3rd European Conference of Urantia Book Readers

From , Presented by Olga López, Spain on

Overcoming Materialism, Enlightening Europe

(Editor’s note: The Urantia Association of Spain, Urantia Association International, and the European Organizing Committee worked hard to create this event in Southern Europe to unite the European Urantia Community once again for our third European Urantia Conference.) 

The 3rd European Conference of Urantia Book readers was held at the Sol Don Pablo Hotel in Torremolinos (Malaga, Spain) from October 20 to 23. Almost 70 readers attended from different parts of Europe and the rest of the world (from Georgia in Eastern Europe to the United States and Argentina in the American continent). With summer temperatures, we were able to enjoy not only the weather, but also the good company of other readers and some activities related to the theme of the conference and the theme of self-mastery, to which several workshops were dedicated.

This third European conference was intended to have a practical focus, so that attendees would return home with new ideas and tools to improve the art of self-mastery. Hence, the workshops of the so-called “route of self-mastery” had a theoretical part and a practical part in which the participation of the attendees was a prerequisite. To facilitate the organization, two routes were defined by language: English and Spanish, which worked independently but always focused on the same theme: self-mastery under the light of the teachings of The Urantia Book. As they developed independently, the approaches were different but equally enriching. There were readers who attended activities in both languages, so multilingual people had the advantage of seeing these different approaches. But there were also joint activities that maintained the cohesion of the group of attendees thanks to the translation services.

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Farewell Margo Sherwood

From ,

Margo Sherwood, beloved wife of Will Sherwood, after a long illness, graduated peacefully in the early hours of Saturday morning, October 29, 2022, with the help and support of her husband, her pets, and loving hospice care workers. 

Margo was born in 1954 in Hungary and escaped that communist nation in her early 20’s. She and her then husband stayed in Austria for nine months awaiting political asylum to become American citizens.

As a successful real estate agent in Los Angeles, CA, she spent her office breaks talking with (unknown to her at the time) Urantia Book reader, Jean Painter. And for about nine months, though they talked much about philosophy, surprisingly Jean never mentioned the book! However, while attending a Whole Life Expo in Pasadena, CA, Margo found herself drawn to the booth hosted by The Urantia Book Los Angeles Society. As she read over a list of people currently reading the book, she was stunned to find that her friend and colleague, Jean, was on the list of people reading and studying the book! Margo immediately called Jean, saying, “This is Margo from Urantia! Why haven’t you told me about this book?” From that point, still in her 20’s, Margo started actively reading the book and attending study groups in Southern California.

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International Service Board Elections

From ,

The International Service Board (ISB) recently held elections for the positions of Vice President, Secretary, Communications Chair, Dissemination Chair, and Study Groups Chair. Here are the results:

Vice President: Andres Rodriguez (re-elected for second term)
Secretary Joanne Strobel: (re-elected for second term)
Communications Chair: Myra Hight (elected for first term)
Dissemination Chair: Willem Jeths (re-elected for second term)
Study Groups Chair: Phillip Marriott (elected for first term)

Congratulations to the successful candidates. Former Communications Chair and Study Groups Chairs, Kathleen Swadling and Andrés Ramírez respectively completed their second terms so needed to step down. We are very grateful for their incredibly loving, loyal, and tireless service. We welcome Myra Hight from California and Phillip Marriott from South Australia to the ISB. We hope they find their volunteer work for the Urantia revelation fulfilling, rewarding, and joyful.

Editor’s Note – November 2022

From , By Mark Blackham on
Mark Blackham

Welcome to the November 2022 edition of the Urantia Association’s Journal, a publication dedicated to the thoughts, observations, and experiences of Urantia Book students from around the world. Our contributors explore a wide range of topics, including personal stories of spiritual discovery, finding new meanings and values, and enhancing spiritual perception. Others write about cosmology, science, and ways to improve global civilization. Throughout all these articles, we see an extraordinary diversity of thought coupled with a spirited unity of purpose. 

Our first article, Our Missing Mother God: Monotheism at the Cost of Trinitarianism by Elisabeth Callahan, is an insightful and novel essay centered on the Mother concept of God. Elisabeth has conducted several classes and forums at the Urantia University Institute on the nature of the local universe Mother Spirit as well the maternal characteristics of the Eternal Son and God the Supreme. In this essay, she makes the case that the continued focus on a male dominated monotheism in world religions detracts from the higher truth inherent in the nature of trinitarianism and, in the process, has devalued the maternal creative function.

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Our Missing Mother God – Monotheism at the Cost of Trinitarianism

From , By Elisabeth Callahan, USA on

Back in the late 1980s, while engaged in a graduate program in transpersonal psychology, I took a class in Creation Spirituality with Matthew Fox, the former Dominican priest, theologian, and author of 37 books including Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth. This was my first significant foray into the idea that God has a pervasive, life-giving, maternal creative function.

At the time, from the viewpoint of the magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church, Fox’s perspective bordered on heresy. He was booted from the Dominican priesthood but later, in 1994, he was received as a priest in the Episcopal Church by Bishop William Swing.

Nonetheless, the concept of creation spirituality was planted in my mind as something worth pondering. Creation spirituality posits that God is in all things (panentheism), that divinity permeates all things, and that all things bear the energetic blueprint of divinity. That is not to say that God is all things, which is a pantheistic assertion, although it is true to say that without God or a Primal Cause, nothing would exist.

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My Relationship to God – My Mother and Father

From , By Kurt Cira, USA on

My understanding of, and relationship with, God has changed tremendously since I discovered The Urantia Book fifty years ago. I was raised in a religion where masculine, anthropomorphic descriptions of Deity dominated the religious thinking of our world. This is not surprising given that almost all aspects of society have been male dominated except within the home, where women have often played an equal or dominant role in family life. The Judeo-Christian and Islamic theologies that are the prevailing religious systems of our times are a product of, and are rooted in, concepts of God that place little emphasis on God as Mother as well as Father. Even the Urantia Papers are written in a way that makes far more use of the term Father and masculine pronouns to describe God. This preponderance of usage has led me and many who have studied the book to overlook its ground-breaking revelation of God as equally mother-like and in possession of all the traits and values that we associate with the feminine. 

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The Psychic Circles and Morontia Life

From , By André Desjardins, Canada on

An archangel of Nebadon mentions:

You should understand that the morontia life of an ascending mortal is really initiated on the inhabited worlds at the conception of the soul, at that moment when the creature mind of moral status is indwelt by the spirit Adjuster. [Paper 48:6.2, page 551.7]

This quotation indicates that morontial life begins on our planet at the formation of the soul through a sincere moral choice, heralding the arrival of the indwelling Thought Adjuster. The joint formation of the morontial soul with the Adjuster provides access to morontia realities, and it is possible for a human personality to know and experience a taste of morontia life during his or her earthly life with the absolute conviction of being part of this great morontial family.

The Urantia Book gives us some information about the activities in the schools of education and training on the morontia worlds in Papers 47 and 48. These papers give us an opportunity to study and join these morontia schools during our earthly life. Man has the power to transcend time and space and live as if in direct contact with the Heavenly Father through his vast personality circuit and through the indwelling presence of the Thought Adjuster. “Man’s ability to transcend himself is the one thing which distinguishes him from the animal kingdom” [111:6.9].

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The Word, the Language, the Dictionary

From , By Peter Walker, USA on

In the Spring of 2018, I read of the new library in the Urantia Foundation’s building, dedicated to containing the works of literature assumed to have been used by the revelators in the Urantia Papers’ formation. Over the years, I have wondered about the origins of the Urantia Papers and reviewed such websites as Matthew Block’s Square Circles in his efforts to match The Urantia Book to human sources. The new library at the Urantia Foundation preserving such works is an invaluable collection, especially for future generations.

Having studied The Urantia Book for years, I am still amazed at the quality of the English language used in the papers. The Urantia Book is a masterpiece of prose literature with its poetic cadence, with each author representing their thoughts through the written word. The style of the Urantia Papers is exclusive from any human author’s works I have read. Even the style of each author is unique. Each has its unique writing style, from a Divine Counselor to a Solitary Messenger, Mighty Messenger, or the Midwayer Commission.

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Why a Study Group? (video)

By Gaetan Charland, Quebec Canada on

This is a video presentation by Gaetan Charland, former President of Urantia Association International and former Chair of the Study Groups Committee of the ISB. He currently (2022) serves as an Associate Trustee of Urantia Foundation.

Gaetan’s passion has always been about the importance of the role study groups play in the mission of spreading the teachings of The Urantia Book. He also believes that the study group is a good environment for the development of teachers and leaders who can assist others in understanding the concepts in the book.

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Mission, Philosophy and Goals of Study Groups (video)

This is a video presentation by Gaetan Charland, former President of Urantia Association International and former Chair of the Study Groups Committee of the ISB. He currently (2022) serves as an Associate Trustee of Urantia Foundation.

Gaetan’s passion has always been about the importance of the role study groups play in the mission of spreading the teachings of The Urantia Book. He also believes that the study group is a good environment for the development of teachers and leaders who can assist others in understanding the concepts in the book.

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Creating a Study Group (video)

This is a video presentation by Gaetan Charland, former President of Urantia Association International and former Chair of the Study Groups Committee of the ISB. He currently (2022) serves as an Associate Trustee of Urantia Foundation.

Gaetan’s passion has always been about the importance of the role study groups play in the mission of spreading the teachings of The Urantia Book. He also believes that the study group is a good environment for the development of teachers and leaders who can assist others in understanding the concepts in the book.

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Facilitating a Study Group (video)

This is a video presentation by Gaetan Charland, former President of Urantia Association International and former Chair of the Study Groups Committee of the ISB. He currently (2022) serves as an Associate Trustee of Urantia Foundation.

Gaetan’s passion has always been about the importance of the role study groups play in the mission of spreading the teachings of The Urantia Book. He also believes that the study group is a good environment for the development of teachers and leaders who can assist others in understanding the concepts in the book.

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Methods for Facilitating a Study Group (video)

This is a video presentation by Gaetan Charland, former President of Urantia Association International and former Chair of the Study Groups Committee of the ISB. He currently (2022) serves as an Associate Trustee of Urantia Foundation.

Gaetan’s passion has always been about the importance of the role study groups play in the mission of spreading the teachings of The Urantia Book. He also believes that the study group is a good environment for the development of teachers and leaders who can assist others in understanding the concepts in the book.

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President’s Message – September 2022 

From , By Enrique Traver, Brazil  on
Enrique Traver

Dear Friends,

I am impressed to know that so many of us are present and active in study groups. And many who believe the truth of this revelation have formed true family associations that are actively engaged in various projects of learning and disseminating the teachings. It’s just wonderful to see all this happening.

Many of us embrace the challenge of serving our Father and others by becoming workers for the kingdom of God. Those who love The Urantia Book revelation approach this purpose with great enthusiasm and true devotion.

When we act enthusiastically to attract more souls to the kingdom of God, there are many different approaches. But no matter which approach we use, we certainly want everyone to feel the same attraction to the revelation as we do.

However, I have observed that some of us are convinced that “converting” our fellows  in favor of this revelation is a great grace and a precious service to others and to the Father. We often deliver impassioned speeches or go out of our way to build up arguments to demonstrate why others must change and how, upon discovering The Urantia Book, each of us must behave in the future. At times, some of us are astonished when faced with confronting situations caused by students of The Urantia Book that, according to our understanding, should not have occurred or are not acceptable. In some situations, our over-zealousness towards non-students of the teachings may cause the encounter to become argumentative when trying to convince that person to change.

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The Jesus Metaverse

From ,

Calling for Presentation Curators

What a transcendent service if, through this revelation, the Son of Man should be recovered from the tomb of traditional theology and be presented as the living Jesus to the church that bears his name, and to all other religions! [Paper 196:1.2, page 2090.3]

About the Jesus Metaverse and the Center for Unity

Gabriel Rymberg

The Center for Unity is currently developing a Jesus Metaverse app that is a strategic, technologically savvy and innovative way to share Jesus with young adults focused on the untold story of Jesus. Our core focus is “to transform the world by sharing a new revelation of Jesus’ life, creating experiences that produce spiritual transformations.”

The user experience in the Jesus Metaverse is based on carefully curated content, presented in a visually engaging and easy to use manner. The media presentations are the basic “building blocks” of the experience. The quality of the experience, the service we provide to our users, therefore relies on two main factors: 1) The quantity and quality of the content and, 2) the quality of the design and implementation of the software.

For a deeper view into the Jesus Metaverse, take a look at this presentation and the jesusmetaverse.org website.

We are currently looking for Presentation Curators who will be tasked with finding specific pieces of content for Metaverse “nodes.”

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3rd European Urantia Conference 2022 

From , Presented by Gines Aviles Martinez, Spain on

20 to 23 October 2022 

Overcoming Materialism, Enlightening Europe 
 

Dear Brothers and Sisters,  

This year we have prepared a dynamic and unique European Conference intended to be a light for our siblings from the continent. It will be held 20 to 23 October at Torremolinos, Málaga, Spain. 

Data shows that secularism triumphs in Europe and that biblical ideas are not well received.* However, there is a very important nuance: the majority still believe in God. Therefore, is there any opportunity for the teachings of The Urantia Book? Whatever: Let’s take it!  

In this new venture we have a plan. We will dive into the waters of self-mastery to gain a clearer idea of how to become better versions of ourselves. And we will do  this through practice in a series of workshops. 

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Prison Inmate Response Team (PIRT) Mission Statement 

From , By Myra Hight, PIRT Chair on

PIRT’s mission is to enlighten the spirits and minds of incarcerated men and women by disseminating The Urantia Book to inmates and providing subsequent correspondence to support the inmate’s efforts to study the teachings. 

Drawn by a Texas inmate and printed with permission.

PIRT is a sub-committee functioning under the Association’s Dissemination Committee; 2022 marks this committee’s 17th year of service. Since the inception of PIRT, approximately 6,000 inmate letters have been processed, 2,800 Urantia books have been donated directly, and 400 books have been seeded into prison libraries.

This year, PIRT experienced the loss of its dear Chairperson, David Linthicum, who was Chair for 13 of its 17 years, with the exception being his term as Dissemination Chair. David left his mortal body for mansonia on June 1st, 2022. He is missed by all who served with him in their collective effort to “assist the Father in finding his lost sheep.” David was a tireless servant involved in many activities besides PIRT and his love touched countless souls.

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I Found the Key

From , By Line St-Pierre, Canada on

How many of us are saddened to see the world today in such decay? I realize that we all have this need to feel comforted and at peace about what will happen after our time on earth. What will we leave as a spiritual legacy to our grandchildren and their children’s children? It may seem far-fetched to think like this, but it is so little when we know that life is eternal and that this earthly adventure must one day reach the era of light and life.

My greatest wish is that The Urantia Book will find its way into the hands of many souls thirsting for truth and that it will transform the person who studies it.

But how could this happen without a personal commitment from those who have found this treasure? As a fervent student of The Urantia Book and its teachings, I feel that these truths are a gift from heaven, an answer to my questions, the object that has given meaning to my life and answers to my many reflections. It has helped me feel better within myself, improving my health and general well-being; it has helped me to strive to be a better person and to be better at living my life and putting my beliefs into action. This book and its teachings cannot remain stagnant—they need to be shared. So, how to share it?

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Parliament of the World’s Religions

From ,

Faith & Interfaith Understanding

14 to 18 August 2023

In August 2023, the Parliament of the World’s Religions returns to Chicago, the birthplace of the modern interfaith movement, to celebrate 130 years of achievements. Parliament conventions attract participants from more than 80 nations reflecting over 200 diverse religious, indigenous, and secular beliefs.

It’s Mission: “The Parliament of the World’s Religions was created to cultivate harmony among the world’s religious and spiritual communities and foster their engagement with the world and its guiding institutions in order to achieve a just, peaceful and sustainable world.”

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The Urantia Uganda Conference 2022

From , Presented by Khatukhira Bernard, Uganda on

THE BIRTH OF THE URANTIA BOOK TEACHINGS IN UGANDA

The Urantia Uganda Conference 2022 was the first ever in Uganda. The conference was to have been held in August 2020 but, due to the Covid 19 pandemic, limited funds, and leadership challenges, it was not possible until this August.

The Urantia Book and its teachings have finally arrived in Uganda, the pearl of Africa. It is with great hope and faith that the truth seekers here will greatly enjoy the teachings of the book as they enrich their ever-growing spirituality, guided by love and the will to service. This is but a start to a long journey of spiritual adventure towards Paradise but most of all for all Ugandans, it brings spiritual enlightenment that shall create unity and harmony (brotherhood of man) among Ugandans in their affirmation of God as the Father (Fatherhood of God) within them. We thank God it has come to pass that The Urantia Book and its teachings have been initiated publicly in Uganda.

Under the sponsorship of Urantia Association, five of us were funded to attend this conference and I do thank God we did because our attendance shaped the program and designed the conference to meet a Urantia Book conference standard. We were asked by the secretary Matte to help develop a program on the day we arrived. We designed the program and the next day we presented an introduction to The Urantia Book, its history, the Publication Mandate, and leadership structure worldwide. 

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