© 1984 Gloriann Harris
© 1984 The Urantia Book Fellowship (formerly Urantia Brotherhood)
The following was adapted from an address given at the 1984 URANTIA Brotherhood General Conference, Green Lake, Wisconsin
This article is about “other people.” Specifically, l’d like to talk about closing the gap between “self” and “other.” In order to begin, let’s back up a little to the “beginning of time” as we know it personally. Gail Sheehy, in her well-known book, Passages, describes the early experiences of childhood.
“Each child arrives in the world an outlaw. He strives to center the universe about himself and to make it what he wants it to be: his own inner circle. For the first few months of life, this is easy. The infant is the world, and there is no awareness of ‘self’ as distinct from ‘other.’”
—Glorian Harris
Chicago, Illinois
Over the last eight years of publication of The URANTIAN Journal of URANTIA Brotherhood, we have from time to time suggested topics for future issues to stimulate the writers in our community to offer their work for publication. Once again we would like to tickle your imaginations and word-processors with a request for your active participation in The Journal in the coming months. Here’s our question, based upon the following quote from Paper I of The URANTIA Book:
“The affectionate dedication of the human will to the doing of the Father’s will is man’s choicest gift to God; in fact, such a consecration of creature will constitutes man’s only possible gift of true value to the Paradise Father.” (UB 1:1.2)
Question
Why is this consecration the only gift of true value?
While our intent is to stimulate the submittal of finished articles for publication, we will also welcome, edit (if necessary), and publish in summary form any responses to this question you care to send us. In fact, if this approach generates the level of interest we hope it will, we plan to use it on a regular basis to provide a way for our readers to share their thoughts, observations, and responses to questions many of us struggle with on a regular basis, alone, or in our study groups, as we seek to understand our Father better through the mechanism of The URANTIA Book. Thanks in advance for your willingness to participate with us in a more active way of using The URANTIAN Journal to crossfertilize our thinking.
Warmly,
—The Editors
“A personality who knows God and desires to do his will, who has spirit insight, is divinely stable and eternally existent. Man’s great universe adventure consists in the transit of his mortal mind from the stability of mechanical statics to the divinity of spiritual dynamics, and he achieves this transformation by the force and constancy of his own personality decisions, in each of life’s situations declaring. ‘It is my will that your will be done.’” (UB 118:8.11)