© 2010 Gaétan G. Charland, Guy Laporte, Hélène Boisvenue, Marc Belleau, Al Niel
© 2010 Urantia Association of Quebec
¶ Word from the President
Dear friends and members of the AUQ,
IT IS WITH PLEASURE THAT AS PRESIDENT OF THE URANTIA ASSOCIATION OF QUEBEC I WRITE THIS FIRST THREAD OF WORDS TO WELCOME YOU TO THIS NEW EDITION OF THE NEWSLETTER RÉFLECTIVITÉ.
Since 2006, Réflectivité has been paired with the international newsletter Tidings. This arrangement was intended to provide you with news surrounding Urantia activities on the international level. In its early days, Tidings was published monthly, but due to the difficulties encountered in this effort, its publication was postponed to every two months, thereby depriving Quebec members and readers of their intimate and timely relationship with their local newsletter.
In a spirit of service, the members of the AUQ board have unanimously decided to overcome this constraint by offering you Réflectivité again in a separate format and monthly. We will continue our efforts to translate and offer Tidings to you in electronic format. We believe that it is important for Quebec readers to be informed about Urantia activities at the international level and thus be able to contribute to the universal and spiritual brotherhood. We hope that this initiative will contribute to confirming your support for the Urantia Association of Quebec (AUQ) and the Urantia Association International (UAI).
I encourage readers to write an article, a reflection and share their understanding and experience with other readers via Réflectivité and send it to line.stpierre@gmail.com
I also take this opportunity to clarify the role of the local and international association in relation to the Urantia Foundation. Often in my meetings with readers in Quebec or when traveling abroad, many confuse the roles that these organizations play in relation to The Urantia Book. In the Charter of the UAI and the AUQ, the mission given to us is to disseminate the teachings of The Urantia Book, and this, by our personal example in the activities of daily life, in the family, social or work environment.
Prior to the creation of the Urantia Brotherhood, the revelators had given the contact commission certain important directives concerning the dissemination of the teachings of The Urantia Book and the book itself. These directives were read to the early members of the Brotherhood in 1955 by Sadler Jr. and were entitled “The Publication Mandate” which you can find on our website at the following address. http://www.urantiaquebec.ca/urantia-quebec/page213.shtml Today more than ever, the Urantia Association of Quebec relies on this important document to give life to its mission and to continue it; this is why study groups and the training of leaders and teachers are at the forefront of our approach.
To understand the differences in responsibilities between the Foundation and the Association, as promulgated by the revelators, the Foundation publishes, translates, distributes, and protects the texts of The Urantia Book. Its role is a material and commercial one in the publication and distribution of The Urantia Book. The Association has a social and spiritual role in the promotion of brotherhood and the emancipation of personal religion.
These two organizations are intimately interdependent upon each other and work together in the accomplishment of the mission of The Urantia Book as set forth in the publication mandate and other directives formulated by the revelators and contained in the declaration of the Trustees.
It is certain that this brief description does not cover all aspects of this interdependence, but at least it defines it in its scope and action. I suggest that you continue this reflection by consulting the Internet site “Michael’s plan” at the following address http://www.michaelsplan.org/ you will find there many interesting documents on the origin of the Urantia movement and its destiny. You can also consult the Internet site of the Foundation which reports in detail its many projects and accomplishments as described in its newsletters at the following address, http://www.urantia.org/
I hope that you will find in this new edition of Réflectivité the same pleasure that you had in reading its first publications under the direction and pen of Pierre Routhier.
Happy reading.
Gaetan G. Charland
President AUQ
¶ Birthday picnic
NO QUESTION TO FORGET THE ANNIVERSARY DATE OF THE COMING OF MICHAEL OF NEBADON. IT HAS BECOME A TRADITION FOR THE URANTIA ASSOCIATION OF QUEBEC TO INVITE THE READERS OF THE UB TO CELEBRATE THIS EVENT WITH A PICNIC AT ANGRIGNON PARK IN MONTREAL
So on Saturday, August 21, 2010, about thirty people answered the call. The location in Angrignon Park was the same as last year. It was identified by a large banner bearing the three blue concentric circles.
The gloomy and even rainy weather had no effect on the fraternal and serene nature of the party. I say a big thank you to all those who contributed to filling the long picnic table with provisions as well as good wines. The service was complete, because even a portable toilet was installed near the camp.
A portion of cake carrying Picnic Birthday continued from page 1
The three blue rings were served to all present in commemoration of the birthday of Michael of Nebadon.
This festivity has become a tradition for readers from the Montreal and surrounding areas. Many take advantage of it to meet readers other than those they meet in their reading groups. It is an opportunity for exchange of all kinds. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, I invite you to visit the following website: http://www.urantia-quebec.ca/album/page221.shtml. You can view photos taken on this occasion this year and even for previous years. Enjoy viewing.
Guy Laporte
¶ A religious experience
THE REVELATIONS OF GOD SHINE LIKE LIGHTNING ON EARTH IN THE LIVES OF MEN WHO REVEAL GOD TO THEIR FELLOW PEOPLE. UB 132:7.6
This sentence from a text in The Urantia Book reminds me of a very pleasant experience I had last fall, an experience I can call religious. I want to share it with you.
Last October, during a study session of The Urantia Book, we read this excerpt: … when the created personality consents to — chooses to — submit the will of the creature to the will of the Father… This choice of the creature is not an abandonment of the will. It is an expansion of the will, a glorification of the will, a perfection of the will. UB 111:5.4-5 . Of course, we were unanimous in ecstatic about the content of this text, but, within myself, I kept a vague reticence that I dared not express. This statement offended my common sense: how can submission be transformed into glorification and expansion of the will? Logically, is there not a contradiction in terms? During this weekend, due to lack of time, I did not linger much to resolve this paradox and I forgot about it.
A few weeks later, I was sharing a nice meal with friends and we were chatting amicably about funny anecdotes and various topics related to our past and present lives. We were talking, among other things, about budgets and I was informing my friends of my taste of my ability to manage the family budget. With my husband’s consent, this area of our family organization is under my responsibility. I then indicated that this skill came to me from my mother who had always been able to balance our family’s income and expenses despite often difficult financial conditions. I then stated: “I have always identified so much with Mom!” And there it was, in a flash, I associated this experience of my relationship with Mom with the text previously read on the glorification and expansion of the will, and I understood! What a beautiful religious experience!
As a young child, my mother fascinated me. I found her beautiful, joyful, intelligent and loving. My sisters and I wanted to be like her and sometimes argued about which of us was most like her. I wanted to be like her, to be like her. At a very young age, I had so well integrated my mother’s qualities and values that I never really felt like I was obeying her. My actions almost always responded to an impulse that, it seemed to me, came from me. When I modeled my actions on my mother’s, I did not abandon my will, I rather felt like I was asserting myself. And it was a great pleasure for me. Isn’t this an illustration of what the expansion of the will can be?
I now understand that it is a very similar process that attunes us to the will of God and this in the greatest pleasure of an expansion of our will.
I am very happy with this experience and I pray to God to reveal to me more beautiful things that will burst like lightning in my life.
I have shared this new understanding of a text in The Urantia Book with my friends, and they have been delighted. Through this associative capacity bestowed upon us by an adjutant spirit, new experiences will bring forth greater understandings, higher meanings connected with the facts of our existence. The process seems so natural, so well adapted to the nature of the human being, that it sometimes passes unnoticed as a religious experience. I marvel at this process in religious experience. What sweet divine subtlety! God thus brings his light, and I thank him for it.
Helene Boisvenue,
Sherbrooke
¶ Free Will: A Divine Right
WE OFTEN WONDER WHY HUMANITY HAS TO FACE THE INJUSTICE, THE EVIL THAT IS RAGING IN OUR WORLD.
You don’t have to look very far to find examples that illustrate my point. Just listen to the news and you’ll be served. Think of the financial scandals that occur from time to time and you’ll understand what I mean. Think of the Kamikazes who commit suicide attacks in the name of established religion and you’ll feel, just like me, this outrage to humanity. Why does God accept all these situations? Why allow so much suffering? Isn’t God beautiful, good, great and all-powerful, couldn’t he prevent all this?
If there is all this suffering in our world, it is surely not because God is trying to test us. I categorically refuse to subscribe to this view of things. A parent worthy of the name does not inflict all sorts of unpleasant experiences on his children in order to teach them life lessons, to make them grow and thus acquire a noble character. The normal circumstances of existence necessarily bring their share of problems to be solved and that, believe me, is quite enough to challenge us and stimulate our growth. So why does all this evil come into existence?
The free will granted to all human beings is the cause of all that is good and bad in our world. However, by giving the power of choice to immature and inexperienced beings, we create the potential for error, evil and all their consequences. If we have the choice to do good, we must also have the choice to do evil. When, in a given circumstance, we make a bad choice, when we commit a mistake, we allow evil to exist. It is therefore our personal decisions and our decisions as a society that bring evil into existence and affect all the individuals who live in our environment. We can then ask ourselves why God grants free will to creatures who use it badly.
This question is quite legitimate when we see the use that is made of free will. It is love that is the main reason for our freedom. The goal of every personality is to love and be loved. God and human beings are no exception to this rule. God and man are made to love each other and love requires freedom of choice, free will. There is no love possible unless it is ardently desired and freely consented to. To love God, we must be able to choose him! As for God, he has already chosen us. By giving freedom to his imperfect and inexperienced creatures, error and evil have become possible. It is up to us not to bring them into existence by using our free will to choose the divine will in the light of our knowledge. Our Father knows that we will make mistakes along the way and these are already forgiven us before we even ask him.
Let us learn, then, to use wisely this precious gift granted by our divine heavenly Father. We can be sure that with every misstep, every mistake, when we misuse our faculty of choice, God always remains present to support us and to live with us and in us, the unfortunate and, it must be said, sometimes disastrous consequences of our bad decisions and all this… out of love for his creation.
Marc Belleau
belleaumarc@hotmail.com
If you have any comments, questions or objections about this text, please feel free to write to me. I will be happy to read them.
¶ A global trend in the air
IF YOU HAVE NOTICED, FOR SOME TIME Lately, URANTIA ASSOCIATION INTERNATIONAL AND ITS LEADERS HAVE BEEN STRIKING THE NOTE ON THE IMPORTANCE OF ESTABLISHING STUDY GROUPS ON THE TEACHINGS OF THE UB.
Remember that these people are visionaries, in the sense that they have a more global vision of the present situation on Urantia. After the Foundation put their efforts into the translation into several languages and the distribution of the L.U. in many countries, the UAI is now trying to shift the trend from the container to the spirit of the content, that is, the teachings. And they are right!
The order of things is running smoothly on Urantia, now that almost the entire planet can appropriate the L.U., it is now time to move on to the hour of the purpose and the significance of the 5th epochal revelation.
It is this next planetary trend of study group formation that will give our world a special value. A spiritual value that is inestimable in our cosmic quest. There is so much to discover in a study group. Let me tell you a story.
Five years ago, three people plus myself decided to take a topic from the L.U. and do an in-depth study of it, not a reading, but a study. We took a full day each month to bring out the full depth of this topic. This study lasted three years, let me tell you that what came out of it was extraordinary.
It was quite an intense experience, so much so that when I presented myself at other organized activities, I could not help but pass on what I had perceived of our work. Probably because I spoke about it with such enthusiasm that other personalities showed interest. Our group therefore grew from four to eight. It was a new group, new elements having been added, the group was called upon to be adjusted.
This time the topic was, A Study in the Master Universe by William S. Sadler Jr.
Each of the parties made its individual ascent, but what is most wonderful is that each party made its ascent in a group that was also ascending. But beyond the theme, the words and the material that we explored, I discovered something else.
A warm camaraderie developed within this group, due to the fact that we were all putting our efforts together, with a common goal of understanding a little more about God’s plans for us.
This warm camaraderie soon turned into team spirit, and from this team spirit was born something even more beautiful, spiritual brotherhood. I will forever cherish this unique experience of having participated in this study group. I received much more than I could have given.
Certainly my spiritual perception has been elevated and my cosmic vision has expanded further, but I have realized that the group is also addictive.
Now we need each other. Of course we have achieved our goal, it took almost two years of intensive meetings to complete this study.
And now there is the next destination. We have recommitted ourselves as a group to another adventure, another study of the concepts of the L.U. that will lead us surely and safely to other uncharted shores of our minds.
I cherish the past experience, but I anticipate the next one more. The global influence of study groups is present, will you be trendy this year?
Al Niel
¶ 2010 Activities Calendar
Invitation to Saguenay
Sunday October 10
Dear readers of The Urantia Book,
The members of the board of the Urantia Association of Quebec will be in your region for an informative and fraternal meeting, on Sunday, October 10 at the Holiday Inn Saguenay — Convention Center 2675, boul. du Royaume, Jonquière.
We will introduce you to the Association, its role, its mandate and the pursuit of its goals. You will be informed of the Leadership Symposium that is being organized in Chicago next year. We will also inform you of the activities surrounding The Urantia Book in Quebec and throughout the world.
We will welcome you from 9:30 am to start the presentations at 10 am and we will continue the meeting until 4 pm. A one-hour break for lunch will be taken around 12:30 pm.
We look forward to seeing you there. It’s a meeting.
The AUQ Council
Theme Day
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Location and subject to be confirmed.
Christmas Dinner 2010
Saturday, December 4, 2010 Details to follow.
¶ STUDY GROUPS
THIS ACTIVITY ALLOWS MULTIPLE READERS AT DIFFERENT LEVELS OF UNDERSTANDING TO SHARE AND STUDY THE TEACHINGS OF THE URANTIA BOOK TOGETHER. IT PROMOTES SPIRITUAL PROGRESS BY ENABLING PARTICIPANTS TO FIND PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS OF THE TEACHINGS OF THE URANTIA BOOK IN THEIR DAILY LIVES. THIS IMPORTANT PRACTICE MAINTAINS A BROADER VIEW OF CONCEPTS OF TRUTH.
You wish to participate or form a study group; we will be happy to assist you. If you wish to have your study group appear in this list, contact the person in charge, via email association.urantia.quebec@gmail.com or at 450-565-3323.
Group: Découverte
Every Monday from 7:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.
Laurentians Region Gaétan Charland and Line St-Pierre
Tel.: 450-565-3323
Group: Étoile du Soir
Every Wednesday from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.
Laurentides region
Carmen Charland
Tel.: 450-553-3601
Group: Le Pont
Every Thursday from 7:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.
South Shore of Montreal
Guy Vachon
Tel.: 450-465-7049
Group: Basses Laurentides
Every Monday from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.
Yvon or Irene Belle-Isle
Tel: 819-423-1240
Group: Mauricie Readers
Every Monday from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.
Three Rivers Region
Madeleine Boisvert and
Tel: 819-376-8850
Roger Perigny
819-379-5768
Group: Veritas
Every Tuesday from 7:00 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.
Montreal area, near the Church metro station
Lise and Pierre Routhier
Tel.: 514-761-2378
Sherbrooke Group
Every two weeks, Tuesday or Wednesday (to be confirmed)
From 7:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.
Helene Boisvenue or Denis Gravelle
Tel.: 819 569-6416
Group: The Ascendants
Every two weeks on Sunday from 13 h 00 to 3:30 p.m.
South Shore of Quebec
Guy LeBlanc
Tel: 418-835-1809
Group: The Agondontarians
Every two weeks on Sunday from 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. North Shore of Quebec
Guy & Rolande L. Martin
Tel: 418-651-3851
Group: Les Débonnaires
Wednesdays from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.
Montreal region
Julien Audet
Tel: 514-315-9871
Group: Urantia Fraternity
Wednesdays from 7:30 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.
Lanaudière region
Richard Landry & Gisèle Boisjoly
Tel: 450-589-6922
Group: Vers les Sommets
Friday from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.
Regions Ormstown & Valleyfield
Louise Sauve
Tel: 450-829-3631
Group: The United Urantia Family
Monday from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.
Montreal region
Mrs. Diane Labrecque
Tel: 514-277-2308
Disclaimer: Any interpretations, opinions, conclusions or artistic representations, stated or implied, are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and views of Urantia Association International or local and national level associations.