# 31:  I believe I fell asleep and lost a month or two.  When I am settled into a comfortable location as I am now in Dade City Florida I get stuck in a rut and neglect important things like writing blogs and finding readers.  Not long after parking here I went north to Sheila’s house in The Villages where John Causland, an amateur astronomer, gave his presentation.  I also went back to the community center there for a study group meeting a few weeks later.  Finally I will have a brief comment on a quotation I found recently.

“Divine love does not merely forgive wrongs; it absorbs and actually destroys them. The forgiveness of love utterly transcends the forgiveness of mercy. Mercy sets the guilt of evil-doing to one side; but love destroys forever the sin and all weakness resulting therefrom. Jesus brought a new method of living to Urantia. He taught us not to resist evil but to find through him a goodness which effectually destroys evil. The forgiveness of Jesus is not condonation; it is salvation from condemnation. Salvation does not slight wrongs; it makes them right. True love does not compromise nor condone hate; it destroys it. The love of Jesus is never satisfied with mere forgiveness. The Master’s love implies rehabilitation, eternal survival. It is altogether proper to speak of salvation as redemption if you mean this eternal rehabilitation.”  The Urantia Book (2018.1) (188:5.2)

The Villages where Sheila’s house is located is nearly an hours drive directly north from where I am parked; I heard that there are 40,000 golf carts there but I don’t think quite all of them were on the prowl when I was there.  They even have special paths and bridges for them so they can be driven to nearby strip malls and such and it covers parts of three counties. (I saw a special about it on PBS recently.)  The presentation by John Causland was most interesting and informative.  There were perhaps about twenty people there, some were not readers of The Urantia Book but were interested in the astronomy he discussed.  He presented his evidence that the minor sector of our Superuniverse corresponds to what we call a galaxy.  After the meeting there were munchies as we waited for it to get dark enough to observe the stars.  There was a homemade telescope consisting of a cut off scuba tank and optics from surplus military equipment.  We were able to see the Pleiades among other objects.  By the way Sheila is not in the above photograph because my camera was not behaving, the timer would not work with the flash, perhaps the battery was weak.

The study group at The Villages is conducted by Dr. Dale Sams.  As shown in the above photograph, the community center is lushly appointed and very comfortable.  They studied Paper 14, The Central and Divine Universe.  Some groups prefer to read and some use a recording, this group uses the recording.  After the meeting Dr. Sams asked if I wanted to conduct the next meeting.  I am still considering (the meeting is next weekend).

This sunrise was just a few days ago; one of the joys of getting up early to exercise is seeing such wonders.

In the following quotation I have made a few minor changes (as noted), see if any of this is relevant to our society.

“Even a good religion could not save a great [nation] from the sure results of lack of individual participation in the affairs of government, from overmuch paternalism, overtaxation and gross collection abuses, unbalanced trade … which drained away the gold, amusement madness, [cultural] standardization, the degradation of woman, slavery and race decadence, physical plagues, and a … church which became institutionalized nearly to the point of spiritual barrenness.”  The Urantia Book (2074.4) (195:3.9)

With the exception of physical plagues and slavery, this fits our current society so completely that it could have come out of today’s newspaper, there have even been fears of plagues—global pandemics and our society does suffer from the cultural and emotional after-effects of slavery.  As for the rest they are relevant, e.g. the average individual cannot participate in our government, that being largely for the super rich and large corporations.  For paternalism there is our welfare state mentality.  And so on down the line, unbalanced trade, amusement madness, these are current headlines.  In this quotation however, The Urantia Book is not talking about our twenty-first century civilization, it is actually talking about the Roman Empire in the second century after Christ.  During this period the empire was starting its slide into oblivion while Christianity was starting its rise to prominence.  The parallels to our society are compelling enough that they should not be ignored; in fact this brings up the notion that our society may be heading toward a similar fate. 

“Urantia is now quivering on the very brink of one of its most amazing and enthralling epochs of social readjustment, moral quickening, and spiritual enlightenment.”  The Urantia Book (2082.7) (195:9.2)

There is not space enough in this short (and overdue) blog to go into details, but this is a conversation that we must begin, it is something we need to aware of and prepare for.  Are we going to sit back and watch as these “enthralling epochs of social readjustment” pass us by while we watch on the sidelines?  Are we going to participate and help shape these changes?  This is a necessary conversation.

# 30:  I am now parked in Dade City, Florida and plan to be here for a month or two before moving on again.  The journey from South Carolina to Jacksonville to Dade City was uneventful, which is fine with me while I am pulling my house on wheels.  After I was parked at Jacksonville and settled in, Betty Lou, President of the Urantia Association of Florida, traveled there by train and joined me.  The next day she presided over a meeting of UAF that went very well.  Then for a week and a half the two of us leisurely traveled down the east coast of Florida, parking at New Smyrna Beach and Fort Pierce meeting with students of The Urantia Book, finally parking in Lake Worth, just south of West Palm Beach where Betty Lou returned home.  After a jaunt to the Miami Book Fair I came here to Dade City so I could catch up on things and start planning the next excursion.


“The world is filled with hungry souls who famish in the very presence of the bread of life; men die searching for the very God who lives within them. Men seek for the treasures of the kingdom with yearning hearts and weary feet when they are all within the immediate grasp of living faith.  Faith is to religion what sails are to a ship; it is an addition of power, not an added burden of life.”  The Urantia Book (1766.4) (159:3.8)

About twenty attended the UAF meeting in Jacksonville.  Unfortunately we did not get a group picture, so the above will have to do.  New members joined and all members sat through and participated in a rather long business meeting.  New associate member Cheri brought her son and his wife who are also readers and they brought youthful energy to the gathering.  It is encouraging to see young people interested in the revelation, more on this below.

After the meeting we had a recovery day before Betty Lou and I headed out on our southward excursion.  Once parked in New Smyrna Beach we drove to Palm Coast to meet Bob at Hooligan’s restaurant where we shared an enjoyable two-hour dinner and conversation.  

One of the highlights of this tour was a jaunt to Daytona Beach to meet with the artist Perego (Art of Perego).  As you can see, he dressed up especially for the occasion.  First was a tour of the area where his art works are displayed.  There are buildings with his art covering the outside walls or displayed on the inside.  One fascinating display was at the local Harley Davidson dealership (the largest in the world) that has his renditions of well-known people painted along the walls.  I understand they are planning a museum there.  When he was introduced to the lady behind the counter she positively beamed.  There is another building farther south, near I-95 going toward Miami, that looks as if it is covered with arches and doorways; the outside of this entire multistory building is another of his paintings.  Recently he is into high-energy performance art.  By the way, the gentleman depicted in this painting was seated nearby in the restaurant (Caffeine Bistro and Wine Bar in Ormond Beach) where this and other Perego paintings are located, his mustache is the same but his face and hands are no longer blue.

After dinner with Perego we hurried back to the campground for a meeting with Michael who has a web radio program and is involved in several other fascinating endeavors.  He even sold each of us a small thingy to put on our cell phone batteries that are supposed to eliminate harmful electronic radiation.  After installing hers, Betty Lou’s phone felt cool to the touch; she insisted it had previously always been quite warm.

While at Fort Pierce we picked up Vern and went to Lib and Hermann’s for a study group meeting, there were about eight in attendance.  Hermann even had handouts prepared for the meeting where we read Paper 63 “The First Human Family.”  At the conclusion of the meeting we conducted a memorial for Darrel who has graduated (on my stop in Columbus Ohio last spring, Scott’s group had a remembrance for Darrel, he had not yet passed on but was then getting weaker; Darrel had connections with both groups).  After the meeting five of us went out to dinner.

In this photograph, Betty Lou’s chaperone Ira, a very imposing frog, is resting happily between us.

After a couple of days for recuperation, Betty Lou, Katy and I went to Miami for the book fair.  We arrived Thursday afternoon to sign in and take boxes of books to the booth, which was supported by the Urantia Association of the US.  Friday the attendees were mostly school children while Saturday and Sunday there were more adults and families.  Betty Lou thought there were not as many people as previous years, but as the photograph shows, there was still a good many there.  We did not sell a lot of books and some books were damaged by rain, but it was an invigorating experience.  It was a pleasure to talk about the epochal revelation to those who stopped by.  The most important thing is to give them food for thought; when they are ready they will seek out more Truth.  Our booth was not flashy, but often we noted young children looking into the booth with interest; some stopped and looked at the posters, commentating on them to their parents.  It almost seemed as if they were spiritually drawn to the booth.  One boy who appeared to be about eleven stopped to read from one of the open books for several minutes.  We gave him a couple of pamphlets and he went on his way.  Later I went to a nearby exhibit building showing works from China.  He was also there and he was carefully holding our pamphlets (the only ones he carried) as if they meant a lot to him.  When he is ready he will have the information.  There are young people who are Seeking; it is up to us to find them, or so to live our lives that they find us.

“Truth cannot be defined with words, only by living. Truth is always more than knowledge…  Knowledge originates in science; wisdom, in true philosophy; truth, in the religious experience of spiritual living. Knowledge deals with facts; wisdom, with relationships; truth, with reality values.”  The Urantia Book (1459.2) (132:3.2)

# 29:  I have made it safely to the KOA in Ladson, South Carolina, which is not far from Charleston.  The journey southward went smoothly, even though I took a short cut and went through Pennsylvania diagonally, not the best route while pulling my ‘house’ (36 foot fifth wheel).  I started out by going through Warren PA, but just before I got to the bridge over the Allegheny River toward US-6 there was a roadblock.  The bridge was being paved and I had to make a U-turn and go back through downtown Warren to another bridge.  What fun!  Once safely on the highway, the roads were mostly good and the scenery was enjoyable, but there were no rest areas and no parking spaces big enough for the rig.  Finally I parked in a potholed lot next to some run-down buildings so I could use my own facilities.  Next time I will go the long way around and stick to the interstates where I can park with the Big trucks.

There were only two stopovers on the way south (not counting a one nighter in Bedford PA).  The first was near Natural Bridge VA; Dick and Janice Bain were kind enough to travel over the mountains to visit and see my pictures of Alaska.  Janice even brought homemade cookies!  The reason I went down I-81 instead of a more westerly route was to visit with them.  While there at the Yogi Bear Jellystone Park I found some excellent hiking trails in the woods that I want to explore some more during my next trip.  The other stop was in upstate South Carolina to visit Lamar’s relatives.  While there I looked on Google Maps and found an interesting road nearby, which was just a narrow forest road but it made a lovely walk through the woods.  (Every day or two I try to do a power walk of four miles or so.)

Jesus speaking: “Life in the Father’s eternal creation is not an endless rest of idleness and selfish ease but rather a ceaseless progression in grace, truth, and glory. Each of the many, many stations in my Father’s house is a stopping place, a life designed to prepare you for the next one ahead. And so will the children of light go on from glory to glory until they attain the divine estate wherein they are spiritually perfected even as the Father is perfect in all things.”  The Urantia Book (1953.4) (181:1.2)

The Sunday before going south (remember what Treebeard said in the second “Lord of the Rings” movie: “I like travelling south, somehow it feels like going downhill.”) my sister, my brother and his wife and I went to the Kinzua Bridge State Park, located in McKean County, PA.  For some reason I drove The Monster (Ford F350), not the best choice of wheels on this occasion!  Unbeknownst to us, they were having a dedication at the park that day and it was overcrowded with people.  The road going in was only a few miles long but not made for that kind of traffic.  It was a narrow two lane road and I had to drive the full length of it in and out while both lanes were clogged with traffic, both berms were parked solid with cars and throngs of people were walking along the road on both sides.  More than once the external mirrors on The Monster were sticking over and above the mirrors of cars going the other way.  My dual rear wheels were never more than a few inches from cars on both sides.  It was, however, worth the effort.

When the Kinzua Bridge was built in 1882 it was the highest railroad bridge in the world.  Built of iron it was 301 feet high and 2,053 feet long.  Imagine building it without the tall cranes we have today.  According to Wikipedia, it took a crew of 40 just 94 working days to build it, care to guess how they did it?  Go ahead and think about it, I will wait.  (Musical interlude)  OK, I’m back.  Give up?  They used a gin pole, apparently a long pole resting on a fulcrum, to build the first tower.  Since it was close to the bank it was not as tall as the others, then they laid tracks out to that tower and used a traveling crane on the railroad to build the rest, 20 towers in all.  In 1900 it was rebuilt with steel to make it sturdier, this more than doubled the weight of the bridge.  The bridge was used to haul freight until the middle of 1959.  Excursion trains used the bridge for several years starting in 1987.  While it was being restored again, in July 2003 an F1 tornado destroyed the center of the bridge.

The dedication ceremonies the weekend we were there were for the newly built observation deck, complete with a glass floor.  You no longer need to go to the Grand Canyon and pay good money to get on a glass floor; you can get on one in Pennsylvania for nothing!

There hasn’t been anything else of note since the last posting, but before signing off, I have some comments.  During my studies of The Urantia Book over the years I have noted certain changes in my inner life.  The most important of these deal with the elimination of spirit poisons.

“Impatience is a spirit poison; anger is like a stone hurled into a hornet’s nest.”

The Urantia Book (557.4) (48:7.20)

All of us have spirit poisons (or mental poisons) within us; they deplete our energy, waste our time and make it more difficult for our indwelling fragment of God, our Thought Adjuster, to communicate with us.

“All physical poisons greatly retard the efforts of the Adjuster to exalt the material mind, while the mental poisons of fear, anger, envy, jealousy, suspicion, and intolerance likewise tremendously interfere with the spiritual progress of the evolving soul.” The Urantia Book (1204.3) (110:1.5)

These spirit poisons can be devastating and tear up our lives just as the tornado tore up the Kinzua Bridge. 

#28: I have no intention of becoming a political or economic commentator (shudder at the thought!) but an interview was recently published in which Dr. George Friedman discussed the recent financial turmoil and he said something in this interview that is consistent with concepts in The Urantia Book. 

So this posting will be somewhat different, hopefully not too many of you will be antagonized.  There will be photographs, but there have not been any exciting new places and or study groups since Salt Lake City and there may not be any before going south next month.  If anybody has suggestions for stopping places along the way, please let me know.  There will be stops in Virginia, South Carolina and Florida.  Before parking in Dade City in late November, there will be a tour along the east coast of Florida with members of UA Florida, meeting with study groups in that region, stay tuned for details.  There may also be a visit to the Miami Book Fair in November.

First a photograph, there was a quick trip to Cook’s Forrest to visit my vacationing sister and about ten members of her family.  While hiking along a trail into the woods I found this tree growing around a rock.  There is certainly a commentary here about the persistence of life when faced with an immovable object.

The interview mentioned above was issued by Stratfor, whose main focus is Geopolitics, the idea that the politics of a given country or group is strongly influenced by its geography, see www.stratfor.com for further information.  In the interview Dr. Friedman is discussing the recent turmoil in the global financial markets and concludes with the following.

“Well, the failure of the financial regulatory system and its failure to clear it up is not the cause, it’s the symptom. No regulatory system works if it is not enforced…. The crisis is not that new regulation is not emerging, it’s that they won’t be enforced anyway. I’ll put it this way: this is a crisis in virtue — in the virtue of the political leadership, in the virtue of the financial leaders. There’s expected to be a certain degree of self-restraint and moral probity. You can’t substitute regulations for that, and you can’t worry about whether or not they’re going to be enforced in the future. The heart of the matter is that the integrity, the intelligence, the morality of these elites, have now been called into question….  So we have a crisis I think, not in corruption, but of sheer incompetence and indifference to incompetence, and that is something that is not necessarily unmanageable, but it’s certainly not a question of getting better regulations.”  Dr. George Friedman, www.stratfor.com.  (Emphasis added)

This failure, this “indifference to incompetence,” is a symptom of society as a whole, for after all these leaders, these politicians and financial regulators are a product of our society.  They have been elected and chosen by our society.  In the interview Dr. Friedman made it clear that this is a global phenomenon, these observations apply equally to the United States, China and England, the driving engines of our global economy; this is a symptom of our entire social system, which brings us to the following quote.

"A lasting social system without a morality predicated on spiritual realities can no more be maintained than could the solar system without gravity."  The Urantia Book (2075.12) (195:5.9)

Our social system appears to be without any morality, this is obvious wherever we look; there are few areas where spiritual realities are even considered.  Therefore, this quote states that our social system must collapse, just as would the solar system without gravity, unless this society recognizes spiritual realities and becomes motivated by them and bases its values upon them.  This recognition will not come easy and will not be quick.

“The great danger to any civilization — at any one moment — is the threat of breakdown during the time of transition from the established methods of the past to those new and better, but untried, procedures of the future.”  The Urantia Book (911.6) (81:6.41)

Time for another photograph, this from gardens at the University of Utah.  Each of the scars of life can have a certain appeal, even beauty when observed from the proper perspective.

Throughout history each time a nation has risen to found a new civilization, be it China, Greece, Rome or England, in time that society has been brought low and replaced by another powerful nation.  The above quote from The Urantia Book means that these civilizations failed because they were not built on “spiritual realities” and therefore their collapse was merely the inevitable result of spiritual gravity taking over.  This is the danger our civilization faces today.

While the founders of these civilizations may have been individually virtuous, the basis of their civilizations quickly became materialistic and nationalistic, sometimes even imperialistic.  As long as we as individuals, and as a society, remain focused on material things, meanings and goals, our legacy will be transitory and can evaporate in an instant.  It is only when we concentrate on, and base our lives on, eternal goals, true meanings, and spiritual values that we can form a more lasting society.

One final photograph from Salt Lake City.  We are as children scampering about on this planet without a care, blithely oblivious to the spiritual realities that surround us and give our existence meaning, even eternal meaning.

“Institutional religion cannot afford inspiration and provide leadership in this impending world-wide social reconstruction and economic reorganization because it has unfortunately become more or less of an organic part of the social order and the economic system which is destined to undergo reconstruction. Only the real religion of personal spiritual experience can function helpfully and creatively in the present crisis of civilization.”  The Urantia Book (1087.4) (99:2.1) (Emphasis added)

# 27: The Urantia Book Fellowship’s 2011 International conference in Salt Lake City was an uplifting spiritual experience; the outpouring of energy at the end of the Saturday morning session was, well, just wait till I get to that part!  The theme of the conference was “The Revelation in Action, Act Globally / Grow Cosmically.”  The people were friendly and interesting, which I have found to be generally the case at Urantia Book meetings.  I received more warm hugs at that one conference than I get in many a year. The major negative was the last leg of the flight back, from Detroit to Erie PA, which left me saying unkind things about Delta (sorry Tom).


“The great God makes direct contact with mortal man and gives a part of his infinite and eternal and incomprehensible self to live and dwell within him. God has embarked upon the eternal adventure with man. If you yield to the leadings of the spiritual forces in you and around you, you cannot fail to attain the high destiny established by a loving God as the universe goal of his ascendant creatures from the evolutionary worlds of space.”  (Emphasis added)  The Urantia Book (64.3) (5:1.12)

I arrived at the conference early Tuesday afternoon and registered for my room.  Immediately I met Linda from the Bellevue, Washington study group and four of us went exploring downtown, with Linda’s navigational skills we only got lost once (if I had been navigating it would have been worse than that).  The parking garage is underneath a ten-story building that has an observation deck where I took the above photograph.  The Tabernacle is just behind the temple to the left.

We went to the visitor’s center and from there two guides took us through the Tabernacle and grounds.  One building had a series of artworks; the one above shows Jesus at the Temple when he was not quite thirteen.  Everything was beautiful and well ordered.  On Thursday evening we went to the Tabernacle Choir rehearsal in a nearby auditorium.

I attended conference meetings Wednesday through Saturday, there were also meetings on Sunday but I could not make flight arrangements that would allow me to attend those.  Every morning except Friday there was a Plenary Session, which lasted from 8:30 to 11:00.  Each of these started with music and a moment of prayer followed by various presentations.  With the exception of Friday, which was a light day, each afternoon there were about eight different presentations in the first afternoon session and another seven or so in the second afternoon session, plus sessions in the evenings; only a few were repeats.  Frequently it was difficult to choose which to attend.  There were perhaps 20 – 30 attendees at each session I went to.  I understand there were about four hundred at the conference.

Some of the presentations I attended were “Exploring the Context of Michael’s Bestowal” by David Kantor; “The Study Group as Sacred Space: Integrating Mind and Spirit in Social Service” by James Woodward; and “The Hunt for Eden and Atlantis” by Robert Sarmast.  There was an encouraging presentation by Buck and Arlene Weimer, “The Revelation Around the World,” where they told about their travels to many countries giving out books and meeting readers; it is interesting that the revelation seems to be doing better in Catholic countries such as Latin America and Poland.  There was a touching presentation by Earlene Green, “Progress in Black and White.”  She movingly told about growing up in a black family where she was darker skinned than the others and the discrimination she experienced within her family as she grew up.  There was also a presentation by Calvin Len McKee suggesting that The Urantia Book may be the greater revelation promised in the Book of Mormon.

Were there any negatives?  Certainly, some presentations could have been a bit more focused instead of rambling on and some attendees were not happy with the food, but the positives vastly outweighed any negatives.

One promising observation was the large number of energetic young people at the conference; I understand there were about sixty in the youth program.

Friday morning as I was eating breakfast I looked out the windows at the mountains just behind the campus (the conference was held at the University of Utah) and I could hear the mountains calling me, so I took a hike to go exploring.  I found a perch to sit on and view the valley below, trying to imagine what it looked like when the Mormons came over the pass, saw the flat land surrounded by mountains and said “Here we build.”  And build they did!

Saturday morning’s Plenary Session was something special.  The final presentation was about the Creed Project, which is a high school program that teaches facts, how to use those facts in real situations and also teaches values.  At the end of the program each student must develop a personal creed to live by.  Heartening testimonials by former students were read, giving a glimpse of what education could do for our young people.  In the upper balcony above the stage is a full sized pipe organ; after the Creed Project presentation an organist sat at the organ console and started playing a medley of pieces including the organ run in “Phantom of the Opera,” which was politely recognized by the audience.  The organist had previously played a classical piece on the grand piano.  Next he played “Amazing Grace” and a trumpeter at the rear of the auditorium answered; the two instruments talked back and forth until we all got goose bumps.  Next they played “How Great Thou Art,” again with the interplay between trumpet and organ.  This music was so powerful that at the end of it we were all on our feet with our arms in the air, shouting so much that the last few organ notes could not be heard.  There were very few dry eyes in the house; certainly mine weren’t dry and some of us were wiping away tears for several minutes.  Wow!

“Science lives by the mathematics of the mind; music expresses the tempo of the emotions. Religion is the spiritual rhythm of the soul in time-space harmony with the higher and eternal melody measurements of Infinity. Religious experience is something in human life which is truly supermathematical.”  The Urantia Book (2080.5) (195:7.20)

# 26:  Next week I fly to Salt Lake City for the Fellowship’s International Conference.  I met readers in Florida, Texas and Washington State who suggested I go, so how could I decline?  I am looking forward to meeting readers from around the world.  I guess that means I need to finish Alaska before I get too far behind, so I must hurry through the rest of the journey.  I have not been to any study group meetings recently; hopefully I will make up for that in the posting after the conference.

“You cannot reveal God to those who do not seek for him; you cannot lead unwilling souls into the joys of salvation. Man must become hungry for truth as a result of the experiences of living, or he must desire to know God as the result of contact with the lives of those who are acquainted with the divine Father…. If we know God, our real business on earth is so to live as to permit the Father to reveal himself in our lives, and thus will all God-seeking persons see the Father and ask for our help in finding out more about the God who in this manner finds expression in our lives.”  Jesus speaking to Ganid.  The Urantia Book (1466.2) (132:7.2)

Now back to the Alaska tour, which we left last time in the Kenai Peninsula.  The next major event was a cruise from Seward (pronounced Souward), the full length of Resurrection Bay, into Aialik Bay and up to the Aialik Glacier, shown above.  Along the way were beautiful sights of the snow-capped mountains, small islands and wildlife.  I photographed a Sea Otter taking a nap while floating on his back, a Humpbacked whale, a pair of Orcas (killer whales), a Puffin, a rock wall covered with Artic Terns, and Sea Lions where the large male was bellowing out orders.  While the ship stood just off the glacier there were many loud noises but we saw no icebergs falling off.  On the way back to port the ship had a special on Margaritas made with glacier ice.

The next day was a free day at Denali, which worked out well because everyone could choose what they wanted to do.  I had signed up for a guided hike in the morning and wondered about the weather, this was the only rain we had the entire trip but the rain was light enough not to interfere with the hike.  The walk was enjoyable through the wet woods and the highlight of the hike was a close encounter of the Moose kind.  We stopped at the end of a lake and spotted a female Moose at the far end of the lake.  I took my time getting out my telephoto lens and got a good picture of her.  Shortly after that we were walking along the lake, on a trail that was uphill and perhaps fifty feet or so from the shore when we saw the Moose taking a swim.  She then got out of the water and began charging up the hill toward us.  I took one photo that shows her large body behind a nearby bush, too close for the long lens.  She got to within about thirty feet of us before the tour guides waved their arms, shouted and shooed her away.

That afternoon the weather cleared up and I was able to take a helicopter ride up to a glacier.  This flight over the Alaska wilderness was truly memorable.  We were seated in the helicopter according to weight and I was given the back window seat.  Along the way we saw Dall’s Sheep and Caribou but both were a bit too far away to photograph well.  The scenery was stunning; the above photo only gives a small taste of the sights.  As we landed on the glacier the music in our headphones was Satchmo singing “It’s a Wonderful World,” probably planned that way but a nice touch anyway.  We were able to get out, walk around and take pictures from the top of the glacier.  

From Denali we went south to Talkeetna where we stayed two nights.  While there we went on a jet boat ride.  The boat was large enough for all 47 in the tour group; after a leisurely ride upriver the boat pilot stopped and asked us all to buckle our seatbelts.  We then went over Class IV rapids and stopped just short of Class VI rapids that had exposed rocks.  This area is called Devil’s Canyon, naturally.  He held the boat in place for fifteen minutes so we could all take plenty of pictures.  The last evening in Talkeetna the clouds lifted and the mountain came into full view.

Alaska, the great land indeed!

"On the seven mansion worlds [where we go after physical death] ascending mortals are afforded ample opportunities for compensating any and all experiential deprivations suffered on their worlds of origin, whether due to inheritance, environment, or unfortunate premature termination of the career in the flesh." The Urantia Book (516.1) (45:6.3)

#25: In a word, Alaska was fantastic, spectacular and wondrous!  I took about 1500 pictures on the trip, but I may spare you some of them.  After returning I was asked if there were any parts of the trip that I did not enjoy; I had to answer no because every moment was better than expected.  After thoroughly enjoying the Great State of Alaska I visited an energetic study group in the Seattle - Bellevue area.  I will break the Alaska trip into more than one blog so I can also include study group meetings.

But before starting on the trip I have an update on a previous blog (#23) where I described the Falls Park on the Reedy River in Greeneville South Carolina.  On the flight from Philadelphia to Anchorage, which was seven hours forty minutes long, I was flipping through the airline magazine when I saw an article listing the best city parks in the country.  Most were in big cities like Atlanta or New York City, but the park in Greeneville was listed as one of the fifteen best.  Told you.

“My son, everything must await the coming of its time. You are born into the world, but no amount of anxiety and no manifestation of impatience will help you to grow up. You must, in all such matters, wait upon time. Time alone will ripen the green fruit upon the tree. Season follows season and sundown follows sunrise only with the passing of time....  My tomorrow is wholly in the hands of my Father in heaven.” (Jesus talking to Ganid) The Urantia Book (1436.4) (130:5.3)

The first stop was Potter Marsh, south of Anchorage; the above photograph gives some idea of what it looked like.  After I took the above photo I was told there was a Sandhill Crane in the marsh.  I put the telephoto lens on but could not see the bird.  I took a couple of pictures anyway and when I examined them later I could indeed see the Crane.  There were also ducks and plenty of Tree Swallows were flying about catching snacks.  The Swallows were too swift for me to photograph on the wing, but a pair kindly perched on a nearby tree and posed for me.  The following picture is titled “My nest is your nest.”

In time I hope to set up a web page with more pictures, until then you will have to wait until we meet.

On the way back to the bus we saw a female Moose and her calf, but I have a better Moose story and picture later.  Our next stop was at Portage Glacier, shown below in the distance.  There was a nature center showing a film about the area; the time difference (four hours) was starting to catch up with me, but I did not sleep through the entire film.

The next day I called my brother at the campground in New York State, the first thing he asked about the earthquake.  I had read in the morning paper that there was a 5.2 magnitude earthquake centered near where we had been the day before, however we did not feel it on the rocking bus.  He probably heard about it before we did.

The highlight of that day was a float trip on the Kenai River starting at Cooper Landing.  Before starting out on the rubber rafts we were fitted with rubber boots and full water gear, but no hats thank you.  Each raft held twelve people; at the beginning the river water came from a glacier and was cloudy but later spring-fed streams entered the river.  We saw a bald eagle perched in a tree; downstream there were many fishermen along the bank angling for salmon, in places they were only two or three feet apart.  Not far beyond them was a bear, but he was not fishing, just hanging out and trying to figure out what those funny things in the river were.

The next day we went to Exit Glacier; before beginning our climb to the glacier we saw two bear cubs up the same tree and I got a photo.  I guess it is time to visit the study group and close, more on Alaska next time.

I had met some of the Bellevue – Seattle study group at the Boulder conference last year; in fact Tom took the photo of me giving my presentation (blog #13).  Linda was kind enough to invite me on an excursion with her daughter and two grandsons to the Bloedel Reserve on Bainbridge Island.  After finishing Alaska I might tell more about that visit, it was a beautiful area.  Christine was a gracious host and we had interesting conversations before the study group meeting.  During the meeting we read Paper 160 “Rodan of Alexandria.”  This study group has a meaningful practice; at the close of each meeting they read one of the prayers from other planets found on page 1622-3.

"The world needs more firsthand religion. Even Christianity - the best of the religions of the twentieth century - is not only a religion about Jesus, but it is so largely one which men experience secondhand." The Urantia Book (2083.4) (195:9.8)