July 15, 2001
The Rainbow Gathering really
felt like a worthwhile trip for all of us who were there. For me the best
thing about the rainbow gathering was enjoying being with my friends,
and seeing that they enjoyed it so much.
After months of planning, on
the 30th of June a group of us, six "young adult" readers made our way
deep into the mountains of Idaho to establish a "Urantia camp" at the
national rainbow gathering. The gathering was in a very remote, and beautiful,
national forest location. Anna and I traveled to Kansas City to meet with
Noah Wood, whom we car pooled with to the gathering. We had a really wonderful
time stopping in Boulder and Jerome Idaho on the way visiting reader friends.
In Jerome we also met with Ashley Pierce, Shane
Coetner and Jacob
Dix who spent the day traveling into the remote parts of Idaho's Sawtooth
mountains. On the way back we were also blessed to be able to meet with
great friends in Idaho, Utah and Colorado. (great times but another story)
Our
first goal was to find Joe and Arrow, two other young adult readers who
wanted to join us. We knew they were at the gathering, and that they had
brought a tepee, though that they might not have been able to put up the
tepee without our help. It's a long hike from the parking area to the
gathering. We all hoped that we would find them quickly, knowing that
it could take a few days or longer to find them among the 20-30,000 people
spread over a nine square miles. There were other readers who were there,
even ones who we planned to meet, but time and space seemed to limit us
among the thousands.
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By
the time we got to the gathering it was almost dark so we hurried to find
a place to camp while keeping an eye out for Joe and Arrow. We decided
that "tepee circle" would be the best place to try to find them, and ended
up setting up camp really close to tepee circle. Soon after we had set
up our camp a man came from a nearby tepee to ask if we could move our
tents farther from his campsite. I told him that we had camped so close
to tepee circle because we thought we might find our friends there. He
asked who our friends were. I said we were looking for Joe and Arrow,
and he said, "that's their tepee right there" (very close to us), and
told us that their son Marcus was asleep in his tepee as Joe and Arrow
had driven to Boise for a supply run! He invited us to his tepee, and
what a surprise it was for Joe and Arrow to find us there when they got
back from Boise!
That
was the beginning of a great time together, five days of bonding. We put
our "Urantia Camp" on the rainbow gathering area map at information, and
put up a signs about how to find us.
A few readers we had never
met found our camp and told us how overjoyed they were to find other readers
at the gathering. One of them told us how it was an answer to his prayers.
We
spent some time together finding short, truth packed quotes, which we
thought would be well received, and made small signs with these short
UB quotes, acknowledging the source. We put about 30 of the little quote-signs
up, spread out over the miles of wilderness trails, and we were amazed
to see how well received they seemed to be. Each of us noticed how people
would stop and read the quotes and sometimes mention things like, "Wow,
another one of those Urantia Book quotes, RIGHT ON!"
 We
had nightly study groups in Joe and Arrow's tepee, which always turned
out to be introductions to the book for the new people who would show
up. We would pick some good sections to read and discuss together, and
all the people who came once seemed to come back to our camp again to
visit with us.
There were so many beautiful,
idealistic, and friendly people there and the environment was so warm
and welcoming that we all wished we had planned to stay longer. I will
wrap this up as others who were there have said they will write something
about it, and I don't want to say it all. (I could go on and on!)
I
thought of the whole thing as an experiment, to see if the Rainbow gathering
would be as good a place to have a meeting of young UB readers and do
tactful outreach. The experiment was a success, as it seems to me, I put
my feet in the water, and the water was just the right temperature. So
now that I know this, next year (hopefully) or the next time I'll plan
to have more time to spend there, I'll plan to get there and set up a
camp much earlier, and "take a swim".
Mike M. (& Anna and whoever
else who were along but won't get the chance to write about it)
P.2047
- §5 Devote your life to proving that love is the greatest thing in the
world.

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