Listening by Dave Mckay - HTML preview

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Chapter Fourteen--Reaching Out

Seven people, each following quite different and largely separate spiritual paths, emerged from that classroom after three days of intense fellowship, with an exciting concept of a world where each person would take no thought for their own material needs, but would just do what they could to help others and to listen to God. Vaishnu had done an excellent job of inspiring them all, although David was quick to point out that what he was saying was really coming from the teachings of Jesus. They agreed that they were each prepared to give up all other plans or ambitions in order to create such a world.

Ming packed her belongings, and the seven new-found friends squeezed into Chaim's station wagon for the drive to Newcastle. Ben Black was there when they arrived, with five Aboriginal friends, bringing to thirteen the number of occupants in the sprawling two-bedroom home unit.

Vaishnu and Ben

"Vaishnu, your flight to India leaves in two days. What do you want to do about it?" Chaim asked soon after they had unpacked.

"Of course I must go; but I will need help. With my people I can lead, but I was not thinking before about teaching non-Hindus. So much will be different now."

"I fink I should go with him," said Ben.

Ben had never been outside of Australia, and, in common with many other Aborigines, he went through periods of great lonesomeness once away from his beloved homeland. But he showed no worry about the decision now. Chaim arranged to purchase a ticket for Ben, and the two men took a train to Sydney for the flight to Chennai.

Ben and Vaishnu were an ideal team. They were both humble and teachable. Over the next few months, with only the slightest hints, Ben was able to steer Vaishnu away from Hindu references which would hinder his dealings with non-Hindus. Ben's full-blooded Aboriginal skin was his ticket to acceptance by the Tamils of South India, although their journeys through India ultimately led them to settle in New Delhi.

One by one they had located many of the old followers and expanded the vision of these people to include all faiths and all countries. New recruits started to pour in from amongst Muslims, Sikhs, and even Christians. All of these people resumed the offer of free labour. As news of the offer spread, and as their workforce grew, so did public interest.

Media coverage resumed, but Vaishnu himself (with promptings from Ben) stayed out of sight this time. Of course, this secrecy only heightened the curiosity of both the public and the media, about who was behind the new movement.

Ming and Carl

Ming flew out of Sydney for Beijing just two weeks after Vaishnu and Ben.

She was accompanied by Carl Chang, a young Sydney political activist, who had briefly visited China three years earlier, as a representative for an Australian trade union. His father was half Chinese and half Aboriginal, hence the Chinese surname. Ming emailed her parents that she had quit her studies, but did not inform them of her plans or of her whereabouts.

On the flight to Beijing, they sat next to a retired Chinese businessman, in his sixties. He too had been searching for the truth, and what they shared with him touched his heart.

"Equality and justice can only come through faith and love," Ming explained in Cantonese. "Communism tries to do this with force, but there is a better way." They went on to talk about people trusting God for their material needs, and about a community of people who willingly give up all private ownership.

Something clicked, and the businessman, Ree Woo, invited them to share his home with him. A week later, he was liquidating his assets and planning ways to finance this new movement in China. He not only sent Ming and Carl on their way to their next destination, but he started recruiting others in the movement himself.

It was only a matter of weeks before word was spreading in China as it had in India. The movement, with its emphasis on spiritual communism, attracted several idealists in the government, who left their positions (amid protests from colleagues) to take up this new form of communism, where people serve one another freely, for love and not for profit. Once again, the media became involved, and once again, the leaders (Ming and Carl in this case) stayed out of the limelight.

Every new member of the movement also became a new recruiter, so that Ming and Carl only needed to find one or two receptive spirits in each area of the country for those members to spread the message further after the pioneering couple had moved on.

Mashallah and Gambuti

Mashallah left Australia about the same time that Ming and Carl flew to Beijing. He was accompanied on a flight to Indonesia, by Gambuti, a tribal elder from Arnhem Land. Gambuti was a handsome elder, with a big head of white hair, and a bushy white beard, both of which made him stand out wherever he went.

The pair spent a week doing volunteer work as cleaners at a beach resort in Bali before they met their first disciple. He was a tourist from Germany, who had been travelling the world in search of truth. He decided to stay on permanently in order to continue the search for other believers in that country.

It was more than a month before they made their first Muslim convert, and then it was Gambuti who figured most strongly in the conversation.

"You talk too much about perfect," he had said to someone who was defending Islam on some minor point. "You say your book is perfect. You talk like your prophet is perfect, and your organisation is perfect. But only All ah is perfect."

The man they were talking to did not change; but there was a young Muslim woman listening nearby, and she approached the pair when the conversation ended, hoping to learn more.

"All ah will bring together all who are open to his Spirit," Gambuti explained to her. "But we must listen, and we cannot hear when we are full of our own answers."

Sometimes Gambuti and Mashallah would spend a week or more just waiting on the leadings of the Spirit, then they would get a strong impression about where to go or who to help, and before long, they would have located one more person who was ready to drop everything and become part of the chain reaction that was spreading all over Asia. They spent about three months planting seeds in the hearts of people in Indonesia, before moving on to Bangladesh and then Pakistan, where they ministered to many more Muslims.

In Australia itself, Molly, David, and Sheree had started by approaching three different sub-cultures; but in the end, only Molly stayed on in the southern continent.

Molly and Bess

Molly was helped by Bess, a younger, stronger, heavy-set motherly woman from a mission station in Western Australia. Bess had left her youngest child in the care of her oldest daughter in order to join this movement, a decision that had been very difficult for her. Together, Molly and Bess were finding far more than the handful of Aboriginal assistants that David and Ben had been able to round up prior to the meeting at Macquarie University. And it wasn't long before their followers were reaching out to the White population of Australia as well. A race that had often been maligned for its indifference to work, responded with enthusiasm to the idea of labouring for God and for love, even if many of their workers lacked professional skills.

Converts would do tasks as simple as mowing lawns or weeding gardens, but with the help of the media, they were soon getting more requests for help than they could handle.

At one point the two women made a trip to Papua New Guinea to locate a disciple. They then took a trip to New Zealand, where they met two Maoris who were open to the leadings of the Spirit. After they returned to Australia, their recruits carried on looking for others on their own islands, and on other islands in the Pacific.

The strangest thing about this new movement was its adaptability.

Converts all quit their jobs and dedicated all that they owned to the cause; they all spent a lot of time just listening; and they all seemed to travel a lot. But when it came to creeds and doctrines, there were almost as many variations as there were people involved.

Sheree and Bobbi

Sheree started by focussing on the New Age movement. She was aided by a young Aboriginal woman from Queensland, named Bobbi, who had a university degree, and who had done social work amongst various Aboriginal communities around that state. The two were like sisters, with abundant enthusiasm for the work that they were doing.

Some of Chaim's Quaker connections were the first to join in with what these women had started. Together, they attended everything from Rainbow Gatherings to country music festivals, where they would participate, help out (for free, of course), or set up an area where they would make themselves available for one-on-one conversation, therapeutic massage, or free workshops on learning to listen.

After only three weeks of this, Sheree and Bobbi felt that they could leave what they had started, for the others to carry on, and they themselves took off for Tokyo, from where they were able to reach out to Japan and Korea over the next six months.

David and Charmane

David's partner was a twelve-year-old girl named Charmane, who came from the Northern Territory. Like any other twelve-year-old, Charmane was full of energy and curiosity; but at the same time, she was unusually quiet. Ben and David had been encouraged by her mother, Rose, to take her with them, because Rose herself could not leave her other children. She had insisted that Charmane could see and feel the same things that she felt and saw. Over the ensuing months, David came to recognise the truth in this. Charmane had a spiritual maturity that amazed and impressed him.

"I've scouted out four different church services for us to attend tomorrow,"

David said on the first Saturday after he and Charmane had been teamed up.

The young girl said nothing. She just folded her arms across her chest and raised her eyebrows politely.

"We need to look for opportunities to talk to the people; can you watch for that tomorrow?"

Charmane said nothing; but David hardly noticed.

"The first two churches let people give testimonies during the meeting. I can do that. But the others, we'll have to wait till after the meetings finish, and then start up talk with people coming out of the service."

It went like this for three weeks, with David making plans and Charmane's reticence being ignored. On the third week, Charmane just got up and walked out of the service. David had been waiting for a chance to speak, and now he was going to miss it, to chase after Charmane and see what was bothering her.

He caught up with her in a park not far from the church. She was sitting on the ground, pulling out blades of grass and chewing on them.

"What's wrong?" he asked. "I was just gonna speak when you walked out."

"Ya ain't s'posed ta be talkin' jist yet," Charmane replied. "'Member? Listening?"

"Yeah, that's what we're trying to tell them about. Don't you want others to know about listening too?"

"Hey, but they ain't listenin' either, are they?"

David had to admit that they had not achieved anything in the past three weeks. Several arguments, maybe, but no converts.

Just then, Charmane jumped to her feet and raced over to the playground area of the park. She took a seat in a swing next to one occupied by a boy about her own age. David did not know what to do or say, so he just watched... and listened for a change.

"You come from round here?" the boy asked.

"Nah," Charmane replied.

"Where ya from?"

"Up near Rockhampton."

"So what're ya doin' down here?"

"Lookin' for people."

"What sort of people?"

"People who wants ta listen to God."

There was silence for a while, and then the boy spoke.

"You sound like my dad. He's over there at the picnic table."

Needless to say, by the end of the afternoon, David and Charmane had found their first convert. They stayed away from churches for the next two weeks and just listened. Near the end of the two weeks, they met someone else who was looking for what they had to offer; and about the same time, they both had a conviction that their target audience was not to be in Australia. They, too, were needed in China.

They flew to Guangzhou, in southern China. For the next six months, they never came in direct contact with either Ming or Carl. Instead, they were led to Christian believers, most of whom were connected with underground churches, scattered across the country. David rented a room in Hong Kong, where he worked during the week producing literature for themselves and for the other five 'tribes', as the groups came to be called. Charmane stayed with believers in Guangzhou.

*

 It took a while before each of the six teams came to realise just how rapidly their movement was growing. Their own efforts were miniscule by comparison to the exponential growth that was coming from the people whom they kept bumping into and then leaving in their wake. In just six months, they had grown to more than fifty thousand people in Australasia and the islands of the Pacific, and they were still growing.

There were links between each of them, including access to an Internet site which Chaim had set up, but on the whole it was just their mutual commitment to 'listening' that seemed to keep them together.