© 2006 Michel Rouanet
© 2006 French-speaking Association of Readers of the Urantia Book
| Le Lien Urantien — Issue 38 — Winter 2006 — Contents | Le Lien Urantien — Issue 38 — Winter 2006 | Essays to explain the concept of living truth |
Dear members of the French-speaking Association of Readers of the URANTIA Book, In this issue, the presence of the article by François Dupont of the ABFU and the message to the Council of Representatives from Gaétan Charland, Quebec president of the IUA, shows us, on the one hand, that the influence of the Urantian Francophonie goes beyond the simple French territorial framework, in metropolitan France and overseas, on the other hand that the AFLUB is totally integrated into a French-speaking associative fabric. In addition to the fraternal relations that we maintain with the Quebec association, the Belgian association and the Senegalese association, we still welcome Swiss members into our midst and sporadically receive requests from different French-speaking countries in Africa (Ivory Coast, Congo, Rwanda, Cameroon, Togo, Benin, Madagascar, etc.).
Just as the AFLUB was a crucible from which the Belgian founding members built their association in 2006, we may also be able to support the creation of a Swiss association in the future, and help to sow the Urantian teachings by responding to the calls of our French-speaking African brothers. As such, we are looking for a person responsible for French-speaking foreign relations who will be responsible for maintaining fraternal contacts by mail and email with African readers who sometimes find themselves isolated in their country. Robert Mondange’s article reminds us that “an isolated reader risks abandoning the Book”. We therefore have a duty of solidarity towards isolated French-speaking readers of whatever nationality they may be.
Getting out of isolation by sharing our spiritual experiences is the goal we have set for ourselves for the years to come. Concretely, this takes the form of a decentralized representation of the AFLUB through around twenty regional intermediaries and a tighter territorial network of small departmental study groups. Tighten the space and punctuate the time of meetings between readers. I cannot urge you enough to participate in our two annual weekends, special moments that never leave the participants indifferent, as Johanna Beukers testifies.
Johanna brings up the topic of eugenics, which was discussed at our last meeting. This subject arouses legitimate concerns: too many misfortunes have been perpetrated and experienced in its name, eugenics being too often associated with genocides. But to bring a eugenicist trial to the UB is to ignore the guiding principle of the Book: to love one’s neighbor, even one’s enemy, as oneself. It is also to ignore the equality of status before the celestial powers of any individual, any race, any people [UB 64:6.27]. One cannot have a living faith, the true one, the only one, and commit the worst atrocities in the name of improving the race. Haste is often a trap. Eugenics aims first and foremost to improve the performance of man and future generations. The Adjuster works on the mind, which is based on a biological electrochemical mechanism whose efficiency also conditions the quality of this dialogue. Only the progress of science, wisdom, and spirituality over a long period of time will improve humanity in all its aspects, even biological ones, and will replace ancestral eugenic violence [[UB 80:1.7], sometimes referred to as “social Darwinism”. Eugenics is not conceivable outside of an ethical and spiritual framework. However, the vocation of the UB lies first and foremost in these registers.
In our national meetings, we are currently engaged in a cycle of study on the individual. A better understanding of the physical, mental and spiritual realities that make us up like a nesting doll should allow us to live our lives better, in a relationship with God and our brothers and sisters. A general trend, a current inclination of the men and women of our society, therefore of ourselves, to which our association cannot remain indifferent in the choice of its study themes. The “know thyself” of the temple of Delphi remains relevant. Certain signs are obvious: the interest that certain members have in the teachings of Moussa N’Diaye of the Senegal association, the recent publication by the AFLUB of the book by Marvin Gawrin entitled the Path to the Peaks: the psychology of spiritual life (on sale at bookstores), and the following article by Dominique Ronfet on “the human and his double”.
The fact remains that religion is a personal experience, lived in a living relationship with the Father through adoration (article by Michel R.) and shared with others. This sharing sometimes takes the form of teaching given around oneself: this is what Samuel Heine tells us about.
Two “schools” coexist: that of the acquisition of intellectual capital through collective exchange within in-depth study groups of the “letter” of the UB, that of teachings of a rather professorial type as developed by Moussa and more focused on self-understanding and the “spirit” of the book.
I think that the two approaches are complementary, the foundations must remain solid to accommodate the walls and the roof.
It remains for me to wish you a happy new year 2007. More happiness of course, as always, but above all a better perception of happiness. The reasons to rejoice or to lament are sometimes objective, certainly, but let us not forget the importance of the subjectivity of perception.
A living faith can transform this subjectivity and provoke “the conversion of the gaze” on life. Let us be poets of the banal prose of everyday life [UB 48:7.22].
Indeed, what luck to live in this 21st century full of potential and innovations, both material and spiritual! In this last area, people of faith in the 5th epochal revelation certainly have a major role to play. What an exciting opportunity to live on Urantia on the occasion of an epochal Revelation!
Good conversion of the gaze, good poetry in life and peace to all in 2007.
President of the A.F.L.L.U.
Michel R.
| Le Lien Urantien — Issue 38 — Winter 2006 — Contents | Le Lien Urantien — Issue 38 — Winter 2006 | Essays to explain the concept of living truth |