On 18th July 2019 one of the seminal figures in the Urantia readers’ movement in Britain and the world was suddenly and cruelly taken from us. According to media reports, Mark, who was 54, was involved in a ‘brawl’ or some sort of violent altercation at a pub in Swansea, and died of the injuries he sustained.
Many of you who are reading this will not have known Mark. It is more than a decade, closer to two, since Mark’s path and mine crossed. He came into our lives quite suddenly, around 1994, when he turned to the Urantia Foundation office in Britain, which I was running at the time, and offered to take a stock of Urantia Books in his car around Britain and donate them to libraries. It was my job to provide the stock, and the addresses of the libraries. Mark spent weeks and weeks on the road, living frugally and often sleeping in his car, and successfully completed the mission. Next he decided to donate to Britain’s prison libraries. He also toured Ireland, donating Urantia Books to public libraries as well. He was a young man of energy and determination.
Mark had his sights set on other ways of helping mankind as well. I still recall him telling us eagerly, as he loaded up his car for the British donation mission, of his plan to go to India and start a series of cataract clinics for the poor, thus saving the eyesight of thousands and thousands of Indians. He succeeded in raising money to do this. Mark spent quite a long time in India, and while there, in Calcutta, he became an assistant to Mother Teresa. It was this facet of his life that the British media picked up on in announcing his death.
Mark broadened his sights still further and became something of a wandering citizen of the world. He decided, with the help of book donations from Urantia Foundation, to visit many countries in Africa and Asia where the Urantia Book was completely unknown. I can’t say how successful his mission was in the long term, but I do recall publishing some of his reports from far-flung places about his latest run-in with the authorities, in the earlier incarnation of our Ascender newsletter, and the need to wait for ages in some African town for a shipment of books to arrive, held up by customs.
And it was during his world-touring phase that I eventually lost touch with Mark, and so it came as a surprise to even hear that he was located in Swansea. Mark had many unique qualities – an ascetic selflessness, a burning idealism that often made him short with people who lacked his vision. He did have a sense of humour, but one that was completely free of Ego. One always felt with Mark that he was thinking “my goal’s beyond”, and so I confess that I thought, when I heard that he had died suddenly, at such a young age, that the mansion worlds had been eagerly waiting for him. He gave off the sense of a candidate for fusion.
Rest in peace, Mark. Chris Moseley, Editor
Charlie Fox recalls his friend Mark:
Mark is irreverent and a chance taker, being so in love with truth, and appreciating his dark and acerbic mark sense of humour, I can only address writing an obituary in the full light, as Mark lived his earthly life and explored his own nature, his own duality, his material and spiritual self.
Because of this, he could be humble, and then arrogant, retiring, then aggressive, mild, then opinionated, kind, then disdainful.
Any less than addressing these, would definitely disappoint the man as Mark challenged us to love him as himself, not as what was expected of him.
Flashes of cosmic brilliance were seen alongside barbaric, bombastic enjoyment of life and almost spiritual gangsterism in his waylaying and slaying of all he saw as a barrier to truth.
He was a man of mystery, and loved being able to be mysterious. This was central to his personality, I once told him he was a frustrated secret agent, which made him laugh.
I could relate well to him on a number of levels, and we shared a camaraderie, up to his sheer love of shock value and winding people up, for a purpose.Mark was a misunderstood magician who left both hurt and puzzled people in his wake, as well as those he totally inspired.
I was very impressed by his Indian efforts, his multitudinous works, and utterly annoyed by his lack of care about his behaviour at home, to my mind at the time, a saint, should more or less be a Saint. Yet this is one thing I learned from Mark, which proved any person could achieve, no matter what their station or status. Ever since I have seen more human spoiling the “Guru” in my own experience, of proudly flawed Shaolin monks for example, not living up to Hollywood, being drunks and boors and carousers.
However he did not hesitate to shut people out of his life should he find them not functional, he had a well balanced sense of what works and what does not.
Mark shot from pillar to post, shining, smashing, speeding, hiding, like a pinball.
This pinball wizard I shared a house with then for six months in 1997. It was an experience to see both sides of the man, along with his drive to success in the universe.
He was the person who introduced me to the UB, I’m not going to say the standard devotional “… and I’m eternally grateful for that…” I’m not one for trite comment, which is partly mostly why Mark and I got on, but I am grateful for my experience of someone who sprang into another world, even as he lived in this one – by his deeds, not the Urantia book, that is Mark’s lesson to the movement. It’s not just a book club, DO SOMETHING IN THE WORLD.