Spirit in Action

Barb Kass of Anathoth Farm

Spirit In Action will be visiting today with Barb Kass who is a member and founder of the Anathoth Community Farm, an itentional community based on non-violence, sustainability and community, located in Luck, Wisconsin. Barb has traveled a long and varied spiritual path, being raised Catholic, active with Intervarsity Christian Fellowship in college, attending seminary in Chicago, working with Catholic Worker communities, and currently attending a progressive small-town Luthern Church.

Duration:: 59m
Broadcast on:: 27 Nov 2005
Audio Format:: mp3

I have no hands but yours to tend my sheep No handkerchief but yours to try the eyes of those who weep I have no eyes but yours with which to hold Once grown weary from the struggle Or be with growing old I have no voice but yours which to see To let my children know that I am lost And love is everything I have no way to feed the hungry souls No clothes to give the naked the fragrant and the bone So be my heart, my hand, my tongue Through you all with me, darling Fingers have I none to have one time It tangled not the twisted chains of strength Welcome to Spirit in Action, my name is Mark Helpsmeat Each week I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service Of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service Above all, I'll seek out light, love, and helping hands Being shared between our many neighbors on this planet, hoping to inspire and encourage you To sink deep roots and produce sacred food in your own life I have no way to open people's eyes Except that you have showed them how to trust the inner life The Spirit in Action will be visiting today with Barb Cass who is a member and founder of the Anathoth Community Farm, an intentional community based on non-violence, sustainability, and community in Luck, Wisconsin Barb Cass has traveled a long and varied spiritual path Being raised Catholic, active with Intervarsity Christian Fellowship in college Attending seminary near Chicago, involved with Catholic worker communities and currently attends a progressive Lutheran Church She and her husband, Mike Miles, have been jailed for their actions including for praying on the White House lawn Barb, Mike, and Anathoth are an inspiration of rooted activist living Good morning Barb, welcome to Spirit in Action How are you doing today? Good Are you pretty busy right now? What with preparations? I assume Mike is going to Washington, D.C. He is going to Washington and we are crazy but this morning as he checked out the list, I think we are totally full Every bus is full This is our full and we're working off waiting lists We're down to the nitty gritty logistics For our listeners, could you tell them what we're talking about here? Okay, there is a large and hopefully it will be a historically large gathering in Washington D.C. this weekend calling for the end of the war, bringing the troops back There is massive mobilization across the country to bring people out I think they are up to 11 buses between Central Minnesota, Wisconsin all the way over to Milwaukee Madison area and people will leave Friday morning and get back Sunday night and spend two nights on the bus and will they marching? So how many people are we talking about between these 11 buses? Probably 600 or so coming from this area, which is amazing And who is organizing this? It's actually Peace North and the Northwoods Peace Initiative which is this kind of a grassroots, it grew out of the last time in 2003 Well, Mike and I, around Christmas time thought wouldn't it be nice to send the bus out to the, let's stop the war rally In Washington, we've always taken vans out there and so modestly thought, well, maybe we can get one bus and one bus went to two and two went to four and by the time it was all done, 11 buses went out and it was one of the biggest contingents When we looked date by state, how many buses had gone out, we held our own here in Wisconsin and I felt like we came very close to historically stopping the war before it started Barb, when you say you and Mike don't spell out who you are? Oh, my I'm Barb Cass and my spouse is Mike Miles and we are members of the Anathoth Community Farm here in Luck, Wisconsin Tell us about Anathoth It's an intentional community and we're based on non-violence, sustainability and community Mike and I were the first people here, 1987, we put up the first house and since then it's grown to the community of nine adults Our kids are now grown, but there's a small boy on the community that was our newest generation of peace activists, Amos and we have student groups come and talk about non-violence and intentional living making a lot of ecological wisdom kinds of things are built into each house that we have here We have six different houses, have a large organic garden where we grow most of our own food Certainly our fresh stuff and preserve it for the winter Newquatch is housed here, the Northwoods Peace Initiative A lot of stuff comes out of here, Mike does a lot of that by email And that project helped campaign a lot of that, energy came out of here We've been involved in a lot of things over the last 18 years, a lot of activism and a lot of good has come out of the farm What led you to start Anathoth? We had been living out on the East Coast with Elizabeth McAllister in South Bergen in the early 80s and learned a lot about intentional community, a resistance community where we were actively involved in witness at the White House, the State Department, the Pentagon But as we started having our own kids, we wanted to be closer to grandparents and family My family's in the Twin Cities, Mike's was in Chicago So we moved back with the intent of finding a piece of land in a rural area Thinking that a rural resistance community had some good things about it Involved tomorrow we lived right in the inner city We felt the yes of our message would balance the no of no to militarism, no to violence That the yes of living close to the land, providing an option Was a good yin and yang of what our lives were about And so we set out to find a piece of land and it took us three years to find this particular one Then we raised money, sent a note out to friends in our address book Saying we have this idea of a rural resistance community, we're not going to borrow money If you believe in it, send us $100 and in six weeks we've raised about $20,000 Which was enough to buy the land That must have been quite a transition for you to go from inner city Baltimore to living in the country Were you prepared for that kind of transition? How are you ever prepared? I mean we actually had lived in Polk County for two and a half years before we bought the land We did do some checking out We moved back, looked around as to an area that we wanted to live in And came up with Polk County, we knew about Project Alpha And what that meant for the first strike weaponry, some of the witness that had been going on there We were very tied into the Honeywell Project in the Twin Cities Polk County was kind of halfway in between There was another peace community nearby that had enough families there But were extremely good neighbors and allies We had been out in the country at kind of other farmhouses for a couple years But I tell you, living in inner city Baltimore, we used the house with wood And there we didn't garden, we dumpstered food from the Maryland food terminal And a variety of places, so just kind of rework it, you know Could you tell me a little bit about the community you lived in when you were in Baltimore? Where it came from, who was part of that community, what the purpose was? Okay, children of the house who started after the Vietnam War ended It was Phil Berrigan, Liz McCallister But when we moved in there were 13 adults and five children Which would include our child that was born there We moved to address militarism, especially nuclear weapons Cold War was raging, we moved there in 1980 The first plow share's action had actually just happened weeks before For those who don't know about plow share's actions against nuclear missiles Here's a Charlie King song, "The Hammer Has To Fall" ♪ My name is Daniel Berrigan, chaplain at a hospice for the dying I have seen the face of death, it is for life, I bring this hammer down My name is Molly Rush, I have six children, he deserve a future I strike this blow today for the children all the world around I hear the prophets cry, oh, ring through the prison wall We've waited 30 centuries to see that hammer fall If we think we've got 30 more, we cannot see at all For swords into plow shares, the hammer has to fall ♪ My name is Elmer Moss, we're this a peaceful world I'd sit and play piano But lacking Nero's conscience, I could not watch that fire devour the land My name is John Shushard, I am no stranger to the prison that awaits us But where genocide is legal, I stand in outlaw with the hammer in my pen I hear the prophets cry, oh, ring through the prison wall We've waited 30 centuries to see that hammer fall If we think we've got 30 more, we cannot see at all For swords into plow shares, the hammer has to fall Dean Hammer is my name, Micah and Isaiah, my tradition Oh, I tried to be their scholar, but could not escape their logic in the end My name is Philip Barrigan, in World War II I flew the bombing missions, now with every blow I strike today I say the bombs will never fall again I hear the prophets cry, oh, ring through the prison wall We've waited 30 centuries to see that hammer fall If we think we've got 30 more, we cannot see at all For swords into plow shares, the hammer has to fall Cabot is my name, I have lived and worked among the third world peoples I've seen corporations flourish, while the war were left to fight for every man My name is Anne Montgomery, my life spent in community with women I bring their healing power to this factory of carnage and undead I hear the prophets cry, oh, ring through the prison wall We've waited 30 centuries to see that hammer fall If we think we've got 30 more, we cannot see at all For swords into plow shares, the hammer has to fall The hammer has to fall We were with the brother and volunteer service doing a year in eastern Kentucky Way back in Appalachia, country, and we had known of Jonah House Mike had been pretty close to a man that lived there So we'd gone out for a couple things at the Pentagon in some years there And got an invitation from the community saying, we think this might be the place for you When your time is done with the brother and volunteer service, why don't you think about coming for a trial period? In that trial period, it turned into three years We did a lot of organizing of actions, bringing people in from the east coast to the White House We organized the prey in at the White House all of June of '81, I guess, people were there Right on the lawn of the White House, four-piece, and it was when they were cutting all the social programs Putting it all into the military budget was during the Reagan era Also the year old missiles, you know, there was a lot happening in 1980 and 1981 And the years that we were there, so we were at all the time Just trying to bring the light, these issues, and I guess as it was said clearly out there That where you may not be able to change things you can maybe hold back the darkness a little bit And can bring light into some pretty dark places Was Jonah House a religiously based, spiritually based community? We had literacy there every week, we had learning prayers and Bible studies I would say it leaned towards Catholic, certainly, strongly Christian, but also that wouldn't characterize every single person in the community Who were the founders then of Jonah House? Bill Berrigan and Elizabeth McAllister And are they both Catholic of origin? Where? They were. Liz was a nun, Bill was a priest You said, Barb, that you dumpster dived for food there My family did that a little bit when I was young because we needed to with our seven kids at that time What was your dumpster diving for food like there? In our neighborhood, we would take a pickup truck and go to the Maryland food terminal Every Tuesday morning early, crack it on, and it was simply waste It was beautiful produce that, because it was perfect, couldn't be sold in the grocery stores Because by the time it was transported, it would be beyond peak So we got excellent, amazing food that would have been just thrown out And fed 150 or so families in our neighborhood in Baltimore People would line up with boxes and bags and commens We'd lay everything out and people would take what they needed And we used what we could use in the community and took the rest to soup kitchens And it was a matter of just kind of redistributing waste That a wasteful thing, it's unconscionable that we throw so much food away We looked at a subsistence lifestyle, our rent wasn't very high Everybody worked part time, but our activism took up a lot of time The work of the house at that point was painting houses, painting churches And then we had a common purse and lived very frugally What was the big motivation for you to go from inner city out to where you live now on luck? Oh, grandparents, grandparents and we were pregnant with our second child actually As we made the trip from Baltimore back to the Midwest Mike and I both had been close to grandparents Seeing them once or twice a year was just not going to make it for us And what we wanted for our kids, so Mike had spent a lot of time on his grandmother's farm in Michigan He was driven a tractor from a very early age cows, all that kind of stuff He remembers being in fifth grade or something and people saying what you want to be when you grow up And Wayne heavily, whether to be truthful or to say what everybody else was saying And he was truthful and everybody laughed him because he said he wanted to be a farmer So he had deep roots in rural living a time in eastern Kentucky I liked the lifestyle and was willing to take a risk and learn a lot of things My grandparents weren't on the farm, so I come from a family where food was prepared from scratch And canning happened and a lot of that I had a lot of basic knowledge But I read a lot of books and learned a lot of things in the eighteen years that we've been here Tell me a little bit about your background that led you first to get involved with you on a house and other places Did you grow up some kind of left wing radical? Oh no, oh no, it would be a surprise to all of us Although I have to say, I grew up Catholic in the suburbs of Minneapolis And was at a progressive parish, we had an open house this weekend here at the farm And one of the women that I know from Minneapolis is active in the Witness Against Alliance There's an apartment tech where they make depleted uranium munitions and landmines That's housed right there in the Dinah, Minnesota Sister Dorothy is her name and she is well in her eighties Wouldn't you know, she's an activist and she was a nun at the parish I grew up in So I remembered Sister Dorothy from many many years ago And when I saw her at a lion tech and told her about our open house She was able to get a ride out here and then part of the afternoon with us here There was much more progressive thought at that parish than I was ever aware of as a little girl All those things, you know, what do you learn subliminally as a child? I don't know I was always active in the church, went to Catechism, active in the youth group When I went to college, actually, I did participate in Newman Center, but I also met people that were part of more of the Evangelical movement The University Christian Fellowship And at that point in my life, I really thought that I had never really studied the Bible Catholics didn't do a lot of Bible study, now they do a lot of it But they didn't, when I was growing up, and I was really fascinated by that whole thing So got involved with the University Christian Fellowship and they had Bible study every week And also had been involved with youth organizations called Young Life Which was bringing the gospel to kids that had a bad experience with the church And we all know that churches can either be really great or really be restrictive And kids either want to belong or they don't But feeling like the faith was important enough to want to share it And try to get kids to understand, so I kind of have a mixed bag You know, I sort of did it all and mixed a lot of traditions in my search for spirituality Ended up on Young Life staff, which is why I went to seminary Being staff with them, you need a masters of youth ministry Ended up studying in Chicago at yet a different tradition The Covenant Church Seminary, called North Park, had the youth ministry degree And so I worked in inner cities there So Baltimore wasn't as much a jump as it could have been I worked on the north side of Chicago out of a school that had 61 first languages And was boarded to be third most violent neighborhood on the north side And I hung out with kids, tried to share a little truth with them Then heard about Catholic Worker and had mixed that in the pot And so now at 51, where would I put my hat on? I guess it would be Catholic Worker There are Catholic Worker churches, so we belong to a small Lutheran church here In town and are grateful for the gift of that community Kind of a long roundabout, but you can tell that there is definitely a search for spirituality in my soul And I look hard and wide trying to satisfy that yearning for spirituality Would you describe the evangelicals, the Christian you were active with in college as liberal leaning? I would not, you know, I've been out of school for a very long time I do remember them talking about community As, you know, the early church where they shared what they had And that communal, collective, early church kind of model I remember that being fairly radical And though we didn't live in community, I felt like people were really connected to each other If I or anybody had a need money-wise, it was there People did really care and sacrificed for each other's needs So I have to say that Politically, I think they were not And I wasn't political Until I went to seminary with a kind of a social worker background in undergrad I worked with Catholic Charities in the Twin Cities And worked at an intake center where we had a pantry and pooch shelf And got people signed up for emergency assistance, general assistance Those kinds of things That summer was an eye-opener of what I saw in Minneapolis All those things fit with concerns that must have been there a long time But I just didn't have any experience there So then going to the north side of Chicago I was getting a better understanding of poverty and injustice And those sort of things were building and then to get the theology behind it at North Park It was pretty life-changing All of a sudden, really was scrutinizing things like what I was eating Where the very little money that I had was going The inequality of how much money was being spent on weapons versus social programs How can we have 6% of the world's population and consume 40% of the non-renewable resources? I was a right field, you know, I looked at it, I took it in and then said now What changes can I make in my life to reflect this injustice that I can at least try to address it In my patterns of consumption, my patterns of what I do with my time and energy When you say you learned at the seminary, the theology behind it, what did you learn? Well, one class that stands out was the biblical view of oppression And looking at the Prophet in a new light, realizing how much Yahweh God sides on the side of the poor How do we know God? It's really by serving the widows and the orphans as kind of a metaphor But probably not metaphor because they were the ones with absolutely no voice, no power A woman that was widowed had no economic choice, you know, she was totally at the mercy of other people's kindness So seeing just that theology of poverty or understanding where God sides with the poor The rage of against injustice, that probably injustice is much worse than so many of the other sins I just looked at the parables in different ways, the teaching of Jesus And where He always was confronting powers and principalities of the things that box people in and cause people Do not have any kind of quality of life, it all started making sense to me Given that kind of background, biblically based background How do you understand or explain the divergence that exists in my perception, many people's perception Between evangelical Christianity and the kind of peace and justice activism Why aren't they the same? Well there are places where they are the same, you look at sojourners, you look at, I mean, I don't know How do you answer that, how can churches stand side by side do the same readings in the church on Sundays And come out with such different conclusions, it's kind of a mystery as to how that is And where is the spirit involved in both of those? How do you refrain from being so critical? I mean, sometimes I want to run away from the term Christian Because how many people are killed every second in the name of Christianity? You know, and I look at a very strong non-violence, go beyond, love your neighbor, love your enemy in a sex-ficial way When I look at that, I go, how can we all be one body, one faith, one mind, or not? And yet the scriptures are the same, it's a hard question to grapple with All I can say is the people that I have met in my life, my mentors, the people that have gone before me I see so much truth in their lives, the way they've lived out their lives in a truthful way I just try to absorb some of that truth and replicate it in my own life I don't know, I mean, am I evangelical? On one hand, yes Because I hope that people are inspired by the way I live, by the way we live here at the farm, by the things we do Evangelical means to bring good news, and I think we have good news here At our open house this weekend, the first person up the driveway was a pickup with two elderly couples No idea who they are, and they had read about it in the paper, and they came to see what we were doing And did they come away filled? I think they did, I think they did We have such simple ways of using solar and ecologically wise, prudent ways here at the farm That almost anybody can do, the way we live is pretty simple Is it us here? I don't think so, some people do There must be something out there because of the 50, 60 plus people that came on Saturday You may be only new 20% people had heard something good was happening here, came out in south of themselves And left with new ideas, and inspired, and I think that being evangelical And it's a wonderful form of evangelism You've mentioned something about the church you now attend there, that's Luther, and how did you get connected with them? A church that I've known about for a long time, the West Denmark Lutheran Church, Danish traditions Could never quite decide that it actually joined another church We attended parishes, we did house church for a year and a half studying the Gospel of Mars You know, we've done many things, but it's been sort of a whole I happened to be flying home from visiting my sister in Vermont on September 11, 2001 And flew around the Trade Center about 840, that morning in a small commuter plane Landed in Newark, and within the hour watched the towers burning from across the bay Certainly intense experience, I know I came home when I finally was able to get a flight out on Saturday Came home, of course disturbed as everyone was Surprised no, shocked, of course, and saddened and all that stuff It was very intense to be in the area where every single person knew someone that had been in the Trade Center Within the next week, I had a chance to go to West Denmark, and it was about the same time as the service was And that I tried out, I knew the pastor because I facilitated grief group in the area So I had heard him and liked him as a person and thought, well, let me go check it out And was surprised to hear him say from the pulpit that the last thing he felt like doing on September 11 was raising an American flight Also asking questions not how could they do this to us, but saying what hurt is so intense here that a reaction would be so severe In another period of time on the Marquis of the Church was deny them their victory, practice non-violence And I thought it was extremely courageous, and that cuts across all ties of do I go to the Catholic Church, do I go to the Methodist Church, do I go to the Baptist Church When I see courage from the pulpit, I'm inspired by that, and I started going more often And then my husband started going with me, we liked the elders, the elders are progressive Danes Who really look at the world and try to make sense of it, and are very clear about speaking out on injustice We found some kindred spirits, we found a lot of support for our life here It's just so nice to be in a place where we felt accepted and supported and also challenged We've been going since then, and are pretty involved [music] See the plane in the distance, see the flame in the sky See the young ones running for cover, the old ones wondering why The tell us that the world is a dangerous place, we live in a terrible tide But in promotion, money, or corn, bag, dad It's the innocent to die for the crime, not in my name Not in my name Not in my name Not in my name Witnesses watch through the window Their hearts lock in horror and pain At the man lying strapped to a gurney The poison has come through his face And I'm wondering who are the prisoners? Who was the lock and the key? Who has the power over life, over death? When will it finally be free? Not in my name Not in my name Not in my name Not in my name Not in my name Not in my name Not in my name Not in my name We stray and we stumble in seeking the truth Wonder why it's so hard to find But in I for it I am a tooth or a tooth Leave the hole hungry and blind When will it be free? Not in my name Not in my name Not in my name Not in my name Not in my name Not in my name Not in my name Not in my name Not in my name Not in my name Not in my name Not in my name Not in my name Not in my name Not in my name Not in my name Not in my name Not in my name Not in my name Not in my name Not in my name Not in my name Not in my name Not in my name Not in my name Not in my name Not in my name Not in my name I think we bring some really good things to that church we've brought speakers in We're bringing our Palestinian dance troupe in November Children from the Dejaysha refugee camp in Bethlehem I think is where Dejaysha is Have a dance troupe and they tell their stories of occupation in Palestine Through dance and theater And they're performing in the Twin Cities as part of their national tour But Mike has been to Dejaysha, has been to Ipda, the center that they're from He was feeling, you know, they never see rural America They're only in big cities We are getting them from the airport and banning them out And it has been an afternoon and an evening in Polk County, Wisconsin Have dinner at the church and I've been talking to kids in the luck school To come and see if we can do some kind of round table sharing of dances There's a lot of traditional dancing that goes with being Danish, I guess I'm not Danish, so I'm new at this and have asked another person That does some international dancing to see if we can make a pretty interesting night So things like that we bring to the church and then we come away with Being part of a community and that's a real gift I think Bonhopper says community just is a gift, you can't really demand it Do you know the date for that? Yeah, they will be here November 1st And they are performing at Central High School in the Twin Cities on November 2nd And I think it's 7 or 730 in the Twin Cities Sounds like a wonderful gathering I think it's going to be amazing I really have high hopes for it, I think there's 25 in the troop I'd like it if you could talk a little bit more, Barb, about the Anathoth community What your membership is like, what your physical grounds are like And if you're still willing to grow Well, as I said before, we have 9 adults and one little boy, couple dogs, couple cats Anathoth is 57 acres, it's a really good mix of wood Which includes a couple tracks of maple, so we are able to do maple syrup here I think we put out a little over 200 taps in the spring Our garden is about an acre, we have, I don't know how many acres are tillable But Mike is able to take pay off property Some we sell, grass hay for horses And then we use a lot of hay in our garden for mulch And then our garden's about an acre, it's got two hoop houses, greenhouses That are unheated, one is stationary And the other one is kind of in the road of Elliot Coleman, the gardener from the Northeast But it's on rails and it moves Currently we have the winter garden planted and it's outside And it's greens that will survive freezing And provide us greens all year We haven't actually been successful at this, but we're pretty close And maybe this will be the year that it really works What's the religious spiritual makeup of the 9 adults there at Anathoth? Extremely varied, Mike and I are probably the only ones that belong to an organized church At this point in town There is some gathering of people's community for prayer or home church Maybe it's Murphy's Law, we had really hoped to do that for years And it didn't have the right mix of people here After we joined West Denmark, then all of a sudden the right mix became available here And for whatever reason, you know, Sunday morning is a good time And those gatherings happen kind of at the same time It's a bit of a puzzlement, you long for it for so long to be on your property It doesn't happen, you find it somewhere else Then it does happen in your sort of torrents There's Quakers here, there are people that do sweat lodges And the Native American spirituality is felt that in a very deep way People that have absolutely no connection with any kind of Christian faith That would not hang their hat on any kind of organized religion But have a spirituality based on goodness and truth and spirituality of the land It's quite a mix What is the basis that brings you together then, what's the principles or rules that bind you? Nonviolence would be it Nonviolence, commitment to resist militarism in all forms Sustainability, being in a way that is sustainable Those are the things that bind us together Are you willing to grow, is there room for more people there? We discuss that a lot And I don't have an answer to that Right now our houses are filled up, but there's one structure being almost done It's always a hard thing of how many is too many Because already, with nine of us, we go in a lot of different directions And we meet every Friday to talk about who's coming, who's going, hospitality, what needs to be done in the gardens What's coming up and all those sorts of things And sometimes during the week, I don't always see everybody I don't know what too big is When people come here to join the community, we ask them to stay a year To see all the seasons of Anitha You know, if you come in the summer and you think, "Oh, this is great" And you hate winter, you certainly don't want to join the community Because we have a lot of winter here Are there rules about certain amount of involvement you have with the community? No, we are pretty respectful And pretty much everyone here is self-starting enough that Well, we trust that everybody is doing what they need to do We have a day that we're bringing the potatoes in And that's the 30th because it's such a big job Certainly, not everybody was here for the open house There were a couple people that chose to do something else that day You know, we brought in somebody else to talk about the solar house that's off the grid There is a lot of freedom of choice Sometimes there's resentment with that freedom of choice, you know? Am I gone too much because I'm at school three days a week? I care for my dad who is Alzheimer's that fourth day And then we hit the weekend So there are days that I just leave early in the morning and get home far after dark And I don't spend much time in the garden on those days But I do feel the support of people that I do what I can As soon as you start counting that I'm doing more than that person is doing Then it breaks down And I think that's kind of the hard lesson of community Is that you don't do your share, you always do more than your share But unless everybody does more than their share, it doesn't work Did I hear you to say that you have a weekly house meeting or community meeting? We do And most people, I mean you try really hard to be there Now this week Friday John LaForge and Michael be on the bus already I think John and Jane are traveling So I'm not sure who's left That's always okay, who's going to be here on Friday But we do And we're trying to come up with a schedule that we can do a more in depth to check in How are you doing? What's going on in your life are you feeling good about things? Where's the struggle? Try to do that? That's kind of an all day meeting And those are really good, sometimes they're hard But they're always good to do and we're trying to do that More than twice a year I mean this is amazing with nine people Sometimes it's a real struggle to come up with a whole day that everybody has And it only happens a couple times a year What process do you use in your meetings? Sometimes we have facilitators, sometimes we can bring people in from the outside If there's things that really need sorting out that we don't think we have The ability to do We work on consensus But I can't think of any time anybody has really blocked my decision There's a lot of respect and a lot of freedom to pursue things We try to be reasonable and we try to be respectful And there is quite a lot of autonomy here Which I think is there strengthen and also could be our weakness I heard you say that one of the houses is off the grid How many houses do you have and are any others off the grid? There are two off the grid One, two, three, four, five, six houses Of the six houses, two houses have water running into them Only one of those houses has an actual flush toilet and septic system Every other house has a composting toilet Some are manufactured here at the farm and some are commercial And there's outhouses and Nobody has hot water on demand We have a solar heated shower Our preheat is run off the solar panel And it runs water from the hot water heater Through a series of tubes and back in to preheat it It brings it up to about 108 But of the two water heaters in the two houses with water They both have wood fire boxes So we're able to use scrap wood that's land filled from Luckwood industry to eat our water Then we also have a solar shower out by the garden And we're able to use that all summer In our design of the farm, no house has everything There's one wash machine on the property There's one tractor, there's one pickup truck We have the breathers in our house And we have a lot of the canned goods on our shelves Because our basement doesn't breathe When you have everything available somewhere on the 57 acres It gives a lot of license to be able to design the homes in a different way So you can live without water coming out of your cap If you know you can get a shower at another place That has worked pretty well Barb, what are your kids, yours and my kids Attitude towards life in the community And what are the attitudes of your parents towards your life? Well, we have three kids, Ollie's 24 She probably spent 16 years thinking she would never consider A lifestyle like this, you know, when she graduated and was out of here And I think she has mellowed quite a bit I think our kids, especially as they've left, realized how rich their experience was With a lot of different people, a lot of caring adults It's hard work and they all know the cost of a lifestyle like this They have seen their parents in jail, they've seen their adult friends go to jail They have felt the loneliness of being the only one in their perceptions Opposing the war in '91, you know, yellow ribbons everywhere in the town Their dads in jail, they know it's hard for mom, me, at home trying to keep it all together They know there's a cost, but they also know that there's been change along the way And a few victories, that it's worth it As they go away and realize what they had here, they're appreciative of it I've also asked about my parents, luckily I have the kind of parents that value relationship over a green on everything They were a little taken aback, certainly early on when we moved out to Baltimore to be part of this fairly radical community I didn't like the jail going and worried, but came out to visit us, have always welcomed us As we came back this way to be closer to them, we're financially supportive of the farm In times when things were really crazy, I could always depend on my mom to come out I mean, they've been very dependably supportive throughout the whole thing You probably have changed in their thinking, my mom voted green You know, my dad is Alzheimer's, so it's hard to know where he stands anymore You mentioned the jail time that both you and Mike and I think other community members have spent What has been their attitude towards your jail time, and what have your kids' attitudes towards it, Ben? You know, they kind of wondered why. They thought it was more okay for Mike. That seems unfair It seems like it's putting people into gender boxes. Was it more okay for dad to be gone than for mom? I've not done a lot of jail time. I certainly was having kids and nursing kids early on And then after we moved to the farm, I became the primary worker bee. Mike is a better builder, he's a better farmer And then I got some good jobs. They were good jobs that were flexible and part-time and allowed Mike to do more of the things that he wanted to do And provided me with worthwhile work. He thus has been more freed, not punching a clock, to be able to do more jail time He has, he's done probably over a year or more cumulatively, but the most he's ever done was, I think, five months What have you been jailed for? What have I been jailed for? Either one of you Praying at the White House lawn, praying in the Capitol Rotunda, crossing the line at Elf, crossing in the driveway at Port McCoy after the first Gulf War Serving coffee and cake at Project Gwen, the Gwen Tower system was on there, expanding it before they had funding And we went up to Medford and said, you know, the funding hasn't been approved, it's probably premature to be putting this new facility up And Mike did some time for that. But out of that action, a lot of email, a lot of press, it got on ABC World News tonight On your money, your choice segment, the money wasn't approved, and the project went down Do I correctly understand that you and he were put in jail for praying? Oh, yeah, they can't pray where they don't want you to pray On the White House lawn, that was when Ollie was very little and I think I was just in jail, eight hours in lockup But praying in the Capitol Rotunda as part of the Sojourner's Peace Pentecost And so the charge was, failure to quit, praying and singing in the Capitol Rotunda as part of a protest against nuclear weapons Well, that's what I was doing, so how could you not plead guilty, you know, to what you did? Five days, five days in DC detention Wow One of our friends were praying on the White House lawn, the same thing I got, eight hours time served for six months Six months for praying at the White House lawn, he was a vet, the judge asked him his motivation, he said, the last time I listened to what the government told me I found myself killing women and children in Vietnam and I don't listen anymore and it was enough to set the judge off And he said, maximum six months sentence, he out of here, we were shocked Ollie So, Barb, you've obviously come quite a journey religiously Can you imagine living in community as you do without some kind of a spiritual base? No, I think it's, I think it's hand in hand, I think our faith causes to live in community, I don't know if it's always physically I mean, I would communally, probably our whole married life, so that's 27 years I can't imagine us not in an intentional community It's a struggle, it's a strain, I mean, you know, it's like being married to nine people sometimes I'm sure it's hard enough to be married to one I think faith causes us to be accountable to each other And community puts you right under the microscope, the thing that you think you've nailed down pretty well in your mind Then you're confronted by a community member and have to really sort it out So it does keep you on your toes and I think that's good There's just a lot of good things about being so connected Spiritually, you know, like I said, we don't share a lot of spirituality on the farm But on the other hand, there is this spirituality that goes, I think, with community And there is a drawn community spirit After being part of a church again, you know, I realized I didn't miss that being part of a larger body of people So I have appreciated that You've got a whole lot of what I would call ministries, even if people don't generally like that term That you sponsor out of there, how can people be supportive or get involved with what you're doing? I'm very heartened when I read what other people are doing other places And I think each of us create our work, our ministry, in our backyards Which was one of the things as we moved from Baltimore to the unknown of this, of Wisconsin Midwest What struck us was that the Pentagon sent everybody's backyards because it's everywhere And that work would be here for us Probably it from us to realize how much work there would be The Northwest Peace Initiative certainly has connected a loose band of people With lots of good hopes and energy to make change It's kind of connected us up in a good way Before the current war, I think people got a lot of energy from connecting and out of going out to Washington With those 11 buses, in 2003, people came home and started vigilant in all the small towns, all over the place That's what I think we each need to do, just try to find our work in our own community Get together occasionally to celebrate what we're doing right and just to be together But to realize that change is going to take all of us where we are We certainly welcome people to come visit and chat with us here at Anathath and encourage us with their stories And we can encourage others with our story That we can go down the same path together knowing that, you know, it's a lot bigger than any one of us And yet, it's attainable with all of us And if people want to contact you, how can they do that? Our email is Anathath, which is A-N-A-T-H-O-T-H at Lakeland, L-A-K-E-L-A-N-D, dot W-S Which I always thought meant websites, but it actually stands for Western Samoa And I have no idea why Or our phone number is 715-472-8721 And I know this is going to air after the bus is going to DC so you might even have a chance of reaching us Because our phone is pretty busy, these last few days If I have any idea what your life is like there, you probably have more visitors Than you can possibly assimilate into your hearts and your lives and your minds Are people allowed to come visit periodically? Absolutely, we have visitors almost every week It's not always in one swoop and we have plenty of spare rooms and camping areas If people want to stay overnight, we always joke So are these Catholic workers emphasis on worker? So are our Catholic worker friends the other day that came, bagged up the onions? If people come and they visit and then they want to share an hour of work, it's always a project If you don't want to share an hour of work, we're fine with that because actually we need to be encouraged to play a little more Have a cup of tea and talk about things Please don't feel like we are so inundated with visitors that people shouldn't call Because we really enjoy having people here and seeing the farm and ensuring what we have Barb, it's wonderful having the time with you I'm heartened by so many of the good programs that come out of Anathoth and that you support And also that you have such a very clear spiritual religious basis to what you do The story of your small Lutheran Church there is amazing to me and a bright spot on the horizon It is a bright spot on the horizon and we're just real grateful to have it in our community Thank you so much for asking me to be part of this, I've enjoyed the talk I'll look forward to meeting you soon in person [Music] I know a woman who's in motion from the rising of the morning sun [Music] And the walls are stamped between her and the place she needs to be annoying Keep on toppling one by one, she keeps moving [Music] To her rainbow's in his mind, she's getting off on getting this She keeps making progress and breaking ground She says you got to keep on moving Even when you cannot feel the beat you got to keep on moving [Music] It's energizing to be rising when you bring it up and holding you back [Music] And when you're rolling hill, then you'll find you can get up home And when you just break your wheels, say all the tracks you can't stop [Music] You'll never will [Music] What do you do when you're in easy talking when you stand still You'll find you got to keep on moving Even when you cannot feel the beat you got to keep on moving [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] She keeps going with the floor and then she's carrying her down the line [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Even when you cannot feel the beat you got to keep on moving [Music] [Music] Even when you cannot feel the beat you got to keep on moving [Music] You've been listening to an interview with Barb Cass of the Anithoth Community Farm in Luck, Wisconsin You can listen to this and other interviews via the web at northernspiritradio.org Music on this program has included two songs by Charlie King "The Hammer Has to Fall" and "A Woman of Great Energy" and "A Song by John McCutchen" not in my name. Thank you for listening. I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit. You can email me at helpsmeet@usa.net May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light. This is Spirit in Action. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]