You have recently received a brief report from the Fellowship and the Foundation summarizing the results of a very constructive meeting held on October 3. As one of the Fellowship representatives at this meeting, I have been very interested in the continuing discussions of its meaning and significance. I thought it might be helpful to provide some personal comments on the tone and content of the meeting, perhaps correcting some misunderstandings along the way. Note that I am writing here as an individual participant. You should not expect my views to be exactly those of any other participant in the meeting.

A key feature of our discussions was that, at no time, did the Trustees suggest that the Fellowship had damaged the Foundation or the Book by its publishing efforts. The principal focus of the Trustees' concern was whether and how the Fellowship might join with the Foundation in helping develop, print, and distribute translations of the Book worldwide. The Trustees have a very ambitious plan for this work and acknowledge the need to bring the resources of the entire community, including the Fellowship and its constituent Societies, to bear on the task. The Trustees recognized the legitimacy of the Fellowship as a Urantia Book movement organization, although the details of how such recognition might be formalized were left for discussion at a later time. The Fellowship recognized the legitimacy of the Trustees' translation program by making a significant, and ENTIRELY VOLUNTARY, donation.

The centerpiece of the Fellowship's presentation to the Foundation was a position paper entitled "A New Framework for Cooperation". This paper incorporates input from most members of the Executive Committee and, in particular, the thoughts and criticisms of all the other members of the Fellowship Negotiating Team. I have appended a copy of this position paper to the end of this message, for your reference.

Basically, the Fellowship's position paper attempts to provide an unbiased and non-confrontational assessment of the current state of the Urantia movement and to suggest realistically how unity in the movement might be fostered at this time. The paper acknowledges the difficulty of fostering unity in an atmosphere of distrust and litigation. The paper calls on the two organizations to take a dramatic step forward towards inter-organizational harmony. The paper suggests that one such step might be for the Foundation to license the Fellowship to serve as a "second source" for the publication and distribution of the Urantia Book. The paper indicates that such a relationship of cooperation and trust could serve as the basis for much more extensive cooperation in the future between the organizations.

The response of the Trustees to the Fellowship's position paper was quite favorable. Although they did not choose to pursue detailed discussion of the licensing option during the meeting, they indicated that some such highly cooperative relationship might emerge in the future through other joint efforts. I believe that, by showing our openness to a wide range of future possibilities, and by emphasizing the welfare of the Urantia movement as a whole, we communicated to the Trustees our sincere desire to depolarize the present confrontational climate. The comments of the Trustees indicated to me that they shared this sincere desire.

Although I was sorry the Trustees did not choose to explore the dramatic licensing option, I fully understood the suddenness with which this thought had been dropped on them and their natural desire to think it over at greater length than was possible during our brief meeting. I still believe that what the movement most needs to hear and see right now is a dramatic act of resolution and healing, such as a win-win settlement of a legal conflict. Although continuing broad disagreement within the readership makes wholehearted support of Foundation projects difficult for us, it will not keep the Fellowship from continuing dialog with the Trustees in search of common ground.

An initial step has been taken by both the Foundation and the Fellowship towards constructive cooperation. I look forward to further positive steps and hope the readership will encourage them whenever, wherever, and however possible.

Groups of Urantia Book readers are presently confused and divided in their views of outreach, text preservation, and other matters of importance to the eventual success of the revelation. In spite of this confusion, the revelation continues to reach a growing body of interested readers. However, there lingers the feeling among many that the Urantia community could be better served by a greater spirit of unity or harmony among its members.

Unfortunately, simple unity is not easy to achieve in a community that has become polarized over copyright and trademark issues. Normal divergences of opinion have become exacerbated by the inability of the two original Urantia organizations, the Fellowship and the Foundation, to agree on a basis for mutual cooperation.

As a result, each organization has become an unintentional focus for the hopes and aspirations of various partisans who hope to influence the business of the revelation. Thus the pluralistic Fellowship unintentionally finds itself identified with opponents of Foundation policies. In this situation, it is impossible for either organization alone to exercise the moral authority to serve as a unifying force within the movement.

If the Foundation and the Fellowship could arrive at a relationship which allowed them to work together, each in their own way, for the advancement of the revelation, a true leadership center would be established for the Urantia movement with the potential to provide unifying moral authority. Such an achievement would not cause radical criticism from the extremes of opinion to cease, but it would have the effect of giving greater substance and credibility to a balanced approach to fostering the revelation. At least, it would have the effect of marginalizing radical fringe elements and reducing their ability to perturb the progress of the revelation.

If some such center cannot be found, the movement is faced with continuing disruption and organizational confusion for the forseeable future. The success of the Foundation in appealing the Maaherra decision has given the Foundation's opponents a rallying point for defiance of the copyright. If the Foundation is not proactive in depolarizing this situation, it may be faced with an onslaught of defiant publishing activity leading to more acrimonious litigation.

It is inconceivable that the Fellowship would foster these extreme actions. The Fellowship is totally devoted to preserving the availability of an accurate, authoritative text of the Urantia Book and has absolutely no quarrel with the Foundation on this vital issue. The Fellowship will not benefit from, and will certainly be injured by, the effects of intemperate actions on the readership, which it only aims to serve. We believe, however, that a window of opportunity exists at the present time in which cooperative movement by the Fellowship and the Foundation towards a common good could greatly reduce the risk of further confrontation.

The leaders of the Fellowship have been careful observers of Foundation activity for many years. We are well aware that the current Trustees have acted to reduce Book cost and improve availability and have made great strides in developing and publishing translations. Unfortunately, the memory of past conflicts lingers. This past makes it difficult for our organization to represent the Foundation's interests to our affiliated societies, members, and readers, especially in areas like fund raising. For the Fellowship and its affiliates to trust the new Foundation fully will require some significant gesture that annuls the shadow of the past.

How can the necessary degree of trust be re-established? One way is for each party to take a series of small, positive steps towards greater cooperation. This does not require any great faith in or acknowledgment of the motivations of the other group. Unfortunately, by the time mutual trust has matured to the level where the attitudes and actions of extremists can be tempered, some new crisis threatening the Foundation or the Fellowship may have erupted, making further progress very difficult.

While we are willing to try the gradual approach, and while we recognize that it may have some potential to address disunity in the movement, we believe a more promising approach would be for the Fellowship and the Foundation to agree at this time on a relatively dramatic act of cooperation that will demonstrate the willingness of both parties actually to trust the motivations and intentions of the other.

Our first thought for such a dramatic action is that the Foundation should license the Fellowship for the remaining term of the copyright to publish and distribute the inviolate text of the Urantia Book in return for a commercial royalty. Such an action would, we believe, shift moral and financial support from radical groups to the two primary Urantia organizations.

We believe there are many additional advantages to the Foundation in such an arrangement, besides fostering a peaceful evolution of the movement. First, the concerns of the Foundation regarding the Fellowship's publication of the Book while the copyright was in abeyance would be resolved easily by payment of royalties on the sale of books already printed. (The question of disposition of Fellowship books currently in storage would also be resolved by allowing them to go back into distribution, under the terms of the license.) Second, any Fellowship success in developing the market for the Urantia Book would redound to the financial and organizational benefit of the Foundation, both through royalties and reader referrals, without cost or risk to the Foundation. Third, the creation of a "second source" for the Book would increase occupation of the market by authentic texts and make it more difficult for a corrupted text to position itself as "authentic."

Our experience as a publisher shows that, by diversifying the presentation of the text, we succeeded in broadening the market appeal of the Book. The Fellowship sold over 11,000 Urantia Books in one year, without reducing the Foundation's ongoing sales of over 20,000 Books a year. A license from the Foundation to the Fellowship will increase dissemination of the authentic text during the remaining years of the copyright. Further, this license will produce a significant income stream to the Foundation without added investment, providing additional funding for translations.

We believe such a license could be arranged legally to provide the Foundation with "absolute control" over the printing of the Book, as required by the Declaration of Trust. It is not necessary for the Foundation actually to print the Book in order to have "absolute control" and, in fact, the Foundation does not actually print the Book now, of course, but turns the work over to a commercial printer. What is at issue is the willingness of the Foundation to tolerate additional sources of inviolate text in the marketplace.

It is reasonable to ask why the Fellowship would want to or feel it needed to publish the Urantia Book when the Foundation is willing to provide unlimited copies, at a fair price, to the Fellowship for use in its outreach and other programs. We believe that entry into a relationship of this type by the Foundation and the Fellowship will send a loud and clear signal to the readership that we are committed to working together for the welfare of the entire movement. We are convinced that it is imperative that such a signal be sent NOW, before the forces of disunity have time to find a new focus for their action. We are so convinced of the importance of this action for the welfare of the movement, that we would be willing to negotiate a number of additional concessions to the Foundation to provide added assurance of our good faith in this matter.

As another example, the Trustees are surely aware of the degree to which their registered marks are a target of negative reaction and potential legal attack from anti-Foundation factions. With some clarification through further discussion, an arrangement could be found for the continued use and licensing of the marks that the Fellowship and the Foundation would be able to support. The effect of such an agreement, if framed to avoid further polarization of the movement, would be to enable the Foundation to assure that the symbol of the infinity, eternity, and universality of the Paradise Trinity and the local universe name of our planet will never be perverted to an unseemly or non-spiritual purpose.

None of these actions (serving as a "second source" publisher, massively supporting translations, upholding Foundation control of the word and symbol) represent an easy path for the Fellowship. However, if such considerations could form the basis for the re-establishment of harmony within the readership, the Fellowship is prepared to work towards them.

We recognize that this outlines a very broad and ambitious basis for long-term cooperation between the Foundation and the Fellowship. Such an eventuality can only come about if the individual decision makers in both organizations are willing to put aside their fears and injustices and grasp the opportunity afforded us NOW to address the real problems.