Mark Bloomfield's plenary speech delivered to the July 2006 UAI
Conference, "Small Teams in Deep Waters," in Sydney, Australia
* * *
Here and Now
The "Mother of all Missions" as per
the written word
 O
Having largely shunned the conference circuit in favour of my
solitary field work, the repeated requests that I speak at the
Sydney conference about working in "isolation" as supposedly
one of the "smallest teams" in the "deepest waters" this movement
could offer were as often met with "careful what you wish for."
The years of apparent isolation hand-seeding over 8,000 Urantia
Books into learning centres the world over, with several times that
number still in prospect, was apparently supposed to qualify me to
speak in this regard. The bush pilot days saving African elephants
from the ivory poachers, my time with Mother Teresa of Calcutta and
all the free mass-cataract operations in South Asia also probably
didn't help my chances of slipping under the radar this time round.
The free evening schools in North India and later along the
Thai/Burma border which recently helped facilitate the creation of
Freeschools World
Literacy that aims to wipe world illiteracy clean out by
century's end, didn't exactly keep me out of the spotlight either.
The irregular decision to attend the conference was, however, more
down to wanting to see a few old friends plus an idle curiosity as
to this movement's own take in regard to apparent isolation.
Not being one for rehearsed, set speeches (having only ever tried to
speak as the occasion serves), I had, by the final conference day
when I was due to speak, of course heard many perspectives on this
issue. My own tried to reflect how massively I felt the world could
be uplifted if only this [Urantia] movement were to better balance
its socializing in Heaven's Garden with service in Hell's Kitchen:
"Small teams in deep waters?"-- Who?
With the highest revealed truths in a million years in the palm of
our hand, a small army of unseen helpers around us, the powercharge
of a superuniverse behind us, and God Himself impinging upon our
superconscious minds, we're part of the greatest team in all
creation in the smallest, shallowest puddle in all Nebadon.
Tyranny. There's a small team in deep water. Dogmatized religious
fundamentalism. There's another. The entire materialistic age: try
that for a third.
"Isolation?" -- Who? Where?
If lifelong solitary fieldworkers cannot even think of pleading
isolation, then by what wild, wanton stretch of the imagination can
you?
Alone? Frequently. Isolated? Never. There's a subtle but
life-transforming difference.
Selah. Now that those little notions have been put to bed,
let's start again shall we?
With what we are temporal
custodians of, we must be the greatest human potential power since
Christ for bringing a final end to all the horrors, atrocities and
ills of this world. Slum-ridden, famine-stricken overpopulation,
raging and seething militarism, blind consumerism, crippling
degeneracy: the Urantia community is sitting on the God-given,
Heaven-sent final solution to them all. Please stay clear of this
movement's decision making levels if you don't believe that with all
your heart and soul but, if you do, then as for what exactly we
intend doing about it we may wish to ponder this:
We are taught that even on a
good day, the true leaders and teachers out there never exceed one
percent of the population which equates to roughly sixty million
souls worldwide: equivalent to the population of my own country, the
United Kingdom. If this revelation was freely presented to even a
modest percentage of that sixty million, then thank you and
goodnight because that will to all intents and purposes be the
proverbial "it." Accomplish that one little mission, then pack your
bags and go home Loreta because it's all over. If we as a
collectivity achieve that one singularly vital objective then
whatever else we do will by comparison almost not matter. Play
Scrabble if you like.
For critical mass in humanly
engineering the precipitation of the greatest spiritual renaissance
there can ever be will have therein been attained. Several tens of
thousands of Urantia-Book-savvy Amadons, Abners, Simon Peters and
Mother Teresas all together at once? Er, excuse me, say what? No
contrary power on the face of this Earth could ever hope to stand in
their way; anyone or anything that did would simply be squashed
perfectly flat. Brighter than a thousand suns, we would in spiritual
terms have generated power so fantastic here as to be what mothers
tell their children bedtime stories about for an entire age to come.
To a newly inspired and
consecrated readership with all the advantages of modern day
transport and communication, the actual real life accomplishment of
this mission of them all is by no means beyond the realms of
physical possibility. Doesn't that excite you? Doesn't that make you
feel in some way called? Have you ever in your entire life felt so
wildly empowered?
For my own part, this should
explain to all my ongoing hand-seeding of the world field loading
the equation towards this very tipping point in world history --
especially knowing, as we all do, that many of the most able leaders
and teachers are to be found in some of the world's toughest
environments far removed from the relative ease and comfort of the
western world.
And with or without popular
support (for I've survived both), I'll never quit so long as I have
the health to continue. In vogue, out of vogue, it's all the same to
me.
* * *
Revelation is by nature
typically reciprocal and progressive -- reciprocal in that first
comes the top-down, God-to-man revelation and then comes the human
response to such as a revelation of man and woman to the onlooking
universe. Jesus of Nazareth first revealed God to man before making
a new revelation of man to God; progressive in that each successive
revelation both builds upon previous revelations and prepares the
way for future ones. Our obvious problem here is that epochal
revelation #4 saw the Son of God himself laying down his life not
merely for his friends but for his enemies: a seemingly impossible
act to better until, that is, you look again at our mission of
bringing this revelation to that sixty million who will in turn each
find their own best ways of imparting such truths to the rest of
humanity.
Suppose one of our lone
fieldworkers ventures, books in hand, into the wrong ghetto and
doesn't come out. Not if but when that happens, he
will firstly have laid his life down for his enemies, alone and
without the company of friends, which will immediately have beaten
the Nazarene at his own game who enjoyed the company of his friends
right up to his arrest. Secondly, he will have done so with no
expectation of a future reward whereas the Master, by so bestowing
himself here, earned unquestioned sovereignty of a vast universe:
not a bad little paycheque for "but a day's work." Thirdly, our lone
fieldworker would not once have undergone the faith-compromising
experience of direct contact with superhuman personalities as did
Jesus with Gabriel and the Father Melchizedek during the
transfiguration, for example.
This, of course, is not to
suggest that we all rush out and get ourselves mugged in the nearest
slum, but rather to merely offer that fifth epochal love isn't fifth
epochal love until it somehow distinguishes itself from fourth
epochal love in some upwardly progressive manner.
But this brings us somewhat inevitably to something of a fork in the
road for the Urantia movement, depending largely upon whether or not
the readership is content to allow this movement to deteriorate into
as great a millstone around the neck of the fifth epochal revelation
as has the pitifully subdivided Christian church demonstrably become
to the fourth:
Seek dominion over fields wherein you have not laboured and
you are, by my definition, a priest; seek no dominion even
over those fields wherein you have laboured and you are, by
my definition, a fieldworker....
As the teachings of the Urantia Book can now be seen as only the
first half of the fifth epochal revelation -- i.e. the top-down,
God-to-man half -- any "priest-led" movement under the pretence of
endlessly studying and dissecting the book's teachings only serves
as that breed's new preferred vehicle of self-perpetuation for the
next thousand years. There is no reciprocal man-to-God element of
revelation here for this strata of society has of course been at
this very same game for the last half million years. This is the
"spectral" movement in that, while it makes a point of being the
most visible, it is at the same time the least real.
The "divide and rule" ethos of the priest types epitomized:
"We've got 20 million dollars so give us the seats of honour and do
things exactly our way or we'll create new ones with both our own
rival competing brands of movement and book even if the resulting
havoc ultimately turns whole religions against the revelation."
By night and day contrast, the "unite and serve" ethos of the
fieldworkers has no time for fancy titles and seats of honour,
instead preferring to lose themselves in the work of freely carrying
revealed truth to the ends of the Earth that all truthseekers might
have a fighting chance of finding what they're looking for, whilst
the equally important "homesteaders" of such a progressive movement
all but trip over themselves to support them.
These are the types who at some point snap the Urantia Book shut and
say, "Okay. I get it. The Gods have revealed Themselves to me; now
it's my turn to reveal myself to the Gods." What happens next
becomes their gift to the onlooking universe by way of reciprocal
revelation as manifested as their gift to humanity by way of real
and tangible social service. Any Urantia Book study in the field-led
movement would thus be seen as simply a means to an end, whereas in
the priest- led shadow movement such a never-ending study industry
would become the end in itself.
Any productive member of a field-led movement could silence a
hundred priest types with the calm pronouncement, "If you wish to
outrank me then first outserve me."
Leading as they do from the front rather than the rear, genuine
fieldworkers (as opposed to the inevitable charlatans and
pretenders) would always prioritize the work of the field to routine
social gatherings, but in just that way does their absence begin to
take on a kind of presence, and the resulting silence, a kind of
beckoning call. Whoever doesn't attend a [Urantia] conference may be
of greater kingdom significance than who does.
And when this Mother of all Missions yields this revelation's first
outright martyr we'll not be overly sorry, as it will not so much be
an accident if all our fieldworkers don't come home as much as if
they do. If we're not losing the occasional alpha-plus male in the
line of duty then as far as I'm concerned we're not trying hard
enough.
"Steady on Bloomfield," one or two of you start to mutter, "You
can't say things like that."
Yes I can.
This is not a movement for weaklings, cowards or the ultra-selfish,
for we have a world-liberating mission before us in which it will
soon enough be realised that freedom is rarely free. And where a
priest-led movement would only lead to the future-eternal prison
cell of regret, a field-led -- or at least for now a field-friendly
movement -- would aspire to set us all free, from the least
fortunate child all the way up to the Supreme Being.
In leaving "The Faith of Jesus" as the final paper in the Urantia
Book, can you not discern the revelators practically begging the
cream of our youth to attempt to go one better? A new kind of faith
will need neither the company of friends nor any hint of a future
reward, much less coffee and doughnuts with Gabriel.
Why always settle for God raising the bar and inviting us all to
catch up when we ourselves can occasionally raise it, clear it, then
invite God to catch up? Have you no sense of audacity? Page 729
reminds us that our immediate creators love seeing a little human
"pluck" so why be so mean as to deprive them of their amusement when
human evolution is so obviously their favourite bloodsport?
And with all the means currently at our disposal, it's not so much
whether a few dedicated fieldworkers could outserve all the apostles
put together as much as their being hardly worth mentioning if they
don't. Under such circumstances, what wouldn't even the higher
angels give to change places with us if only for a single year of
human life?
You, dear reader, are of critical importance to the present and
future spiritual economy of this blighted sphere. Almost certainly
in all human history have human hands never been so empowered to
influence for better or worse an entire age to come. For you are a
living, breathing part of the total human response to the fifth
epochal revelation, a response which of a surety is in turn destined
to become either Caligastia's worst nightmare -- or Michael's.
In search of the Father's will,
Mark Philip Bloomfield
* * *
Read about Mark Bloomfield's
South African Urantia Book Seeding Mission
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