Parents of today and those to come who have found the teachings of The Urantia Book to be essential to their spiritual development NEED your experience, your suggestions, your mentoring. To pass on what you have learned is actually a principle found at all levels of our universe career. Many of us who are long time “UBers” were on our own as we attempted to pass the truths of The Urantia Book to our children. We did it by the seat of our pants with various levels of success. There is now a generation of grandparents, and the younger generation who you raised, who can benefit measurably by your willingness to share some of your experiences.
Even a short answer to the following questions could be instructive:
If you raised your children with the teachings of The Urantia Book, what were the methods you felt were most receptive by your children: reading stories from The Urantia Book, telling stories, sending them to Sunday school, bringing them to conferences, having a study group in your home, or other methods?
What methods did not work? Perhaps even turned you off from The Urantia Book?
Children talk about God, heaven, hell, angels, the devil, good and evil. How did your children socialize the teachings? Did they have other children with whom they could share these concepts, or were they isolated within the sometimes specialized language of The Urantia Book?
If your partner was not involved in The Urantia Book, how did you work out what would be taught to your children?
What rituals or ceremonies, if any, were a part of your home life?
Are your children involved with The Urantia Book currently? Do they attend a church? Have they left the teachings to the side? Are they just not interested in religion? Have they found another path for spiritual fulfillment?
If you were raised in a home where your parent/s embraced The Urantia Book, what did you experience in your home which illustrated and taught the truths of life? What created a desire in you to continue to embrace The Urantia Book teachings?
If as a child growing up in a home where stories and terminology from The Urantia Book were used in normal, daily interaction, did you find it difficult to interact with peers who knew nothing about Fandors or Lucifer or Adam and Eve, or life on other planets, for example?
If you grew up in a home with parents who “inculcated” you into The Urantia Book teachings, if/when you have children what methods would you NOT recommend to parents as they desire to share The Urantia Book?
What were at least three of the most memorable truths emphasized in your home, or that you emphasized as a parent?
Jesus told his apostles: “It is not so important that you should know about the fact of God as that you should increasingly grow in the ability to feel the presence of God.”UB 155:6.12 How did you as a parent embrace this truth in your home, or if you grew up in a home where your parents were aware of this, how did they provide the environment for this “feeling” as differentiated from “the fact of God”?
Thank you on behalf of the current parents and parents-to-be for your time and responses. Please send them to Sara Blackstock blackstocksara7@gmail.com and with the guidance of the Family Life Team (Richard Daunt, Riula Deoto, Miranda Clendening, Tony Finstad, Angie Thurston, and Janet Farrington, our wise mentor) will compile them to be shared in the next issue of the Fellowship Herald and put on the Family Life website: http://www.urantiafamilylife.org and the Fellowship web site http://www.urantiabook.org. If you so wish, your replies can be anonymous.
Sara Blackstock feels she has had the privilege of working with school-age children for almost 50 years as a teacher and administrator. She coordinated three Jerusalem Marketplaces at three International Conferences sponsored by the Fellowship, and is now the interim coordinator of the Family Life Team of the Fellowship.