Me in my punk days at 21
by Br Gilbert Joseph of the Divine Presence
I came from an assimilated Australian family of Anglo-Jewish and Anglo-Celtic ancestry. I am one of seven children. My brothers are Perry, Dean, Regan, Adam and Nathan. I have one sister Tamara. My grandparents were not religious but my parents became devout Evangelical Anglicans. I was born in Subiaco (a suburb of Perth) in Western Australia in 1963. When I was a baby my family moved to a small north-eastern wheat-belt town of Morowa where my parents took up wheat and sheep farming for a couple of years. Both my parents were from another small south-eastern wheat belt town in Western Australia called Dumbleyung.
I came from an assimilated Australian family of Anglo-Jewish and Anglo-Celtic ancestry. I am one of seven children. My brothers are Perry, Dean, Regan, Adam and Nathan. I have one sister Tamara. My grandparents were not religious but my parents became devout Evangelical Anglicans. I was born in Subiaco (a suburb of Perth) in Western Australia in 1963. When I was a baby my family moved to a small north-eastern wheat-belt town of Morowa where my parents took up wheat and sheep farming for a couple of years. Both my parents were from another small south-eastern wheat belt town in Western Australia called Dumbleyung.
Like all my brothers, I was circumcised on the eighth day after birth. My mother told me that her parents insisted that all their grandsons should be circumcised on the eighth day. My mother in turn was very upset when some of her own grandsons were not circumcised. After a couple of years in Morawa we returned to live at my parents house (on three acres) in the hills of Perth. We had chooks, a milking cow and calf, sheep, goats and even a horse at one stage and of course cats and dogs. My mother's sister Faye lived next door to us with my 6 cousins (5 girls and one boy), Caroline, Dana, Joanne, Karen, Shaun and Kylie. They were more like having six more siblings than cousins. It was an exciting childhood with many adventures to be had. Many of my holidays throughout my life I was to spend in Dumbleyung at my father's sister Shirley's house, my mother's sister Una's house, my mother's sister Faye's house, at the farm where my sister Tamara lived or my mother's little house in town. It was a place I often went to renew my energy for life while walking and praying around the shores of Lake Dumbleyung. My three younger brothers Regan, Adam and Nathan all spent time living in Dumbleyung and attending some of their schooling at the Dumbleyung School where my parents had been educated. My sister and her husband still live on the farm near Dumbleyung to this day as do many other relatives.
Lake Dumbleyung in rural Western Australia my ancestral home since the 1870's
At the age of seven I was baptised in the Anglican Church (St Luke's Maddington) with my father (a former atheist) and brothers. At 14 I was confirmed in the Anglican Faith at St Mary in the Valley, Kelmscott. My father was a leader in the CEBS (Church of England Boys Society) in our parish which is like Scouts and my younger brothers Regan and Adam and I were in it as well as attending Sunday School and later Youth Group at St Luke's in Maddington. I also attended the Church of Christ Youth Group with many of my classmates in High School. Our family alternated between the three parishes of Gosnells, Maddington and Kelmscott. We considered ourselves as evangelical Anglicans however our ministers or priests were firstly called Mr (as in Mr Adams and Mr Hayles) and were just ordinary middle of the road Anglicans, then High Church (Father Michael and Father Robert) and then Sydney Moore Theological evangelical Anglicans who we either called Mr or by their first names (Peter Brian, Mr Thomas and John Foran). Throughout my young years we often attended with my parents and aunt the Keswick Convention meetings of the evangelicals. I was even elected as a delegate by the local Perth Anglican Youth Synod to represent Perth in the National Youth Synod in Sydney. Attending this Synod totally disillusioned me with the direction that the Anglican Church was heading in. Of the two favourite Anglican Parishes that I attended one was High Church and Charismatic at St George's in Parkes NSW (which had Masses that the music was charismatic Celtic style) in 1984 and the other St Hillary's in Kew in Melbourne that was Charismatic and Evangelical in the 1980's. In my Uni student days in Perth we (my friends and I) often attended St Matthew's in Shenton Park which was the centre of evangelical activity and St Alban's in High Gate which was the Charismatic Anglican centre. In Melbourne it was St Jude's near Melbourne University that was popular with evangelical students. I often lived in Melbourne between the years 1985-1993 but also spent some time back living in Perth, as well as living in Sydney in 1986 and Townsville in 1989. I lived in many different places in Melbourne including, North Carlton, Fitzroy, St Kilda and Kew which were my favourites as well as places like Newport, Broadmeadows, Moonie Ponds, St Albans and Caulfield. Between the years of 1993-2011 I was living outside Australia as much as I was living in it. I lived in the Philippines, Thailand, Israel, the US as well as visiting other places such as Ireland, Singapore, Malaysia and Bangladesh. I had visited Britain, Western Europe and Singapore in 1988 on my first overseas trip. Since 2011 I have not left Australia and have been living in Tasmania since 2014.
My brother Dean when he was 15 in 1971 as a groomsman at my sister Tamara's wedding dancing with Helen the sister of my brother-in-law who was a bridesmaid. I was a page boy at this wedding at St George's Cathedral in Perth.
Sadly when I was nine my sixteen year old brother Dean died in a car accident in Tasmania. This sad event affected me greatly and it would take a lot of inner healing over many years to fully recover from this tragic event. Fortunately my family was like a huge clan and I had many wonderful cousins who are a treasured part of my life. Over the years people have complimented me on my eclectic knowledge and intelligence, however I would have to say that both my mother and my brother Regan were much more naturally intelligent than me. My father was a master storyteller and jack of all trades and he could do anything if he set his mind to it.
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My brothers and sister have been the bedrock of my life and the best of friends too. All my family were gifted and champions at every sport known to man except for me, even though I was good at athletics and swimming when I was young. My father and brothers were all brilliant footballers (Aussie Rules) which I also played until I was 14 at which I was mediocre (on a good day), which caused me great anguish as a child and teenage boy. I honestly believed nobody actually liked me (except maybe my mother and sister) but that they tolerated me. I was the only one of my siblings that was shortsighted which meant I was pretty useless at ball sports of all description. This combined with the trauma of the death of my brother Dean caused me to have a death wish until I received deep inner healing. This probably drew me to escaping into myself by reading which didn't make one the most popular of boys in a bogan school. It was only later that I realised my family did care for me and love me (with all my shortcomings) and I became very close to my father during his last ten years of life.
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My mother and her sister Faye also belonged to a Jewish Christian group ('Jewish Evangelical Witness' founded by Lawrence Duff-Forbes) as well as the Anglican Church. She and her sister Faye had become Evangelicals through the preaching of Billy Graham when he came to Perth in 1959. Many of my mother's cousins were becoming Jehovah's Witnesses in those times. My eldest brother in the 1970's married a daughter of one of these Jehovah's Witness cousins and he is to this day a devout JW.
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Me sitting on the rock at the back with my school friends at Rottnest Island when we were about 15 in 1978.
I first remember being aware of my Jewish ancestry when I heard my mother discussing her strict Anglo-Jewish great-grandmother Matilda West at one of the Jewish Evangelical Meetings (also called the David House Fellowship) when I was about 8 or 9. Matilda's brother Simeon Levi West (who we called Uncle Levi) had been a devout crypto-Jewish Rabbi (probably more of a Chazzan) in rural New South Wales who was famous for his racehorse "Tradition" who came second in both the 1888 Melbourne and Caulfield Cups. I would later learn that the Dutch branches of the West family had almost all been exterminated by the Nazis in the death camps of Sobibor and Auschwitz. Recently one of my mother's elderly cousins told me that his and my mother's great-uncle James Lewis (a nephew of Uncle Levi) had also been a crypto-Rabbi in Queensland. When I was about 13 I started to wear a gold Magen David that belonged to my mother. Today I still wear a gold Magen David under my habit in memory of my mother. I was also a co-owner of a race horse with my brothers Regan, Adam and Nathan. He was born a day after my mother's death and we named it Law Rain in her honour. When he came 1st in a 50,000 dollar race at Ascot in Perth it was a very exciting time!
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Me at age 13 in 1976. Necklace in the picture had a gold Magen David on it that belonged to my mother.
Besides the meetings of Jewish Evangelical Witness my mother and aunt were supporters of The Leprosy Mission and I and my brothers and cousins attended the Leprosy talks with slides and films at the Ryan's house all during my childhood and teenage years. It seemed as if our lives alternated between Jews and Lepers. I had a real horror and fear of leprosy and could never after that read any books which had a leper in it and was always fearful that any strange mark may be the start of leprosy. As a young adult I attended a dinner with my mother and aunt for the Leprosy Mission at which two of my best friends at University's parents were there and I realised that they had also been involved in the Leprosy Mission as missionaries in Ethiopia.What a small world!
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The grave of my parents and brother with a Magen David on my mother’s tombstone in 2014
In my teens I became very interested in religion and politics. I became involved with right-wing conservative groups such as the Australian League of Rights which were often anti-semitic and I believed that there was a worldwide Jewish conspiracy and that Jewish bankers were controlling the world. I even started to doubt the extent of the Holocaust after reading David Irving and I became friends with mad Jack Van Tongeren who later blew up Asian restaurants. Of course I never told Jack about my Jewish ancestry as he was very anti-Jewish and adored Hitler. It can be difficult to convince people caught up in these anti-Jewish ideas as it can become like an obsessive compulsion, but I am proof that prayer, conversion of heart and discussion can change such thinking.
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Me at 19 with my friend Cheryl in 1982
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My mother and aunt and their mother were supporters of the British Empire Loyalist movement and the Australian League of Rights and other right -wing organisations even though they did not agree with the anti-Semitic elements or Holocaust revisionism. They also supported the Free China Association and Australian Rhodesian Society. They were traditional conservatives as was my father (who did not like the Australian League of Rights) who were pro-God, Queen, country, family and the English Common Law. Both my parents did not like the ideas of Jack van Tongeren and were concerned at my friendship with him.
Looking back I am amazed at how my mother and aunt could ignore the elements they didn't like in these organisations but support them because of their defence of the Queen, Empire and other conservative values. I remember as a teen coming across a huge pile of old copies of "Candour" the League of Empire Loyalists newsletter in my mothers wardrobe and read them secretly and avidly and came to admire their efforts to save the British Empire in the days before I was born and just after. Most of the people in these groups were kind, respectable, cultured and intelligent middle and upper middle class people who abhorred violence or any breaking of the law. It troubles me now when people demonise either right or left wing people and exaggerate their ideas. There are sincere, caring and wonderful people on all sides of religion and politics even if I think them mistaken. And unfortunately also corrupt ones on all sides too.
At fourteen years of age I read a British Israelite book belonging to my mother called "Christians Awake" by Gilbert Saddler and I became interested in the Bible and a supporter of the British Israel World Federation. I later found out that my great grandparents Leonard and Hannah Lewis and many of my grandmother's siblings had been believers in the British Israel Identity which was popular before World War Two. This earlier form of British Israelism was pro-Jewish and pro-Zionist but later forms became anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist which also influenced me in a negative way. As an older teenager I would walk to visit Mrs Price a devout British Israelite (who had been a Methodist and then became a Pentecostal and was the local leader of the moral values group called the Festival of Light) who was a close friend of my mother and aunt and I studied the Bible with her and she prayed over me and told me that God was calling me "to stand in the gap" in prayer intercession for my family and to be a "watchman on the walls". Once I started University at age 17 I would regularly visit the British Israelite bookshop in the city centre of Perth and spend hours there talking with a tall blonde goddess -like lady in her late twenties that ran the bookshop and with whom politically and religiously I was in total accord at that stage. One time we walked down the mall handing out pamphlets that were anti-Semitic and Holocaust Revisionist. I remember talking with an old Jewish man who was very upset with us who had seen the camps after the war. He must have made an impact as I never did that again. However, I did learn a distrust of media reports when an article appeared in the newspaper that a large well financed group of anti-Semites had been handing out literature in the Mall when it was only two fairly poor young people on their own initiative that did it!
When I lived in Melbourne I also visited the British Israel Bookshop and attended some British Israelite meetings, this group were not anti-Semitic but gave me some Jewish literature that was by Jews who believed in the British Israel Identity that was called the United Israel World Union as was founded by David Horowitz in 1944. I would also later after becoming a Catholic become involved with Yair Davidi and the Orthodox Jewish group Brit-am who also believed in the Western European peoples being descended from the lost Tribes of Israel. I spoke as the guest speaker at one of their meetings in Jerusalem in 2002 where all the others were religious Jews and me a Hebrew Catholic.
Me with parents and siblings in chinese dressing gowns in 1988
My brothers and sister have been the bedrock of my life and the best of friends too. All my family were gifted and champions at every sport known to man except for me, even though I was good at athletics and swimming when I was young. My father and brothers were all brilliant footballers (Aussie Rules) which I also played until I was 14 at which I was mediocre (on a good day), which caused me great anguish as a child and teenage boy. I honestly believed nobody actually liked me (except maybe my mother and sister) but that they tolerated me. I was the only one of my siblings that was shortsighted which meant I was pretty useless at ball sports of all description. This combined with the trauma of the death of my brother Dean caused me to have a death wish until I received deep inner healing. This probably drew me to escaping into myself by reading which didn't make one the most popular of boys in a bogan school. It was only later that I realised my family did care for me and love me (with all my shortcomings) and I became very close to my father during his last ten years of life.
Me at 18 in 1981
Me aged 14 in 1977
Me aged 17 at my high School Graduation in 1980
My mother and her sister Faye also belonged to a Jewish Christian group ('Jewish Evangelical Witness' founded by Lawrence Duff-Forbes) as well as the Anglican Church. She and her sister Faye had become Evangelicals through the preaching of Billy Graham when he came to Perth in 1959. Many of my mother's cousins were becoming Jehovah's Witnesses in those times. My eldest brother in the 1970's married a daughter of one of these Jehovah's Witness cousins and he is to this day a devout JW.
Me sitting on the rock at the back with my school friends at Rottnest Island when we were about 15 in 1978.
I first remember being aware of my Jewish ancestry when I heard my mother discussing her strict Anglo-Jewish great-grandmother Matilda West at one of the Jewish Evangelical Meetings (also called the David House Fellowship) when I was about 8 or 9. Matilda's brother Simeon Levi West (who we called Uncle Levi) had been a devout crypto-Jewish Rabbi (probably more of a Chazzan) in rural New South Wales who was famous for his racehorse "Tradition" who came second in both the 1888 Melbourne and Caulfield Cups. I would later learn that the Dutch branches of the West family had almost all been exterminated by the Nazis in the death camps of Sobibor and Auschwitz. Recently one of my mother's elderly cousins told me that his and my mother's great-uncle James Lewis (a nephew of Uncle Levi) had also been a crypto-Rabbi in Queensland. When I was about 13 I started to wear a gold Magen David that belonged to my mother. Today I still wear a gold Magen David under my habit in memory of my mother. I was also a co-owner of a race horse with my brothers Regan, Adam and Nathan. He was born a day after my mother's death and we named it Law Rain in her honour. When he came 1st in a 50,000 dollar race at Ascot in Perth it was a very exciting time!
Law Rain my racehorse winning at Ascot in 2008
Besides the meetings of Jewish Evangelical Witness my mother and aunt were supporters of The Leprosy Mission and I and my brothers and cousins attended the Leprosy talks with slides and films at the Ryan's house all during my childhood and teenage years. It seemed as if our lives alternated between Jews and Lepers. I had a real horror and fear of leprosy and could never after that read any books which had a leper in it and was always fearful that any strange mark may be the start of leprosy. As a young adult I attended a dinner with my mother and aunt for the Leprosy Mission at which two of my best friends at University's parents were there and I realised that they had also been involved in the Leprosy Mission as missionaries in Ethiopia.What a small world!
In my teens I became very interested in religion and politics. I became involved with right-wing conservative groups such as the Australian League of Rights which were often anti-semitic and I believed that there was a worldwide Jewish conspiracy and that Jewish bankers were controlling the world. I even started to doubt the extent of the Holocaust after reading David Irving and I became friends with mad Jack Van Tongeren who later blew up Asian restaurants. Of course I never told Jack about my Jewish ancestry as he was very anti-Jewish and adored Hitler. It can be difficult to convince people caught up in these anti-Jewish ideas as it can become like an obsessive compulsion, but I am proof that prayer, conversion of heart and discussion can change such thinking.
Me at 19 with my friend Cheryl in 1982
Me in Kettering Tasmania with one of my best friends Gordy in 2014
Me being given a punk makeover by my dear friends Judy and Nikki in Melbourne in 1984
My mother and aunt and their mother were supporters of the British Empire Loyalist movement and the Australian League of Rights and other right -wing organisations even though they did not agree with the anti-Semitic elements or Holocaust revisionism. They also supported the Free China Association and Australian Rhodesian Society. They were traditional conservatives as was my father (who did not like the Australian League of Rights) who were pro-God, Queen, country, family and the English Common Law. Both my parents did not like the ideas of Jack van Tongeren and were concerned at my friendship with him.
Looking back I am amazed at how my mother and aunt could ignore the elements they didn't like in these organisations but support them because of their defence of the Queen, Empire and other conservative values. I remember as a teen coming across a huge pile of old copies of "Candour" the League of Empire Loyalists newsletter in my mothers wardrobe and read them secretly and avidly and came to admire their efforts to save the British Empire in the days before I was born and just after. Most of the people in these groups were kind, respectable, cultured and intelligent middle and upper middle class people who abhorred violence or any breaking of the law. It troubles me now when people demonise either right or left wing people and exaggerate their ideas. There are sincere, caring and wonderful people on all sides of religion and politics even if I think them mistaken. And unfortunately also corrupt ones on all sides too.
At fourteen years of age I read a British Israelite book belonging to my mother called "Christians Awake" by Gilbert Saddler and I became interested in the Bible and a supporter of the British Israel World Federation. I later found out that my great grandparents Leonard and Hannah Lewis and many of my grandmother's siblings had been believers in the British Israel Identity which was popular before World War Two. This earlier form of British Israelism was pro-Jewish and pro-Zionist but later forms became anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist which also influenced me in a negative way. As an older teenager I would walk to visit Mrs Price a devout British Israelite (who had been a Methodist and then became a Pentecostal and was the local leader of the moral values group called the Festival of Light) who was a close friend of my mother and aunt and I studied the Bible with her and she prayed over me and told me that God was calling me "to stand in the gap" in prayer intercession for my family and to be a "watchman on the walls". Once I started University at age 17 I would regularly visit the British Israelite bookshop in the city centre of Perth and spend hours there talking with a tall blonde goddess -like lady in her late twenties that ran the bookshop and with whom politically and religiously I was in total accord at that stage. One time we walked down the mall handing out pamphlets that were anti-Semitic and Holocaust Revisionist. I remember talking with an old Jewish man who was very upset with us who had seen the camps after the war. He must have made an impact as I never did that again. However, I did learn a distrust of media reports when an article appeared in the newspaper that a large well financed group of anti-Semites had been handing out literature in the Mall when it was only two fairly poor young people on their own initiative that did it!
When I lived in Melbourne I also visited the British Israel Bookshop and attended some British Israelite meetings, this group were not anti-Semitic but gave me some Jewish literature that was by Jews who believed in the British Israel Identity that was called the United Israel World Union as was founded by David Horowitz in 1944. I would also later after becoming a Catholic become involved with Yair Davidi and the Orthodox Jewish group Brit-am who also believed in the Western European peoples being descended from the lost Tribes of Israel. I spoke as the guest speaker at one of their meetings in Jerusalem in 2002 where all the others were religious Jews and me a Hebrew Catholic.
Nana Wuffa in Dumbleyung when she was around 90 (about 1990)
In my teenage years (from about 14 years old) I was also starting to get interested in the occult and reincarnation. I shared this interest with my Russian Orthodox step-grandmother Madame Nadine Wulffius (Nana Wuffa) who was a co-founder and past president of the Western Australian Ballet Company and a choreographer. She had lived in Czarist Russia and been a student at the Imperial Ballet School in St Petersburg when the Revolution broke out in 1917. She escaped to Latvia in 1922 and my mother saved up to pay for her to come to Australia in 1953. I would once a week catch a bus to Victoria Park where Nana was living at that time and would discuss together the world religions among many other subjects and I became fascinated with the books of Edgar Cayce and Paul Brunton among others. Paul Brunton's book "A Search in Secret Egypt" had the deepest impact on me and made me change my mind about becoming an archeologist. Since I was a child I have had a passion for reading and for history. At this time I was anti-Judaism and anti-Catholicism. These discussions would later continue when Nana moved to live with my sister on the farm at Dumbleyung for the last 13 years of her life. I no longer believed in reincarnation or the occult teachings but Nana and I would have plenty of others things to discuss.
One time I prayed over Nana Wuffa in tongues. I was surprised when Nana, who spoke fluently six languages and was familiar with many more, told me that the first language I spoke in was a Semitic language and the second one was a Slavic one. I had a vision while praying over her of Jesus standing with his arms and hands outstretched towards Nana with blood dripping from them. Jesus was saying "I did all this for you yet you still cling to your old ways". I heard an inner voice say "tell it to her". I didn't want to as I thought it would upset her but in the end I did. She responded very peacefully and said that she had been already thinking this and she recommitted her life to Jesus and accepted him as God (for many years she just believed he was a great teacher and that the Bible was a book "written by the Jews to glorify the Jews" and was a follower of Rudolf Steiner who she visited in Switzerland in the 1920's). She also told how she had sailed with a certain Prince on his yacht to Egypt and down the Nile to Karnak where she had to ride a donkey as she couldn't manage the camel. There she met some Egyptian women who claimed to preserve some of the ancient dances used in the Karnak Temple of ancient Egypt (they would not show them to men). She memorised the dance steps and gestures and later taught them to her Ballet students who performed them in a concert in Perth. She showed me the newspaper report of the concert that was published in the newspaper at the time. Her passion was for the mystical aspect of Dance and her favourite class at the Imperial Ballet School in Russia was the History of Dance taught by Sergei Khudekov who said to her and his students: "We have forgotten to pray to God with our feet. We have forgotten that once in the great past a divine being touched us and we were nearer to God." She made this her own personal motto and it also resonates with my spirit deeply.
I also went through many fashion phases such as punk, goth and Prince (in his purple phase) and Billy Idol. I spent a lot of time with friends wildly dancing at night clubs. Even though I did learn ballroom dancing, I belong more to the Isadora Duncan style of dancing. All of my family love to dance. Due to my grandmother and mother's influence I still loved attending the Ballet before I moved to Tasmania especially with my second cousin Gaye who reared as a Jehovah's Witness was the first after me to become a Catholic - she now considers herself and her six children as Hebrew Catholics and each year keeps the traditional Jewish Pesach. One of the last lovely times with my mother before she died was when Gaye, her daughter Sophia, my mother and I attended the Ballet together. It was a wonderful night and I ended up spontaneously going back to my mother's place and staying a couple of days. Sophia recently visited Auschwitz and went on a Discovery Trip to Israel.
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At 18 I had an experience of the Holy Spirit which instantly revealed to me that the occult direction was a false path. I felt loved for the first time and I started to speak in a strange language which I later found out was called the gift of tongues. I also lost my anti-Judaism and anti-Catholic prejudices. I started to attend the Jewish Society meetings at the University of Western Australia and I attended Jewish camps on Jewish identity. I completed a Bachelor of Arts at UWA majoring in History and minoring in Ancient History, English and Music. I had previously learnt the piano for six years. In 1984 I had my first full-time job as a teacher in New South Wales where I taught English, History, Drama and Physical Education at a private Protestant College. Strangely it was in the very town where my ancestral Uncle Levi had lived for many years.
After I moved to Melbourne and was studying there in 1985 I was introduced to the Jewish chaplain at Melbourne University, Rabbi Michael Katz, who started to teach me the Hebrew alphabet. I became friends with Benjamin Hurwitz a young orthodox Jewish student who took me to the East Melbourne Synagogue and I would sometimes attend the service of this very Anglo-Jewish Shul and I also attended their community Passover celebrations. I also attended the Reform Jewish Temple Beth Israel in Kew, where I was living, a few times but I didn't like that as much as the Orthodox Shul (Synagogue). Rabbi Katz invited me to attend a Jewish student camp on the theme of Jewish identity where I made a number of friends but especially one of them called Eric who I am still good friends with until today. It was through Eric that I also met my great friend Gordana back in 1987 or 1988 as well as a number of other people. I attended a few years ago Eric's orthodox Jewish wedding in Melbourne to a wonderful Jewish Israeli lady called Lilach. Rabbi Katz also introduced me to some Rabbis at the Beth ha Talmud Kollel who were from Lakewood , New Jersey. At first I couldn't understand the Rabbis at all and Rabbi Katz had to translate for me. I asked him what language they were speaking and I was shocked when he said "English". This seemed like a very different world to the more English-style Anglo-Judaism of the East Melbourne synagogue and very different to my very Anglo-Australian upbringing but I loved it.
After my first encounter with the Lakewood Rabbis in Balaclava, I started to attend their Orthodox Jewish Synagogue and joined the Kollel with these ten Litvak Rabbi's from Lakewood New Jersey as well as studying with Lubavitch (Chabad) Rabbis. I spent every weekend at the home of my "adopted" orthodox Jewish family. I started to become an observant Jew at this stage even though I was still very alternative in my dress which must have tested the tolerance of the Rabbis. Though they may have liked the challenge of this strange young man who wore stud-arm bands to synagogue. I loved the orthodox Jewish community and everyone was so kind to me especially the Rabbis. They told me not to reject Jesus but to have a little talk with him and tell him I was not rejecting him but that I was going to be concentrating on his Father for awhile. However I went through real inner turmoil as I wanted to be fully orthodox Jewish but I still loved Jesus and believed as my parents had taught me that he was the Jewish Messiah.
Strangely enough my parents were more upset at me becoming a Catholic than when I had joined the orthodox Jewish community. In fact my mother forbade me to become a Catholic. However over the years they softened and would attend Mass with me on occasions. By the time of her sudden death my mother was almost a Catholic in belief without formally joining the Catholic Church. Not long before my mother's death in 2005 she was very happy when one of my sister-in-laws (Regan's wife) with her two teenage sons were baptised in the Catholic Church along with the two year old son of my brother Nathan and my cousin Gaye's youngest son Levi (who was a baby). What a happy day that was! My mother was most amused when one of her newly baptised grandsons (he was 15) asked her cheekily why she wasn't a Catholic as the Catholic Church was the original one. She responded, "He has only been a Catholic an hour and he is already a bigoted one". My brother Nathan has had all three of his children baptised as Catholics even though he and his wife are not Catholics at this stage.
Just before I became a Catholic I had come to accept most of the Marian teachings of the Catholic Church and I had felt drawn to the Hail Mary. However, I told a nun friend of mine, Sister Deanne Connelly, that I thought the Rosary with its repetitions might be "the vain repetitions of the pagans" and I then informed her that I was not going to pray any rosaries. She just smiled at me and didn't say anything but I am sure she must have prayed for me. This was the same nun that I had met 6 or 7 years before and told her she was a pagan idol worshiper (she was studying English with me at the University of Western Australia when I was 17 in 1981). I went home after our lunch and talk (in early 1987) about not praying the rosary and I had a vivid dream. I was at the end of the world with all terrible political and cataclysmic events happening. I was with my Aunty Faye and we were complaining about all the terrible events happening. Then suddenly a loud voice spoke from the Heavens and said: "If you had prayed the Rosary this wouldn't have happened". Then I turned to my aunt in the dream and said to her: "See I told you we should have prayed the Rosary". I woke up and caught the train to the city the next morning and went to the Catholic shop and bought some rosary beads and a pamphlet on how to pray it and began that day. My Aunty Faye 25 years later at age 83 became a Catholic with her daughter Caroline, her granddaughter Natasha and Natasha's four children Ethan, Reilly, Bella and Imani (I was their sponsor/godfather). Aunty Faye would regularly pray the Rosary with her daughter Caroline until she died at 88 in 2017.
In the midst of this Orthodox Jewish journey I was still attending the local Anglican Church where I was also working with street people and ex-prisoners with the support of the Anglican priest who put on an evening charismatic service with a meal to which I could bring these people who were not used to Church. The power of God was very evident in these meetings. At this time I first heard of a group of Anglican religious brothers and priests (Society of the Sacred Mission) and after some contact I joined them as an aspirant at their priory at Diggers Rest. After a few months of gardening (which I hate) I decided I wasn't ready for such a lifestyle and returned to the Orthodox Jewish journey and my working with street people.
One time I prayed over Nana Wuffa in tongues. I was surprised when Nana, who spoke fluently six languages and was familiar with many more, told me that the first language I spoke in was a Semitic language and the second one was a Slavic one. I had a vision while praying over her of Jesus standing with his arms and hands outstretched towards Nana with blood dripping from them. Jesus was saying "I did all this for you yet you still cling to your old ways". I heard an inner voice say "tell it to her". I didn't want to as I thought it would upset her but in the end I did. She responded very peacefully and said that she had been already thinking this and she recommitted her life to Jesus and accepted him as God (for many years she just believed he was a great teacher and that the Bible was a book "written by the Jews to glorify the Jews" and was a follower of Rudolf Steiner who she visited in Switzerland in the 1920's). She also told how she had sailed with a certain Prince on his yacht to Egypt and down the Nile to Karnak where she had to ride a donkey as she couldn't manage the camel. There she met some Egyptian women who claimed to preserve some of the ancient dances used in the Karnak Temple of ancient Egypt (they would not show them to men). She memorised the dance steps and gestures and later taught them to her Ballet students who performed them in a concert in Perth. She showed me the newspaper report of the concert that was published in the newspaper at the time. Her passion was for the mystical aspect of Dance and her favourite class at the Imperial Ballet School in Russia was the History of Dance taught by Sergei Khudekov who said to her and his students: "We have forgotten to pray to God with our feet. We have forgotten that once in the great past a divine being touched us and we were nearer to God." She made this her own personal motto and it also resonates with my spirit deeply.
I also went through many fashion phases such as punk, goth and Prince (in his purple phase) and Billy Idol. I spent a lot of time with friends wildly dancing at night clubs. Even though I did learn ballroom dancing, I belong more to the Isadora Duncan style of dancing. All of my family love to dance. Due to my grandmother and mother's influence I still loved attending the Ballet before I moved to Tasmania especially with my second cousin Gaye who reared as a Jehovah's Witness was the first after me to become a Catholic - she now considers herself and her six children as Hebrew Catholics and each year keeps the traditional Jewish Pesach. One of the last lovely times with my mother before she died was when Gaye, her daughter Sophia, my mother and I attended the Ballet together. It was a wonderful night and I ended up spontaneously going back to my mother's place and staying a couple of days. Sophia recently visited Auschwitz and went on a Discovery Trip to Israel.
Perry, Me (the little blonde boy), Regan (baby), Tamara and Dean around 1965
Me aged 19 in 1982
At 18 I had an experience of the Holy Spirit which instantly revealed to me that the occult direction was a false path. I felt loved for the first time and I started to speak in a strange language which I later found out was called the gift of tongues. I also lost my anti-Judaism and anti-Catholic prejudices. I started to attend the Jewish Society meetings at the University of Western Australia and I attended Jewish camps on Jewish identity. I completed a Bachelor of Arts at UWA majoring in History and minoring in Ancient History, English and Music. I had previously learnt the piano for six years. In 1984 I had my first full-time job as a teacher in New South Wales where I taught English, History, Drama and Physical Education at a private Protestant College. Strangely it was in the very town where my ancestral Uncle Levi had lived for many years.
After I moved to Melbourne and was studying there in 1985 I was introduced to the Jewish chaplain at Melbourne University, Rabbi Michael Katz, who started to teach me the Hebrew alphabet. I became friends with Benjamin Hurwitz a young orthodox Jewish student who took me to the East Melbourne Synagogue and I would sometimes attend the service of this very Anglo-Jewish Shul and I also attended their community Passover celebrations. I also attended the Reform Jewish Temple Beth Israel in Kew, where I was living, a few times but I didn't like that as much as the Orthodox Shul (Synagogue). Rabbi Katz invited me to attend a Jewish student camp on the theme of Jewish identity where I made a number of friends but especially one of them called Eric who I am still good friends with until today. It was through Eric that I also met my great friend Gordana back in 1987 or 1988 as well as a number of other people. I attended a few years ago Eric's orthodox Jewish wedding in Melbourne to a wonderful Jewish Israeli lady called Lilach. Rabbi Katz also introduced me to some Rabbis at the Beth ha Talmud Kollel who were from Lakewood , New Jersey. At first I couldn't understand the Rabbis at all and Rabbi Katz had to translate for me. I asked him what language they were speaking and I was shocked when he said "English". This seemed like a very different world to the more English-style Anglo-Judaism of the East Melbourne synagogue and very different to my very Anglo-Australian upbringing but I loved it.
After my first encounter with the Lakewood Rabbis in Balaclava, I started to attend their Orthodox Jewish Synagogue and joined the Kollel with these ten Litvak Rabbi's from Lakewood New Jersey as well as studying with Lubavitch (Chabad) Rabbis. I spent every weekend at the home of my "adopted" orthodox Jewish family. I started to become an observant Jew at this stage even though I was still very alternative in my dress which must have tested the tolerance of the Rabbis. Though they may have liked the challenge of this strange young man who wore stud-arm bands to synagogue. I loved the orthodox Jewish community and everyone was so kind to me especially the Rabbis. They told me not to reject Jesus but to have a little talk with him and tell him I was not rejecting him but that I was going to be concentrating on his Father for awhile. However I went through real inner turmoil as I wanted to be fully orthodox Jewish but I still loved Jesus and believed as my parents had taught me that he was the Jewish Messiah.
Strangely enough my parents were more upset at me becoming a Catholic than when I had joined the orthodox Jewish community. In fact my mother forbade me to become a Catholic. However over the years they softened and would attend Mass with me on occasions. By the time of her sudden death my mother was almost a Catholic in belief without formally joining the Catholic Church. Not long before my mother's death in 2005 she was very happy when one of my sister-in-laws (Regan's wife) with her two teenage sons were baptised in the Catholic Church along with the two year old son of my brother Nathan and my cousin Gaye's youngest son Levi (who was a baby). What a happy day that was! My mother was most amused when one of her newly baptised grandsons (he was 15) asked her cheekily why she wasn't a Catholic as the Catholic Church was the original one. She responded, "He has only been a Catholic an hour and he is already a bigoted one". My brother Nathan has had all three of his children baptised as Catholics even though he and his wife are not Catholics at this stage.
Just before I became a Catholic I had come to accept most of the Marian teachings of the Catholic Church and I had felt drawn to the Hail Mary. However, I told a nun friend of mine, Sister Deanne Connelly, that I thought the Rosary with its repetitions might be "the vain repetitions of the pagans" and I then informed her that I was not going to pray any rosaries. She just smiled at me and didn't say anything but I am sure she must have prayed for me. This was the same nun that I had met 6 or 7 years before and told her she was a pagan idol worshiper (she was studying English with me at the University of Western Australia when I was 17 in 1981). I went home after our lunch and talk (in early 1987) about not praying the rosary and I had a vivid dream. I was at the end of the world with all terrible political and cataclysmic events happening. I was with my Aunty Faye and we were complaining about all the terrible events happening. Then suddenly a loud voice spoke from the Heavens and said: "If you had prayed the Rosary this wouldn't have happened". Then I turned to my aunt in the dream and said to her: "See I told you we should have prayed the Rosary". I woke up and caught the train to the city the next morning and went to the Catholic shop and bought some rosary beads and a pamphlet on how to pray it and began that day. My Aunty Faye 25 years later at age 83 became a Catholic with her daughter Caroline, her granddaughter Natasha and Natasha's four children Ethan, Reilly, Bella and Imani (I was their sponsor/godfather). Aunty Faye would regularly pray the Rosary with her daughter Caroline until she died at 88 in 2017.
In the midst of this Orthodox Jewish journey I was still attending the local Anglican Church where I was also working with street people and ex-prisoners with the support of the Anglican priest who put on an evening charismatic service with a meal to which I could bring these people who were not used to Church. The power of God was very evident in these meetings. At this time I first heard of a group of Anglican religious brothers and priests (Society of the Sacred Mission) and after some contact I joined them as an aspirant at their priory at Diggers Rest. After a few months of gardening (which I hate) I decided I wasn't ready for such a lifestyle and returned to the Orthodox Jewish journey and my working with street people.
Another Punk picture of Me in 1984
One day after studying at the Beth ha Talmud Kollel in Melbourne and out of curiosity I went into the Catholic Church opposite where I felt the Divine Presence in the empty Church. I was puzzled as I had felt His Presence in the worship of both synagogue and Protestant church but when the synagogue or church had no service it just felt like an empty building. Why did the empty Catholic Church have this Presence? This began my journey into the Catholic Church. Just before my entry into the Catholic Church I attended some Messianic Jewish meetings where a Messianic Jewish lady (Betty Baruch) told me about a Hebrew Catholic group led by a holocaust survivor Andrew Sholl [cofounder of the Association of Hebrew Catholics]. So right from the start of my Catholic journey I was able to meet with other Hebrew Catholics regularly. This was in 1987 when I was 24 years old. I also had studied with a Rabbi at the Chabad Yeshiva in Melbourne and I sometimes attended the Chasidic services.
My former gothic/alternative girlfriend Yasmina attended my reception into the Catholic Church at St Patrick's Cathedral in Melbourne in 1987 in all her gothic splendour. We had broken up not long before as I was still considering a calling to religious life. She was a nominal Catholic whose father was Muslim and her mother was a Catholic and her maternal grandmother Jewish and Yasmina was a terrific actress. She arrived late and we could hear the jingling of her gothic garments coming through the darkened Cathedral (it was at night) and I think Dean Chamberlain nearly had a heart attack when she suddenly appeared in the Lady Chapel in all her dark Gothic splendour (looking like Morticia or Elvira). She was my first serious girlfriend since I had left Parkes in 1984 where I was dating two girls- one a Baptist and the other a Catholic. I was more serious about the Catholic one and we continued to write for some time after I left Parkes. When I was in Israel in 2002/3 I met and became close to Amy who was a young orthodox Jewish woman from Texas-we were very keen on each other but we realised that my being a Catholic would be a problem for her so that was that. In 2007 I dated in Israel two Hebrew Catholic women- one an Israeli Professor and the other an orthodox Jewish woman who was secretly Catholic (who I met through a friend who was an orthodox Jewish rabbi but secretly interested in the Catholic faith). But God had other plans for me than the married life.
My cousin Brent with his friend Mark when they were staying with me in Jerusalem in 2002
Me at 30 as a seminarian in 1994
I also joined a Charismatic Catholic lay community in 1987 that worked with street kids, prostitutes and drug addicts for many years. I had been working among the poor in Melbourne since 1985 before I became a Catholic in 1987. It was in 1984 that I felt a call to work with the poor and to be a religious brother. However in 1985 I first attended Synagogue and started to gradually live as an orthodox Jew in Melbourne. In 1986 I had trained and worked as an actor in an International Theatre Company in Sydney where I also attended Synagogue and learnt with some Chasidic seminarians in Bondi. In 1986 I met one of my closest and dearest friends Patrick who is now a priest promoting Perpetual Eucharistic Adoration all over the world. He is such an inspiration to me. He and I were also in the Street Kid community together and later in the Philippines where I was to meet Father Doug. Patrick and I also spent time together promoting adoration in Thailand. He also was my sponsor/ godfather in 1987 when I became a Catholic.
In 1988 I visited the UK, Europe and Singapore with my mother. I also lived in the Philippines for three years (1993-1996) as a seminarian for a community that promoted Perpetual Adoration. I completed a number of studies in Philosophy and Theology there. Before going to the Philippines I had studied at the Australian Catholic University in 1990 and 1993- completing my Graduate Diploma of Education. In 1989 while still working with street kids I informally attended Melbourne University where I audited the Modern Jewish History course with Mark Baker, as well as the Biblical Hebrew Class and a course on Islam. I was still feeling a call to religious life and in 1990 I made a six months commitment to serve as a consecrated brother for the Hebrew Catholics. We had a Hebrew Catholic ceremony at the Melbourne Hebrew Catholic Havurah (Study and Prayer Group) in which I made my commitment and it was attended by the Havurah members (led by Andrew Sholl) as well as my dearest friend and prayer partner Sister Lyn an Anglican nun and even some of my non-christian Jewish friends. I wore a black habit with a black sash around my waist and a black kippa on my head and a blue Miraculous Medal. However after six months I decided not to continue in this way of life and I went through a real time of crisis and spiritual confusion after this and even stopped attending Mass regularly for about three months.
My father Gilbert died on February 4, 1994 (Feast of St Gilbert of Sempringham) of a brain tumour when I was in the Philippines in the Seminary. This was a very difficult time for me. It was in the Philippines as a fruit of my Adoration that I started to write from a more mystical perspective on the Jewish roots of the Catholic Faith. I was also invited by a group of upper middle- class Filipino ladies led by June Keithley (who later I found out was a famous personality in Manila) to teach them about the Jewish roots of the Catholic Faith. After leaving the seminary in 1996 and my return to Australia I became engaged to Miriam an Australian girl that I had met when I lived in Melbourne but we broke up due to her desire to consider being a nun (which she later did).
Me in Jerusalem in 2002 with the Armenian Bishop and two of my fellow missionary brothers
Me in 2002 visiting the place Jesus was born with fellow Eucharistic missionary brother Craig
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Me as one of three godfathers of Craig who is being confirmed by the Armenian Catholic Bishop of Jerusalem in 2002
After teaching Law (among other subjects) in 1996 at a Catholic College in Karratha in the very hot north of Western Australia to Years 9-12 I applied and was accepted to study Law but at the last minute felt that was the wrong decision and ended up going to Thailand as a teacher where I taught off and on for many years. In Thailand I was very involved with my Bishop and some priests since 1997 in giving talks promoting Perpetual Eucharistic Adoration, and the Marian and Charismatic movements. In this time I prayed over thousands of people for healing with the permission and direction of the Bishop and my parish priest. My last teaching stint in Thailand was in 2008 and I last visited Thailand for a month in 2011 (when I was already a consecrated brother) to see the Bishop who was sick and he died soon after. During my time in Thailand I had over the years attended the Synagogue in Bangkok for Shabbas and Pesach and other festivals on occasion. When I was living and working in Thailand I had met Vassula Ryden and her Greek Orthodox friend Katarina who was living in Bangladesh and running a house for the poor so I visited her in Dhaka in 2001 on one of the school holidays at the same time Vassula was there and we travelled around together with a wonderful Armenian Orthodox Bishop (Bishop Zakarian of Lyon) from France.
Me at 21 or 22 at University of Western Australia in 1985
Me in Thailand with Bishop Manat and Greek orthodox visionary Vassula Ryden in 1998
Me teaching in Thailand in 1998 at E-Tech in Chonburi
My Jewish journey also continued and later I was blessed to have lived in Israel three different times where I helped found 'Catholics For Israel'group in 2007 with my friends and neighbours Ariel ben Ami and Countess Marie (in Nachlaot in Jerusalem). I also was involved in starting Perpetual Eucharistic Adoration in the Old City of Jerusalem at the Armenian Catholic Church in the Muslim quarter in 2002 as well as studying Hebrew in Ulpan and did Jewish studies in an Orthodox Jewish Yeshivah (I also studied there in 2007 and 2008). Tragically my nephew committed suicide at 23 years of age while I was in Israel just before the wedding of my youngest brother Nathan. I received the news when I was in Haifa just after visiting the Cave of Elijah at the Stella Maris Monastery where Father Elias Friedman (founder of the Association of Hebrew Catholics) had lived. I later also spent fruitful time in America four times with David and Kathleen Moss of the Association of Hebrew Catholics (in 2005,2007,2008 and 2009).
Me with my mother in the 1990's
At the time of deciding to become a Catholic I read the book "Communion in the Messiah" of Father Lev Gillet a Russian Orthodox priest who was influenced by the Hebrew Christian Anglican priest Paul Levertoff. It was their vision of a Hasidic Jewish branch of the Catholic Church that helped make my leap into the Catholic Church. As my step-father and step-grandmother had been Russian Orthodox I at first considered becoming Russian Orthodox as I loved their spiritual tradition and as a ultra-monarchist I had a devotion to the Czars of Russia. My mother had also considered converting to Russian Orthodox before her first marriage but the priest went away on holiday so she didn't follow it up. I used to attend the Russian Orthodox Church in Melbourne on occasion and as I found it difficult to understand the ideas of why purgatory was needed as a belief once one accepted Jesus or the Immaculate Conception I thought that Russian Orthodox would be a better fit. However I had come to believe that the Pope was the Successor of Peter and that the Catholic Church 's teachings on faith and morals was infallible. Thus I decided that I would accept the teachings on Purgatory and the Immaculate Conception by faith even if I didn't fully understand why they were true. I think God wanted me to get out of my head and the intellectual approach and make a leap of faith. After I became a Catholic I suddenly understood those teachings and didn't get why I had trouble with them before.
After becoming a Latin-rite Catholic I discovered that there was a Byzantine Russian Catholic Church in Melbourne and I attended it on a few occasions. I treasure all the spiritual journeys I was led on and till this day appreciate the richness of the Litvak Jewish, Chasidic Jewish, Messianic Jewish, Anglican, and Russian Orthodox spiritualities which complement my Hebrew Catholicism rather than substract from it.
About 20 or more years ago I became fascinated by my ancestor Rebbe Nachman of Breslov and his teachings. However I only met Breslovers in person for the first time when I went to Israel in 2002. I had a spiritually significant experience talking with a young Breslover in King David's Tomb (in the room below the Cenacle of the Last Supper) where I often went to pray. In 2007 I was to attend an orthodox Jewish Passover Seder there. I consider myself as a Catholic Breslov Hasid and Ushpizin is my favourite movie. David and Kathleen Moss introduced me to the Israeli movie "Ushpizin" when I was staying with them at the Hebrew Catholic center in St Louis in 2007- I watched it about 6 times. Strangely when I was living in Israel later that year- my neighbours decided to watch "Ushpizin" and we suddenly realised that our street - Rama Street in Nachlaot - was in the film. I later also realised that the Yeshiva used in the film was one near my place in Nachlaot where I studied Talmud with some Breslovers. I have since written much about Rebbe Nachman of Breslov and done research and written about him as part of my Master of Arts in 2013 as well as for my Master of Theological Studies between 2016-2019.
My mother Laurie with her brother Garry in the late 1940's
My mother Laurie in the early 1950's
My parents Gil and Laurie
After my return to Australia from Jerusalem in 2003 I first learnt of the Divine Will movement. When I was teaching at a Seventh Day Adventist School in Thailand I was given the "Hours of the Passion" and started to use these wonderful meditations in my prayer life. When I then returned to Australia I was invited by Jenny and Michele of the Casa de Luisa Piccarreta to give a talk on the Jewish Roots of the Catholic Faith. Since then I have become very involved in the Divine Will movement and given numerous talks (many of them sold on DVD) on Jewish and Catholic Mysticism both throughout Australia and overseas. In 2005 I gave a very successful talk to the Hebrew Catholic connections group in Jacksonville Florida. Sadly my mother died later in 2005 about a month after my return from America. She died in my sister Tamara and my arms while I recited the Divine Mercy chaplet over her. She received the Sacrament of Anointing from a Catholic priest friend of mine the day before her death. Her funeral had Anglican, Catholic and Jewish elements. My mother was a very spiritual and mystical person who had a deep impact on my own faith journey and her death left a great hole in my life. For the next few years I kept busy traveling the world ( I think I was in shock) and in 2009-10 the loss of my mother struck me deeply and was one of the worst times of my life.
Me aged 23 in Melbourne in Jewish kippa and Tallis in 1987.
Me in Melbourne aged 21 with friends Natalie and Jane in 1985
In 2007 I was invited by a community of Carmelite hermit nuns in the USA (whose Mother Superior at the time was a Hebrew Catholic) to give a series of talks on Jewish and Catholic mysticism and I also gave a talk to the enclosed Carmelite nuns in St Louis. The nuns greeted me like an old friend as they felt they already knew me as they had been watching a number of my DVD talks. The next year in 2008 the Carmelite nuns in St Louis invited me to give 10 talks on the connections between Jewish mysticism and Carmelite spirituality. These nuns were very generous to me and some of the loveliest women I have ever met. Another Carmelite nun of Jewish Sephardi ancestry invited me to give a series of 10 talks in San Diego to a Divine Will group as well as speaking to her enclosed Carmelite nuns and also giving a talk to a community of active Carmelite sisters who we stayed with on this trip.
Me and friends[Jeff Ryan, Sister Briana and Mary Hills] in San Diego giving talks on Jewish and Catholic mysticism in 2008
On my trip to San Diego I was accompanied by Jeff Ryan (who I met in Jerusalem in 2007 and ran into him again at a Hebrew Catholic meeting in St Louis in 2008) a graduate of the Franciscan University of Stubenville who is an expert on Catholic mysticism and he also gave some inspirational talks. Back in St Louis Jeff and I gave a series of talks at the Hebrew Catholic Center as the foundation talks of the Bnei Miriam Kollel with the encouragement of David and Kathleen Moss. Strangely enough talking with Jeff's mother we realised that we were distant cousins through the Payne, Walsh and Montefiore families. Jeff is now in a religious community and studying to be a priest. Before this, earlier in 2008, after leaving Israel, I visited Ireland where I gave a talk to a Catholic group in Waterford where an Irish friend Cathy lived who had formerly worked with me in the Street Kid community in Melbourne. In Ireland I also visited Cavan and the Ring of Kerry. I have also given a series of talks in Queensland, country New South Wales, Sydney, Canberra and Tasmania around this time including the Penrose Park and Marian Valley Shrines in New South Wales and Queensland (before 2010).
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Me (in the back) when my cousins Bonny and Natasha were in Thailand in 1998
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Me with my three cousins Gaye, Mandie and Margo in Perth
I pray for the reunion of all into the one Faith expressed in many different ways. Unity but not uniformity. I thus look forward to the further development of the Anglican ordinariates and look with excitement at the fruits coming from the discussion between Messianic Jews and other Jews in the Churches that began in Finland in 2010 at the annual 'Jews in the Church of Christ' conference. I have been described as a spiritual troubador and trouble shooter. I have also realised I have the calling of a fool for Mashiach (Messiah) and I have learnt much from the teachings of Rebbe Nachman of Breslov and Luisa Piccarreta in recent years. The constants in my life have been the Hebrew Catholic apostolate and the promotion of Perpetual Eucharistic Adoration with the friendship of two priest friends Fathers Patrick Barry and Doug Harris among others.
Me with my brothers Perry, Nathan and Adam in 2009 in Australia
Me with my mother in Singapore in 1988
My cousin Shaun (far left), held by my brother Dean, and Me (far right) held by my sister Tamara around 1965
I pray for the reunion of all into the one Faith expressed in many different ways. Unity but not uniformity. I thus look forward to the further development of the Anglican ordinariates and look with excitement at the fruits coming from the discussion between Messianic Jews and other Jews in the Churches that began in Finland in 2010 at the annual 'Jews in the Church of Christ' conference. I have been described as a spiritual troubador and trouble shooter. I have also realised I have the calling of a fool for Mashiach (Messiah) and I have learnt much from the teachings of Rebbe Nachman of Breslov and Luisa Piccarreta in recent years. The constants in my life have been the Hebrew Catholic apostolate and the promotion of Perpetual Eucharistic Adoration with the friendship of two priest friends Fathers Patrick Barry and Doug Harris among others.
Me with my brother Nathan in 2017
Me with my baby brother Nathan drinking strawberries and champagne before going to the Races in 2008 or 2009 before I went to America to join the Franciscans
In 2009 I was a candidate with the Franciscan Friars of the Holy Land in Washington DC which did not work out as I expected and I later returned to Australia after spending some time at the Hebrew Catholic center in St Louis. In 2010 I taught at St Clare's Catholic Girl's College in Canberra. I taught year 7-12 Girls in English, Society and Environment, Religion and beginner's Italian language and culture (luckily I had learnt Italian four days a week for about two months in Washington DC in 2009). I rented an apartment in Griffith walking distance to my school near the Russian Orthodox Church which I attended on a couple of occasions. I also kept a kosher kitchen and diet as there was a wonderful kosher section in the local supermarket and I attended regularly the orthodox Jewish services at the Jewish Community Centre (which was also walking distance) as well as attending the Cathedral and St Benedict's where I participated in the adoration programme. My eldest brother Perry had been born in Canberra in 1951. I think I first visited Canberra in 1984. I had after that visited Canberra to stay with friends many times over the years. It was in Canberra that I first met and visited the Anglican monks of the Society of the Sacred Mission in 1984. I also visited Canberra with my mother in 1987 as well as Sydney where we stayed with our cousin Julie and her husband Michael in Bondi Junction. I had stayed at Julie and Michael's for a few days earlier in 1984.
I had returned to Perth to assist Father Doug with the Adoration programmes at his parish and another parish in late 2010. In 2011 on Feb 4 I became a consecrated Brother as Brother Gilbert Joseph of the Divine Presence with the 'Apostles of Perpetual Adoration' in Perth. [I had been a member of the APA since it was founded in 2006.] My birth name was Athol Gilbert Hal Bloomer. In 2012 I renewed my promises as a consecrated brother. On February 4 2013 I took life promises as a consecrated brother.
Me and Br JJ in Queensland with Geraldine at St Joseph's Place in 2017
Thus it wasn't until I was 47 years old that I finally found my vocation. I had many years before in 1984 had a prophecy that I would be as a wandering bird caste out of the nest and another lady prophesied that my calling was as a troubadour and a trouble shooter. I remember many struggles with God over my vocation as I wanted to be either a priest or religious or married not just a single lay man for the Lord. It was only when I gave up my desires and was happy to embrace being single for God as an ordinary lay man that God decided to open up my new vocation as a consecrated brother. An African Archbishop had prophesied over me in 1986 that I would one day be a leader in the future Church and I remember as a young man in his twenties being horrified when I received the message that it wouldn't be until after I turned 41! It was at this age of 41 I first discovered Lusia Piccarreta and the Divine Will.
In 2009 a very holy priest friend of mine told me that there was no place or group for my very unusual charism in the Church and wouldn't be until another couple of years. He and a number of charismatically gifted people (including three very tough Catholic men who worked in the mines, a hermit and others in the Divine Will movement) had told me that I should go to America and join the Franciscans but that this was not my true vocation and I would not be there long but it was a step on the journey to where I should be. I was not very happy with this idea and I intended that I would go and be a Franciscan for the rest of my life. God had other plans. I realise now that I had to wait for Br John Joseph of the Immaculate Womb (formerly Callum Martin) to be born and grow up so he could join me in this charism and vocation. At the age of 16 he heard me give a talk at a Mass, at Our Lady of Mt Carmel Church run by the Carmelite Friars, about my Jewish journey and Eucharistic Adoration which made a deep impact on him even though he never spoke to me until by "chance" he met me again when he was 19 and I had already began the journey of consecrated life as a brother with the APA. He was already the spiritual leader of a little group of young people around his own age who were seeking to go deeper in their Catholic Faith. He was invited into the presbytery where I was living with two priests and there he saw me reclining on the couch in my habit eating a large slice of watermelon! This was the start of many fascinating conversations with him and his friends with me, Father Doug and the Texan priest who was the dominate force in the group. Callum was to assist at my taking final vows on Feb 4 2013 and his friends were the choir. On the feast of Our Lady of Mt Carmel (July 16 2020) he was to take his final and life vows as a Little Eucharistic Brother of Divine Will at our little Church in Dover called St Mary Our Hope.
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On May 13 2013 the consecrated contemplative-active brothers within APA took the name of 'Little Eucharistic Brothers of Divine Will'. In 2013 I completed my Master of Arts in Theological Studies at the University of Notre Dame in Fremantle and Brother John Joseph completed his BA in Theological Studies and Social Justice. In 2014 the Brothers moved to Tasmania. I think since I became a consecrated brother I have been at my most happiest and fulfilled than at any other stage of my life. There are still the daily struggles and the ups and downs of life but I have an inner peace that I didn't have in the past. However the first couple of years as a consecrated brother were very difficult and I almost didn't continue after the first year. Coming to Tasmania has only increased that peace and the wonderful way God has cared for us and provided for us (through so many kind and lovely people) has helped me grow in faith, hope and love. At the same time I embrace the Divine Will where ever he takes me next in life. Since 2016 I and Brother John-Joseph have also been studying a Masters of Theological Studies through the ACU. In 2014 God sent us an older man called Joseph as a brother from Sydney who joined us in February 2015 and became Brother Stephen Joseph of the Immaculate Heart. He had formerly been a manger of some big stores in Sydney for many years. He was born in Hungary but came to Australia when he was a baby. He took the name of Stephen in honour of King St. Stephen (Istvan) of Hungary.
In 2009 a very holy priest friend of mine told me that there was no place or group for my very unusual charism in the Church and wouldn't be until another couple of years. He and a number of charismatically gifted people (including three very tough Catholic men who worked in the mines, a hermit and others in the Divine Will movement) had told me that I should go to America and join the Franciscans but that this was not my true vocation and I would not be there long but it was a step on the journey to where I should be. I was not very happy with this idea and I intended that I would go and be a Franciscan for the rest of my life. God had other plans. I realise now that I had to wait for Br John Joseph of the Immaculate Womb (formerly Callum Martin) to be born and grow up so he could join me in this charism and vocation. At the age of 16 he heard me give a talk at a Mass, at Our Lady of Mt Carmel Church run by the Carmelite Friars, about my Jewish journey and Eucharistic Adoration which made a deep impact on him even though he never spoke to me until by "chance" he met me again when he was 19 and I had already began the journey of consecrated life as a brother with the APA. He was already the spiritual leader of a little group of young people around his own age who were seeking to go deeper in their Catholic Faith. He was invited into the presbytery where I was living with two priests and there he saw me reclining on the couch in my habit eating a large slice of watermelon! This was the start of many fascinating conversations with him and his friends with me, Father Doug and the Texan priest who was the dominate force in the group. Callum was to assist at my taking final vows on Feb 4 2013 and his friends were the choir. On the feast of Our Lady of Mt Carmel (July 16 2020) he was to take his final and life vows as a Little Eucharistic Brother of Divine Will at our little Church in Dover called St Mary Our Hope.
On May 13 2013 the consecrated contemplative-active brothers within APA took the name of 'Little Eucharistic Brothers of Divine Will'. In 2013 I completed my Master of Arts in Theological Studies at the University of Notre Dame in Fremantle and Brother John Joseph completed his BA in Theological Studies and Social Justice. In 2014 the Brothers moved to Tasmania. I think since I became a consecrated brother I have been at my most happiest and fulfilled than at any other stage of my life. There are still the daily struggles and the ups and downs of life but I have an inner peace that I didn't have in the past. However the first couple of years as a consecrated brother were very difficult and I almost didn't continue after the first year. Coming to Tasmania has only increased that peace and the wonderful way God has cared for us and provided for us (through so many kind and lovely people) has helped me grow in faith, hope and love. At the same time I embrace the Divine Will where ever he takes me next in life. Since 2016 I and Brother John-Joseph have also been studying a Masters of Theological Studies through the ACU. In 2014 God sent us an older man called Joseph as a brother from Sydney who joined us in February 2015 and became Brother Stephen Joseph of the Immaculate Heart. He had formerly been a manger of some big stores in Sydney for many years. He was born in Hungary but came to Australia when he was a baby. He took the name of Stephen in honour of King St. Stephen (Istvan) of Hungary.
We had become great friends with Father Michael Tate (a former Senator and Law Professor who was to become the Vicar General of the Archdiocese) who we met in our first week in Tasmania in Feb 2014. Father Michael within a month had offered to us the Presbytery to rent at one of the Churches (St Pius X) at Taroona with the approval of the Archbishop.We spent a wonderful year there before Father Michael was transferred to the Huon Valley parish and we followed him there and rented a house in Huonville until July 2015. Brother Stephen (who was Joe then) joined us on the day we moved (Feb 6 2015) and was a great blessing in packing and unpacking from the removal truck we hired. We took with us all the furniture and things that the St Vincent de Paul men (the two Pauls and Danny) and ladies (Margaret and Pat) had given us.
We also met Rabbi Yochanan (who was 27 at the time) the only Rabbi in Tasmania before Passover in 2014 at the Chabad House in Sandy Bay where I had rung up and ordered some kosher wine and matzot for Passover. They were rather shocked when I turned up in my monk's habit! We struck up a friendship and I began to study Tanya with him every Monday night as well as attend a more general study group with other members of the Orthodox Jewish community after the Tanya group. In the first year we had a very successful Passover that we held at St Joseph Villa in Taroona with Father Michael as our priestly guest of honour as well as the Sisters of the Immaculata and a number of other people who we had just started to become friends with. Rabbi Yochanan has maintained his contact with us and we attend some of the Orthodox Jewish events every year even though we are a lot further away. It was a delight when the Rabbi arrived to our place near Dover with his two small children with a Mobile Succah during Sukkot one year and set it up and we got to wave the species and to eat and drink in the Succah. He regularly rings up to have a chat with me-he is such a faithful shepherd to his Jewish flock. I would say that our Bnei Miriam Havurah Passover each year is usually the high light of our social calendar. We have some Catholic families of Jewish ancestry in our parish who attend every year.
Since July 2015 we have been living in a hidden valley on a 21 acre property south of Hobart near Dover and are very involved in the life of the Huon Valley parish. I also joined the Anglican Ordinariate of Our Lady of the Southern Cross in early 2017. At the time the ordinary Monsignor Harry told me I was the only member of the Ordinariate in Tasmania. As a community we are committed to the Divine Will movement, the Perpetual Adoration Movement, the Hebrew Catholic movement (as well as the Orthodox Jewish community of Tasmania and its Rabbi) and the Anglican Ordinariate movement as well as supportive of other movements and communities of authentic spirituality. As a community we are also called to be fools for Christ and little monks (monacelli) for Jesus with the freedom of the early Franciscans and of the Brelsov Chasidim and the mysticism of the Carmelite saints and Rebbe Nachman of Breslov and the littleness and hiddenness of Blessed Charles de Foucauld and the servant of God Luisa Piccarreta and the commitment to the orthodox Catholic faith and unity of Blessed Cardinal Newman and Vladimir Soloviev. We desire to become ever more little and hidden in Our Lady's mystical womb with her Son the Messiah and enveloped by the mystical dark cloud of St Joseph's protection.
Me celebrating Pesach with some of my Hebrew Catholic relatives in 2012
Me with Br John-Joseph in Tasmania in 2015
