MY BEAUTIFUL GERMAN FRIENDS

Russia is still mourning the people she lost in the WWII. It happened just sixty eight years ago, and the whole culture over there is full of bitter and poignant memories. The movies, the books, the poems, the songs: they are largely about the loss and remembrance. When I worked at the Agricultural Academy, in Moscow, there were many foreign students. Once I was walking ahead of the two of them. They started to speak German, and my shoulders automatically pulled back in a panic. When I came to the U.S. and met the Unification Church though, some of the first people I met there were from Germany. I never met more beautiful souls. There was something wrong with their eyes: they shone with goodness and love! I remember one German sister; we went together for the seminars in the Baltic states during the Perestroika in the Soviet Union. We happened to be in a small town's cathedral. A beggar-woman was there, her dress - stained, her shoes - mere rags on her feet. She asked us for money, but my friend had something else in mind. You should've seen the look on the panhandler's face, as she was walking away from there, hugging her new shoes to her chest! It was as if she saw God's miracle. And she did, in the countenance of an unknown German girl. Perhaps, its time to change the stories, the songs, the poems, to reflect the relief of forgiveness and healing.