© 2021 Olga López
© 2021 Urantia Association of Spain
Newsletter of the Urantia Association of Spain
Light and Life — September 2021
¶ In this number
- Editorial Light and Life – September 2021
- Works – our recommendations of the month
- History and teachings – Chronicles of the life of Jesus
- Books – our recommendations of the month
- Recommended Blog: Confirming The Urantia Book
- Video – our recommendation of the month
- Navigating through life – God is sugar
- My favorite paragraph
- Urantia Questionnaire: Jorge Nagore
- Courses resume at The Urantia Book Internet School (UBIS)
- About the Light and Life newsletter
¶ Editorial Light and Life – September 2021
M. José Sánchez Santamaría
Learn and grow like children
In this September issue (2021) of our newsletter Luz y Vida we offer you news that we hope you will like. Everything in life undergoes changes and our magazine also grows a little more. Our already classic and successful section of works by readers of The Urantia Book remains, where we discover fascinating aspects of the book (Gobekli Tepe, The Art of Living, etc.)
We continue to refer to books inspired by The Urantia Book that we hope you will be encouraged to read, because they are worth reading. They also continue the summaries of the fourth part that we have entitled “Chronicle of the life of Jesus”, which can be useful to us in the study of the life of Jesus of Nazareth.
But we have also wanted our digital magazine to continue to live and grow with new sections. We encourage you, starting this month, to discover the pearls of wisdom that stories, parables and poems encourage us to continue growing spiritually from the “Sailing through life” section.
Do you have a quote from The Urantia Book that impacts, excites or moves you? Well, do not hesitate to send it to our email address to spread it in the new section “My favorite paragraph”. The people who make up the Urantia Association of Spain are open to your proposals and work. Do not hesitate to contact us. (urantiaesp@gmail.com).
We offer you a wide variety of material of a “Urantian” nature, for the Urantia Movement is a beautifully dynamic and diverse thing. A material that allows us to make the multifaceted Urantia Book more concrete, close and attractive. A book that also encourages us to grow, not to stagnate in our spiritual growth, to discover and browse our universe and its amazing inhabitants.
Curiosity
the spirit of investigation,
the urge of discovery,
the drive of exploration—
is a part of the inborn and
divine endowment of evolutionary space creatures.
(UB 14:5.11)
This is how we can understand the surprising encounters of Jesus of Nazareth with children. Jesus recriminates his apostles when they do not allow children to approach Him. Jesus names them as a model for everyone, that is, for his countrymen, disciples… and for us who live in the 21st century.
“Verily, verily, I say to you, whosoever receives not the kingdom of God as a little child shall hardly enter therein to grow up to the full stature of spiritual manhood.”
(UB 167:6.1)
Can we imagine what our lives on Urantia would be like if they were oriented according to a series of attitudes manifested by the little ones?
We would show CURIOSITY, leaving our comfort zone, learning until the last day of our lives.
We would act without FEAR of failing, ridicule, disappointing… because we are always learning in life.
We would enjoy moments of FUN, and not just seriousness and stressful work.
We would relate without PREJUDICES, without stereotypes; between human beings, people with very similar emotions.
We would live with enthusiasm and joy in our day to day.
And above all, with HUMILITY and with the TRUST that we are in the hands of Someone much greater than us, who loves us with unconditional love.
Let us not doubt that the same God who created us is the same God who enjoyed the games and laughter with the little ones of his town next to the workshop. Our God is a God who values humor, joy, curiosity, and fun. Too bad we sometimes lose sight of this beautiful truth.
This mood that our God has has profound implications in our lives. For example, the meaning of our life can be better understood from this perspective of play and discovery. Let us turn to a story that Rabbi Yehuda Berg tells simply:
“You are 10 years old. You and a few other guys get together to play hide-and-seek. You are ready to have a great time. The game starts and you have to close your eyes, count and search. You count to ten. You are excited. Full of enthusiasm. When you finish counting to ten and open your eyes there is a surprise. Because? Because no one hid and everyone is standing in front of you! You feel happy? No not at all. Can the goal of the game, which is to experience pleasure, be achieved? No way. Despite having ”found" all the guys, are you having fun? Of course not. Because to enjoy the game, all friends must be hidden. The effort of finding each boy separately is what makes this game so enjoyable, so worth it. The act of hiding is the mechanism that produces all the fun.
“Our Creator has liked to hide in the world all the joy and infinite satisfaction. Now, we must go out and find that Light. Therein lies the deep meaning of our existence: to find the hidden truths of life, to find the Light in this great game that is our existence, to rejoice once achieved.”
Learning by playing, discovering for ourselves the great truths or values of existence. This is how The Urantia Book explains it to us when it enumerates the different inevitabilities of our existence.
Now we better understand this eternal game that is our life.
The uncertainties of life and the vicissitudes of existence do not in any way contradict the concept of God’s universal sovereignty. UB 3:5.5
A free and inexperienced intelligence cannot be by any means uniformly wise at first. UB 3:5.15
All the divine things that the human mind captures and that the human soul achieves are experiential achievements; they are realities of personal experience and are therefore unique possessions. UB 3:5.16
We see, then, that everything is carefully planned so that we seek and discover for ourselves the pearls of Life.
Now, at this moment, and every day of our existence, the game of hide-and-seek begins. God hides and we have had to look for him. Shall we play the big game? We had fun?
¶ Works – our recommendations of the month
The Architects of the Master Universe (Bill Sadler)
This work takes as its starting points other secondary works by the author (collected in the Appendices of A study of the master universe, also available on the association’s website) to deal more extensively with the absonite level of reality and, in particular, about those absonite beings known as the Architects of the Master Universe, who, in the words of the author, “deal with initiating God’s plans.”
Gravity, Newton, Einstein and UB (author unknown)
In this work, the author reflects on the fact that the developers seemed to know Einstein’s theory but nevertheless used Newtonian terms to expose contents related to gravity, matter and energy. Is this an indicator that both approaches have their share of truth, or is it part of the limitations of the developers? Meanwhile, scientists have made measurements and formulated theories that seem to fit the scientific claims made in the book.
In this very interesting work that will delight readers who are fond of ancient history and archaeology, the author talks about the Gobekli Tepe site, remains of a surprisingly advanced city for the time in which it was built, and links it to the explanations from The Urantia Book about “a genetically superior and well-developed pastoral civilization existed in this area more than 30,000 years ago.” It includes a large number of images of the site and other ancient civilizations so that we can get an idea of its complexity and importance.
The art of living (Hubert Gallet)
In the words of its author, a Canadian reader, “Jesus did not come to earth to impose what he was on us, but to live his life in the best possible way and to show us a way, believe in a high ideal and inspire, in this way and with sweetness, a fundamentally innovative art of living, in a world ravaged at that time by evil”. Precisely in this work we are given some brushstrokes about the art of living that Jesus practiced, as they appear in the fourth part of The Urantia Book.
¶ History and teachings – Chronicles of the life of Jesus
JOURNALISTIC ACCOUNT OF THE LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS ACCORDING TO THE URANTIA BOOK
We present the following installment of the chronicles of the life of Jesus, which on this occasion contains what the revealers tell us in document 125. Within the PDF you will see a button from which you can access the text of the document from the Foundation’s website Urantia.
¶ Books – our recommendations of the month
Dialogues with Sofía (Olga López)
In the words of its author, “this book arose as a result of considering how I would make the teachings of The Urantia Book known in a simple way but without sounding superficial, and the solution that occurred to me was that of a “Socratic” dialogue. between two characters: Sofía, the informal “teacher”, and Miguel, the young seeker of the truth. Of course, condensing all the teachings of the book in just over two hundred pages was an impossible task, but that was not my intention either, but rather to make the reader think and leave him wanting to know more, to find the source with which to quench his thirst of truth".
Link from where to download the novel in different electronic formats
Kietud Island (Paula Requejo)
According to its author, «Kietud Island was born when the author was looking for an answer, among the documents of The Urantia Book, to one of her questions. Isla Kietud is a studio work that considers what happens when the subconscious gets entangled with the conscious and elevates us to the superconscious. This book is written for those who are unaware or who are becoming familiar with The Urantia Book, for this reason it is written in a simple and enjoyable way to read, but without neglecting the depth of the teachings. The author includes numerous quotes from the book, with the idea of causing in the hypothetical reader the need to go to the source of all these teachings.
Link with more information about the book and how to obtain it
¶ Recommended Blog: Confirming The Urantia Book
https://confirmandoellibrodeurantia.blogspot.com
In this blog by Christian Figueroa, reader from Puerto Rico and collaborator of Radio Urantia, we will find very interesting entries on very diverse topics related to The Urantia Book, especially with what has to do with the scientific findings that corroborate the affirmations that appear in the fifth revelation. The blog is updated quite frequently, so interested readers will always find new material.
¶ Video – our recommendation of the month
In this video from the channel Urantia Writings Study, an interesting explanation is proposed about part of the so-called unidentified flying objects: those that do not seem material but purely energetic. Jael González, the author of the text, analyzes what The Urantia Book says about seraphic transportation and compares it with these phenomena that have appeared in the heavens since time immemorial. The video contains plenty of photographs and videos to support the explanation, apart from the corresponding references from The Urantia Book.
¶ Navigating through life – God is sugar
God is sugar (anonymous)
One day the teacher asked the children who knew how to explain who God was. One of the children raised his hand and said, “God is our Father, He made the earth, the sea, and everything on it. He made us as his children."
The teacher, looking for more answers, went further: “How do you know that God exists, if you never saw him?”
The entire room fell silent.
Rosa, a very shy little girl, raised her hands and said: «My mother says that God is like the sugar in the milk that he makes me every morning. I do not see the sugar that is inside the cup, mixed with the milk, but if it did not have it, it would have no flavor. God exists, He is always in our midst, we just don’t see him, but if he left, our life would be tasteless.
The teacher smiled and said: «Very well, Rosa, I teach you many things, today you taught me something deeper than everything I knew. Now I know that God is our sugar, and that he is sweetening our lives every day!"
He kissed her on the forehead, and was surprised by that girl’s response.
Wisdom is not in knowledge, but in the experience of God in our lives.
There are many theories, but sweetness like God’s does not yet exist, not even in the best sugars.
Don’t forget to place sugar in your life.
Of this sugar there are NO limits.
It does NOT fatten more than the Soul and the spirit, and it sweetens the most bitter moment of your life.
Always keep it on hand, and may you never lack that good sugar that is God.
¶ My favorite paragraph
Olga Lopez
Of God, the most inescapable of all presences, the most real of all facts, the most living of all truths, the most loving of all friends, and the most divine of all values, we have the right to be the most certain of all universe experiences. (UB 102:7.10)
I have chosen this paragraph from document 102 as my favourite, although I could say that there are many paragraphs in the book that resonate strongly within me and that I find as beautiful in form as in substance.
This passage is one of those that reaffirm our faith in an intense and vehement way. In the face of the prevailing thought that God is an illusion, something we make up to make our existence in this vale of tears more bearable, what the revelators tell us is that there is nothing more real than God! And not only that, but we have the right to be sure of its existence!
These words encourage us not to lose faith, to live life fully convinced that, whatever happens, we have an affectionate friend who is always there. And it’s not an imaginary friend!
¶ Urantia Questionnaire: Jorge Nagore
Jorge Nagore is 68 years old. He is married and has two children and three grandchildren. He is an active retiree after 35 years dedicated to journalism. He studied with the Jesuits and at the Opus Dei university. He has always lived in Pamplona, Spain, the city of the running of the bulls, and there he continues. After a “near-death experience” resulting from a traffic accident at the age of 17, a push arose in him towards the search for himself and the relationship with the higher existence.
- How did you get to The Urantia Book and why do you think you found it?
In 1994 he was already enjoying the Caballo de Troya. I also read El testamento de san Juan de Benítez, but by chance I didn’t look at the back cover where there was a reference to The Urantia Book. In 2014, while cleaning the storage room, when I dusted it off, I turned said book over and there it appeared: “based on The Urantia Book.” The rest was simple: download the book, buy it, attend a meeting and get hooked on this community of readers to whom I owe so much.
I think I found it because it was surely waiting for me, possibly because I needed it. The question is: why in 2014 and not in 1994? I think that in those twenty years away I matured a little more in my search and evolution, at least enough to accept that gift with a little more capacity.
¶ Courses resume at The Urantia Book Internet School (UBIS)
Courses will resume in September at the School of The Urantia Book on the Internet. The school offers five courses in Spanish, three of which will be taught for the first time. The courses are ten weeks long, except those listed as reduced courses, which last six weeks.
The registration period begins on Monday, September 13 and ends on Sunday, September 26. If you are interested in requesting a course, you must first create an account (this can be done before registration begins).
Many courses are completed within the first few days, so sign up as soon as possible! For more information about the courses, you can visit this page: https://www.urantia.org/es/education/programacion-de-cursos
¶ About the Light and Life newsletter
Light and Life is the newsletter of the Urantia Association of Spain. From 2005 to 2016 it was published in PDF format and distributed by mail and email to the association’s reader list, but it is currently distributed in newsletter format from content in HTML format.
If you want to receive the newsletter in your email, contact the association to subscribe to the mailing list.
All papers and news from readers and study groups are welcome, so if you want to share any side work, writing, outline, image, etc., you can send it to the association and we will publish it previous evaluation of its suitability. Likewise, the Communication commission of the board of directors of the Urantia Association of Spain reserves the right to edit it so that it meets minimum spelling quality.
¶ References
- Article of the Magazine Light and Life Online: https://aue.urantia-association.org/newsletter/luz-y-vida-septiembre-2021/