10 — Day 5 - Communal Life Means Sharing Your Peanut Butter

The next night we camped in the pine trees at Lake Tahoe.  I made a bed of pine needles--not as wonderful as advertised.  Two things:  they stuck me all night and the sap got all over my clothes.  The next morning we drove down to the lake to go for a swim and get rid of the road dirt and pine sap.  I had never seen water so blue.  Jumping straight in, I had never experienced water so cold!

Once we were dried off, we climbed back into the car and drove all day, arriving at Scott's Valley outside Santa Cruz just as the sun was setting.  As we drove up the pine-forested mountainside to the commune, I inhaled the scent of pine and eucalyptus.  The setting was idyllic as we pulled off the road to see a large wood cabin nestled in the trees on the side of the mountain.  

As we exited the Mustang, we were greeted by Craig and Sandy, the couple who operated the commune.  We were invited in for a communal meal of rice and vegetables.  Seated at the large plank table, we met another 8 of the commune members.  The commune was composed hippies from all over.  There was a young fellow with long straight black hair.  He looked like a native American straight out of a western movie.  It turned out that he did have a Navajo and Hispanic background.  Then there was Jean, a 16 year old farm girl from Iowa.  [Jean and Dave would later marry.]  Al, was the only one who seemed out of place.  He had very short hair and as I was to later learn, was very much a political and social conservative.  How he got there I still don't know.

Craig and Sandy had been married for a few years.  Sandy's parents actually owned the cabin and had a nice house higher up the hill.  I was never invited or allowed to see their house or meet them.  I got the impression that they were not sympathetic to the agenda of a Jesus Commune.  Craig had been employed as a school bus driver, but was fired when he was discovered with LSD--not an asset while driving a bus full of children!  Craig and Sandy had their own room as did Al.  The rest of us slept on the porch, couch or outside--wherever it was convenient.  We had one communal bathroom.  

There were some rules.  No one was forced to be a Christian, but the whole purpose of the commune was to be a place where hippies could come and recover from the drug lifestyle and be exposed to the lifestyle of a Jesus Freak. That meant no drugs or alcohol.  All food was shared.  Craig made a weekly trip to pickup welfare rice, cheese, milk and peanut butter.  Everyone contributed $5/week.  That went towards paying for food and utilities.

There were occasional evening Bible studies organized, but most of that activity was very casual and personal.  I found that I was being "witnessed to" day and night.  The black-haired Navajo/Latino fellow whose name I cannot remember, spent a lot of personal time with me trying to explain the essentials of this non-traditional Christianity.  

Commune members seemed to rely heavily on little pamphlets called "tracts."   The tracts were about 2" x 4" with about 6-8 pages.  Often, they were illustrated.  I found out later that there were two primary sources for these tracts.  

Campus Crusade for Christ published a tract called "The Four Spiritual Laws." Its argument was that people are separated from God by their sins.  These sins create a chasm between them and God.  Since Jesus was both God and man, he could touch both sides and bridge the chasm.  The chasm stuff made sense, but the God/man stuff was a fairy tale to me.  And the part that I really could not understand was how Jesus' death on the cross made this all possible.  Their explanations of this sounded like bad science fiction.

Then there were "Chick Tracts."  No, these were not for girls or about girls, although that is an interesting marketing idea!  These were written by an extremely fundamentalist Baptist preacher, Jack Chick.  They were illustrated stories, very much like DC superhero comics.  They employed bold colors with flamboyant story lines, often illustrating what it would be like to be trapped in Hell.

The Spiritual Law tracts appealed to reason.  The Chick tracts appealed to emotions like fear and regret.  Neither appealed to me.

What did appeal to me was what I saw in the demeanor of the Jesus Freaks I was meeting.  All of them, except that strange guy Al, were hippies like me who had come out of the drug subculture.  All of them, again except for Al, had been searching for some sort of purpose for their lives.  All of them seemed to be at peace, stress-free, and happy.  All of them seemed to have found something in Jesus.  But all of them came from Christian backgrounds.  What could Jesus do for me as a secular Jew?

Craig seemed to sense my dilemma and suggested that I set all the tracts and arguments aside.  He said:  We are going to a Bible study at a friend's house in Santa Cruz tomorrow night.  He is a real Bible scholar.  Maybe he can give you some better answers to your questions.  Why don't you come with us?

Tomorrow:  Learning to Laugh