HERE AND NOW
Mark Bloomfield's plenary speech delivered to the July 2006 UAI Conference, "Small Teams in Deep Waters,"
in Sydney, Australia
The "Mother of all Missions" as per the written word

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