Listening by Dave Mckay Mckay (best summer books .TXT) 📕

There had been the dream about the little girl, just before the fall of America, then the synchronicity of everyone turning up at Macquarie University, and now this. In between, Chaim had not experienced anything else that he would regard as miraculous. He still had his underlying bias against miracles, which he always associated with religious fundamentalism and ignorant superstitions.

So was God trying to say something about his attitude toward fundamentalism, perhaps?

Grabbing hold of a nearby rock, Chaim decided to try it once again.

"Start," he said softly. Nothing happened. "Start. Start raining!" His voice was louder, more demanding this time. But again nothing happened.

"Okay, so I've lost it," he said with a shrug. "It's kind of a relief anyway."

But he knew that what had happened before was not his imagination.

"Miracles happen. I can accept that," he said to himself. "But they're not the norm. Just exceptions for exceptional circumstances."

Then he looked up and said, "And that was one hell of a circumstance that you just got me out of. Thank you. Thank you."

Chaim smiled as he contemplated what was happening to him spiritually. "So I'm becoming a fundamentalist. I believe in miracles!" He thought for a moment. "Okay, I can live with that. But what do I do about it?"

He thought more specifically about his problems with David and Mashallah. Obviously, they couldn't both be right... not perfectly right. But they had some things in common too. They both were looking for a messiah, and they both called him Jesus. This bothered Chaim. Vaishnu was looking for a messiah too, but that had not bothered Chaim. Why?

Could it be because Vaishnu's messiah was not called Jesus? How was it that he could tolerate things in non-Christians that he could not tolerate in Christians? Maybe, for all of his talk about tolerance, he really did have a blind spot when it came to Jesus. And maybe when it came to listening, this same blind spot was more like a deaf spot.

"Okay, if that's it, then I apologise," he said to God. "Could it be as simple as that? If that's the problem, I'm willing to change. Is all of this just about Jesus?"

Chaim closed his eyes, and instantly an image appeared in his brain of a man on a big white horse, wielding a huge blazing sword. Some words popped into his brain at the same time: "His name is the Word of God."

He knew instinctively that the man was Jesus, and he was overcome by the power of the revelation. In all of his listening previously, he had not seen images or heard words. It was always just silence. God had used the silence; but he now understood that what God really had wanted to do was to talk to him. And what had kept him from hearing had been his prejudice against Jesus. Oh, he had been prepared to accept Jesus as a great philosopher, and he truly did respect much of what Jesus had been recorded as saying. But now he was coming face to face with the Man on the White Horse, the Word of God. This was Jesus in all his splendour... a Jesus with absolute authority. And Chaim literally bowed at his feet, ashamed of how he had treated him in the past.

"Forgive me," he said with heartfelt sorrow. "Forgive me!"

(Table of Contents)

Chapter Sixteen--The Cornerstone

Learning to listen, as the Aborigines do, had produced a powerful change in Chaim. But now he was starting to actually hear things from God, and it had an equally dramatic effect on him. He had, in accepting the authority of Jesus, a starting place... a cornerstone, from which to build a broader understanding of all that he experienced.

And what a cornerstone it was! Chaim devoured everything that Jesus said, with an understanding that he was going to do his best to follow Jesus... obey his instructions... submit to his authority. He had become an unabashed Christian in the true sense of the word. And what he was being called to build (He learned with delight.) was not some Christian sect; it was to be Christianity as Jesus taught it and as Jesus lived it. Chaim observed that what went on in so many denominations and churches was no more based on the teachings of Jesus than were any number of service clubs or political parties.

But in the teachings of Jesus he discovered explanations for life that he had never even imagined before. He heard God speaking most forcefully through the Gospels, but he also started to receive information in his listening times... words, visions, even an occasional song. They took some practice to understand, but they were invaluable when it came to filling in the gaps between what the Gospels said and what he needed to do and say each day himself.

His fears about falling into the traps that he had seen other Christians fall into appeared to be groundless. He was still able to exercise discretion, to observe and criticise his own behaviour, and to recognise the roots of hypocrisy. Belief in miracles, submission to the authority of Jesus, and even faith in the prophetic parts of the Bible did not make Chaim anything like the fundamentalists with whom he had always associated such things. The whole world had been conned into believing that right wing Christianity was built on the teachings of Jesus when it was almost exactly opposite. Chaim had found the real thing.

* * *

During a visit to his old meeting in Newcastle, two weeks after the drowning incident, the "quaking" finally expressed itself in words... words that were backed up with a deeply changed life. But even before he spoke, Chaim knew that what he said was not so important as the fact that this was the right time and the right place. He could have stood up and burped and what followed would have happened just as surely. Such was the power of the Spirit that Sunday morning.

"I've been a thief," he began. "I've taken the social benefits of being a Quaker without knowing personally the One whom we call the Seed. I have enjoyed the peace and the holy silence which was purchased with the blood of early Friends; even as I have laughed at their commitment, despised their extremism, and boasted of my own uncertainty. Week after week I went through the motions of worshipping God. But now I can say that I have found Him. I have found the One for whom early Friends were willing to suffer and die, and I can testify that it is a whole new level of living."

Then he turned toward those in the meeting.

"Friends, do you know him? Are you really a child of the Light? We talk of this infinite ocean of light and love, but have you ever swum in it? Conformity to a people is not enough. It takes a hunger for something better, a willingness to be changed in the deepest places of your being.

"I believe God wants a response from each of us... today. Do you feel it? I'm not imagining it, am I? This could be the most important day of your life. What are you going to do with it?"

Chaim spoke with earnestness; but there was something present in that room which went beyond what he was saying. Some were speechless with embarrassment and not a little shocked that he should be speaking with such authority. But others were touched deeply. A few produced tissues with which to wipe tears from their eyes.

After a long silence, a young man stood up.

"I came here three years ago," he said, "seeking this Light, this power that had made Quakerism so great; but what I found seemed to be only the remnants of bygone days. It was better than nothing, but I have longed for more. I want this that Chaim has spoken of. I want to change and I want to be changed. You don't know how much I've wanted it." His voice was cracking as he spoke the final lines, and when he finished, he turned and faced his chair before falling to his knees in front of it, with his head resting on the seat.

He sobbed quietly for a few moments before another member, a young woman this time, slipped off her seat and knelt similarly in front of it. She too had tears running down her cheeks.

Then others joined the movement of the Spirit, some just bowing their heads, but others kneeling in submission to the One whom they sought now with all of their hearts. Two or three stood and walked conspicuously out, but the others took no notice. Something was happening that was much more important than whatever was bothering them. And it was going to echo around the world.

(Table of Contents)

Chapter Seventeen--Free Work

A dozen members of Molly's 'tribe' had joined in with a handful of parents to do some urgent landscaping at a preschool in Western Sydney. The trucks delivering the topsoil were only available during school hours when most parents were at work, so the principal had turned to one of the new believers. Molly's growing army of volunteers was in great demand all over the country.

Chaim hadn't seen Molly and Bess for a few weeks, so he slipped over to the site to have a word with them.

"Great to see such enthusiasm," he said to Bess as they looked out on the playground area from the window of the staff room.

"We bin gettin' lotsa calls," Bess replied. "Tomorruh dis mob'll be letter-boxing most of Parramatta with some health pamphlets, bout AIDS or sumpin."

Bess and Molly were a good team. Molly was much older and wiser, but Bess had the push and energy to keep the team going. In their separate ways they both had a gentle and loving disposition that inspired others.

Just then Molly poked her head in the door from the hallway outside.

"Chaim, ABC feller wants ta talk to you out here," she said.

"Molly, you know I can't do that," Chaim whispered intently. "Did you tell him...?."

"Didn't tell him nuthin', Chaim. He told me. Says he knows you, and he knows you're here."

"What's his name?" Chaim asked.

"Bum, or sumpin like dat. Geoffrey Bum," she said with a smirk at such a rude name.

The name was familiar, but he couldn't place it. "Does he have anyone with him?"

"Fella with a TV camera."

"You say he knows my name? Bring him in, but not the cameraman."

When the big man walked through the door, it all came back. He was the reporter who interviewed Vaishnu when Chaim first met the guru in Chennai.

"Sorry to bother you, Mr. Rosenberg," Baum said as he reached out his big hand.

"Call me Chaim," Chaim replied. "Geoffrey... yes, Geoffrey. I don't know how you knew I was here, but it's very important that no one know who I am."

"I figured it from what's happening in India. The BBC sent me to ferret out a connection between the two movements. I had an appointment to film the volunteers today, and I spotted you going into the school."

"Geoffrey, you can cover what you like, but I can't come into it. No one must know that I have anything to do with this."

"Sure, I can do that,"