© 2005 Séverin Desbuisson, Chris M. Ragetly, Jean-Claude Romeuf, André Chappuis, Dmitri A. Prigov, Jean Royer
© 2005 French-speaking Association of Readers of the Urantia Book
Journal of the association L'A.F.L.L.U. French-speaking Association of Readers of the URANTIA Book
Member of the I.U.A.
Head office:
48, rue Douy Delcupe
93110 MONTREUIL UNDER WOOD
FRANCE
¶ A Word from the President
Dear readers,
From June 2nd to 5th, the annual meeting of readers and the general assembly of the AFLUB took place near Avignon. This event was an opportunity for us to share our experiences and our approaches to the teachings drawn from The Urantia Book. Under the benevolent sun that flooded the region, we were able to enjoy 3 full days to get to know each other better and reflect together on possible paths for the 5th revelation.
The general assembly was an opportunity for us to decide on the major orientations of the AFLUB. A future report will not fail to inform the members of the association with more details. The outgoing office highlighted the lack of volunteers and the extent of the tasks to be carried out. It is indeed necessary that all members and supporters of the AFLUB be ready, at a given moment, in their own way, and according to their affinities, to help the association. Today, we have noted some new willingness, more concentrated in the south of France, to help us in certain recurring and sometimes tedious tasks. I hope that other initiatives will see the light of day this year. We are not an organization but just a small assembly of readers, our survival and our future therefore depend directly on your involvement.
Happy reading,
Severin Desbuisson
President of AFLLU
¶ Summary
- The President’s Word by Séverin Desbuisson
- Contact by Chris M. Ragetly
- Theoretical explanation of creation by Jean-Claude Romeuf
- God the absolute by Jean-Claude Romeuf
- Questions and answers:
- Pentecost of the year 30: forty or fifty days after Easter? by André Chappuis
- Tales? poetry and humor :
- 25th^ conversation with God by Dmitri A. Prigov
- The Imponversation with God by Jean Royer
- Gazette Column by Chris M. Ragetly
- Report of the meeting at Lumières from June 2 to 5, 2005
- Brief Urantian News
❧ 1955 URANTIA Foundation. All rights reserved. These materials from The URANTIA Book are used with permission. Any artistic depiction(s), interpretation(s), opinion(s) or conclusion(s) implied or stated are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of URANTIA Foundation or its affiliates.
Legal deposit: December 1997 — ISSN 1285-1116
Subscription in 1998: 100 FF per year (approximately 4 issues)
¶ Contact
God is eternally and infinitely perfect, he cannot personally know imperfection as his own experience, but he does share the consciousness of all the experience of imperfectness of all the struggling creatures of the evolutionary universes of all the Paradise Creator Sons. The personal and liberating touch of the God of perfection overshadows the hearts and encircuits the natures of all those mortal creatures who have ascended to the universe level of moral discernment. In this manner, as well as through the contacts of the divine presence, the Universal Father actually participates in the experience with immaturity and imperfection in the evolving career of every moral being of the entire universe. (UB 2:2.6)
Here we are again confronted with moral discernment. The Urantia Book teaches us that there is a universal level to which we must rise, and that once we have reached it, it frees us, but from what? Consciously or not, it seems to me that this contact frees us from the sense of loneliness that assails us in our immature and imperfect experiences (see: UB 2:2.6). Personal contact with God is that “…beneficial overshadowing that overshadows the hearts of all mortals who have risen to the universal level of moral discernment…”. “Beneficial overshadowing” is not used here by chance (the original English term is “overshadows”), the translation seems to me appropriate; it reflects a sense of calm, tranquility, peace, rest, and serenity, together with an assurance and certainty of being under absolute protection. It is this assurance that keeps us from sinking into the despair of loneliness.
C. M. Ragetly
(Quotes from The Urantia Book are in italics)
¶ Theoretical explanation of creation
They want to take us for fools!
We were led to believe that God created the sky and the earth, the day and the night, etc.
We are now being led to believe that universal reality appeared during an original Big Bang. This would suggest:
- or that, since all eternity, there existed at a point in space, an imploded or collapsed mass, as large as the earth, the sun or a galaxy, and which, for an unknown reason, would have ended up exploding, releasing its atoms, its electrons as well as all the components of matter. By the force of its initial acceleration, according to the whims of chance, this mass would have ended up dislocating, thereby dragging the cosmos into an endless expansion.
- or that a divine mind would have decided the creation of the world, from nothing and from a zero point. This aggregate of matter and galaxies, fruit of a spontaneous generation, would travel forever, moving away from its original center, expanding space towards infinity.
Jean-Claude Romeuf
¶ God the Absolute
We have chosen to speak of God the Absolute because the very relative understanding that we can make of Him calls upon the most difficult mental concepts in The Urantia Book. We are aware that the human mind is limited and finite, but is not the evolutionary goal to reach the higher limits of perfection? Is it not this very goal that we have set for ourselves that allows us to experience and actualize in the Supreme our potential and imperfect divinity?
We do not think that angels can for a moment smile benevolently, much less sneer stupidly, as the duck laughed (untranslatable into English), when we engage in such theological considerations. On the contrary, they applaud in heaven and are comforted by the work they do for us and the help they minister to us as, with revelation, the spirit draws the human mind to ever higher horizons.
Jean-Claude Romeuf
¶ Questions — answers
¶ Pentecost of the year 30: forty or fifty days after Passover?
Response to the question by Jeanmarie Chaise published in Link No. 11[1], and to the second part of “Jugement hâtif” by Jean Royer in Link No. 32.
I believe that in his article, Jean Royer does not give THE solution, but an explanation. On two occasions, the author states that “Pentecost is 50 days after Passover.” This is still the case now, but not at the time of the Temple. We should not use rules in force today to explain events that took place 1975 years ago, but look for those on which we based ourselves at that time. It is a bit like taking articles from the Italian constitution to justify the wars of Julius Caesar. Mr. Royer also asks the following questions: “Was it a typing error? Was it a lack of knowledge on the part of the authors?” I think that by this, he suspects the mediators who transmitted the fourth part of the L.U. of having made a mistake. Since in Papers 172 through 194 the dates, days of the week, and the forty-day difference agree, this is neither a typing error nor an error of the midwayers. How could they have been mistaken, since, in addition to their memories, they had access to the (lost) writings of the apostle Andrew, as well as to information gleaned from celestial beings who were on earth at the time of Michael’s bestowal (especially his now personalized Adjuster)? The midwayer who expresses his gratitude throughout page 1343 tells us that when planetary information failed, he had recourse to superhuman records. I think there can be no doubt about these. I would rather say that if there is ignorance, it is among those who want at all costs for 50 days to separate Easter and Pentecost in the year 30.
André Chappuis
¶ Tales, Poems and Humor
¶ 25th conversation with god
by Dmitri A.Prigov [2]
God will condemn me a little
Then he will forgive me a little
And from Moscow by direct route
He will invite me to his home in heaven
Strict bearded and mustached
He will look at me sternly
With a frown
-Did you really write all this by yourself?
-Do you think, do you think, thanks to Your help!
-Oh, well, I like that better.
translated from Russian
¶ The impossible dialogue with fundamentalists
The Christian fundamentalist:
The Bible is the word of God,
Now, The Urantia Book is at odds with the Bible,
So The Urantia Book is false, even demonic.
The Jewish fundamentalist:
The Torah says that there is only one God,
Now, Christians and the New Testament say that Jesus is God,
So the New Testament and Christians are wrong.
And even more so The Urantia Book.
Jean Royer
¶ La Gazette section
¶ Report of Lumières 2, 3, 4 and 5 June 2005.
It was under a resplendent sun that the national meeting of readers of the Urantia Book took place under the auspices of the AFLUB.
For the first time, the meeting lasted 3 full days.
½ day dedicated to settling in and the joy of meeting old and new readers, whether under the shade of the lime trees or in the cool of the swimming pool.
2 days devoted to the study of the proposed subject “an experimental religion aided by a philosophy enhanced by a revelation: is it possible?”
½ day devoted to the election of the new AFLUB office and other pending issues of the said organization.
The participants split into 3 or 4 study groups to address the proposed topic and give everyone a chance to speak, thus allowing their personal point of view to express itself. There were many quotes from The Urantia Book. For my part, I particularly appreciated those of Rodan of Alexandria about his way of seeing and drawing inspiration from the life of Jesus as a solid basis for a start in each person’s personal life.
Sunday morning was dedicated to AFLUB.
- Election of the office
- President: Séverin Desbuisson, who is temporarily renewing his position.
- Vice-president: Thierry le Page.
- Treasurer: Anne-Marie Ronfet.
- Secretary: Yves Guillot-Goguet.
- Concerning “the Urantian Link”, Ivan Stol will relieve the Parisian team by taking care of printing and shipping.
- Johanna will be responsible for fundraising for the Urantia Book reprints, as well as other tasks.
- Pascal Coulombe will administer the AFLUB website.
- Other people are responsible for various administrative tasks.
The location and date of the next national meeting remains to be determined, as it has been decided that there will now be only one annual meeting.
Chris M. Ragetly
¶ Urantia News Briefs
- Release in June 2005 of the first issue of “Tidings” i.e. “News”. This is a monthly published in English by the UAI and only on the Internet. This new magazine gives news of the actions of the different Member Associations of the UAI and allows, among other things, to announce national or local conferences.
For example, this first issue announces the 3rd National Conference of Colombia which will take place from August 12 to 15 in San José de Caldas and whose main theme is: From the atom to peace.
“Tidings” can be found at http://www.urantia-iua.org/tidings - The Italian version of The Urantia Book, entitled IL Libro de Urantia is now ready to be printed. All that is missing is to find the 40,000 dollars needed for printing. For this, the UAI has created a special fund called the Urantia Book Translation Printing Fund. You can participate using PayPal at: http://www.squarecircles.com/articles/italiantranslation/fundraiser.htm
- The UAI Journal comes under Canadian control with a team formed by Guy PERRON, Alain CYR, Johanne SEQUIN, Claude FLIBOTTE and Carlos RUBINSKY, all Canadians, except Carlos who is Argentinian.
¶ Remarks
¶ References
Article by Jeanmarie Chaise: Forty or fifty days?: Among the Jews of Jesus’ time, the wheat harvest festival took place 50 days, or seven weeks, after Passover, that is to say the fiftieth day after this festival commemorating the exodus from Egypt. It was called for this reason the Feast of Weeks. “You shall celebrate a feast of weeks for the firstfruits of the wheat harvest.” (Ex. XXXIV, 21) Because of this number of weeks (7 x 7 + 1) or fifty days, its name became Pentecost from the Greek Pentëkostë = fiftieth.
But this information is in contradiction with what The Urantia Book tells us. Indeed, the Passover which took place on Saturday, April 8 of the year of the crucifixion preceded by only 40 days this other feast of Pentecost which, The Urantia Book tells us, took place on May 18. : “(UB 193:5.1) It was almost half past seven in the morning, Thursday, May 18, when Jesus arrived on the western slope of Mount Olivet with his eleven silent and somewhat disoriented apostles.”
We do have 22 days of April + 18 days of May for this indicated time span of 40 days, and The Urantia Book is consistent with itself. But it is on the other hand in contradiction with the customs and traditions of the Jewish people. If anyone has an explanation, I would be very happy if he would provide it to me and to the readers of THE URANTIAN LINK. Thank you.
Jeanmarie Chair ↩︎
Dmitri Alexandrovich Prigov was born in 1940 in Moscow.
He is one of the founders and main ideologists of Russian conceptualism. Prigov is the author of numerous collections, novels and essays, as well as various “happenings”. Dmitri A. Prigov is a laureate of the Topfer Fund Pushkin Prize (1993), his works have been translated into more than a dozen languages.
In France, his poems have been published in magazines and anthologies. A limited edition bilingual collection, Les Fauves de la vie (Amga-LRS) was published in Paris in 1994. ↩︎