Episode:Jesus the Tutor—Journey to Rome (Part 6)

From Symmetry of Soul


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.

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Keywords: Urantia, Jesus, Religious Life, Play, Courage

Note: This was our 7th anniversary episode, and the first part of the show was spent reflecting on what this means to us. Ann Garner called in to share as well.

Summary by Kermit

We celebrated our seventh year of SoS broadcasts. Following the lead of James Woodward, each co-host took time to reminisce on our beginnings. We give special thanks for the pioneering work of Ann Garner in envisioning the broadcast and recruiting the SoS team. Ann graciously called in to add her voice to our remembrance, as did Zabriel Zadravetz, who posts the text of our study in the BlogTalkRadio chat room during our broadcasts. We also thank others who diligently serve to support our efforts in countless ways.

Commentary on Review

Commenting on the inherent biases each of us has toward an individuality perspective or a unity perspective we noted that for those who favor a unity worldview they frequently harbor a running hostility at the horrendous individuality of individuals. Individuality is not to be interpreted as an offense to unity, but rather an opportunity for establishing harmony, for the individuality of the whole is the actuality of harmony.

130:5 On The Island of Crete

While the Cretans of that day were not held in high esteem by their neighbors, Jesus and Ganid were able to uplift the thinking of many as a result of their personal contact. The revelators present an intriguing reference to harsh words about the Cretans, spoken by Paul in his instructions to Titus concerning the organization of the early Christian church. Following this reference we discovered an amazing historical thread leading from the first chapter of the New Testament letter of Paul to Titus, wherein the Paul’s harsh words are found, to Paul’s familiar pronouncement concerning our relation to God to wit: "in Him we all live and move and have our being”, thence finding revelatory expression in [117:3.12] From the finite standpoint, we actually live, move, and have our being within the immanence of the Supreme. Thus we go from Epimenides, a Cretan whose unflattering characterization of Cretans are quoted by Paul to the 5th ER where another quote from Epimenides becomes elevated to one of the more advanced concepts of the revelation—the immanence of the Supreme as God the Mother. Listen to the archive for the details of the full journey.

We have mentioned before, concerning this Mediterranean journey, that the seeds of truth sown by Jesus in his significant positive contacts with his fellows subsequently bore much fruit as Paul traversed the same roads establishing the early Christian church.

Jesus, in response to a question by Ganid as to why he had not set himself to the work of public teaching presents us with a philosophic insight into two aspects of time designated by the Greek terms kairos and kronos. Kairos being a cosmic concept, sometimes referred to as God’s time, and kronos being the so-called ordinary sequential time of the moment.

The stated purpose of going to Crete was to play, to walk about, and climb the mountains, even so Jesus and the Indians had a number of casual meetings worthy of recording. The first incident was the closest thing to a physical confrontation Jesus experienced on his bestowal. He came to the rescue of a slave girl being assaulted by a drunken degenerate, by restraining the madman allowing the girl to make way to safety. Jesus’ handling of the event challenged Ganid’s sense of fairness and desire for retaliation. Note the revelators’ use of the term “encounter.” This word has the meaning of contending against, which while still found in dictionaries is more often used today in a more neutral sense of meeting.

130:6 The Young Man Who Was Afraid

Our final section details the memorable meeting of Jesus and a young man seeking escape from the difficulties of living by taking refuge in the mountains. The revelators devote considerable ink to this interaction. We are left wondering whether Jesus’ strategy of engaging this man in conversation was entirely spontaneous, as in when Jesus having made ready to leave but suddenly turned to him as if he had a second thought to speak further and proceeded to answer the lad’s unspoken request for assistance with his anxiety and depression with such an uplifting, encouraging and even challenging outpouring of love and mercy. As we noted, this episode in the religious life of Jesus did not consist in a narration of Jesus’ spiritual experience. Rather, it represents the response of a man among men who has attained the status of the third circle of cosmic development to the unspoken need of a fellow mortal.

Between the lines of this inspiring narrative we find incitement to do the unnatural thing by responding positively to a negative stimulus.

The cherry on top of this section is the final paragraph where we learn that Jesus and Ganid give first aid to an injured boy, who just happens to be the son of Simon of Cyrene, the man who bore by order of a Roman soldier Jesus’ cross on his way to Golgotha.

Notes by Brad

  • Note well that after immersing themselves in Alexandria--the philosophic center of the world--our travelers went to Crete to "play."
  • Cretan and cretian are not at all the same words, no similar root. Fun fact, easy to get wrong while reading this.
  • Even Jesus' seemingly simple poetic passage about awaiting the passing of time? It's using different Greek concepts of time
    • kairos. Things awaiting their time in a cosmic sense. Parts in a whole.
      • Every so often, the whole manifests into the moment most definitively. But don't always count on it.
      • "Now wait a minute, something more than the moment is at play in this moment. It's like all the past an present are embodied in this moment."
    • chronos. Standard prosaic progression of time
  • We have chronometers. What would our kairometer be? Life carriers have something of this when they implant life on experimental worlds--it's a gauge of the Supreme.
  • "personal encounter." Understand this literally. En- -counter.
  • "evils of inaction". Evil means you have broken your connection to unity. To have a connection to unity, you need to be in action.