Dear Ec'ers,

Last night David and I went to the 50th anniversary Urantia Foundation

dinner dance. We went partially to support Carolyn Kendall who gave the

keynote speech and partially because of David's family's longstanding

relationship to Urantia Foundation.

I'd like to share two observations with you. First, Carolyn's speech was

about the future of Urantia Foundation (she spoke in the place of Tom). Her

thesis was about reunification of the IUA and the Fellowship and the need to

have one socio-fraternal organization. Much of what she said you have

already read in her posts regarding the millenium initiative. She also

mentioned the General Council's endorsement of the MI resolution.  I thought

that this might have pushed the edge of the how UF envisioned it's future.

However, the response from the audience was exceedingly positive. A standing

ovation followed and glowing remarks from Nancy Schaeffer about the speech

concluded the evening for us.

Secondly, David and I talked with Gard for about two minutes. The

observation that I would make from his interaction is that he not only gave

his beautiful prayer for unity and community during the weekend, but that he

has tried hard to interject these ideas in other sessions throughout the

meeting with the hopes that some people may listen and hear.

The reason that I wanted to share these observations with you is to suggest

that to an outside observer, one would never guess that negative relations

between the Fellowship and Foundation were escalating.  Regardless of who

has the power and who will ultimately make decisions about our relationship

on behalf of the trustees, I would guess that individuals outside the inner

circle have relatively little information regarding the current philosophy

and vision of UF. I see this as a positive for us--in my experience the

element of suprise may work well against an enemy, but rarely leads to

positive feelings among friends.

Overall, I left last night feeling that we may have more going for us than I

had previously thought.

Love to you all, Marilynn