© 2011 Robert Gallo
© 2011 Association Francophone des Lecteurs du Livre d'Urantia
Organized by readers from the Paris region in conjunction with those from Touraine, this meeting took place on November 14 and 15 at the Châles en Sologne estate south of Orléans. It brought together 11 regional participants to whom were added Isabelle and Jean Annet from Belgium to form a group of 13 seminarians who exchanged their approaches in perfect harmony, in the sumptuous setting of the castle reserved for us and under the light of a gentle autumnal sun.
Among the lucky “chosen ones” of this meeting, we could recognize Anne-Marie and Dominique Ronfet, Elisabeth and Jean-François TROUVE, Marlène and Georges Dupont, Isabelle and Jean ANNET, Thierry Lepage and his partner, Christine Baussain, Jean DUVEAU and your servant Robert Gallo.
All the participants met during lunch on Saturday and separated at the end of lunch on Sunday after 24 hours of reading and discussions (interspersed with a night of rest) on the following theme:
How does the UB enlighten us on this affirmation which has crossed the ages “God made man in his image”?
This meeting was a first halfway between a national meeting and a reading session: It resembled a national meeting by its character of a residential seminar on a specific theme and it resembled a reading session by its relative proximity (except for our Belgian friends) and its brevity. This formula which is limited to a single “weekend” (transport time included) will certainly flourish if we judge by the degree of satisfaction of the participants.
Concerning the “works” and to keep a common thread, we worked on a support of texts prepared by Anne-Marie without prohibiting ourselves from frequent returns to the Book. From the outset, the participants dismissed any physical resemblance with God to concentrate on the spiritual endowments. We concluded that the divine similarities were in the composition, the functioning and the future of these endowments.
We are like God because what characterizes us (Personality, Mind, Adjuster) emanates from God. Just as the creative personalities of time and space, in liaison with the impersonal spirit of the Paradise Trinity, create new potentials; so our personality in liaison with the impersonal spirit (the Adjuster) creates an immortal soul. Just as the Supreme grows through the acts of the creative personalities, so man grows through the persistence of his own decisions which bring about the growth of the soul in and by itself. Potentially like God at the finite level, man will never cease, in an eternal future, to approach more and more the image of God: Be perfect as I am perfect.
Robert Gallo