Global Community Communications Alliance Member Profile
Cecilian
On November 24, 1999, our beloved choir master, Cecilián, succumbed to cancer and transcended the planet. We know that the four and a half years she spent with us were the happiest years of her life. She believed she was in the perfect will of God with her destiny, and anyone who saw her perform publicly would know that. She was vivacious and full of life up to the last few weeks of her life.
Cecilián was Gabriel of Urantia's musical complement. She was able to take his original compositions and arrangements and perform them with the choir and orchestra to perfection. She left her legacy when she took forty unprofessional voices, some had never even sung before, and within a year turned them into a professional-sounding choir. She brought the love of music to our children, teaching them to appreciate a variety of music, to sing, and to play various instruments. She conducted the children's choir and orchestra with the patience of a mother's heart.
At this writing,
we are still grief-stricken. We also know that this beautiful soul
passed on two days after the Catholic Church's appointed day for St. Cecilia,
the patron saint of music. This is one of the indications for us
that she truly was our St. Cecilia and will be forevermore our Thanksgiving
week saint.
The eldership of Global Community Communications Alliance
December 4, 1999
August 17, 1999
My early life was filled with piano lessons and recitals, music competitions and classical music concerts. Strange as it seemed I loved to practice, and I would spend hours at a time playing and composing music. Besides music, religion also played a part in these formative years and became an integral part of my life as I pursued my career as a musician and teacher.
As a child I was deeply involved in the Episcopal church. My father is an ordained clergyman in the church, and he is also a musician. We spent many hours together playing musical duets, and we talked about God and the universe. We took many spiritual walks together. Music and religion were definitely fused at some level for me from a youngster on through my life.
The church provided for me a backdrop of music through chants and beautiful choirs. I know that much of what I considered worship came from my love and connection with church music.
As a young adult I was singing, playing the piano and the French horn. With a degree in music I taught music in schools and colleges and performed in choirs and orchestras. During that time, however, my involvement in the church began to wane. Spiritually I was being challenged. Newly divorced and with a small child, I sensed that even though God was such an important part of my life, the church had failed to provide for me the foundation of a true personal relationship with God and Jesus Christ. I was to discover later that, indeed, I needed to find my personal relationship with my heavenly Father through my own commitment to God and not to be taught only through liturgical worship.
Living in Chicago at that time offered many opportunities for me to be in musical performances and to teach. I still hung on by a thread to some sense of organized religion however. It mainly provided a connection that helped me keep a link with God and gave me the opportunity to perform in sacred concerts. With a background immersed in classical music, I was spiritually moved by singing the great liturgical music of Bach and Mozart, and the hymns of Martin Luther and John and Charles Wesley.
This was also a time in my life when I spent a series of summers in Europe and Russia attending music conferences and seminars, and performing in the magnificent cathedrals of Austria and Germany. I found a great surge spiritually and a truer connection with worship through these travels. I felt God's grace and mercy and blessings in my life through opportunities in music.
The void of a deeper personal relationship with our heavenly Father still continued throughout these years, though. Finally I felt an awakening and quickening in my spirit through involvement in several charismatic movements within the Catholic and Episcopal churches. A sense of vision and God-purpose began to fill my life. It was a renaissance in my relationship with Christ Jesus. I knew God was present as I continued my musical life.
Then years passed, and I again was obliged to look at my spiritual growth and relationship with God. Was I complacent, stagnant? My life took a turn, and I realized that after an end of a second marriage my two children and I were to face a new adventure in the world. Once more I knew that God was my light and hope, that I was not to stay in a comfortable zone of connecting with God when I thought it convenient or just through musical experiences.
I had to reach deep within to see how a purpose in God's plan included me and my small family. Besides the support of my immediate family, especially with my spiritual and musical connection with my father, there was the idea within my heart that family connections needed to be expanded; it needed to be a network, a unit that branched outward yet completely and solidly connected. Did I find a God-purposed family through the established church which I moved in and out of for so many years? Only in a very limited way. How could I make that personal connection with my Universal Father was the question I asked myself.
In moving across country from Chicago to Phoenix, Arizona I felt an initial sense that I was honing into a new, exciting adventure with God. I wasn't too sure what a change in scenery and a new beginning might mean to me. As we made this move, I did sense hope and purpose though. I remember my son saying that this was a "good idea, Mom." It was a faith walk. It was a time of saying, "OK, Lord, what's going to happen?"
We settled down into a routine of life. I got a job as a music teacher and started singing in a local classical performing group in Phoenix. A few months passed, and I thought, "Wait a moment; we're settling into the same lifestyle that we had left months before." I prayed, "What is this call that I sense yet don't see manifesting in our lives?" "What are we to be doing or what should we be doing, dear heavenly Father?"
A few weeks later I was reading the newspaper, and as I turned the page there was an article explaining about The URANTIA Book . The name "Urantia" rang true in me, like a note resonating perfectly in tune. I immediately went out and bought the book. As I began to read through this amazing book of revelation of the Universal Father's plan for His eternal kingdom, I resonated with the understanding that I need to know God in a way of expanding truth. The URANTIA Book provided this expanding truth. It is also referred to as the Fifth Epochal Revelation. I began growing into the knowledge of a living ascension plan of God's purpose for me and for us all. I read about Jesus Christ Michael who I had previously known as Jesus Christ of Nazareth. He truly is the Son of God and the Son of Man in a much broader and cosmic sense than I had known Him before. Christ Michael is the sovereign Lord, the Universe Father, the Creator Son of our local universe of Nebadon.
I was excited and renewed by discovering this revelation. "Now, how would I find others with whom I could share this?" I asked myself. Even though I inquired about study groups and tried to find others who knew of The URANTIA Book , I could not find anyone with whom I could relate. My friends in the music field did not seem interested, and the friends I had in the organized churches seemed to think I had been led off the track. For me, I felt I was finally on track!
For about a year I continued my life as it had been, but with one exception, I read The URANTIA Book and was seeking more than ever a closer relationship with our heavenly Father. In February of 1995 I came across an article written by a beautiful woman named Niánn Emerson Chase. Her picture and the title of the article, The First Cosmic Family , caught my attention. I immediately read the article. Indeed, I was searching for my cosmic family just as I had recognized earlier in my life when I spoke of my personal need to be a part of a family unit that branched out. Now I knew it meant more than just having a network on this planet, it meant a network with other cosmic family members from other universes with whom we are all related, for we all have the same Universal Father. As Jesus brought forth through His teachings in the section of The URANTIA Book entitled the Life and Teachings of Jesus (p. 2053:4), it is said that "the fatherhood of God implies that you also freely accept the associated truth of the brotherhood of man." We are our brother's and sister's keeper. Jesus Christ Michael also gave to us through His bestowal on Urantia the beautiful gift of the Spirit of Truth.
After reading The First Cosmic Family the Spirit of Truth spoke to me, and I called the number listed at the end of the article. It was the number connecting me with Global Community Communications Alliance and a re-gathering of the first cosmic family. As I was to learn, Gabriel of Urantia along with Niánn Emerson Chase are the founders and leaders of this religious community. I was soon to find out that Gabriel and Niánn have the Mandate of the Bright and Morning Star. Just as earlier I had discovered The URANTIA Book with its Fifth Epochal Revelation of cosmic and divine truth, I was now being introduced to Continuing Fifth Epochal Revelation through the books The Divine New Order , Gabriel of Urantia's autobiography, and The Cosmic Family, Volume I , the first volume of Continuing Fifth Epochal Revelation (CFER). I truly knew I had been divinely led to meet again my cosmic family and to grow in purpose and ascension. What I was seeking throughout my life in finding that wonderful personal and revelatory relationship with the Universal Father and with Jesus Christ Michael and the Universe Mother Spirit was happening! The search was over; my life could now move towards fulfillment!
As I soon learned, Gabriel is a musician of beautiful song and lyrics. In my initial visit to the community I was delighted and honored when I was invited to attend a rehearsal of Gabriel of Urantia and the Bright and Morning Star Band. When I heard Gabriel sing the lyrics that came forth from his song Wake up America , which is now on his CD, Holy City , I woke up. I truly knew that this indeed is the most beautiful music on the planet from any time period in history. Before I heard Gabriel's music, I had been immersed in the classical music field. I paid little attention to the pop music of the day. Gabriel's music, though, goes beyond any "type" of music; it is universally beautiful and artistic; it is CosmoPop. With all the composers I have loved from different periods of musical renaissance, I recognized Gabriel as the musical renaissance. Because of my background of extensive musical study, I understood and knew that Gabriel's music had more to offer musically, artistically, and spiritually than any music I had ever heard, played or studied previously. Gabriel's music brings with it the resonance of higher understanding of God and God's love for us. Gabriel's melodies and lyrics awaken the soul and make the spirit dance. This was the final catalyst for me. A true fusion of music and spirituality.
As part of my destiny,
I am now honored to be the concertmaster of Gabriel of Urantia's Bright
and Morning Star Choir in which we sing CosmoWorship songs composed by
Gabriel. It is fulfilling as we go out and sing this music to the
world and for me personally to know that my relationship with our Universal
Father grows daily as I grow within this beautiful cosmic family, this
union of souls. The music we sing and play heals and makes whole
the true seeker of God's kingdom.
Cecilian,
Minister
First Assistant
to Gabriel of Urantia and Niánn Emerson Chase and the Mandate of the Bright and Morning Star