"I BELIEVE" - FAITH ON VINYL

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"I Believe" is the name of a popular song

 written by Ervin Drake, Irvin Graham, Jimmy Shirl

and Al Stillman in 1953.

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"I Believe" was commissioned and introduced

 by Jane Froman on her television show, and became the first hit song ever introduced on TV. Froman, troubled by the uprising of the Korean War in 1952 so soon after World War II, asked Drake, Graham, Shirl and Stillman to compose a song that would offer hope and faith to the populace. In addition to Froman,
 "I Believe" has been recorded by many others, and has become both a popular and religious standard.

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Frankie Laine had the big hit version of the song,

 which still holds the record for the most weeks spent at

 number one in the UK Singles Chart.

(From Wikipedia)

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I believe for every drop of rain that falls

A flower grows,

I believe that somewhere in the darkest night

A candle glows,

I believe for everyone who goes astray,

Someone will come to show the way,

I believe, I believe.

I believe above the storm the smallest prayer

Will still be heard,

I believe that someone in the great somewhere

Hears every word,

Every time I hear a newborn baby cry,

Or touch a leaf, or see the sky,

Then I know why,

I believe.

Every time I hear a newborn baby cry,

Or touch a leaf, or see the sky,

Then I know why,

I believe.

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THE CERTITUDE OF THE DIVINE

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From THE URANTIA BOOK

Part III, 102, 7

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The Universal Father, being self-existent, is also self-explanatory; he actually lives in every rational mortal. But you cannot be sure about God unless you know him; sonship is the only experience which makes fatherhood certain. The universe is everywhere undergoing change. A changing universe is a dependent universe; such a creation cannot be either final or absolute. A finite universe is wholly dependent on the Ultimate and the Absolute. The universe and God are not identical; one is cause, the other effect. The cause is absolute, infinite, eternal, and changeless; the effect, time-space and transcendental but ever changing, always growing.

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 God is the one and only self-caused fact in the universe. He is the secret of the order, plan, and purpose of the whole creation of things and beings. The everywhere-changing universe is regulated and stabilized by absolutely unchanging laws, the habits of an unchanging God. The fact of God, the divine law, is changeless; the truth of God, his relation to the universe, is a relative revelation which is ever adaptable to the constantly evolving universe.
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 Those who would invent a religion without God are like those who would gather fruit without trees, have children without parents. You cannot have effects without causes; only the I AM is causeless. The fact of religious experience implies God, and such a God of personal experience must be a personal Deity. You cannot pray to a chemical formula, supplicate a mathematical equation, worship a hypothesis, confide in a postulate, commune with a process, serve an abstraction, or hold loving fellowship with a law.

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True, many apparently religious traits can grow out of nonreligious roots. Man can, intellectually, deny God and yet be morally good, loyal, filial, honest, and even idealistic. Man may graft many purely humanistic branches onto his basic spiritual nature and thus apparently prove his contentions in behalf of a godless religion, but such an experience is devoid of survival values, God-knowingness and God-ascension. In such a mortal experience only social fruits are forthcoming, not spiritual. The graft determines the nature of the fruit, notwithstanding
 that the living sustenance is drawn from the roots of
 original divine endowment of both mind and spirit.

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 The intellectual earmark of religion is certainty; the philosophical characteristic is consistency; the social fruits are love and service.

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 The God-knowing individual is not one who is blind to the difficulties or unmindful of the obstacles which stand in the way of finding God in the maze of superstition, tradition, and materialistic tendencies of modern times. He has encountered all these deterrents and triumphed over them, surmounted them by living faith, and attained the highlands of spiritual experience in spite of them. But it is true that many who are inwardly sure about God fear to assert such feelings of certainty because of the multiplicity and cleverness of those who assemble objections and magnify difficulties about believing in God. It requires no great depth of intellect to pick flaws, ask questions, or raise objections. But it does require brilliance of mind to answer these questions and solve these difficulties; faith certainty is the greatest technique for dealing with all such superficial contentions.

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If science, philosophy, or sociology dares to become dogmatic in contending with the prophets of true religion, then should God-knowing men reply to such unwarranted dogmatism with that more farseeing dogmatism of the certainty of personal spiritual experience, " I know what I have experienced because I am a son of I AM. " If the personal experience of a faither is to be challenged by dogma, then this faith-born son of the experiencible Father may reply with that unchallengeable dogma, the statement of his actual sonship with

 the Universal Father.
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 Only an unqualified reality, an absolute, could dare consistently to be dogmatic. Those who assume to be dogmatic must, if consistent, sooner or later be driven into the arms of the Absolute of energy, the Universal of truth,

 and the Infinite of love.

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 If the nonreligious approaches to cosmic reality presume to challenge the certainty of faith on the grounds of its unproved status, then the spirit experiencer can likewise resort to the dogmatic challenge of the facts of science and the beliefs of philosophy on the grounds that they are likewise unproved; they are likewise experiences in the consciousness of the scientist or the philosopher.

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Of God, the most inescapable of all presences, the most real of all facts, the most living of all truths, the most loving of all friends, and the most divine of all values, we have the right to be the most certain of all universe experiences.
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THEOLOGY FROM AN ASTRONAUT

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When I was the last man to

walk on the moon in December 1972,

I stood in the blue darkness and looked in awe

at the earth from the lunar surface.

What I saw was almost too beautiful to grasp.

There was too much logic, too much purpose -

it was just too beautiful to have happend by accident.

It doesn't matter how you choose to worship God ....

He has to exist to have created what I was privileged to see.

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Astronaut Gene Cernan

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MILAGROS (MIRACLES)

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 The small metal objects that in Mexico are

collloquially called milagros (miracles) or
 milagritos (little miracles) belong to a devotional genre
 known as ex-votos. There is a wide range of representational
 forms of milagros, including legs, arms, heads, hearts, angels,
 animals (dogs, chickens, pigs, and horses, among others)
 and entire humans, both male and female, either standing face
 forward or kneeling with hands outstretched in prayer.
 Objects virtually identical to these can be found in
 Andalusia, Spain, and throughout the Mediterranean world, 
where they almost certainly originated and from which
 they diffused to Mexico and other parts of Latin America
 at the time of the Spanish conquest.
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Throughout Mexico, milagros belong to the world of 
popular or folk religion rather than to that of religious othodoxy.
 As devotional objects, they therefore pertain predominantly, 
if not exclusively, to the world of the working classes. 
Members of the intellectual and social elite, however,
 appreciate these small objects for their aesthetic value
 and sometimes collect and display them.
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 Milagros are sold in churchyards and at chapels,
 sanctuaries, basilicas, and cathedrals throughout Mexico.
 Typically, a believer who suffers a serious or persistent health
 problem makes a promesa, or vow, to a saint that, if cured,
 he or she will present the saint with a token of gratitude in the
 form of a milagro. The milagro selected for presentation reflects
 the afflicted body part - eyes, hands, feet, or head, for example.
 In the case of sick farm animals or small children,
 believers choose milagros that represent those victims 
of misfortune. Almost always, presentation of the milagro
 follows upon a cure, in repayment for the miraculous recovery.
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Frequently the promise keeper attaches
 the milagro to the clothing of an image of a saint.
 Even more often,
it is fastened to a cloth hung on the wall
 next to the saint's image.
 These small metal objects facilitate a
 social relationship between supernatural beings
 and believers. Displayed as they are in public,
 they announce to the world the successful realization
 of a divinely aided recovery.
 They have been an integral part of folk
 medical systems in the Mediterranean
 world for centuries.
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Edited from an essay by Stanley Brandes in

FAITH AND TRANSFORMATION -
Votive Offerings and Amulets

Published by the International Museum of Folk Art

Santa Fe, New Mexico
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SCANDINAVIAN PROVERB

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Faith is like a bird
that feels dawn breaking and
sings while it's still dark.
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Author Unknown
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