Passage Read Free Page A

constant companion in the form of Brother Dawid. From day one, he was also appointed to assist in my early study of the Bible.
    The first passage I learned, which I still know by heart, was this one: ‘Now when Jesus heard these things, he said unto him … sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor, and though shalt have treasure in heaven.’
    ‘You are tethered to things in the material world,’ said Brother Dawid. ‘If you are going to stay here you need to rid yourself of everything.’
    ‘I don’t actually have anything,’ I said, although it wasn’t quite true. I had a two-door Datsun, worth maybe $1500, plus other bits and pieces: a little cassette player, a two-man tent and a few camping supplies.
    ‘You need to get rid of all that, but especially the car,’ Brother Dawid said on hearing this. ‘There isn’t a way to keep it and truly be at peace.’
    He accompanied me off the property to a small shop with a petrol bowser in a township outside Euroa (I know that now; at the time, I was told only that we were cycling back into the Outside World). Brother Dawid suggested that I call Mum from the phone box. As a parent myself, it’s with great shame that I admit that this was the first contact I’d made with home in three days. (Yes, Mum had called the police, whotold her, rightly as it turned out, that I’d probably just wandered off and would return of my own accord. I don’t suppose that either of us imagined it would take seven years.)
    In any case, my step-father, Gary, answered. I told him what I’d done – renounced my name, taken a new one (Brother Zephaniah, if you must know) and given myself to Christ. As such, I needed him to sell the Datsun and send the money to my new friends.
    ‘These Jesus People,’ said Gary, ‘do they take cheques, or only cash?’
    I gave him the number of a post-office box in Euroa. He took it down and then said, ‘Your mother’s been worried, by the way.’
    I couldn’t think what to say about that, so I put the handset back on the hook and left the phone box.
    Two weeks later, Brother Dawid came with new verses from the Bible, this time about the difficulty of getting camels through the eyes of needles, and rich men into heaven.
    ‘How did you live when you were a student?’ he said. ‘Did you have a part-time job, or any kind of allowance?’
    I’d been getting what was then called child endowment – a small payment from the government that used to be given directly to mothers, some of whom passed it on to their children instead of giving them pocket money.
    ‘You need to arrange things so that allowance gets sent here,’ said Brother Dawid.
    ‘But what if I need that money when I go home?’ I said.
    ‘You are home,’ he said. ‘Everything you need is right here.’
    I arranged to have the money sent to the commune, and when I got too old for child endowment, I went on unemployment benefits and had them sent to the commune, too. All such money was pooled, and kept in what we called the Red Tin, the keys to which were held by Elder Brothers who also kept an accountant’s Red Book.
     
    ‘But what were you doing all day?’ That’s also of interest to people who know I spent time in a commune. ‘It can’t have been all prayers and chores’ – but it was, in fact, all prayers and chores.
    There was no electricity on the property, except in those houses occupied by the Leader, who wasn’t always there. As such, much energy was spent keeping warm in winter, collecting wood, collecting eggs from the hens, washing clothes in the river, and cooking food over open fires.
    I pottered around in a brown tunic and grew a beard (and my toenails).
    I didn’t question any part of the routine for several years. I suppose that was because my new life suited me. I hadn’t been able to decide on a path – now I was upon one and the need for decision making had been taken from me. I wouldn’t have to worry about finding a job and keeping it, or