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<DIV><FONT face="GoudyOlSt BT"><B>
<P>DATE:</B> July 29, 1997<BR><B>LOCATION:</B> Butler, PA, USA<BR><B>T/R:</B>
Gerdean<BR><B><BR>TEACHERS TOMAS and MERIUM<BR>TOPIC(s): Washing the Feet of
Your Fellows<BR>How the Teachers Spend Their Time </P></B><B>
<P>TOMAS:</B> Good evening, my friends. I am Tomas, your host. A different
greeting, yes. Be not alarmed; I am still your friend.</P>
<P>I thought to introduce myself differently to you this evening to indicate to
you the various aspects that personalities have inherent in them. If you come to
know each other only in one capacity, you deprive yourself then of anticipating
other hues and points of view. It limits also the expression. If I am to always
approach you as primarily your teacher, you will begin to look upon me as
studious and methodical. I am therefore also your friend, and this evening I
tell you I am your host.</P>
<P>Now, my gracious guests, I have prepared for you a tidbit or two for your
pleasure. I have to say I am not the chef! I did not create the hors d'ouerves;
I am only serving it to you. I will talk about serving. </P>
<P>I am reminded, as no doubt you are also, of our Father/Brother Michael who,
when he was a mortal, washed the feet of his apostles, and so this evening,
symbolically speaking, I would wash your feet. How shall I wash your feet? How
shall I serve you from this vantage point when you are finite and I am not? I
have to honor your feet. I have to serve you in a way that you can appreciate
that I am intending to, and in my essence, am, indeed, providing you a
service.</P>
<P>Did it truly matter whether the feet of the apostles were dusty? Evidently
not for they sat at their places at the table and did not care whether their
feet were dusty or not, for their interests were elsewhere at the time. But if I
attend to you in such a way as you feel that you have been served, that you have
been tended to, that you have been honored, that you have been paid note of in a
loving way, then you have recognized the service.</P>
<P>Your discourses this evening were most entertaining (group chuckle), and I
will say that in hearing each other, listening with ears to hear, you are being
of service. You are washing the feet of your fellows.</P>
<P>It is not the custom in your society to wash feet. It is the custom in your
society, rather, to share, to break bread, and many other things, and they are
indeed, all of these, a service inasmuch as you have extended yourself in loving
kindness; you have shown yourself friendly; you have honored the mortal by
acknowledging their presence. By sharing their interests, by drawing them out
you indicate your concern for their welfare, and your interest in their
interests. This is a service that is performed in your culture, and if you would
emulate the Master, you would also honor the Thought Adjuster that indwells the
human being that also craves acknowledgement and seeks expression.</P>
<P>The human races are greatly admixed and the cultures are blended, by and
large, and acceptable to one another, by and large, as if you were all tourists
on the home sphere, acknowledging how it is done in other cultures. There are
cultures where it would be dastardly to show the bottoms of your feet; to expose
the bottom of your feet would be a tremendous insult. There are cultures that
condone belching as an indication of satisfaction for the food served, whereas
other cultures would regard it as rude.</P>
<P>And so in the human culture there are differences, but if in the expression
of your good will toward your fellow men you also include and acknowledge the
appearance of an actuality of their indwelling God Fragment, their divinity
aspect, the chances of offending the human being are greatly lessened for you
honor the true person when you honor their indwelling God fragment. You honor
their dignity, their faith son status.</P>
<P>Getting to know you, indeed. I am still getting to know Merium. And as I
adjust to her ways and she adjusts to mine, I discover my own limitations. Once
I have acknowledged that I have looked with limitation, I am then free to accept
the liberating fellowship she provides. This is a passage into fuller
appreciation of relationship. Pausing here, I sense Merium' s presence in line
to speak. Hunnah?</P><B>
<P>MERIUM:</B> Good evening. Tomas is so genteel and poised this evening. He
must have gotten down from behind his pulpit to walk among you. I want you to
know that we can "hang out" too. You have all been adjusting to and rallying to
the summer's pleasures and you manage to learn lessons and make observations in
spite of the change of your routines and it is new adjustment that requires
tolerance on your part. As Gerdean finds, people are not coming in out of the
rain to read books.</P>
<P>What can I do for you this evening? There was a great deal of chatter among
you earlier. Shall I take my three-minute turn at sharing and I will have your
undivided attention ...</P><B>
<P>Gerdean:</B> You have that already!</P><B>
<P>MERIUM:</B> ... to find out what I have been doing with my time?</P><B>
<P>Gerdean:</B> That would be interesting.</P><B>
<P>Leah:</B> And not only that, Hunnah said she would like to interview people
as a way of finding out what's going on.</P><B>
<P>MERIUM:</B> Let me think of how I can explain this. It is as if I have always
been. It is as if I have always been as enlightened as I am. I suppose you could
say a consistency is about me. It is hard to talk to you within my own
personality; it would be my preference (my hostess here this evening is
squirming a little bit)...</P>
<P>Gerdean read my talk of last week about the lightness that I am and I am
comfortable with saying this. And there is no "job" involved in what I do; I am
simply myself, and wherever I am I take that lightness with me and it blends
with the activity at hand.</P>
<P>I would like to expand this evening and go through Gerdean and have you ask
that question again. Would that be all right? [Silence] Is it all right with
you?</P><B>
<P>Gerdean:</B> Yes, it's okay with me.<BR><B>MERIUM:</B> Let's try that.</P><B>
<P>Leah:</B> Am I asking the question?<BR><B>MERIUM:</B> That will be fine, but
I will speak to you through Gerdean.</P><B>
<P>Leah:</B> Merium, several times Hunnah has said she would like to interview
you and we would like to know about you, what your functions are, where you hang
out, what you do, and can you tell us a little bit more about yourself?</P><B>
<P>MERIUM:</B> I can. I can familiarize you somewhat with my lifestyle. I have -
as I have indicated before - great joy in being, and I am not limited by the
mortal constraints such as you are and so I have great freedom of being. It is a
chore for me to translate my reality into terms that you can appreciate, can
comprehend, but it is not a <I>tiresome</I> chore. It is merely an adaptation
that I do not have to make when I deal with those of us in the spirit realm, and
so in my normal environment I am quite free and quite light, as you might well
imagine.</P>
<P>In order for you to understand my existence here, I would have to draw
analogies that you could understand, and immediately it would reduce the truth
to a finite comprehension. I will say there is certain paper work that is
necessary. There are reports. And you can appreciate what that means, but I do
not have a secretary or a filing cabinet. For me to file a report is simply to
convey an essence of value to an appropriate seraphim and it is recorded. It
does not take long at all, but it is something that is done often - many, many,
many, many times a day. You have heard it said that there are notations in the
archives as to your decisions and your behaviors and your interactions and so
forth, and many of these are my purview.</P><B>
<P>Leah:</B> Would you repeat that word?</P><B>
<P>MERIUM:</B> Purview. I did not want to use the word "job" because I do not
want to connote to you that I find my work tedious, and many mortals find their
work, their job, tedious. To do that would be to reduce my joy in living to your
understanding of work. For me, work is a radiant experience. I worship the work
that I do for it is of The Father. That concept alone is, I perceive, beyond
your comprehension, but I convey it because it is true and it is part of what
constitutes me.</P>
<P>Now there are other things that I do and that we do that you will appreciate
and, again, in your terms, we have many staff meetings. We have many, many, many
conversations regarding you and your lives. We converse on occasion with the
angels and have staff meetings with them. We also work with the midwayers who
work most closely with you. There are many personalities that we work with,
associate with, on a regular basis. These terms you can find in your text and
for the most part they are merely terms, but for me they are vibrant and
meaningful experiences. They are contacts of utmost friendliness and
happiness.</P>
<P>There is a lot of humor in our realm. We laugh often. We have, if we were
human, a warble in our voice from constraining the song of joy that comes from
our very being. In our association in the spirit realms and on the morontia
realms, the laughter and the music are closely entwined. As you perceive it, in
the abstract, laughter IS music.</P>
<P>We spend some time at rest. We become depleted, but we are quickly revived.
We revive ourselves much in our worship, from where we receive our greatest
sustenance. Indeed, we hunger for time alone with God, and much time is provided
us for that joy, that very necessary joy.</P>
<P>We have celebrations. These are similar to your festivals. They are not
constant, for our joy is constant. Our celebrations are in honor of certain
events, events that you perhaps cannot fully appreciate except as they relate to
you. You yourselves are cause for celebration on occasion, but you are not a
constant party, however. That was a joke. (Group giggle)</P>
<P>Even so, there are moments in your enlightenment, in your upward ascent, that
strike chords of harmony that are so vibrant and real as to call forth a true
celebration. These range in import and we do rejoice with you, even in your
small victories. Your large victories are celebrated even by The Father.</P>
<P>I have given you an idea of how I spend my time. Are there other and related
questions?</P><B>
<P>Hunnah:</B> This is Hunnah. </P><B>
<P>MERIUM:</B> Yes, my dear.</P><B>
<P>Hunnah:</B> As I listen to you talk about your realm, I'm aware of a lack of
or an absence of conflict. It is as if you were all in agreement, and it makes
me long to be in such a happy sphere, even though I am not unhappy! You seem to
be in such agreement with time.</P><B>
<P>MERIUM:</B> It will be attained. But, my dear, it is something that we have
worked for, we have aspired for and have attained. Every one of my associates on
this side has, in large part, experienced confusion and travail. That is, all of
my fellow teachers. But we have grown and attained a level of appreciation such
as you would compare perhaps to fine dining, fine music, fine theater. We have
stumbled and lived in those realms that were less, and we loved them less for
being there, but we graduated, you see, a little bit at a time, and the reward
is indeed increased grace, increased harmony, increased fraternity.</P>
<P>If we had not sought these things, we would have reverted and stayed in the
darkness. It is a natural result of growth, and the wonderful thing is, you see,
The Father has designed you to grow, to grow in the spirit, that you may be
harmonious, even here and now with each other.</P>
<P>It is a wondrous arena that I live in and work in, yes. It is a glorious
experience, but so is yours. Your associates are also sensitive and
tenderhearted. They also respond to the caresses of the spiritual harp. Their
souls are touched by kindness and tenderhearted affection. Your voice has the
power to be the music that soothes the savage beast, that lulls the -- (it's a
word that starts with "a" --aggressive, uh,...</P><B>
<P>Hunnah:</B> Antagonistic.</P><B>
<P>MERIUM:</B> ... antagonistic. Thank you.) -- the antagonistic nature of the
human animal. This is a level indeed of your joy here, to bring about your own
realm of perfection, to contribute to the extension of that perfection into your
finite realm by calling upon the forces of light that indwell your friends and
neighbors.</P>
<P>There are times on Urantia when we have seen literally glowing, illuminated
pockets of perfection, of human beings congregated to praise and adore the
greater reality. Whether they are in the Teaching Mission or not, those children
of God who seek the Source bring great light, great tidings of joy to their
environment, to their sphere of influence. </P>
<P>And so do not "long" overmuch for the distant days of the future, but long
instead for the moment that you, perchance, may serve the Master in your
brethren and wash their feet, symbolically or, as you waded on the shore, even
literally. Bringing refreshment to the soul is the ticket. Washing the dust of
the byways away in the dew-like freshness of enlightenment and acceptance and
peace is the Way.</P><B>
<P>Hunnah:</B> I can appreciate the metaphor. It's been very helpful. I never
thought of listening as a service in the sense that it was refreshment in that
way. We protect our feet these days, and we protect our conversations.</P><B>
<P>MERIUM:</B> It is armor against the battle of life, but you are now engaged
in the good fight of faith. It is part of the process of making it new, allowing
yourself to trust and open your heart to love. Granted, you may stub your toe on
occasion, but you will learn to walk softly. </P>
<P>I will entertain one more question if there is another regarding my
lifestyle.</P><B>
<P>Hunnah:</B> There doesn't seem to be any form indicated, in the sense of
abode, or being in a particular structure.</P><B>
<P>MERIUM:</B> I am not surprised you asked, and I will give you a response that
I do indeed have a dwelling place. There are, even here, spheres wherein we
reside. There are worlds created for all the children of time and space,
including those of us in the morontia form, and even in the spirit. They are not
the finite cities and domiciles of your material existence, but they are very
real and they accommodate us very well. We have homes. Indeed, cities. </P>
<P>Now, I am here on assignment, as are many other teachers, and so to use a
very crude analogy, we have our motor homes parked out back in the campground.
Our homes are often Salvington or other spheres, but we are very well provided
for here. (I hope I have not painted a picture of a KOA Campground that will be
burned in your brain forever as our home away from home, for that is not true;
it is quite accommodating and expansive.) Yes.</P><B>
<P>Hunnah:</B> It tickles the imagination.</P><B>
<P>MERIUM:</B> I am glad to tickle your imagination, for if I could not tickle
your imagination, what kind of friend would I be? That is one of the delights of
friendship, is that we mutually stimulate each other, and so I appreciate our
on-going friendship, our deepening rapport.</P>
<P>It is truly wonderful to be assigned to this neighborhood and participate in
the incredible unfolding of events taking place. Such a busy area! I am
personally anticipating and eagerly looking forward to a few get-togethers in
the more local arena having to do with Michael's birthday party which you are so
loyally developing as a new opportunity to renew your vows of commitment to
follow Him. The resultant celebratory and thankful atmosphere is a joy to us and
a wonder to behold, not to mention the delight it is to partake of and
contribute to, so I'm looking forward to the upcoming season.</P>
<P>It is wonderful to get to know you better and I will now return this platform
to my colleague Tomas and thank you all for indulging me and being curious about
me and my life. I am happy to convey to you these things that I am given to
experience. Tomas, you may resume your pulpit.</P><B>
<P>TOMAS:</B> I am ensconced in my robes and, as I formerly advised, slouched
over the chair with this lectern at hand. I am comfortable, in spite of my
authority, and even though I testify to being a host this evening, I am the kind
of host who will sit on a lounge chair by the pool and watch you baptize
yourself in refreshment of spirit association, baptize yourself in the living
waters.</P>
<P>Are there other matters for discourse this evening, my friends?</P>
<P>My thanks to you for your companionship and my thanks to Merium for her
blessed contribution to our community. It is a marvelous experience indeed, this
expansion of community, for how wonderful it is to enjoy the expanded
consciousness brought on by the sharing with others, and so this week, my
friends, go forth and share.</P>
<P>Farewell.</P>
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