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<DIV><B>
<P>DATE:</B> February 8, 1996<BR><B>LOCATION:</B> Pittsburgh, PA,
USA<BR><B>T/R:</B> Gerdean</P><B>
<P>Urantia Book Study<BR></B>Paper 3. The Attributes of God<BR>(Including the
"inevitabilities" on Page 51)</P><B>
<P>TEACHER SESSION:</B><BR><B>Try A Little Tenderness</P>
<P>TOMAS:</B> Good afternoon, faithful following, as we all follow Him who sent
us.</P>
<P>Beloved friends, it pleases me again to be with you, to enjoin with you in
our configuration of study and sharing that which has worth in your life and
which will manifest in worth in the lives of others.</P>
<P>We have been on a vigorous path of absorption of truth and experientials and
I am going to back off in our strenuous pursuit somewhat; not that we might grow
trivial, no, but that we may access and appreciate some of the refinements of
the spirit, in order that you may appreciate the gentle qualities of your spirit
reality as well as those strengths of character which pull you forward and
earmark you as a valiant soldier of the circles. And therefore today, precious
ones, I will call to your attention a characteristic, a quality of divinity,
which you yourselves can sincerely understand and appreciate, and that has to do
with that of tenderness.</P>
<P>As parents, as elder siblings, as owners of pets, even as mortals indwelling
the tabernacle of flesh, you have an understanding and appreciation for various
degrees of tenderness. When you exercise robustly, your muscles grow tender. In
that light, then, today, let us nurture ourselves in tenderness of the mortal
condition, the child of God who grows weary and who hurts, who calls upon the
Third Source and Center for ministry in healing of tender wounds, the solace of
Michael and his Divine Minister, to assure us of their tender mercy on our
assaults upon ourselves and on others.</P>
<P>Embrace tenderness beginning with your own self, your own soul, for your
soul, although strong, is also tender. It is young. Your understanding of your
faith status is tender, for sometimes you are confident and sometimes you
flounder and so herein you are tender. In your growth, then, remember
tenderness. Be always tender with yourself and with others in your physical
dealings, in your emotional dealings, in your mental dealings, and in your
spiritual dealings.</P>
<P>Tenderness will take the edge off of your striving and allow your ascent to
become an easy climb to the farther view, rather than a death-defying exercise.
Tenderness with yourself does not connote necessarily glossing over your
shortcomings, but is in tender appreciation for your journey yet to come, for
your status again as a growing thing.</P>
<P>When you observe your fellows, observe them now with tenderness. Even as they
spitefully abuse you, hold an eye on tenderness of their ignorance, and be
joyous in the prospects of things to come. Tenderness in your dealings with
others connotes sincerity, but tenderness in your attitude lives in your
relationships as a godlike quality. Mistake not tenderness for sentimentality,
and do not regard my words as sanction to regard everyone as an infant needing
coddling, but even as you are tender, so are they tender, an aspect indeed of
Godlikeness.</P>
<P>We read, we absorb, we learn as to the all-powerful, all wise facet of God
and we see nothing of his tenderness except as we <I>feel </I>his tenderness
envelop us in our private moments with Him. We overlook the gentle qualities and
attributes of God as we behold in awe his power and wonders. What makes Him
meaningful to you, however, is that He is merciful and gentle and tender with
you, His Child, and you may carry this legacy into your arena and manifest
tenderness also.</P>
<P>As a muscle that has been overworked, apply the healing balm of, the salve of
tenderness, to those who strain at gnats. As a heart reveals itself as being
broken, or in pain, return their mood through tenderness and reintroduce their
heart to the tender love and appreciation of divinity. As your fellows have
fallen and have hurt themselves and are in shame of their frailties, embrace
them tenderly as Father embraces you, and lift them up in tenderness from that
place. Be tender of your own wounds as well.</P>
<P>I will offer an odd assignment this week and if it offends you, pluck it out
of your frame of reference. But this week, if you would, bring yourself tenderly
to this precipice of faith and forgive Father for the times when you have not
felt His tenderness, for those times when your overworked muscles strained
unmercifully, in your mind. Forgive the Father.</P>
<P>Of course, it is an entirely presumptuous and arrogant attitude in the
intellectual sense, but in the soulful context of camaraderie and understanding
between yourself and your Creator Parent, sidle up to Him, bringing your
tenderness of spirit, and with a quiet hand on His shoulder, forgive Him for
those ills which you have experienced, that He has caused you to experience in
order that you might learn.</P>
<P>This peculiar assignment, dear ones, is intended to provide you with a
perspective on how truly tender the relationship is between you and your Parent,
how gentle and soulful and meaningful this merger is. If you have this
experience in the next few days, if you allow this exercise, it would lend for
some interesting discourse among you, again reflecting a tenderness and a
patience and a forbearance you might not have realized possible.</P>
<P>There is an old Christian song, "softly and tenderly Jesus is calling," and
so many of you have such a sense of urgency, as if an evil were nipping at your
heels, as if you must run to secure yourselves within the walls of Havona before
the sun goes down. And yet you are bidden to come forward, to come into this
holy place softly and tenderly.</P>
<P>It is not necessary to march in the gate and show God how good you are, how
on time you are, how noble you are by showing up. Part of this attitude is anger
at God in the fissures and crevices of your conditioning. And so talk it over
with Him, by experiencing sufficient camaraderie and tenderness with yourself,
in conjunction with Him, that you can experience forgiveness together. And then,
children, go forth in tenderness and greet one another.</P>
<P>***************</P>
<P>My lesson is complete for today. I am glad to be with you. How are you? Have
you questions or subjects for discourse on the table in your minds?</P><B>
<P>Celeste:</B> Do you think we fully understood page 51 today? I find this so
fascinating and can learn so many different ways.</P><B>
<P>TOMAS:</B> It has been said of the text that it is presented in such a way as
to provide different levels of understanding. It well may have to do with your
level of growth as to what you are capable of understanding at any given time,
but at any given juncture in your growth, the inevitabilities outlined are truly
worthy of comprehension, and this comprehension is more than intellectual. They
are designedly active, designed to activate your sensibilities in terms of
experiential.</P>
<P>In other words, you may philosophize about the meaning, but unless and until
you have feelingly experienced it, it is a mere mental exercise, and so as you
experience it, much like morontia mota, you then gain a greater appreciation for
your intellectual understanding. As you were discussing today, social
inequalities are not exclusively related to financial inequalities, and the
resultant conversations regarding inequalities is expansive, for what one
individual can readily see as an inequality has perhaps not occurred to another,
and so in sharing your perceptions, you share your knowledge and this increases
your capacities to aspire, even to wisdom.</P>
<P>And so, no I do not believe that you entirely understand what you read today.
I believe that there is more substance there that you will enjoy for a long
time.</P><B>
<P>Celeste:</B> I think so, too. I hope so. It's more exciting to know that
there's a lot more to be gained from it.</P><B>
<P>TOMAS:</B> Indeed, it is one of the exciting facets of this new revelation,
for although it is disconcerting at first to discover that the concept of "one
God" has gone from a simple concept of one God to the hosts of space with, as
you are reading in your studies, many titles, for many different facets of
function. It was easier perhaps when you believed you died and then went at once
through the pearly gates to see God with his scepter and the angels with their
halos, but by the same token, eternal bliss could become tedious and dull, and
now you see that you get the best of both worlds: you get increased perfection
and eternal service, an unending university of discovery. Thus we evolve.
Yes.</P><B>
<P>Celeste:</B> I can't believe that we don't have a million questions for
you.<BR><B>TOMAS:</B> You are perhaps savoring tenderness.</P><B>
<P>Hunnah:</B> Savoring lunch.</P><B>
<P>TOMAS:</B> Which falls tenderly upon your stomach.</P><B>
<P>Hunnah:</B> You like that word! The word I was thinking of when you were
talking, when you used tenderness, was fragility. And when something is fragile,
it takes a very light touch to encourage it to grow in the direction it will
otherwise it can be overwhelmed or frightened. Could it be you have overwhelmed
or frightened us? Or we're not getting close enough up on that lap that we've
been invited on?</P><B>
<P>TOMAS:</B> No, I do not perceive that at all. </P><B>
<P>Hunnah:</B> Okay.</P><B>
<P>TOMAS:</B> I do perceive, however, some reluctance to become that intimate
with yourself. As you regard yourself as fragile, you are picturing yourself as
if you were glass or something that could break, but in tenderness, there is no
allowance for breaking, only bruising; more malleable, perhaps less dramatic,
but certainly substantive and qualitative. You are not accustomed to thinking of
yourself, perhaps, as tenderloin or a tenderfoot. You think only of babies as
tender.</P><B>
<P>Celeste:</B> I always think that one has to be very strong to be tender. One
has to have learned a lot and gained a lot of strength to be tender toward
others.</P><B>
<P>TOMAS:</B> It is not necessary, for you see, even the childlike personality
knows tenderness. A little girl can go up to a grown-up who is grieving and
comfort the adult tenderly, with a tender compassion, and she is certainly not
strong in terms of experience or wisdom.</P><B>
<P>Loreenia:</B> Just innocent.</P><B>
<P>TOMAS:</B> In her childlikeness she is tender. It is perhaps a commentary on
your society that says that only those who are strong can afford to be tender,
for many tender-hearted individuals are taken advantage of or glossed over as
being insignificant, and so many of you, if not all of you, have your dukes up,
and therein is why I suggest you ...</P><B>
<P>Hunnah:</B> Try a little tenderness. There was a popular song years ago
called, "Try a little tenderness."</P><B>
<P>TOMAS:</B> Yes, try it. The song wafts to the mind of the transmitter, of
course, that women get weary wearing the same shabby dress, and perhaps your
understanding of tenderness is to treat yourself by going shopping (group
laughter) for in some ways it nurtures and caters to that in you which is
wounded and bruised. But it is costly!</P>
<P>It is referenced in the text that you may adorn the person, but that will not
satisfy the longings of the soul, and in that context then, although "when the
going gets the tough, the tough go shopping," to assuage that internal
tenderness, shopping is not the solution. The solution is in directly accepting
the <I>true</I> tenderness and not putting a Band-Aid on it, not putting a new
dress on it, not sidestepping the need for tenderness with a material
dressing.</P><B>
<P>Celeste:</B> Often there's a pretense at tenderness, too, that is not really
there. It's a front.</P><B>
<P>TOMAS:</B> It is a common technique of deception, in fact, and this is why I
say to utilize your sincerity and why I suggest it is not mere sentimentality,
nor is it nor should it be reserved as an attitude for babies. Big people do
need tenderness, but as your song also says, "Big boys/ big girls don't cry"
and, in truth, <I>they do</I>. They sometimes <I>need</I> to cry. Therein is the
need to show tenderness, to embrace the mortal, to embrace the personality in
acceptance of the struggle, of the difficulty, of the disappointment, of the
experience.</P>
<P>I will also point out that it is not necessary, even, that a person have an
excuse to feel bad. Sometimes, in the human, a "bad feeling" will just simply
waft in and over the mechanism, allowing it to feel a certain depletion of
energies, and the mind can quickly, in defense of its nether state, feel that
something must be wrong; there must be a reason for this feeling. It is not the
case. Sometimes just sitting there, allowing time for tenderness to come upon
you is adequate. Did that make sense to you?</P><B>
<P>Leah: </B>I understand you to say, "Embrace your anguish."</P><B>
<P>TOMAS:</B> It may be interpreted that way. I would not have chosen those
words, but as I observe the configuration of those words, I would agree, for as
the "bad feeling" is embraced, it is loved, it is accepted, it is owned, and it
is then allowed to be dissolved, absorbed, melted away, no longer concrete and
worrisome, no longer a rock but now thousands and thousands of grains of sand
that can be washed away. However, to tell someone to embrace the "angst"--
</P><B>
<P>Leah:</B> Anguish.</P><B>
<P>TOMAS:</B> Either would apply. -- is perhaps a brutal suggestion on its
face.</P><B>
<P>Celeste:</B> Tomas, you seem so serious today. We like it when you bring some
humor with you.</P><B>
<P>TOMAS:</B> I am going to shift the blame. (Group laughter) I am also going to
be tender of my transmitter. As she is elevated in body, mind and spirit, I am,
too, for certain obvious reason. And as she is weary, thus am I. And so I ask
you to be tender of us both, as you are tender with yourself.</P><B>
<P>Celeste:</B> I can't think of two people that we would rather be tender
with.</P><B>
<P>TOMAS:</B> Do! For there are many who are in far greater need! It is not
uncommon for you to look upon your own loved ones first, for a practice of such
an intimate emotion and attitude, and that's a good place to start, but don't
stop there. Be tender of strangers also, and of "the enemy." Tenderness is a
form of prayer.</P>
<P>I am going to call it quits for today, so that you can enjoy each other and
entertain yourselves at leisure. This little one is tuckered, as are you,
perhaps.</P><B>
<P>Celeste:</B> Full.</P><B>
<P>TOMAS:</B> I have cautioned you about that before, but you don't
listen.</P><B>
<P>Group:</B> Yes we do listen to you, Tomas!</P><B>
<P>TOMAS:</B> I know you do! In fact, it is because you listen so well and you
grow so vigorously that you wear yourselves out, and so suckle yourselves. I
look forward to our next gathering. Do let me know where and when we are to
convene. I will try to catch the correct bus. </P>
<P>Our love to you all. Farewell.</P>
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