Ode to Beatrice.

From the Desk of George Barnard.

(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 just 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 “unusual 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 the US of A. These were from people who had regular contact with a number of Midwayers.

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 one of my US contacts, 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 down the wires and shut down the computer.

The “Culprit” Owns Up.

The following morning, I was surprised to have two posts from that individual in the US, received at the server just some twenty minutes apart, and I wondered what might have suddenly cropped up in this person's mind, and 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 Angels