Spiritual Lessons from Worms and Kids
by
Sara
Blackstock
Sara Blackstock is the director of a large daycare facility in Walnut
Creek, California, and a longtime reader of The Urantia Book
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At our school-age day care center we support green by recycling glass,
plastic and paper. Just recently we have forged into the realms of
worm composting where worms eat garbage, turning dirt into rich compost
while getting rid of leftover food scraps at the same time.
One day last week at my day care center, a group of kindergartners and
I opened up our new worm composting environment and discovered to our
horror that not only was it too dry, but that the food leftover from the
kid's snacks had not been stirred in. Since I had not given
instructions that it was to be stirred in, the teachers had put the
snack leftovers on top of the dirt and it just sat there fermenting.
Needless to say, something needed to be done immediately. I gave the
kids some spoons to stir in the stuff on top, but it turned out that
the spoons were not long enough to do much good.
There was only one thing for us to do -- reach in with our bare hands.
None of them wanted to do this. They all were holding their noses from
the stench of the decomposing garbage, looking at me, as I rolled up my
sleeves and dug in. |
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Urantia Book Historical Society Being Formed
The
digital archive project whose goal is to digitize and catalog historic
documents of the Urantia
Book readership is approaching 3000
on-line documents in the archive with about 900 of them
cataloged. The Urantia Book Historical Society is being formed to
manage the accumulating collection of historic materials.
The
University of Colorado, Boulder, has expressed a strong interest in
housing these documents as a special collection. This is largely
a repercussion of Urantia work which Don Green has done on the campus
over the past 25 years. The University of California at Santa
Barbara has also expressed an interest -- they already have a growing
collection of Urantia materials in a special section that they have
been developing over past years.
A 501(c)3 non-profit is being set up and
a Board of Directors consisting of individuals from a cross-section of
the readership community is being developed to manage the financial and
legal aspects of this undertaking.
Volunteers
are needed who can read through documents, write short
synopses, and help with cataloging. There is also a need for
someone to take on the project of collecting and organizing short
biographies of the individuals whose letters and writings are being
indexed for the archive. If you are interested in
participating in this exciting project, please contact Larry Watkins.
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Urantian US Postage Stamp Issued!
Yes, a completely legitimate 39 cent first class Urantian postage stamp has been issued!
These can be used
on letters to friends, bills you might be paying -- anything going
through the US mail that you might want to use as a vehicle for
spreading awareness of The Urantia Book.
OK -- These stamps
weren't issued by the US Government -- they were created at a website
which lets you create postage stamps from your own artwork.
If you are
interested in creating your own stamps or ordering some with the
picture shown here,
click here and
follow the directions.
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Annual Oregon Urantian Campout Coming Up!
Julia Fenderson teaches at the Oregon Urantian Campout circa 1978
Mark your calendar for August 18 - 20, the weekend of the Oregon Urantia Campout! At just $35 per person (and cheaper for those 20 and under), these three days of relaxation and exuberance among UB reading friends is affordable for all. We're planning lots of time for fun and
socialization, plus some fascinating excursions into our favorite book
as well as time for prayer and worship together.
Registration deadline: June 30, 2006
($10 late fee after June 30)
Click here for more information
or
call Joy Brandt at (503) 408-4857
If you'd like to be part of
the program, call Esther Wood at (503) 961-2147
If you want to make a vacation out of it, you may also be
interested in attending a weekend Urantia retreat the following
weekend, August 25 to 27, in Eugene, Oregon (one hour south of the
campground) offered by the Retreat Network.
For more
information about the Retreat Network event the following weekendcall
Jeanette Shaefer (541) 754-0385
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Are you ready for an interesting, challenging,
stimulating service opportunity?
Are you ready to serve on the Fellowship's General Council?
Every three years representatives from the various Fellowship Societies meet in a Triennial Delegate Assembly and elect individuals
to the General Council of The Fellowship. This meeting will occur
beginning July 5 in River Forest, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. Some
sixteen positions on the General Council are open. If
you have any interest in helping to manage the rapidly growing
work of the revelation as it spreads in the world, please fill out and send in a copy of the "Application for
Organizational Service".
"As
faith-enlightened and spirit-liberated sons of the kingdom of heaven, you face
a double responsibility of duty to man and duty to God while you voluntarily
assume a third and sacred obligation: service to the brotherhood of God-knowing
believers." [178:1.5; 1930,2]
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 The Pipeline of Light Needs Your Recipes
Michelle, the Pipeline Coordinator, says:
We
have officially opened the call for recipes for the Pipeline of Light
Cookbook project. The proceeds from the sales of this
unique cookbook will help us fund next year's Pipeline expenses.
It is our intention to create a cosmic recipe collection from readers
of The Urantia Book; recipes that are special not only because
they are favorites from our community of readers (much like a church
cookbook that many of us have in our
collections), but because the instructions will be sprinkled with bits
of universe wisdom or references to Urantia Book stories.
Your recipe can be as
simple or as elaborate as you wish, as long as it's a real recipe and
you can think of some bit of universe wisdom or a Urantia Book story
that can be integrated into it.
We would like for the final cookbook to be available for purchase early this Fall.
Here's how to help us with this fun project:
1. Find a couple of your favorite recipes.
2. Read through the instructions and think of a snippet of advice
you could insert that relates your recipe to universe reality or
rewrite it so that it becomes an illustration of or commentary on a
story or concept from The Urantia Book.
Click here to see a sample recipe.
3. Send recipes to me at mklimesh@covad.net
4. Wait for the cookbook to come out so that your fellow readers can start nourishing themselves.
Okay, run to your kitchen and find me a recipe!
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Fellowship Summer Conference Update
Theme: "Celestial Ministry: Seen and Unseen"
Worship, Plenaries and Workshops from July 5 to July 9,
2006
"And so it is: You worship God; pray to, and commune with, the Son;
and work out the details of your earthly sojourn in connection with the
intelligences of the Infinite Spirit operating on your world and throughout
your universe." (p.66)
Please join us this summer at Dominican University as we explore the meanings,
values and implications of this statement.
We will begin each morning in worship of the Universal Father.
There will be plenary presentations on the origin, nature and destiny of
celestial ministry.
Various workshops will focus on a wide range of divine and spiritual forces,
persons, networks and their relationships to us.
A tour is planned of 533 Diversey
Parkway.
The central aim of the conference is to enhance our intellectual and spiritual
lives through study, discussion and reflection, to integrate the practical and
the sacred.
We would like to put more "study" back into the summer study sessions
of the Fellowship. People are encouraged to bring their copy of The
Urantia Book and use it by reading/referencing it during the workshops they
attend.We will have feedback sessions after the day's workshops in
which a volunteer from each workshop will report to the entire group the
highlights of what was done and learned. return to top of page
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Do you shop at Amazon.com?
If so, you can
make a contribution to The Fellowship every time you purchase something
-- Amazon.com will pay The Fellowship a sales commission. If you
reach Amazon.com by going through the Fellowship, the Fellowship gets a
commission on everything you subsequently purchase.
Go to
http://urantia-book.org/amazon.htm
and click on the Amazon.com logo to
get to the Amazon site and make your purchase. You'll be helping
The Fellowship in its effort to spread the revelation.
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Pipeline Cookbook Sample Recipe (continued from above)
Cranberry Sauce a la Salvington
Like the journey to Salvington, this cranberry sauce takes a little
time but is well worth the effort.
Ingredients:
2 cups orange juice
2 cups granulated white sugar
3 tablespoons of Grand Marnier
2 cinnamon sticks
2 whole cloves (do not use ground cloves because they will cloud the sauce)
zest only of 1 clementine
zest only of 1 orange
zest only of 1 lime
zest only of 1 lemon
6 to 8 finely sliced cumquats (if you can find them)
24 ounces of fresh cranberries.
Directions:
Wash the
cranberries and pick through them, removing any debris or
over-ripened cranberries, much in the manner of traversing the morontia
worlds and removing the debris from the mortal life.
Make a seasoned
simple syrup: Place the first 5 ingredients into a 4 quart pot and
bring to a boil. Lower heat and simmer, stirring, until all the
sugar has dissolved. (The adventurous can try substituting 100% pure
maple syrup for the sugar -- just as the journey to Salvington will
require many experiences of adjustment and adaptation on the part of
the adventurous pilgrim to bring out the full flavor of Supremacy.)
Using a citrus
zester, remove the zest from the citrus being careful not to get any of
the white pith, which can be quite bitter -- similar to the quest for
wisdom which enables a productive harvest of experience purified of the
contamination of illusion.
Add the zest to
the hot syrup, stir, and cook at a slow boil until the syrup has
reduced by one-half and the zest is soft and candied, about 10 to
15 minutes. Remove the zest with a fork and spread out onto
waxed paper to cool. Remove cloves now. They will be
impossible to find later until your guests are eating your sauce.
During the ascent to Salvington, purposes must become free of any
tendencies that might cause difficulty for other ascenders in more
complex situations.
Add the cleaned
cranberries and cook over low heat, stirring, until they pop.
Remove from the heat, stir in the zest, and cool to room
temperature. Stir well and store, refrigerated, in a plastic
container until served. Even the ascent to Salvington provides
periods of rest for the blending of experience and insight.
Remove from
refrigerator about 1 hour before serving for best flavor. May be
prepared several days in advance. The sauce may be enhanced,
although made somewhat heavier, by the addition of 1 cup of chopped,
glazed pecans. We will have many opportunities to add to our
experience enabling us to attain more meaningful levels of service.
Serve the Supreme
by serving this cranberry sauce to some of your friends here on earth
with whom you are beginning your journey to Salvington.
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Spiritual Lessons from Worms and Kids (continued from above)
As we began this
process it looked as if we may have lost our whole worm population, for
we began to pull comatose bodies out one by one. But we said to
each other, "If the dirt was stirred and wetted, maybe the little
critters might come alive. Maybe we can save the lives of our
worms."
There was a great stir of energy as these kids saw what to them was a
critical situation in which they could make a difference. They
got some squirt bottles and we got into a rythm as the energy
intensified in the effort to save our worms. I would reach down
to the bottom of the bin, bringing up the drier dirt and along with it
a few listless worms in my hands. I would hold them in my hands
while the kids aimed their squirt bottles at the unmoving worm bodies,
trying to revive them with the water.
The joy that was present in that small space when a comatose worm would
stir after being squirted was indescribable. I doubt that this
had much of the attention of the supreme personalities of the universe,
but for these few minutes, these kids were giving everything they
had to revive these worms.They were actually fighting over who got to
save the worms! Such joy -- and to top it all off, one rather
serious kindergarten boy said, with a perfectly straight face, "That
smells like champagne!" And of course the fermenting fruit did
have a hint of such an aroma.
So what do worms have to do with spiritual service? After some stirring of
the ground of my own being, I came up with no less than 16 principles
of spiritual service from this experience.
I doubt that this falls into the category mentioned on page 1452, "All
good works of true service come from the Supreme", but I also think
that our celestial friends have a wonderful, playful sense of humor and
have keen "joy sensors".
On page 555 I found an interesting phrase talking about what the
ministering reserves can do for ascending mortals: They can
kindle ". . . a divine fire of the will-to-service." This phrase
really caught my soul's eye because the energy to save the worms became
a metaphor for this "divine fire of the will-to-service."
We can feel this "divine fire of the will-to-service" in our very
souls. The Adjusters are dispatched for mortal service from
Divinigton carrying the embers of this "divine fire of the
will-to-service".
So here is a list of sixteen principles of service which I dug up from
the worm bin experience, and I think that all of them apply to us as
individuals, and most are applicable to us as a group of religionists
dedicated to the work of the fifth epochal revelation.
1. Stay grounded.
2. Do what is right in front of you -- serve where you are
first. It is
somtimes so enticing to look for service in distant places that we miss golden opportunities in our own back
yard.
3. Don't be afraid to roll up your sleeves and get dirty. Too many of us are becoming armchair
servers -- seeking high philosophical places, thinking that we can
serve our revelation with just our thoughts, while the Mother Teresas
of the world are doing the real work with their hands and their sweat.
Our families and the world need our hands as well as our
revelation. Plus, getting dirty is humbling, and it keeps us
grounded in the reality of this planet. There is a lot of dirt on
our world.
4. Every little thing counts. Look how many times Jesus
went about doing good -- little things -- he smiled at people as he
passed by.
5. Involve those around you in participation with you in
serving. You don't have to do it alone. Give others a
chance to experience the joy and exhilaration of service.
6. Water the dry ground with the true water of life and love -- wherever you go.
7. Know and understand why you are serving -- to meet your own
needs? To look good? For others to see? Because we
are supposed to? Is our purpose simply to tell the whole world
about the Urantia Book without making an effort to live its truths day
by day?
8. Be diligent and check conditions around you often to see if there is something needing to be done.
9. Do not take yourself too seriously as you serve.
10. Know when to stop serving. Some kids got so caught
up in the process of squirting the worms that they nearly drowned the
ones they had revived.
11.
Keep the priority of relationship always in mind. Was
the really important thing in the worm bin the worms? No, it was the
relationship between the kids and between the kids and me that was the
essential thing happening there. This is where perhaps Supremacy
was also becoming a little more real. Is the important thing to
bang people
over the head with a book to the detriment of your personal
relationship with them?
12. Do things joyfully -- with a sense of humor. At one
point I and the kids were almost rolling on the floor with
laughter. And the ones who were standing on the sidelines
watching had unplugged their noses and moved closer when they saw how
much fun we were having.
13. Respect diversity in service. Some of the kids did not
want to come within eight feet of the worm bin, but they watched and
were caught up in the enthusiasm. Fifteen kids could not have
been doing the same thing anyway.
14. Keep perspective. We could stay at the worm bin
stirring and squirting just so long, and then the rest of life called
us on to school. The Urantia Book admonishes us to engage in life
in a variety of modes -- work, progress, play, service, study,
relaxation.
15. Acknowledge that it is personally good for us to engage in
service. The book also admonishes us to "Seek perfection through
service." We get closer to God through worship and service.
Service stimulates the growth of our souls.
16. Be spontaneous, allowing the "divine fire of the
will-to-service" to burn brightly, without fear and without concern for
what others might think.
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