© 2014 Olga López
© 2014 Urantia Association of Spain
The XIII Meeting of readers began at 6 pm on Friday, May 23, at the Abba Acteón hotel in Valencia. This year they wanted to hold the Meeting there as a way of recognizing the great work being done by an enthusiastic group of Valencian readers, who have created a study group that meets every Sunday in the capital of Turia and whose number is in increase.
In total we gathered about 35 people from Madrid, Barcelona, Girona, Tarragona, Valencia, Mallorca, Murcia, Malaga, Seville, Burgos, Santander and Vizcaya. Thanks to all of them for coming!
At the inaugural meeting, the material that was going to be used in the Meeting was distributed and a brief review of the activities program was given. The theme of this Meeting was “Jesus - his message”, and it had a mixed format of presentation and workshops. The first presentation was given by Ismael Gracia, secretary of the association, who spoke about the seventh bestowal of Miguel de Nebadon. Ishmael in his presentation raised many questions that the attendees discussed during the subsequent discussion.
Saturday the 24th was the day of the workshops. The attendees formed groups of 5 or 6 people around the facilitators. These were the passages that attendees were asked to delve into:
To make this activity more agile, it was done following the following process for each of the speeches and parables.
After lunch, most of the attendees went on a short excursion to visit the exteriors of the City of Arts and Sciences, located near the hotel. This was an occasion to relax and enjoy relaxed conversations with other members of the group.
As a novelty compared to previous Encounters, both on Friday night and on Saturday there was a meditation-worship session led by Mariano Pérez, head of the association’s study groups. The experience has been valued very positively and will be incorporated into other Meetings. Also at night, and as usual, the conversations around the figure of Jesus of Nazareth continued until dawn. On Saturday night, Jaime Marco, vice president of the association, gave a brief presentation on the topic “The faith of Jesus”, which led to a very interesting conversation about what faith is according to The Urantia Book.
On Sunday morning the 25th, as in last year’s Encounter, there was a question-answer session on the teachings of the book. The attendees had the opportunity to write a question that they delivered to the secretary of the board during the Meeting. On Sunday morning the questions were read and everyone tried to answer all of them. Here is a selection of the questions that were posed:
Once again, the discussion that followed each question was very enlightening and lively.
Lastly, and before lunch, the assembly of the Urantia Association of Spain was held, where the attendees were informed about the activities (in support of the study and dissemination) carried out during the last twelve months, as well as about future projects. . It was also a time for attendees to say what they thought of the Meeting, and to make suggestions on how to improve the experience of a readers’ meeting. According to the comments of the attendees, the mixed presentation and workshop format has been valued very positively.
Then, and after the meal, we said goodbye (not without a little sadness) because the Meeting had passed us too quickly.
The Encounter is already history, but its memory gives us strength to continue with our daily lives and with our work of disseminating the teachings of The Urantia Book.