Pulling Together for the Common Good

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By Mo Siegel, President, Urantia Foundation, Boulder, Colorado, USA

Tears of joy flowed from my wife and my eyes as Taylor Ritzel won a gold medal in the “Women’s Eight” rowing competition during the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. Taylor was a childhood friend of our kids and her parents, Tom and Lana, were our close friends. One year and nine months ago, Taylor sat by her middle aged mother's death bed watching her fight for life after a long and debilitating struggle with breast cancer. Just before her mom passed away, Taylor promised her mother she would make the Olympic team in her honor. On August 2, Taylor, along with seven other women surpassed the promise by winning gold.

There they were, eight women pulling as a team. What a magnificent sight, people pulling together for the common good of each other and for the nation they represent. It made me think of our Urantia Book community with hope that we will become as good of team mates as those rowers. The history of the Urantia movement, like all other religious movements, comes with the normal ups and downs of the human condition. Like in families, when we’re harmed we can choose to love and forgive or remain angry and unforgiving. When a person or a group of people turn us away we can either accept the broken relationship as a permanent condition or we can rely on love to heal the situation. Edwin Markham said it beautifully in his poem The Shoes of Happiness. “He drew a circle that shut me out-Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout. But love and I had the wit to win: We drew a circle that took him in.”

Whether you are an independent reader or a supporter of Urantia based organizations, we are in this boat together. Individually we are following the voice of a new revelation and trusting our souls to these higher truths. Now we need to pull further together as a team and create goodness far beyond the power of individual acts. It is time to win the gold medal as team Urantia.

Taylor Ritzel. Women's Eight. 2012 Summer Olympics, London. [© Getty Images]