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James K. Baxter Complete Prose Volume 3

‘Commune’ Closed, but Baxter to Stay at Jerusalem

‘Commune’ Closed, but Baxter to Stay at Jerusalem

The Jerusalem ‘commune’ has closed and the recent return of poet-philosopher James K. Baxter to the tiny Wanganui River settlement does not herald the re-opening of his controversial community there.

Mr Baxter disbanded the community, populated by a large number of young people from all over New Zealand, after complaints from Maori residents of Jerusalem and Wanganui County officials.

‘Though I rarely read the newspapers,’ Mr Baxter said yesterday, ‘it has come to my notice that there has been some newspaper controversy about the supposed re-opening of the community at Jerusalem.

‘The Jerusalem community has definitely closed – it will not be re-opened,’ he said.

Mr Baxter said that he had returned to his Jerusalem residence with the permission of its owners to live there with his ‘family’.

‘It is true that my family includes friends of long-standing who regard me as their adoptive parent, but the limit of the number is fixed at ten, and I am not at liberty to enlarge this number,’ he said.

‘I have heard that an anxious mother wrote in a Wanganui paper, saying that under no circumstances would she allow her daughter to go to Jerusalem.

‘She could set her mind entirely at rest,’ Mr Baxter said.

‘If anyone’s daughter comes to Jerusalem with some mental disturbance, I will say “You’ll have to work that out with your parents and the doctor!”’

‘If anyone’s son comes who has had trouble with the police, I will say “Go back to town – if they put you in jail for being out of work or for being in a house where somebody else possesses drugs, I’m afraid the police and your parents will have to work it out together”,’ Mr Baxter said.

He said that, ‘In a sense, he was thankful to neighbours who had decided the community was a social danger.

‘We were not a free love community, we were not a drug-using or drug-distributing community.

‘We paid our food bills and endeavoured to maintain some standard of hygiene, but certainly we were over-crowded,’ he said.

‘It would have gone against my conscience to turn away many of those who came to our door, but the matter was taken out of my hands by various neighbours with strong fears that rumours about our way of life were either true or might become true,’ Mr Baxter said.

He said he was quite content to abide by this decision, which had taken a great deal of responsibility off his shoulders.

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Mr Baxter also expressed his gratitude to the house-owners and to the Maori people at Jerusalem, who endured a lot of unwelcome publicity on behalf of the community.

‘It is not my wish to burden them any further,’ he said.

‘I wish to point out, however, that the social problems with which we were trying to cope at Jerusalem still remain unsolved and multitudes of young people throughout the country are clashing with their relatives, using drugs, giving up work and going into jails, and / or mental hospitals.

‘The experiment at Jerusalem got some good results,’ Mr Baxter said.

‘I have seen some learn to work, some get well, some stop using drugs, and some make peace with their relatives.

‘I have also seen some acquire belief in God when they had either lost it or never had it, but I was always aware of difficulties that came from overcrowding and it is with real thankfulness that I hand these various social problems back into the public lap,’ he said.

‘There were many supporters of the Jerusalem community, just as there were many critics.

‘I suggest that it is now up to the critics to try their hand and show what constructive solutions other than bigger jails and bigger mental hospitals, they have to offer to the problems of our time,’ he said.

Mr Baxter says his own mind is ‘very much’ at peace: ‘I watch my small family cut bramble, plant seeds, keep the house spick and span, make good meals and construct a magnificent chicken coop where one hen has already laid an egg.

‘I have leisure to think and write; I can go to Mass at the church below the house.

‘The life suits me, yet in my dreams I still hear the voices of the drowning saying “Don’t you care, Hemi? We thought you cared what happens to us.”

‘Being a Christian,’ Mr Baxter said, ‘I am able to accept the obvious will of God in this regard.

‘It is my job at present to look for my own peace, but I must still urge my fellow-citizens to do what they can to help those who cannot cope with our society,’ he said.

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