What’s Love got to do with it – Part 3

By Nigel Nunn, Canberra, ACT on

ANZURA’s presentation of The Urantia Book at the Parliament of the World’s Religions

December 3–9, Melbourne, Australia 2009

Hi, my name is Nigel Nunn. My background is mathematics and astrophysics. I study how stars collapse and the shape of space & time. So what am I doing at a parliament of religions, talking about Love?

Well, when I was about 16, I suffered one of those moments of “peace that passes all understanding”. For a minute or two, my anxieties and fears, my desires and illusions all just melted away. This peace, together with feelings of such clarity and love, were so intense (and so interesting!) that those usual things that move teenagers, like sex, drugs and rock & roll, began to seem pale in comparison. As we know, idealistic teenagers are excited by the idea of a “Quest”, and I now had mine: to discover what it is about ourselves that can experience such intensity of peace, such depth of love.

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What’s Love got to do with it – Part 2

By William Wentworth, Canberra on

ANZURA’s presentation of The Urantia Book at the Parliament of the World’s Religions

December 3–9, Melbourne, Australia 2009

The Urantia Book is not in itself a religion. Rather, it focuses on the spiritual impulse which gives rise to religions. While there is some truth contained in all religions, it is to the common root of all religions that the book directs attention. It seeks to strip away the fear of God, the dread of sin and transgression, and replace it with faith in the friendly nature of God, who is wholly benevolent and fatherly in his attitude to his creatures. He understands his creatures, knows their limitations, and loves them, and wants them to know him as an inspiration rather than as something to be feared.

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What’s Love got to do with it – Part 1

By Kathleen Swadling, Sydney on

ANZURA’s presentation of The Urantia Book at the Parliament of the World’s Religions December 3–9, Melbourne, Australia 2009

Good afternoon and thanks for coming along to our workshop: “The Urantia Papers—What’s Love got to do it?” The theme for this Parliament of the World’s Religions is “Make a World of Difference: Hearing Each Other, Healing the Earth.” No doubt most of us attending this event do so because we care, because we desire to make a difference. And unless we really desire to make a difference, unless we desire to help, to hear and to heal, then we won’t.

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2009 Conference Report – Sydney

By Conference Committee on

25th to 28th September 2009

Happy are the Peacemakers
Religion – the Property of the Human Race

This year’s ANZURA conference was held at the Sydney Lakeside Holiday Park on the shores of the beautiful Narrabeen Lagoon on the Northern Beaches of Sydney.  The members of the Sydney Study Group hosted the conference and readers came from Brisbane, Canberra, Melbourne, Hobart, Newcastle and the Central Coast.

When the study group members met to plan the program for the conference there was a preliminary discussion on the upcoming Parliament of the World’s Religions that is being held in Melbourne in December.  As many of us are involved in the Parliament and plan to attend, it only seemed fitting that the conference program be designed to help us prepare our hearts and minds for the interaction with other religionists.  As a consequence the conference theme evolved from our many discussions about religion and the human race.

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Touching The Divine

By Julian McGarry, Hobart, Tasmania on

This is the second in a series of articles dealing with the ultimate human experience. In this article, I wish to explore the central and critical role of prayer and especially worship in both our individual and collective lives.

In my last article, “The Ultimate Human Experience”, I highlighted the extraordinary, breath-taking, and mind-boggling fact that God, our Father, constantly seeks our intimate fellowship with him, via the agency of our personal, individual Thought Adjuster, that undiluted fragment of absolute deity that is (at least potentially) our everlasting companion and motivator leading us to the “portals of Paradise” and beyond into eternity:

The Father desires all his creatures to be in personal communion with him. [Paper 5:1.8, page 63.6]

Man is spiritually indwelt by a surviving Thought Adjuster. If such a human mind is sincerely and spiritually motivated, if such a human soul desires to know God and become like him, honestly wants to do the Father’s will, there exists no negative influence of mortal deprivation nor positive power of possible interference which can prevent such a divinely motivated soul from securely ascending to the portals of Paradise.[Paper 5:1.7, page 63.5]

All that is required for this destiny to materialise is our choice to participate, the consecration of our will to the doing of our Father’s will:

The affectionate dedication of the human will to the doing of the Father’s will is man’s choicest gift to God. [Paper 1:1.2, page 22.5]

If mortal man is wholeheartedly spiritually motivated, unreservedly consecrated to the doing of the Father’s will, then, since he is so certainly and so effectively spiritually endowed by the indwelling and divine Adjuster, there cannot fail to materialize in that individual’s experience the sublime consciousness of knowing God and the supernal assurance of surviving for the purpose of finding God by the progressive experience of becoming more and more like him. [Paper 5:1.6, page 63.4]

 

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New Zealand Corner – 2008

By Neville Twist, Auckland on

From Autumn Arena 2008 –  New Zealand Corner

 

I’m sorry to report that Sonny Wikaira, one of our new study group attendees passed away suddenly towards the end of 2007. Sonny and his cousin Raewyn Wikaira (who he introduced to the UB), attended several times and made a significant contribution. Sonny had been reading the book for a number of years and had a pretty good grasp on most areas of the book – and to the best of my knowledge, had attained it all by personal study.

To top it off, Raewyn and her family sold up in Auckland and moved to the far North (of the North Island), so our study group is back to just Marion, Susan, Trish and myself. Hopefully Ian Campbell will return from the UK soon to bolster numbers.

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The Ultimate Human Experience

By Julian McGarry, Hobart, Tasmania on

This is the first in a series of articles that will bring us face to face with the ultimate human experience. I wish to explore what I believe to be the fundamental life questions:

  • How do we become like God?
  • How do we do the will of God?
  • What is the ultimate human experience?

We live in a world that is hungry for excitement, for thrills. For many, climbing the highest mountain, circling the earth in the space shuttle, or snorting cocaine constitutes the ultimate human experience. But there is something much greater, something so profound that no words can adequately describe it. The Urantia Book alludes to the answer in the often-repeated theme of the book articulated by the Master, Christ Michael, in these words:

The ultimate goal of human progress is the reverent recognition of the fatherhood of God and the loving materialization of the brotherhood of man. [Paper 143:1.4, page 1608.1]

It is easy to read these words and completely miss their profundity! Did Jesus really mean that God is our father? Did he really mean that we could experience a relationship with God every bit as intimate, warm, affectionate, and real as a human father could possibly have with his child?

God is much, much more than a Father, but the Father is man’s highest concept of God. [Paper 115:1.2, page 1260.3]

God is the Father; man is his son. Love, the love of a father for his son, becomes the central truth in the universe relations of Creator and creature. [Paper 188:5.1, page 2017.9]

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President’s Reports – Arena 2008

By William Wentworth on

 

From the President – Autumn 2008

William Wentworth

With the new year well under way I suppose most study groups are meeting regularly again after the holidays. Here in Towamba we’re meeting once a week and thoroughly enjoying Part III. It’s amazing how much more there is to learn after so long—it is years since I’ve read most of these papers from beginning to end. Like many of you, I suppose, I refer to parts of them when there is something I want to check up on, but rarely read a whole paper except at study group, and I discover new and different ways of looking at the information from the group discussion. I can’t emphasise enough how important study groups are in developing a balanced view of the revelation.

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2008 Canberra – Conference Report

By Vern Verass and Nigel Nunn, ACT on

At our ANZURA Conference in Canberra, we tried to deepen our experience, to brighten our insight, and to awake our slumbering love to serve and to understand. We spent the weekend exploring our Father’s relationship with us, and reflecting on our own responses to this extraordinary human opportunity—to become one with the Father.

The conference was held at Goolabri Country Resort, just north of the Nation’s Capital. Each morning we were greeted by birds singing in this beautiful garden setting, and thus we were primed on Saturday morning to be launched by Vern Verass into a reflection about the essence of Fatherhood, as portrayed in the Urantia papers.

“The love of the Father absolutely individualizes each personality as a unique child of the Universal Father, a child without duplicate in infinity, a will creature irreplaceable in all eternity.” [Paper 12:7.9, page 138:4]

Nigel then amplified this theme, offering a perspective on how Thought Adjusters are our “moment of opportunity” to get real, and how this becomes for the Universal Father a moment of opportunity to experience something absolutely unique: us — children without duplicate, irreplaceable in an infinite eternity!

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Finding ~ and Framing ~ Truth

By by Nigel Nunn, Australia on

How does the modern sophisticated soul deal with truth, let alone revelations about truth? In the following article we try to frame the question, to illustrate the problem, and to see where students of the Urantia Papers may fit in.

Twenty eight years ago Carl Sagan’s TV series “Cosmos” was first shown. The content is now dated, and easily forgotten, but who could forget his sincerity, and the enthusiasm with which he presented what at the time were revelations to the public about the cosmic context of mankind? The unveiled joy and unfeigned awe with which he presented these things provoked many a cynical and ‘scientifically literate’ interviewer to ask, “So is all this the handiwork of God? Do you believe in a Creator?” To whom he would issue the rhetorical challenge: “Whatever your mathematics or your gods, they will have to explain… this!” as he dialled up yet another astrophysical wonder on the view-screen of his virtual starship.

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