HMSA CAROLINE BROWN to HAROLD and MARTHA SHERMAN

Hendersonville, N.C., June 21, 1964

Dear friends,

I didn’t find the time to answer your nice newsy letter before we left Mexico May 8 for here, but did mail you [Clyde Bedell’s] glossary. Did you receive it? Please keep it just for yourselves as there will be a few corrections made before it is passed out from our Forum.

Lulu had another operation for diaphragmatic hernia in January and came through with flying colors, and outside of having the flu afterward is better than ever.

Bob Burton and wife Ruth drove down to see us in April which we enjoyed very much.

It is very delightful up here in the mountains with Grace. This is our third summer here. We will leave here July 19 and fly to Chicago for about ten days, then back to San Antonio where we left our car with friends and drive back home.

I do so want to read your book on ESP, and will send you one of mine, which it looks now as if Doubleday will publish—not sure yet, however. Agent said they thought they would.

Today is my birthday and we are going to the Country Club where they cook wonderful dinners, so I must say goodbye and get ready.

Write when you can. The girls will add a line.

Always our best,
Caroline

HMSA GRACE PALMER to HAROLD and MARTHA SHERMAN

Hendersonville, N.C., June 22, 1964

Dear Martha and Harold,

Well, this is a “have-to” letter—I just wouldn’t let [Caroline’s letter] go out of the house without writing also. I do so wish that we could meet again and get acquainted again.

The girls came up here the middle of May and I came the third, and it is so beautiful up here that I hate to leave when fall comes. We have a 280-degree arc here [so] that we can see as far as the eye can reach.

Caroline’s birthday was yesterday—she was 78 and Lulu is 81 last March—and me, I’ll be 75 next September. Boy, it is sure later than we think. Lulu is so little now you would be surprised at her. Me, I could lose, but I think I need to have what I carry around because I have so much to do.

This beautiful home where we are living belongs to a Mr. Hoiles whom we had known in Chicago for many years, and after his wife passed away he wanted to live with us, so we came up here for one summer, and he bought this and built this gorgeous home—we have four bedrooms and four baths, and a 30-foot living room with a 22x22 lounge besides. If you come this way ever, please plan on coming by to see us. This is the third year that the girls have spent here. They came in April last year and to West Palm Beach and went home July 30. . . .

I always enjoy your Xmas cards so much. Let us hear from you again.

My love to you both always,
Grace

UBH NANCY GRIMSLEY to WILLIAM S. SADLER

Berkeley, Calif., [Received at Urantia Foundation, July 6, 1964]

Dear Dr. Sadler,

Vern and I want you to know how very much we appreciate your prompt and thoughtful replies to Vern’s letters of last fall. You helped us in our discussions together and stimulated our thoughts. Because of your interest and help I would like to tell you now of what we subsequently decided. It has, I am sorry to admit, been a long time since our last correspondence, but it has taken us a long time to think through our situation and decide what we want to accomplish in this life. I do not mean to imply that we know precisely what we are going to do and how; we don’t. But we do know with a much greater degree of certainty what we are going to try to maintain as our guiding principles and goals. The main problem we were facing when Vern wrote to you, you may recall, was the question of our relation to the organized church. Let me sketch briefly the events leading up to that point.

Vern’s strong desire in life has been, since junior high school, to be a preacher. At Culver Military Academy Vern was introduced to the Urantia Book by Dr. Sprunger. He returned to Garden City with a copy and soon told me about it. We were at first intrigued, eventually becoming firm believers in the authenticity of the Book. By the time we were married several years later, we were agreed in thinking that Vern, within the structure of the institutionalized church, could be effective in spreading the Urantia message of the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. The strong, dynamic truth in the Urantia Book is such a refreshing breeze among the smog of misconceptions, misunderstandings, and dry dogmas so prevalent in today’s religious teaching, that we felt it would be welcomed by the people. And let me say here that we see a very important distinction between spreading the Book itself and the message of the Book. There will no doubt be quite a furor, the like of which has not been seen since Jesus enraged the Jewish hierarchy by daring to teach without the “authority” of traditional Judaism, when the Book becomes widely and publicly known. The longer this can be avoided the better, we feel. But the message of the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, and the divine spark indwelling each man, is a message people hunger to learn.

This conviction, together with Vern’s deep desire to be a preacher, drew us toward the parish ministry. To us, there had seemed to be no other avenue open beside the church. We knew well enough there would be many, many problems in attempting to work through the church with this Book. And neither of us was enchanted with the institutional church anyway. We did not overlook the possibility of an academic career for Vern, but he would prefer to stay out of such a career if possible. Vern’s real desire is to do public speaking, writing and personal counseling. This is the main reason he continued to be drawn toward the ministry rather than a university career. We were determined that, despite all the difficulties we foresaw for us in the church, we would make such a plan work. At any rate, we were going to try very hard to make it work.

This tentatively decided, both of us turned our attention, time, energy, minds to the full-time job of obtaining a university education. Both of us took our studies seriously, which meant we devoted a good deal of time to them. We both graduated from the University of Kansas, Vern with a Philosophy and Psychology major and I with a Humanities major. Though we often discussed the difficulty of working through the church, we never quite brought ourselves to consider, consciously at least, abandoning it. We had been growing more disillusioned with it, though.

After arriving in California to attend seminary, Vern wrote the letter he had been planning for so long to write to you. After we received your reply, your thoughts acted as the sparks that ignited in our minds the new burst of thinking which carried us across the line at which we had previously halted—we began to question the ministry as a channel. In defense of what appears to be sheer flightiness on our part in moving halfway across the country to attend seminary only to begin wondering whether to attend, I would say this: taking our studies seriously, as we did, we simply did not have the time to sit together and deeply search our motives. We had been planning seminary and the ministry for so long that to change our minds was a very slow task, and a task we did not imagine we would undertake. We were so involved with examinations, term papers, and studies that we now call that period, as far as spiritual advancement is concerned, our own “dark night of the soul.”

However, after working in a large church in Oakland, California, as a field work student, the role of minister began to look to Vern more and more like that of an administrator of a large plant with committee meetings, reports due here and there, membership and fundraising drives, etc., consuming his time. Living in the seminary community, we discovered that the majority of seminary students look on preaching as quite unimportant and feel the real job of the church today is to “relate” to the world and speak out clearly and strongly on politics, economics, civil rights, etc. As you know, the Urantia Book itself has much to say about the institutional church; we were becoming more and more conscious of the comments made in the Book concerning the dangers of institutionalized religion and the dangers of a church functioning as a political and economic force.
All this time we were also observing firsthand how the church was so burdened with dogma, institutionalism, frozen forms, etc. The institutional church has ever been the last body to change. Since by this time we were becoming willfully committed, by careful decisions, to devoting our highest energies and best abilities to the furtherance of the Urantia message, the crystallization of our disappointment in the institutional church brought serious problems to our attention. We were faced with the tremendous problem of deciding, 1) whether the church would be a very strong channel for the Urantia message, and, if not, 2) what would be a good channel in terms of Vern’s basic desires. In the face of these perplexing doubts we turned to you, one of the few people we knew who could advise us well; there are wise people to whom we could have turned for an outside opinion, but basic to our problem was the fact of the Urantia message, and our friends and family either did not know of the Book or did not share our complete belief in it.

After your second letter containing the sheet of Dr. Sprunger’s comments on evangelism, and in light of his own experiences, we corresponded with him also. We then spent the next four months slowly, very slowly, discussing, thinking and carefully talking out our situation. We did much discussing, praying, and careful analysis.

We were, and are, endeavoring to be Adjuster-led. After considering all the possibilities as thoughtfully and honestly as we could, and after we were sure we had been as objective as possible and were not making a hasty, rash decision, Vern withdrew completely from seminary. We doubt that he will re-enroll, though we are keeping open minds toward all possibilities and vocational areas. Vern had by this time attended seminary full time for one quarter and part of another, and was able to ascertain that, for him, the quality of information in the course could not compare with the Urantia Book. Although we are unsure of many things concerning our future, including what Vern’s career will eventually be, we do know one fact for certain—no matter what Vern does in this life he will first want a very thorough knowledge of the Urantia Book.

Vern also wants to be a public speaker and writer, and has strong feelings about using original material and illustrations instead of other men’s thoughts. Therefore, in lieu of a seminary education, Vern will spend the next four or five years concentrating on 1) obtaining through careful reading and study a very complete knowledge of what is in the Urantia Book, 2) spending some time each day in creative thinking and writing of illustrations, 3) writing and organizing material for a semi-popular psychological-religious book with the aim of eventually having it published, and 4) doing as many public speaking engagements as he can.

We have been following this program for five months. Vern is a person who can and does work very hard on his own. He has accomplished quite a bit, although he is barely started on what he intends to do. He has spoken many times already. We are both still quite young (23 and 24), and as yet without children. I am not only able and willing to work, but delighted to be able to do something so constructive in our plans.

Therefore, since we are young and while I can work we are going to strike out on our own for a while. In the four or five years we are currently planning to spend this way we will be continually alert for areas in which Vern could begin to work.

. . . We think we will be in Chicago at the first of the convention week, then go to Fort Wayne to see the Sprungers, then return to Chicago for the meeting. . . . Let us know your schedule and if you could see us while passing through.

Sincerely,
Nancy Grimsley

UBH WILLIAM S. SADLER to VERN and NANCY GRIMSLEY

Chicago, July 6, 1964

Dear Vern and Nancy:

In answer to your letter received this morning, let me say that your problem and program has turned out as I thought it would, at least, as I hoped it would.

One by one our folks are finding it very difficult to stay in the ministry of the orthodox churches and be able to function as evangels of the Urantia teachings. Dr. Sprunger got out and went into the teaching field, and now Dr. Schlundt has resigned and is joining Dr. Sprunger’s faculty as a teacher.

The minister is in every way handicapped in trying to function as a Urantian. On the other hand, teachers on any level of the academic world seem to have almost complete liberty to carry on their work with the Urantia Book.

I have just heard of a young man who will soon graduate from the Seminary of Yale University, who as a youngster knew of the Urantia Book, and has recently asked his mother to get him a copy. It will be interesting to see what happens to him and what he will decide to do when he begins his ministerial work.

There are many things I might venture to write you about in answering your letter, but it seems that I am going to see you in a month or so when we can talk over these things face to face, so I am going to save myself the effort of making a long reply to your letter and promise to do my best to help you when I see you. . . .

With all best wishes to you, I am

Sincerely,
William S. Sadler