© 2022 Olga López
© 2022 Urantia Association of Spain
Newsletter of the Urantia Association of Spain
Light and Life — October 2022
¶ In this number
- Editorial – October 2022
- Works – our recommendations of the month
- History and teachings – Chronicle of the life of Jesus
- A Children’s Guide to The Urantia Book: Jesus’ School Days in Nazareth
- Other spiritual growth books
- Video – our recommendation of the month
- Navigating through life – The value of a smile
- My favorite paragraph
- Urantian Reflections
- Urantia Questionnaire: Jeannie Vázquez de Abreu
- About the Light and Life newsletter
¶ Editorial – October 2022
Maria Jose Sanchez Santamaria
Two angels fly over post-war Berlin, the city split in two: Damiel and Cassiell. They are invisible, except to children. They cover themselves with dark coats, they fly. They are eternal, protectors and vagabonds. They look at the reality of humans in sepia. They accompany them, they guess them, they can listen to their thoughts. They do not have the possibility to feel as humans feel and yet they are empathic angels. They share fragments of people’s lives, they caress them with their eyes, they hold them without their knowledge.
I’m talking about the moving film The sky over Berlin, directed by Wim Wenders.
Without anyone realizing it, these angels enter a library. Since humans cannot see them, the angels freely approach, sit next to humans, or place a hand on their shoulders. Intrigued, they peer into the books they are reading. They stroke a student’s pencil. Together with some children, they imitate the gesture of touching the lines with the index finger. They observe around them, with curiosity, self-absorbed faces and gazes submerged in words…
Angels have the gift of hearing people’s thoughts. No one speaks, but they catch the silent syllables of the reading. Reading builds an intimate communication, a sound solitude that angels find surprising and miraculous.
Like this sequence in the film, if we could be present in the fascinating and remote Library of Alexandria we would be in rooms full of whispers and whispers. In ancient times, when the eyes recognized the letters, the tongue pronounced them, the body followed the rhythm of the text and the foot tapped the ground to the rhythm. The writing could be heard. Few imagined that it was possible to read in any other way.
Now let’s talk about you, dear reader or reader, who reads this editorial from our magazine. Right now, reading these letters, these black-on-white scribbles on your screen, you are doing a mysterious and disturbing activity, even though the force of habit prevents you from being amazed by what you do. Think wisely. You are silent, going through these letters that communicate ideas of the world that surrounds you right now. You have withdrawn into an inner room where people far away in time or space speak to you. You have created a parallel reality similar to the cinematographic illusion, a reality that depends only on you.
¶ Works – our recommendations of the month
The Creation of Fire (Halbert Katzen)
In this work, the author talks about the moment in which human beings began to use fire intentionally. As we know, in the book it is said that Andón and Fonta, the first couple of human beings, were the first to be able to make fire at will, but current science places the beginning of this ability several hundred thousand years later. Recent discoveries have made it possible to delay that dating considerably.
The Jupiter Problem (Dick Bain)
Jupiter, that gas giant planet in our solar system, has always fascinated astronomers and non-astronomers alike. In fact, it seems that it is not usual to find this type of planet in other solar systems, which leads the author to consider what the developers tell us about our own solar system, which they call Monmatia and which has numerous peculiarities that make it distance. than is usual. In fact, the problem with Jupiter that gives the title to this work is that it should not be where it is. In the author’s words: “According to current models, giant planets form in the outer reaches of a system, then migrate inward and end up very close to their star. But this could not be for Jupiter. It is a huge planet, more than twice the mass of all the other planets in the solar system combined, but yet it orbits deep inside."
Comments to paper 179 (Jan Herca)
In this article, the author deals with the Last Supper (which is precisely mentioned in paper 179) and the circumstances that surrounded it, comparing what is said in the book with the gospels. In the words of the author: “Few stop to think carefully about what Jesus did that night: he changed the ancient rituals! But Jesus was not inaugurating a new way of celebrating the old Passover. His intention was not to curtail human freedom and force a new type of celebration. Jesus was simply giving a lesson in freedom and using an ancient ritual as a means of further teaching and establishing a new type of commemoration.”
The challenges of the leaders of the fifth revelation (Olga López)
In this presentation, the author reviews what for her are the desirable characteristics in leaders who drink from the teachings of The Urantia Book, which have little to do with the concept of leader that we have seen so far in history. religions and humanity in general. It also includes examples of true leaders who appear in the book in each of the earlier epochal revelations, and finally lists the characteristics that make the book’s community of readers different from the communities that have been created out of evolutionary religions.
¶ History and teachings – Chronicle of the life of Jesus
JOURNALISTIC ACCOUNT OF THE LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS ACCORDING TO THE URANTIA BOOK
We present to you the following installment of the chronicles of the life of Jesus, which on this occasion contains what the revelators tell us in document 137 (Waiting in Galilee). Inside the PDF you will see a button from where you can access the text of the document from the Urantia Foundation website.
¶ Children’s Guide to The Urantia Book: Jesus’ School Days in Nazareth
We continue to review the secondary work A Children’s Guide to The Urantia Book, by Mary Livingston. This is the next chapter, dedicated to the school days of Jesus of Nazareth, and it begins like this:
“All the Jewish children at the age of seven went to school. At that time the girls did not attend school. Jesus, along with the other Jewish children, went to school.”
Download the entire chapter in PDF format
¶ Other spiritual growth books
Christianity is Love (Miguel Ruiz de Ayúcar)
The book is an initiation to true Christianity, to the word and works of Jesus, based on the four gospels in letters from Saint Paul, Saint Augustine, etc. It is written for easy understanding, with quotes from the Gospel, from the letters of Saint Paul, from Saint Augustine, from parts of the Old Testament, from the Psalms. It also has comments on the life of Jesus and on some of his parables.
See full review on our website
The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success (Deepak Chopra)
Deepak Chopra is a specialist in mind-body medicine, author of numerous books. In it, he develops seven principles, based on the fact that “success is a journey and not a destination.” Practical book (how could it be less being self-help) but of tremendous depth: “We are not human beings who have spiritual experiences from time to time. It is the opposite: we are spiritual beings who have human experiences from time to time”.
See full review on our website
¶ Video – our recommendation of the month
The Last Supper by Javier Martínez (Urantia Book Study)
This video includes one of the study sessions of the ICSS study group, made up of readers from different Latin American countries; In this case, one of its members, Javier Martínez, offers from Spain an exhibition on the Last Supper and the circumstances that surrounded it. In the words of its author, “in this presentation we will analyze each event that happened in this last dinner of memory, its details, messages and teachings.”
¶ Navigating through life – The value of a smile
It costs nothing, but creates much.
It enriches those who receive, without impoverishing those who give.
It happens in the blink of an eye, and the memory of it sometimes lasts forever.
No one is so rich that they can do without it, and no one is so poor that they cannot be made rich by its benefits. It creates happiness at home, encourages goodwill in business, and is the watchword of friends.
It is rest for the weary, light for the disappointed, sun for the sad and the best antidote to worries.
But it cannot be bought, requested, borrowed or stolen, because it is something that does not benefit anyone unless it is given spontaneously and freely.
And if at a busy time one of us is too tired to give you a smile, can we ask you to leave us a smile of yours?
Because no one needs a smile as much as someone who has none left to give.
(Frank Irving Fletcher)
¶ My favorite paragraph
Victor Manuel Fernandez Martin
For me it is very important since, if it were understood correctly, the “spirit-matter” problem would be clarified, which has been the cause of so many clashes between excessively spiritualistic positions and excessively materialistic positions. I believe that, in this aspect, The Urantia Book invites us to a slow and calm reflection on the reality that would translate into a greater dignity of the human being. The quote is as follows:
PARADISE is the eternal center of the universe of universes and the abiding place of the Universal Father, the Eternal Son, the Infinite Spirit, and their divine co-ordinates and associates. This central Isle is the most gigantic organized body of cosmic reality in all the master universe. Paradise is a material sphere as well as a spiritual abode. All of the intelligent creation of the Universal Father is domiciled on material abodes; hence must the absolute controlling center also be material, literal. And again it should be reiterated that spirit things and spiritual beings are real. (UB 11:0.1)
Brotherly greetings.
¶ Urantia Reflections
Luis Garcia Bory
We seem to know a lot about the human body, but our current knowledge and documented experience of how our mental circuits work together with the brain and nervous system (and the eight other bodily systems we have) seem to be at a very early stage. development.
In part because of the mental health crisis brought on by the coronavirus pandemic, we have been forced to take a starker look at ourselves and reassess many aspects of our reality as individuals and as active members of families, organizations and communities.
In many cases, we didn’t like what we saw. And some of us, as a result, began to experience an unprecedented range of physical (non-COVID-19 related) and mental health problems. At the same time, however, such a seemingly unfortunate event created an opportunity to rethink how and why we live the way we do; relationships with significant people for us, and with the basic external factors that make up what we could call daily existence.
In some strange way, we were forced to rekindle our true fire and find our peace of mind again. Some of us may have considered for the first time the role emotional strength and mental resilience play in our achieving a reasonable level of stability and well-being.
Some of us were down deeper rabbit holes and were forced to accept that something had to change. We begin to face frankly unpleasant or depressive emotional and mental states. Some may have made drastic changes in essential relationships (family, colleagues, work, play, food, rest, and exercise, to name the most basic). Others possibly returned to a more regular practice of introspection, meditation, worship, prayer, and supplication.
And it was through the introduction (or intensification) of these practices that we were able to remember how important it is to have a functional and efficient spiritual system to achieve healthier health (energy, physical, mental and emotional well-being).
The big question is: what is part of that system and how do we keep it running? The Urantia Book seems to offer some clues on how to activate it and keep it sanely functional (morontia generator, if you will).
¶ Urantia Questionnaire: Jeannie Vázquez de Abreu
I am Jeannie Vázquez, I live in Montevideo, Uruguay. I dedicate myself to study and serve the revelation of The Urantia Book.
- How did you get to The Urantia Book and why do you think you found it?
I found him reading a short article in a magazine published by a Uruguayan newspaper. There it was briefly mentioned that The Urantia Book claimed to be a divine revelation presenting the complete life of Jesus of Nazareth. I had years of searching for information about Jesus and God, the soul, eternal life. I needed to know if all that really existed. My search had been almost harrowing; he had read numerous (supposedly) spiritual books and attended conferences dealing with such subjects.
Reading in that article “revelation of the complete life of Jesus” was like a trigger inside me. I ran outside (literally) and arrived out of breath at a bookstore that was seven blocks from my house. There it was, huge, with its rubberized blue lid. I was delighted to see that it was a big book because I was always an avid reader, and reading a good book that lasted a long time was, and still is, a pleasure for me.
- What was your first impression when reading it?
The first thing I read was the index, while I was walking slowly back to my house. I was fascinated to see that he spoke of the Universal Father. Then I read loose parts. My first impression was that what I read was (is) true.
- At what point in the reading (document, sentence, etc.) did you accept that The Urantia Book is really what it claims to be?
From the beginning I accepted it as true, I did not doubt that it is a real divine revelation. The revelation answered all my questions and doubts, it satisfied my hunger for truth.
¶ 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-octubre-2022/