© 1979 Robert F. Bruyn
© 1979 The Urantia Book Fellowship (formerly Urantia Brotherhood)
What did American Astronaut Edgar Mitchell experience during his Apollo 14 trip and moon walk that prompted a personal crusade for worldwide “community spirit”? Mitchell told an audience in 1971, shortly after his return, “I want to convince people of the necessity of viewing our world as a small community, much like you have right here in the state of Kansas, and work to solve problems in the same spirit of togetherness, worldwide, as opposed to community wide.” Photographs and posters of the tiny, blue planet, Earth, suspended in space by invisible threads of gravity provided Americans and people everywhere a chance to share Mitchell’s new perspective — seeing Earth from its moon. With this perspective, the contrasts of diverse races and national boundaries were unified in the minds of many sensitive mortals into an awareness of the interrelatedness of all of this planet’s inhabitants — the brotherhood of man. Certainly a giant step for mankind had been taken in our evolving consciousness.
When we see divine perfection in the material creation around us, we often call it “beautiful” for lack of other descriptive words. A Mighty Messenger tells us, “Beauty, art, is largely a matter of the unification of contrasts.” (UB 56:10.3) Is this what Edgar Mitchell experienced so powerfully? is this what you and I feel during a special sunset when our darkening planet remains lighted by the glow of colorful reflections on our atmosphere from rays originating at the center of our solar system?
This Mighty Messenger also reports that beauty is one of three elements of Deity that mortal man can comprehend-finding God in the material creation. What a paradox to find the source of all mind and all spirit in finite matter through the perception of physical unity-beauty. The beauty of this paradox is that it couldn’t be any other way. God is the unifier of all of the diverse creation, just as he is the unified source of all the diversity. What a beautiful universe! What a beautiful plan! Truly, experiencing beauty is experiencing God. And as scientists uncover the interrelatedness of our material world, each new perspective will carry the implicit, even if unconscious, message that all men, too, are interrelated-brothers.
— Bob Bruyn
Kansas City, Missouri