP USA delegation who attended the World Summit 2020 in Seoul on February 2-7 all came back uninfected! Our delegation was part of 3,000 world leaders from every sector of human endeavor who met at the huge Kintex Center. Literally two weeks after our events, the Kintex Center was shut down as a health precaution!
The World Summit also included several spectacular celebratory events in honor of our Founders' birthdays -- Dr. Hak Ja Han Moon's 77th birthday and the 100th birthday of her late husband, the Rev. Dr. Sun Myung Moon. Everything on the program was live-streamed, including the discussions on peace-building. These were utterly timely and all conducted in the spirit of collaborating beyond differences of religion, nationality, politics, etc., in order to solve the serious issues facing humanity at this time. See our short article in this issue and further information on the World Summit at upf.org. (The Universal Peace Federation was the main sponsor of the events.)
Since by now the coronavirus has also spread into the United States, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and his aides decided to cancel all CSW events this year. And for the same safety reasons, WFWP International and WFWP USA followed suit and agreed to cancel our Horizon Summit, a special annual program we co-sponsor, even though it is unrelated to the UN.
We hope that all of these events, especially since this is a banner year for the UN (75th anniversary) and the Beijing conference (25th anniversary), will be able to take place later this year. In honor of the Beijing conference's anniversary, we posted an article in this edition.
While we encourage everyone to absolutely adhere to the official advice as to how to avoid being infected by the coronavirus, one can see and interpret these current events also in a different way, as a wakeup call and a call for change. We at WFWP USA see this new year generally as one in which important and necessary shifts need to be made for the sake of bringing lasting solutions to our "ailing" planet and suffering humanity. Of course, it depends on the individual choices we make. We see the need for a shift from the inside out, from selfishness to unselfishness, from secularism and humanism to spirituality and moral values and standards -- a cultural shift toward collaboration regardless of differences. See the article by Kiyomi Schmidt.
Fear, hate, and resentment are also known to be the lowest vibrations in the human spectrum of emotions, causing and attracting further sickness and misery and perpetuating a miserable status quo. Healing and health, on the other hand, occur when we consciously shift our mindsets and heartsets to a higher frequency. In the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., "Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that!"
There are many tools and resources out there on the internet to assist us with this, including how to eliminate stress, which is often caused by fear. I recommend taking time to read up on positive mindsets, healing, emotional health, building trust, etc.
In fact, I am doing that myself as we speak, and it works! In a way, it is also part of spring cleaning. Maybe this year and for this new decade we need a deeper level of spring cleaning to be able to avoid further toxins and viruses and to weather the afflictions that may come our way. Women and mothers, let's take the lead in this!
And on that note:
HAPPY INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY 2020!
And Happy Spring!
Angelika Selle