Listen to these and his other work at his Web Site:

DiMattiaMusic.com

 

 

 

Donna Whelan

Hello fellow truth seekers. My name is Donna Whelan, but you may have previously known me (in the Urantia community) as Donna Brown. Perhaps you have even read my story in How I Found The Urantia Book, a compilation of story tells in that book, I first found this Urantia revelation in 1993 while walking through and exploring the booths at a Whole Life Expo in Pasadena, California. If you are interested, you may read further details of my early discovery in that above-mentionedbook.

Ever since that time I have been enthusiastically involved in Urantia Book study groups, conferences (both local and international), projects and activities encompassing a wide range of what I would term Urantia Book outreach and ministry. I do believe that this book with its teachings and revelations has the potential to change the world in a profoundly positive way.   I believe it is what spiritual seekers the world over have been looking for and that it will satisfy much of their deep inner longings and fill the empty part of their spiritual bellies when it is taken in and given the time to digest.

I think I probably inherited some of my father’s ‘way with words’ and love of the English Language as well as ‘the pen is mightier than the sword’ philosophy of life.  My father was once co-owner and publisher of a small local newspaper – The San Gabriel Sun. He also, later was a proofreader for the L.A. Times and much earlier when he was an officer in the U.S. Navy, he was a war correspondent. In any case, spelling, vocabulary and an ease with words has always come easily to me. I was also an early lover of reading, poetry and a well-turned phrase or story.

Prior to my finding The Urantia Book, the 5th Epochal Revelation, I had been an active member for over twenty years in a church that I had found as an answer to my search for a church in which I could enthusiastically believe and also raise my two children. This church had also been founded as a result of more current day revelation.

So, going back, I sort of divide my life up into four phases, so far. The first phase was growing up in Temple City, Calif. and graduating from Temple City High School and then working at my first full time job at the Santa Fe Railway in Los Angeles. When I left the Railway, five years later, I was the Secretary of the Manager of the Industrial Department.  

The second part was marrying a man named Tony Brown, thus my former last name of Brown. Though we met at the Santa Fe Railway, while I was working there, he later became a Fireman and worked in that capacity for the City of L. A., while I was a fulltime housewife and mother. We had two children; a daughter and a son.

The third phase was my returning to school for college when the children were older and my earning an Associate’s Degree at Pasadena City College and then a Bachelor’s Degree at Calif. State Polytechnic University in Pomona in Behavioral Science and, finally a Master’s Degree at Loyola Marymount University in L.A. My Master’s Degree was in Marital and Family Therapy with specialized training in the art therapy modality. All of this education was in pursuit of my goal of becoming a psychotherapist in order to help people with their various life problems. 

While I was going to school, my husband and I divorced.  There had been long-standing problems which we were unable to resolve.  

Included in this third phase of my life was a very rewarding and fulfilling career as a Marriage and Family Therapist. My work began at a state hospital as a rehabilitation therapist using art therapy with the patients. I was part of the treatment team which included a psychiatrist, psychologist, nurses and psych techs as well as other rehabilitation therapists using art (myself), music and recreation to help these people regain some health and stability in their lives. I worked there for two years and then moved on and out into the outpatient field working as an MFT intern at Eastland Counseling Center in Covina, CA. While at Eastland, as an intern, I also saw some young patients in the local hospitals as well as seeing individuals, couples, children and various family groups in this private practice setting. After becoming licensed in 1990, I was asked to work part time at two girls’ group homes in the area. This was in the capacity of a therapist doing individual and group therapy with the girls weekly. The girls ranged in age from 12 to18 and they were in the system, having been removed from their homes for various reasons. 

Eventually this career evolved into working only out of my own home office in Temple City. At this point my clients/patients came from referrals from several of the large Health insurance companies.

Next came the fourth (current) phase, which I would say overlapped with the third as well. This section goes back to 1993 when I first found The Urantia Book and began to be involved in as many activities as I could which revolved around learning more about this book and also socializing with other readers. Then in the year 2000 I met Larry Whelan who was living in Ventura, CA. He came over to our group in Arcadia to introduce himself. To make a long story short, Larry and I really hit it off, fell in love, and were married in the year 2002. Thus, my name is now Donna Whelan.

As a part of this current phase of my life I have become even more interested in serving this Urantia Book outreach along with my new partner and husband Larry.  In order to have more time I have put my license on renewed but inactive status as an MFT. Larry and I have explored and are now doing outreach in several different ways, which I won’t go into in this short biography.  But one of the ways I have decided to ‘help’ is by volunteering my proofreading services to Halbert for this UbtheNews project, which we both feel is very worthy of supporting as best we can.

So now you know Who I am and I hope my services add to the worth and success of this exciting outreach endeavor.  

Mind, Body & Spirit, Inc. (MBS)

Mind, Body & Spirit, Inc. (MBS) is one of the few groups of Urantia Book enthusiasts that have independently organized themselves officially as a church. MBS is based out of Tallahassee, FL and has been in existence since 1997.

About one year into the development of the UBtheNEWS project, MBS agreed to embrace this project as one aspect of their ministry. Their support makes it possible for people to do online contributions. As well, contributions to UBtheNEWS made through MBS are tax deductible. MBS not only passes along 100% of the contributions made through them to UBtheNEWS, but also makes contributions and independently engages in fundraising activities for the UBtheNEWS project.

Advisory Board

Lisa Rae Crowe

Lisa Crowe discovered The Urantia Book in the summer of 2007, and since that day her life has taken a dramatic turn…for the best!  Enthralled and excited about the Fifth Epochal Revelation, priorities in life began shifting quickly.  Every spare minute became consumed with study to learn as much about the Revelation as quickly as possible.  At the same time she was also “home-schooling” herself in web design, hoping to eventually be able to work from home on her ranchette in Texas.   By spring of 2008, Lisa made the bold decision to abandon the financial security of her career in the corporate world in order to focus much more time on her studies.  As her skills in web design improved, it seemed like a natural fit to use the web to help introduce the UB to others. She created the site urantiabook-intro.org to serve that purpose.

Bob Debold

Bob Debold’s awareness of the UB began in 1975; he began serious study in 1981, after moving to Washington, D.C. and joining John Bullock’s study group in Arlington, VA. Over the years, he worked on four Super Sunday sessions in the local DC area and was a Master of Ceremonies for the “Art of Spiritual Living” held at Mt. Vernon College in 1998. Mr. Debold is currently working on synoptic treatises related to The Supreme Being entitled “Crouching Deity, Hidden Supreme.”  Parts I and II can be found on the Fellowship web site.  He is serving as the Vice-Chairman of the Committee for the Global Endeavor.

He has a Masters Degree in Organizational Management and manages a team of eight acquisition logistics professionals on site at the NAVAIR Naval Station in Pax River MD.  He spent ten years teaching mathematics in the New Jersey public school system where he was active as an officer in the NJ Math Teachers Association. His published work, entitled “Performance Management in a Fourth Wave Society, Systemic Measurement, Evaluation, and Incentives for Developing a Holonic Performance Management System” was delivered to the Center for Advanced Team Performance, at the University of North Texas in 1999 and was subsequently published in the World Business Journal and Team Performance Management Manual.  Many of the ideas were catalyzed and derivative of The Urantia Book’s presentation on the part and the whole (paper 12, section 7).

Joe DiMaggio

Joe DiMaggio discovered The Urantia Book in the early 90’s as the result of “an unusual set of circumstances” and, having gotten the clue, he’s been following it ever since. He is now retired from work as an Information Technology professional. When he saw the UBtheNEWS website and then learned that Halbert had sold off everything he owned to jumpstart the project, Joe was moved to contribute his time and expertise as a webmaster for absurdly small amounts of money during its second and third years of operation. Having now helped Halbert get set up to manage most of the additions to the website himself, Joe now hosts the website and acts as a technical consultant whenever his expertise is needed.

Joe is the UAF Membership Chair and Study Group Coordinator. He recently helped set up a new UAUS chapter in Florida and attends study groups in the Jacksonville area.

Polly Friedman

Polly’s serious interest in The Urantia Book began in 1963 in the San Fernando Valley, California. She and her husband settled there and started a family after WWII moving cross country from the Chicago area. Fortunately, in her teen years she had been influenced by her mother, who was a member of the Forum and “the Seventy.” In a subtle way Polly's mother taught her children by integrating the new knowledge of Jesus into her parenting. Polly believes she had to reach some kind of desperation point in her thirties before she herself was motivated to take The Urantia Book down off the shelf. She soon joined the only study group in LA, the LA Society, in 1965 and from then on applied her UB study to the field of education, both professionally, and in Urantia activities. She served on the Brotherhood General Council during the difficult years of change. Throughout periods of unrest she made her mission the goal of bringing people together in unity & harmony. Her professional life includes 37 years of elementary school teaching and ten years as a California Marriage & Family counselor.

Polly was a founder of The School of Meanings and Values, hostess of numerous study groups, member of education committees and conference workshops. She now resides in Newport, Rhode Island where she has started two study groups and is active in a community UCC church. Her main focus is the Urantia Book Internet School. She teaches, serves on the Board of Directors and has pioneered the teacher training program for internet service. Polly also enjoys writing, travel, and entertaining but her favorite topic of conversation, besides Science and Religion, is her 11 grandchildren. Some, of course, are UB readers!

Lynn Goodwin

Gard Jameson

Gard is a current member of Urantia Foundation's Board of Trustees.

In 1972 he bought a copy of The Urantia Book in a California bookstore near Stanford University, where he was studying Comparative Religion. It was like no other book that he had been familiar with in either philosophy or religion. His friend Brian, a fellow student, borrowed it and responded by saying, “Gard, do you know what you have here? A revelation.” This response peeked Gard’s interest, and he began to read it. He made contact with Urantia Foundation after which he joined a weekly study group in Berkeley.

Gard says that “reading The Urantia Book for the first time was the beginning of a pilgrimage of discovery, the beginning of the realization that God has a will for each of our lives. The pilgrimage is the greatest adventure that one can pursue.”

After twenty-five years in the business world as a Certified Public Accountant and Financial Planner, he returned to college to obtain a Ph.D. in Comparative Religion at Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara. He recently published his first book and has been teaching philosophy at the University of Nevada for the last ten years.

Michael MacIsaac

Michael (Mike) MacIsaac is a second-generation reader who began participating in study groups in his mid-teens. He is married to Anna, a Swedish reader, and having spent his adult life in Sweden, he has done much to develop Urantia Book readership there. Mike brings a broad range of experiences and international perspective to the Advisory Board. He is also currently involved with the Urantia Historical Society, the Urantia Foundation's translations committee, and serves as the UAI Dissemination Chair.

In 2000, he strategically placed about 100 books in youth hostels and the library systems of 12 Europeans countries. In 2002, as part of an extensive North America and Europe ‘UByouth Tour’, he placed books in libraries and hostels in the Baltic States. In 2006, he and several others embarked on strategic placement and dissemination effort in Ukraine, Hungary and Romania. In connection with UBYouth activities, Mike helped organize Urantia camps at Rainbow Gatherings: Idaho in 2001, Utah in 2003, Colorado in 2006, and New Mexico in 2009.

For nearly 10 years Mike biannually worked a Urantia booth at the new age expos in the Stockholm area, often managing the entire enterprise solo. He would trade set up and clean up labor with organizers in order to get space for free. He arranged opportunities to do ‘booth work’ at similar expos in Norway and other cities in Sweden and also worked booths at new age expos in Helsinki, Finland, the 1999 Parliament of World Religions in Cape Town, South Africa, a 2000 Whole Life Expo in Denver Colorado and the 2006 Frankfurt Book Fair in Germany.

Edward Southwick

Edward Southwick Jr. was introduced to The Urantia Book in 1987 from a teacher he hired for his failing English school in Tokyo, Japan. He had just gone through a divorce, the English school's failure along with $80,000 debt, and was sleeping on the tile floor of the classroom. Yet his experience for the next few months was not an emotional down, but rather one of exhilaration as he read The Urantia Book in amazement for hours every night. The book made an enormous change in his life because “it finally allowed me to look at the world and everything I was doing with the glasses of logic instead of the distorted lenses I had been looking through with my cultural and religious indoctrination.”

Edward's life improved dramatically. He remarried to his wife of 23 years now, Kaori, and during the next two years had great success in real estate, which allowed him to semi-retire. This led to doing various volunteer activities, especially working with the homeless. He later wrote a book, The 10 Habits of Happy People, which was published nationally in Japan. Edward and Kaori, who are both Certified Family Life Educators, conducted lessons and seminars throughout Japan in relationships and personal happiness. They also wrote a column on relationships with several other prominent educators and celebrities that became the top read column of it's kind in Japan.

Edward’s other businesses include radio and television work—Edward's Anything Goes English radio program and regular appearances on one of the leading Japanese national TV programs. His work as a business consultant is now limited to pro-bono efforts on behalf of non-profit organizations. Currently Edward works as a real estate broker, teaches happiness seminars, and hosts a weekly Urantia Book study group.

Meredith Tenney

Meredith Tenney is a visionary program developer and interfaith minister with degrees in law, public health, and nurse-midwifery. She co-founded the East Coast Women‘s Corps. and was the Creator/Director of Adolescent Preventive Services, an innovative program for at-risk youth. She co-founded InnerLife International, Inc. in 2005 and spearheaded a women’s Sewing Machine Project in Kenya in 2006. Meredith offered a presentation called "The Garden Project" at the IC08 Conference. Her development of The Garden Project more recently led to co-anchoring the Garden Conference in Valle Crucis, NC.

Meredith has been a contributing author to a book, Spiritual Awakening and been a guest panelist at the World Brotherhood Union Symposium in Istanbul. She works internationally to energize the connection between feminine spirituality and women’s global leadership and to create transformational change.

James Woodward

James Woodward discovered The Urantia Book in 1973 and read solo for twenty years before becoming involved with the UB community. Currently, James is also Study Group Chair of UAI and Vice-President of Greater Lake Michigan Urantia Association. In past years, he served as the UAUS’s Publications Chair and Education Chair. Beginning in 2000, James worked for five years as Urantia Foundation’s manager of the Reader Services Department, handling the inquiries and needs of both seasoned and newly interested readers. More recently, he served as editor and marketing consultant for the recently published secondary work, Heaven Is Not The Last Stop. James has developed presentations for churches, expos, conferences and bookstores.

UBtheNEWS is excited to start working with James in his capacity as the UAI Study Group Chair. Before the conference we expect to create and launch a number of new strategies for helping study groups appreciate why and how UBtheNEWS-style presentations, the website, and the pamphlets are effective at inspiring people to attend an introduction and learn about the UB. Study group introductions are especially powerful because they provide “immediate follow up.” They combine introductions and interactions with the UB community. James looks forward to sharing the results of these new initiatives for study group vitality at the conference.