Places Where I've Lived: Dilaram 2

I nick-named our community "Delirium House."  Dan met a couple in Oregon whom he invited to live with us.  We were at a Christian music festival, a series of outdoor concerts attended by thousands of middle class white young evangelicals who wanted all the trappings of sex drugs and rock and roll without having to actually sin in order to get them.  In a word I found them all pathetic.  I got hit by heat stroke and was sick for a couple of days when we returned. 

Jeff moved in, whom I have already written about.  He was the Idealist and later married Beryl
 or Bright Eyes.  She would not be appearing on the scene for another couple of years.  Jeff had spent nine months in the original Dilaram community in Kabul, Afghanistan and like me was quite alarmed at the mess Dan and Helen were making of things.  What had begun as a beautiful and gentle vision of a welcoming Christian community that was more interested in caring for people than proselytizing was being degraded into a cruel and judgmental cult by Dan, a rabid fundamentalist with the most hideous Turn or Burn mentality. 

In September Dan and Helen were gone and Skip and Pam moved with us from Oregon with their three kids in tow.  They were lovely people, kind, affectionate and simply fun to hang out with.  They were very good with people who had been traumatized, gentle and nonjudgmental.  The children slept in the basement.  I found myself doing a lot of childcare and actually enjoying it.  Then Dave and Debby moved in from the YWAM (Youth With A Mission) "base" in Hawaii, apparently to correct the "errors" of Skip and Pam.  In one single day they kicked an entire family, Skip, Pam and their three, all younger than eight years, children.  They justified it as doing God's work, that they were corrupting the community, that they were hindering the work of God, or maybe that for reasons undisclosed, Dan Gardener simply did not like them and would brook no challenge to his authority.  So, presuming they were God's instrument doing God's work they threw a vulnerable family with three small children out on the street.

We carried on.  People were already beginning to move out.  They didn't say as much but it was clear they wanted to be out before Dan and Helen returned in January.  I stayed on though I felt a strong need to get out as well.  Still, I was curious.  I wanted to see what would happen next.  One of my major character defects.

In November 1978 I had a dream that still sticks with me now.  I was in some kind of valley surrounded by very poor people wearing rags.  We were all lined up together with our empty bowls to be fed from a trough.  It was a kind of green pea soup, very flavourful and very nutritious.  I held out my bowl to receive my portion.  I knew that this was where I must live and this was where I was going to grow.  Just a few months later I was to learn just how true and meaningful this dream.