Ode to Beatrice

[George]

Ode to Beatrice
(A Recount Of What Led Up To Our Meeting)

Looking not a day over 21, the 37.000-year-old Midwayer Lass, Beatrice, is still around -- still on duty. As generation after generation of her human cousins struggle to make their way to the Mansion Worlds, this noble Midwayer stays put, right here on Urantia, luring, pushing, pulling, and coercing her “children” towards a more spiritual life.
It seems an age-long, thankless task, but what rewards must await the 1,111.

Bonaparte, and d’Arc.

French and European history, rather than British or American history, was what was “downloaded” into my moderately-willing-to-participate mind. It was said Napoleon Bonaparte had his good points and his bad. He brought with him the decimal system of weights, volumes and measures. He also caused the deaths of many, and he, himself, suffered a miserable end in isolation.
He also made a grave mistake that is much less commonly known. “Old Nappie” dismissed the French inventor of steam power, and he dismissed him out of hand, as one would a hallucinating fool. Napoleon did not want an armada of steamboats to invade la Grande Bretagne. He chose to attack the Bear instead. Alas… cold comfort. Such were the “Bantam Rooster paranoid tendencies” of one who dared crown himself Emperor, and of all he could see in a year’s travel.

Joan of Arc seemed to have a much better record of achievement. Jehanne became my picture of what is truly daring, but also righteous. She was a key individual in the “mosaic of her time”. When France was on its knees through sheer bad management and wasteful spending, she was the catalyst her French nation urgently needed. She gave them back a semblance of self-pride – restored some of the balance of power between France and England. Her demise, however, was hardly preferable to that of Bonaparte… much swifter, though.
Jehanne d’Arc was my childhood heroine, feisty, determined, and yet very, very spiritual all the same. One could not find a greater opposite in characters between the Maid of Orleans and my one-and-only sister, Jehanne-Colette. The latter, Jé Jé, was an ever-caring, but painfully shy, guardian angel and tutor to me. I represented her constant three-foot shadow.

“The Hidden Gem.”

She was said to be too ashamed, and for some years, to even come out of her house. Regularly punched around like a piece of gym equipment, she again and again sported split lips, countless bruises, and black eyes. She was said to be a beautiful “gem of a woman”, who talked with the Angels and the Saints.
One day, beaten up, dazed and confused, and wandering aimlessly along an Aussie highway, she was picked up by a new business associate of mine. He took her home, and “plumb forgot to bring her back”. And in the years I knew this man I call Warren Mears, he never even trusted me enough to introduce me to his new lady. They lived on the outskirts of our big city… somewhere. She had a new name, he told me, but Gemma would do fine.
On occasions “Gemma” directed Warren Mears to bring me a patient in distress. She somehow knew of the patient, somehow knew about me. In a sense she was the “sister” I had long ago left behind. I knew she was talking to the 1,111, perhaps even some of our Platoon. But leery of contact, she chose to remain anonymous.

Facing the Guardians.

I would have dearly loved to meet up with “Gemma”, but it was not to be. I knew there were others like me, dealing with the mighty “Mille-Cent-et-Onze”, but I still felt like a somewhat “freaky human product” being so involved with them.
The obvious thing was to look back in history, and find others who had formed an alliance with the “Eleven-Eleven”. And facing the Midwayer Chief, ABC-22 (Bzutu), I asked about many in our global history. There were so many contacts over all those centuries.
“What about Jehanne of Orleans?” I asked.
“Elle est chez nous,” was the rather timeless response. [She is (was) with us – or (still) belongs with (to) us]. I decided the Maid had every right to have been my childhood heroine, every right to still be just that. I, in fact, had two sisters called Jehanne.

Dr. Mendoza.

Since I thought all Midwayers were people’s souls, lost about the globe, and presumably searching for their physical bodies they had so carelessly misplaced, their codes never made any sense to me. “Generous by nature”, I awarded all of them new names – a proper identity, I felt, they might need and surely deserved. No one ever complained about being renamed. Some even liked the idea.
Then the sound “Emenohwate” was heard in my clinic, and eventually I was shown a kind of “hologram” of the Spirit Guardian, at work in a hospital far away. Unwilling to call him Emenohwate, I requested Bzutu to think of a suitable new name for him. And in less than a second it was decided he was to be Dr. Mendoza from that day on.
Days later, I finally broke that obvious alphabetical/numerical code.

Dante Alighieri.

I kept wondering about those of the past who had served with the 1,111. But in the years between 1988, and 1993, and through serious injuries, contact with the Midwayers was sporadic, difficult to achieve, and often unreliable. I thought about the poet, philosopher, and writer, Dante Alighieri. His Guides who led him through Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso were Virgil, and Beatrice, I knew. Virgil was easy to identify, Beatrice even easier.
Beatrice was Dante’s childhood sweetheart, but, alas, she later married a rich banker, then died at age twenty-four. Another important Beatrice in Dante’s life was his very own daughter. Yet, the idea that the Philosopher had worked with Sprit Friends, like my own, would not go away.
He was an enlightened one, without much doubt – Balzac called him a “Specialist” -- the recipient of an “Aspect of the Morontia Mind”. It seemed to me that for the period 1292 to 1321 his Divine Comedy might have been just the ticket for every Christian, who could hardly make a move without “committing some mortal sin”. His Purgatorio gave them hope – fry for a short time, then go to Heaven – relative reality for fourteenth century perception, one might suggest. But Dante kept his Inferno handy -- the big stick behind the door.
I figured the name Beatrice (Bé-Ah-Tri-Ce) might well be Ah-Bé-Ce-Tri, or ABC-3. It took me some time to get Midwayer confirmation of that fact. Then I put it out of my mind. “Dante’s clever Guide” was obviously still there among the 1,111, and still doing an important job each day.

The US Connection.

In the last day or two, and just before I left for the US in August of 2000, email posts were coming in hard and fast, and there were daily communications from Post Falls, Idaho. These were from Angus Bowen, whose wife, Gerdean, was regularly talking with, and working with, Midwayer Gorman -- and Midwayer Jack long before Gorman came on the scene. We had something in common – an involvement of decades with the 1,111. Whilst getting my luggage ready, I suddenly thought of Dante and his beautiful Celestial Friend. I wrote a brief post to Angus, informing him of that Midwayer’s good work of some 700 years in the past – the grim, and dark times.
That was it for me for the day. I sent that post along the wires and shut down the computer.

The “Culprit” Owns Up.

The following morning, I was surprised to have two posts from Angus, received at the server just some twenty minutes apart, and I wondered what might have suddenly cropped up in his mind in that short space of time.
The first post informed me that a “new” Midwayer had turned up, evidently just to say hello. But the second post held the comment, “Well, what a coincidence! You posted us about Beatrice, and she was here!”
“Yeah, man. This ol' planet is chockers with coincidences,” I grumbled. And the next moment Beatrice stood beside me -- right beside me -- telling me of her gratitude to have finally been publicly acknowledged for all the good work she did… way back then.
………Looking not a day over 21, this most charming, 37.000-year-old Midwayer Youngster, Beatrice, is still on duty. And as generation after generation of her human charges struggle to make their way to Havona, this noble Midwayer stays right here on Urantia, luring, pushing, pulling, and coercing her beloved “cousins” towards greater spiritual attainment.
It seems an age-long, thankless task, but what unimaginable rewards must await the 1,111 when they, at long last, join us in the upward climb towards their Attainment.
For this humble rookie student of the mighty “Mille-Cent-et-Onze” there was no better “farewell for a time” than the embrace of one who knows only of Love Untold.
She is Beatrice. And her name means, “Making Happy”.

11.11 Progress Group
“Le Bon Dieu est toujours au Volant.”
(The Creator always holds the Steering Wheel)

[George]

Illawarra District, Australia, December 27, 2002.
Midwayer Leader, Beatrice (ABC3).
Subject: “Ode to Dante Alighieri.”

Received by George Barnard.

Beatrice: “I greet you my dearest colleague, and ‘brother in the interesting work’ we do on this planet. It’s a pleasure to gracefully glide into your peaceful domain and plug into your hyperactive mind. It is I, Beatrice, here with you. Yes, it is Beatrice, Ahbecetri, or ABC-3, now at long last, and finally, to the minds of those mortal cousins of ours, the long-time associate of the Sage, Philosopher and Poet of old, our cherished Dante Alighieri, a spiritual giant of his time.

“Although of much greater duration, my task was much the same as the project that you and my younger brother and capable leader – now more commonly referred to by the nickname, Bzutu (ABC-22) – experienced in the lengthy documentation of the many adventures and weird and wonderful happenings of some decades of work and play you were involved with with many of my brothers and sisters, nephews and nieces.

“Few of you in the Progress Group, those who listen to our talks, and those who take in the transcripts you put out there for them to read, would have any idea of how much chitchat ‘clogs up’ the lines of communication about this Australian adventure and ‘that mortal’s midway ghost workers’ – the stories that are told and retold and commented on – and the many laughs that are to be had about the countless misunderstandings of the years that have gone by.

“For me this is the first opportunity that I have to come through to you to say, ‘thank you so much’ for figuring out that it was indeed my work of long ago with my dearest, dearest of all friends and colleagues, Dante, that made possible for Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso to be out there for the people. Well, I want you to be certain, and rest entirely assured that your ‘Divine Comedy work’ of many years and that of my charming brother was not produced in vain, as was recently pointed out to you by our dear brother, Machiventa.

“Countless of your brothers and sisters, countless of the younger generation, and countless of those not yet born, will in time view the work and it will instill in them the determination to seek a level of cooperation with the Midway Forces for the betterment of this world, and to honor Michael and the Father.

“For you at this time, I embrace you, George, and I thank you for drawing the attention to the wondrous work of so many others of your brothers and sisters that have labored with us to produce some great works in these new times of the Correction, and that will be preserved for all eternity. Yes, reports came in long ago that every single paragraph of these writings has already been reproduced on the Mansion Worlds, as happens with so much material of earthly origin.

“I thank you, brother, for taking me by the hand and escorting me into your world from the dim, dark times of history, because it is ever so much our human-like nature that yearns for us to receive recognition for the work we do. I add to this that your earthly brother, Dante, only ever had fleeting images of this celestial lady, who was there to assist him with the mammoth tasks he undertook.

“It was only on rare occasions when he glimpsed my presence, but it delighted me no end that he would actually make record of the humble worker that assisted him with the mighty work of the Celestial Artisans and those Instructors from On High that made the great Alighieri’s work possible.

“You are tired and fatigued, my beloved brother. This is Midwayer Chief, Beatrice, saying, ‘Farewell for now’.”

George: “We thank you, Sis. We all love you.”

*
Notes: Beatrice herewith confirmed that the ‘ABC’ of ABC-3 likely means the first of eight families, and the Red family. The 3 of ABC-3 would mean the third child. The C is likely to be indicative of the Third Creative Force having been involved in the ‘production’ of the Secondary Midwayers, but we don’t actually know this.

Her present career is in teaching. We know not where, or whom she teaches.

© The 11:11 Progress Group
Toujours au Service de Michael.