Urantia BROTHERHOOD

February 5, 1989

Mr. Martin Myers 
President
Urantia Foundation
533 Diversey Parkway
Chicago IL 60614

Dear Martin:

Of course I (and Marta) accept your apology; however I don't feel that you owe me one. I did not then nor do I now take your actions that Sunday evening as personal. Unlike my apology to you of a month ago, which I gave (and which you so generously accepted) because I felt that I had stepped over the personal line, this was not at all what I experienced in our Sunday telephone calls. I consider you a friend, and friends sometimes unload on each other. Thus, no apology is necessary.

While this may not be articulated as well as I would like, I want to stress that I wrote the Trustees on February 1 with an organizational matter of grave concern to me, with the certainty that our friendship was and is strong enough to withstand honest, courageous, and even heated exchanges between us.  Just as I know that you intended me no harm with your intense pique born of frustration (as you put it), I felt that you would know that my letter intended you no harm, and was born of my deepening concern for the well‑being of our organizations and our work.

With regard to my travelling to Finland with you and Quin, I can assure YOU that just as my going in the first place was in response to the Trustees' request. I will surely honor the Trustees' request that I not go on Foundation business. As for the particular situation in Finland, I will reiterate that, consistent with the essential point I tried to make in my February I letter, my concern is not so much that I disagree with the way YOU See the situation and the people there, but rather in the way you have set about to handle it. I personally would have grave concern about a strategy which places a high degree of trust in any person who can be easily manipulated; one day that person will most certainly be manipulated in reverse. It is a strategy which could be questioned both on ideal and practical grounds. In any case, we each are entitled to our opinions.

Understandably, but sadly to me, your letter seems to indicate that you and I must now communicate only in writing. I am certainly willing to dialogue personally and verbally with you, but since you feel it best not to do so, I would only request that the Trustees give consideration to the establishment of other channels of personal communication. I think that it would be unhealthy and un­wise for us to have only the written word through which to conduct our organizations' business together. I will gladly accept whatever means of dialogue the Trustees propose.

Martin, I know that our friendship will survive this interaction, at least it will from my side. I hold you no ill will whatsoever, and even as we deal with the issues affecting our organizational work which have been raised, I will let the details and intensity of our Sunday interchange slip into the forgotten past. And, even though I said and meant that an apology was unnecessary, I do care greatly that you cared enough about our friendship to offer it.

Yours In fellowship,

 

David  Elders

President  

cc: Trustees and Trustee Emeritus