THE CASTLEMAINE JOHANNINE COMMUNITY
Biography – Ken Killeen
I am the co-convenor of the Castlemaine Johannine Community and an ordained priest. My ordination was the fulfilment of a prophecy, for my grandmother often stated that “Kenny is going to be a minister when he grow’s up”. I was a pious little boy, a regular church and Sunday school attendee, despite the fact that my parents did not attend. I had a collection of bibles above my bed and I was regularly top of the class in bible studies at my local church.
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Doubt crept in, and in late adolescence I completely abandoned the church because it was so full of sanctimonious and unfriendly people, with no answers to my big questions. Except for the occasional wedding or funeral I didn’t set foot in a church until I discovered The Centre – The Independent Church of Australia, in Hawthorn Road Caulfield, in my thirties. Although I lost interest in organised religion, I didn’t completely abandon my faith. I was not willing to declare emphatically that there was no God and when asked, I declared myself agnostic. After I completed Fine Arts at university I worked for a year in a nursery in the Grampians. In the bush I had a palpable sense of the presence of the numinous. I also read a number of mystical and ‘new-age’ books out of my continued desire to reach beyond the mundane.
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A turning point in my life came with a car accident at 33. I actually remember little of the accident, but the next day when I came to my senses and realised what I had actually done, and how close I came to killing my precious family and myself, I felt that my life had been given back to me as a gift. So I prayed. I prayed in gratitude to God for saving our lives. I prayed more earnestly than I had done since childhood. I prayed in anguish, I prayed in hope and I prayed for help. I made a promise to the Heavens that if I could be helped in adjusting my life to a less self-destructive path then I would dedicate my life to that path.
Within a week I met Hardo Bottin and signed up for ‘The Completion Seminar’ and my life was transformed irrevocably. Holotropic Therapy awakened long dormant memories in me and I became absorbed in First Nations Spirituality and was also introduced to The Centre and to the Reverend Mario Schoenmaker by Hardo. Hardo was the first person I had met who had a palpable, living relationship with Christ. That relationship had been instigated, or I could say initiated by Mario. He was a charismatic teacher, high Initiate and clairvoyant.
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When I first entered The Centre I felt that I had come home. It was a church with a college of metaphysics. A church where I wasn’t expected to leave my brain at the door; a church that had answers to all of my big questions.
For most of my thirties whilst studying and worshipping at The Centre and its teaching wing, the Australian College of Metaphysical Studies (ACMS), directed by Stephen Cugley, I was also involved in learning about and participating in Native American Spirituality and Lakota metaphysics. I undertook countless sweat lodges with various visiting Lakota medicine men, and one Australian resident medicine man. It was uncanny how congruent pagan and esoteric Christian teachings were. Perhaps that is not surprising for spiritual truths are universal.
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My wife Diane and I went in search of an indigenous Australian teacher and found Eddie Kneebone who gave us a perceptive glimpse into our own First Nations metaphysics, and the rich and deep complexities of aboriginal interconnectedness to spirit, each other, plants, animals and country.
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Through the ACMS I also learned about Rudolf Steiner and his immense bequest of esoteric teachings he called Anthroposophy or Spiritual Science. I also joined an Anthroposophical study group in Castlemaine, with the founding parents and teacher of Castlemaine Steiner School. My involvement with Anthroposophy led to my eventual training as a Steiner Secondary Teacher and coordinating the Steiner Stream at Castlemaine Secondary College.
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A group of us ‘Castlemaniacs’ travelled regularly to Melbourne to attend services at The Centre and undertake courses at the ACMS. Because of our dedication, or some other reason known only to him, Mario decided to send the mountain to us. He commissioned some priests to minister to our community on a monthly basis for many years. After Mario and Colin’s deaths, the consequential diaspora away from The Centre and my own resignation as a member, I was audacious enough to begin running services for our community myself. I eventually asked Stephen Cugley to ordain me. He was a bit taken aback at first and had to think about it, before he, and others, laid their hands on me and ‘empowered’ me in 2003. My full ordination took place on St. Johns Tide, June the 24th 2017.
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I feel privileged to have a very strong sense of purpose, a calling. That calling begins with my own desire to know God and extends to my wanting to connect others with the reality of Spirit, awakening people to the indwelling Christ and to help in maintaining that connection. I feel privileged to have been inspired to instigate the Castlemaine Johannine Community. I feel privileged to share regularly in what I know in my heart as something extraordinarily potent and light generating in our dark times.