Urantia at the Parliament of Religions – Day 2

This was the first full day of the Parliament. The program officially opened last night. The opening ceremony included a moving tribute to the indigenous people of Australia.
The Royal Melbourne Philharmonic Choir and Orchestra created the musical backdrop for it all.

This Parliament is clearly focused on the issues effecting humanity. The theme is Hearing Each Other, Healing the Earth. I attended two workshops today. The first one was about President Jimmy Carter’s decision to step down from his life long association with the Southern Baptist Church, citing as his reason, their unjust treatment of women. The workshop featured three women speakers, a Muslim, a Hindu and a Sikh. They expounded on the oppression of women based on religious and cultural bias. They noted that certain cruel practices against women are not necessarily religious, but are in fact cultural and practiced regardless of religion. Religion can be manipulated to justify the practice but the practice is more a function of the culture and can be common in several religions in a given region. They all reiterated that education of girls is the key to change. I found myself wishing that Free Schools could be presenting to the many prominent Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims from India in attendance at the Parliament.

I went to a sobering panel discussion on climate change which was presented by a distinguished group of experts. They called global warming the “silent crisis” and depicted over and over again the dire and tragic consequences it is having on the poorest people in the world. They showed us many slides of statistics but the one that stays with me is that the world’s poor, who contributed only 1% to the problem, are the ones who are suffering 90% of the consequences. As always, the Parliament and the world’s religionists are concerned about the human condition and the panel addressed what they believe religionists can do to help create an awareness of the problem and work for its solutions.

Meredith Tenney is a member of a global organization known as Gather the Women.
She and her colleagues put together a workshop called A Creative Exploration of the Sacred Feminine. It was a packed room of mostly women. Meredith asked Francyl, Cristina and I to present from the “Urantia Tradition.” Francyl sang the most beautiful song dedicated to the Mother Spirit, Cristina played an impromptu mediation in which she expressed to the audience, “I’m going to take you off the earth for a while, but I promise to bring you back.” She and Francyl strolled around the audience in the acoustically perfect room. When they finished playing, the participants willingly lingered in the worshipful sweetness of the Mother Spirit. I spoke on the nature of the Mother as depicted in the UB. Our part was very well received.

There was a workshop at the Parliament called The Life of Jesus: Non-Christian Perspectives. Several of us very much wanted to attend it, but the room was overly packed and we were not admitted. Larry, Buck and Arlene, encountered in the hall, an Australian nun who was also denied. Buck gave her a Jesus book from his backpack. She maintains a library of religious texts for her students and was thrilled to receive it. She said she will read it and then place it in the library for her students. As we ate our communal meal last night we pondered that perhaps we Urantians are missing some wonderful opportunities to introduce the Jesus of the Urantia Book out of the context of Christianity. Perhaps there is more interest in him than we imagine.

The exhibit hall opened at 9:00 AM. The Urantia booth is located right inside the front doors and is one of the first to be seen. We couldn’t ask for a better location. Over the years, Urantians have given devoted support to the Parliament and to the Interfaith Movement in general. This has created invaluable inroads and amazing outreach opportunities for us within this blossoming global religious community. We have plenty of books from both publishers and great volunteers from Australia and North America. Marvin was the superstar at the booth today. He placed at least 8 books and got donations for nearly all of them.

All in all, we are having an experience that is rich beyond measure. We are all deeply grateful to our Fellowship for being committed to this work.

Humbly submitted by Paula, with help from Larry and Cristina.