© 1987 Jim Johnston, Robert Faughum, Curt Cloninger, Stephen Zendt, Eileen Laurence
© 1987 The Urantia Book Fellowship (formerly Urantia Brotherhood)
Special Conference Double Issue
EDITOR’S NOTE: This issue of The URANTIAN, Journal of URANTIA Brotherhood, in our view, captures the spirit of the General Conference held in Maine this past summer. Although we were not able to reproduce here all the fine presentations and workshops offered there, we are pleased to provide a memory for those who attended and a sense of what transpired for those who couldn’t. All of these presented here point clearly to the Conference Theme: Personal Transformation and its Power to Transform the World. We begin with Jim Johnston’s Keynote Address.
The secret of transformation of the individual as well as the world is the vision that you hold of who and what you desire to become, and then acting as though that vision has already become a reality. That’s it. That’s about all that I will be talking about this morning.
The theme of this conference is “Personal Transformation and its Power to Transform the World.” The theme wasn’t posed as a question, but rather as a statement. Can personal transformation, even the spiritual transformation of one individual, actually transform the world? I think that it can.
One only need look at the life of Jesus in both his personal and public ministry, to see the influence of one spiritually transformed individual in the world. His apostles and followers, by virtue of his transforming life in this world, virtually “…turned the whole Roman Empire upside down.” (UB 195:6.9) During his one visit to Rome, Jesus had an influence on the spiritual awakening of more people than most of us will have an influence on in a lifetime. The power of his mere presence was so profound that he merely had to smile upon people for them to experience renewed faith and encouragement.
Jim Johnston
Temple Terrace, Florida
The following two pieces were shared by David Robertson as part of his statement on personal transformation.
by Robert Faughum
Kansas City Times
September 17, 1986
Most of what I really need to know about how to live, and what to do and how to be, I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain but there on the sandbox at the nursery school.
These are the things I learned: Share everything. Play fair. Don’t hit people. Put things back where you found them. Clean up your own mess. Don’t take things that aren’t yours. Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody. Wash your hands before you eat. Flush. Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you. Live a balanced life, Learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.
Take a nap every afternoon. When you go out into the world, watch for traffic, hold hands, and stick together. Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the plastic cup. The roots go down and the plants go up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.
By Curt Cloninger, 17, April, 1986
My God is a slam dancer on a floor with spectral,
psychedelic lights;
and people; and noises; and smells; and bumps
and all He knows is the music.
(He keeps His eyes closed)
My God moves like nobody can;
and breaks and turns, and lunges like some gorgeous blue fluid
at zero gravity.
If the music had life and a body, it would mirror the moves my God makes, and it does.
I want to begin by telling you an anecdote about the renowned American evangelist, Billy Graham. It seems he was in a small community where he was scheduled to speak that evening. During the day, he was anxious to put some letters into the mail and went out for a walk. He stopped a young fellow on the street to ask directions to the local Post Office. After the youngster had given him the information, Graham invited him to his evening preaching engagement, saying that he would be speaking on the topic, “The Way to Heaven,” But the young fellow replied that he’d probably not be there. “Gosh,” he said, “you don’t even know your way to the Post Office.”
The great Danish philosopher and religionist, Kierkegaard, has said, “Most people believe that the …commandments, that is, to love one’s neighbor as oneself (and so forth) are intentionally a little too severe — like putting the clock ahead half an hour to make sure of not being late in the morning.”
I am beginning to think that the act of personal transformation is to bring our interior clocks to the point where they tell true time.
Stephen Zendt
San Francisco, California
In my experience with interfaith dialogue, I have learned to share definitions of terms before discussing ideas and will be doing so this morning. However, I am going to adopt the “Jewish” way and take my title “Our Relationship with God” from the end and work towards the beginning.
When I refer to God, using the single word, it is as my father and your father. We share the same father and therefore, a common parentage, The God to whom I refer created our local universe. I relate to him through my knowledge of Jesus’ life as learned from song texts, the Bible, and The URANTIA Book. Through my awareness of the workings of the Spirit of Truth in my life and in the lives of other believers, I am working towards the realization of the evolving God the Supreme, By striving to strengthen the connection between my errant human self and the divine God presence within me which The URANTIA Book calls “the Thought Adjuster,” I am reaching toward an understanding of the Universal Father.
“With” seems to be a simple word. Webster defines it as, “a being together, in the company of.” The writer of the old Gospel text, “And He walks with me and He talks with me, and He tells me I am His own,” brought this truth to many rural church singers.
Eileen Laurence
Armonk, New York
Just as we seem to lose faith in the awesome power of personal transformation to transform our world, and resort to impersonal, mechanistic technique, along comes a person like Mother Teresa. Even all the words in The URANTIA Book, or a thousand thousand URANTIA Books, pale in comparison to a single life lived as a testament to the reality of our Father among us.
“Lord, make me a channel of your peace, That where there is hatred, I may bring love. Where there is error, I may bring truth. Where there is discord, I may bring harmony. Where there is doubt, I may bring faith. Where there is despair, I may bring joy. For it is by forgetting self that one is found; it is by forgiving that one is forgiven; it is by dying that one awakens to eternal life.”
“You and I must come forward and share the joy of loving. But we cannot give what we don’t have. That’s why we need to pray. And prayer will give us a clean heart. And a clean heart will see the God in each other. And if we see God in each other, we will be able to live in peace. And if we live in peace, we will be able to share the joy of loving with each other and God will be with us, God bless you.”
Mother Teresa’s prayer to the United Nations, from the film, “Mother Teresa,” Petrie Productions, 1985
“The call to the adventure of building a new and transformed human society by means of the spiritual rebirth of Jesus’ brotherhood of the kingdom should thrill all who believe in him as men have not been stirred since the days when they walked about on earth as his companions in the flesh.” (UB 195:10.6)