The KIT Newsletter, an Activity of the KIT
Information
Service, a Project of The Peregrine Foundation
P.O. Box 460141 / San Francisco, CA
94146-0141 /
telephone: (415) 821-2090 / (415) 282-2369
KIT Staff U.S.: Ramon Sender, Charles Lamar,
Christina
Bernard, Vince Lagano, Dave Ostrom;
U.K. : Joy Johson MacDonald, Susan Johnson Suleski,
Ben Cavanna, Leonard
Pavitt, Joanie Pavitt Taylor, Brother Witless
(in an advisory capacity)
The KIT Newsletter is an open forum for fact and
opinion. It
encourages the expression of all views, both from within
and from
outside the Bruderhof. The opinions expressed in the
letters we
publish are those of the correspondents and do not
necessarily
reflects those of KIT editors or staff.
October 1995 Volume VII #10
-------------- "Keep In Touch" --------------
Although sexual issues normally are considered private
in nature, occasionally they may need to be discussed in KIT. This
may offend some of our readers, and for this we apologize. But as
long as sexuality remains a part of life and KIT an adult forum, we
will continue to publish whatever is relevant and people need to say
regarding sex -- or any aspect of their lives. However we also will
attempt to place a warning before any articles that we deem to be
potentially disturbing to some readers.
Those of you who have World Wide Web access should check out
the Children of the Bruderhof International's new home page at:
http://mars.superlink.net/user/cyberman/cobi.html. Nicely done, Mike!
---- The Whole KIT and Kaboodle -----
-------- INDEX --------
Johanna Patrick Homann
Welcome to Roving Reporter Lou Scheggia
Arthur R. Petrick Letter to Sunday Freeman
Christoph Gets 1/2 Hour Near The Pope
Excerpts from Kingston Press Conference
Jere Bruner to H. Goeringer
Hilarion Braun to H. Goeringer
Blair Purcell to H. Goeringer
Yosam & Oakie to H. Goeringer
Hannah Goodwin Johnson to H. Goeringer
Joel G. Clement to The Daily Freeman
Name Withheld
Rollerblading on The B'hof - Mike Boller
Nadine Moonje Pleil
Bette Bohlken-Zumpe
Bill - Poetry
Joel G. Clement - B'hof Reminiscences
Dave Ostrom - My Family Joins
Charlie Lamar - On The Way to F Xways
Gudrun Harries, 9/6/95: I've just recently come back from Germany,.
and my sister Isolde who is organizing the EuroKIT '96 asked me to ask you to publish
her account number so that people could transfer their deposits of US $40 directly into
it:
Isolde Brummerloh ¥ N.F. Bank, A. G. Bremen ¥ Acct No: 3110144603 ¥ Bank Sort
Code: 290 202 02
Thanks again, and Greetings,
KIT: The following paragraphs were
unintentionally left out of Johanna's report on her and Andy
Bazeley's visit to Woodcrest. Sorry for the slip-up!
Johanna Patrick Homann: [Hanna is
waiting in the van in the Woodcrest parking lot because she
was refused permission to accompany Andy on his visit to
mother, Bronwen.] It continued to pour for quite a while and
eventually the rain slackened. Andy's grandmother now
popped out to ask if I was OK and later, during the second
hour of my wait, a sister, who had inquired about my well-
being earlier, scurried back and offered me a little bowl of
ice-cream. She seemed nervous, as if she shouldn't be there,
but genuinely concerned about my long wait in the van. I
was really touched by this and said, "You have been so kind
to me. I have to stay in my van while I wait for a friend
who is visiting here. What is your name?" When she
identified herself, I recognized her and told her that I knew
had and her family from Bulstrode. I thanked her and,
tearing up, I told her that it meant a lot to feel that someone
was genuinely concerned for my welfare. It was a very brief
chat and she scurried off again.
I now began to re-live some of the painful memories of
how my family was split up. First, when I was five years
old, my father was sent away for a year from Primavera to
El Arado to help start the community there while my
mother stayed in Paraguay with six children. When he came
back, he was put in an isolation hut off the 'hof, and though
he repeatedly asked to speak to my mother privately he
was never allowed to do so. There always was a Servant
present and he did not have access to his six children. He
told me, years later, that finally, out of desperation, he just
walked away and found his way to Friesland, a Mennonite
colony, and they helped him get to Asuncion. My mother
was doing what the Bruderhof expected, to put them first
over her marriage vows, and eventually my dad got a
divorce through Mexico, which required only one partner.
My mother was informed of the divorce.
"Don't worry. We will always take care of you," She was
told.
My brothers now were placed with a childless couple
(my youngest brother being only two years old) and they
had a much more difficult time of it under the harsh,
authoritarian rule of the wife. So, to make a long story short,
I grew up never really knowing my father or my brothers
until years later. We were sent to Bulstrode when I was
twelve years old, and one year later, my mother was sent
out with all but my oldest sister (who was a member by
then). My mother had finally taken a stand for her children
by asking for compassion instead of punishment for my
brothers who were getting into trouble, explaining that their
disrupted childhood might have some bearing on their
current behavior. She was told that she was in the wrong
spirit and dumped out on welfare, after giving her life and
her inheritance to the B'hof. She was unable to work because
of weekly migraines and the culture shock for us children
and our continuing struggle for survival is another story.
KIT: We welcome Lou Scheggia of Chalk Hill,
PA, onto our team of roving reporters. He will be reporting
the campaign for town council in Wharton Township
(Farmington) where the Bruderhof allegedly is bringing in
their American members to register as voters (only a 30-
day residency is required in PA before voting) in order to
try to make political inroads into the community. These are
the people who do not believe in democracy on the 'hof --
just off it! Scheggia additionally will be reporting on the
Bruderhof appeal of their property tax assessment.
Arthur R. Petrick, Elka Park, to the
Kingston Sunday Freeman, 9/17/95:
Hutterians Show True Colors
At last the Hutterian cult has finally come out of the
closet and shown their true colors. When they first arrived
here, they pretended to want to become part of the
community. Instead they now want the taxpayers to give
them a free ride and support them. This tax-free status
request is a sham. Here they are running a full-time factory,
using free labor (their cult members), making a big profit,
and we are supposed to subsidize them. What businessman
would not jump at the chance to get free labor and be tax-
free yet?
Just because they want to call themselves a religious
group is no reason for us to support them. They do not even
have a church on the grounds to qualify to be tax-free, yet
they want all the benefits of the community without paying
their fair share as the rest of us do. We would have been
better off if the police camp had become a state prison. At
least then local people would have been hired and the
officers would be spending their money in this community.
LATE NEWS: J. Christoph Arnold, Bruderhof
Elder, has been invited by John Cardinal O'Connor,
Archbishop of New York, to a half-hour "gathering of
Christian leaders with Pope John Paul II, 6:30-7:00 P.M., Oct
7th, at Cardinal O'Connor's residence. Christoph also has been
invited to attend the Holy Mass in Central Park at 9:30
A.M.,"to participate in the Ecumenical Procession at the
beginning of the Liturgy, and to be seated in the sanctuary."
ITEM: Recently a Bruderhof graduate asked
for a family visit, but was told that unless he/she would
promise to have have nothing more to do with Mike Boller
and Eb Zumpe, no further visits would be allowed. When
asked for the reason for their insistence on cutting off from
Mike and Eb, the family replied, "Because Mike Boller and Eb
Zumpe have filed a libel lawsuit against the Bruderhof." Both
Mike and Eb insist that no such lawsuit has been filed.
ITEM: A few excerpts transcribed from the
question period at the Kingston, NY, COB press conference:
Question: What do you feel the Bruderhof's
fear is of you (COB)?
Ben Cavanna: We spent about two and a half
hours this morning trying to establish that very thing. My
best guess is that they are fearful of the bright light of
public scrutiny on some of their actions, particularly most
recently, and some of the ways they lead their life. My
attitude to them is, "If you believe you are living
scripturally, according to the way you believe Jesus did, you
should be delighted to have the bright light shed on that."
Again, most of us who left, [known as] Children of the
Bruderhof now, had things happen to us in the Bruderhof
that the Bruderhof does not wish to have aired in public.
They fear that if we were to give information, alerting the
general public, and also the people inside the Bruderhof, of
things that happened to us, that it would destroy their life.
Question: They fear there will be an exposŽ of
the kind of ways you were raised and some of the situations
that happened? They are afraid that this would be
published? Is that what you think it is?
Ben Cavanna: Yes, I think they are fearful of
COB exposing some of the things that happened to us. And I
think they're fearful of -- very recently like what Andy said
to you, because in part they have said to us -- "These things
happened in the past. We're sorry. We don't do that any
more." But when I tell the same story that happened to me
twenty-five years ago, and Andy comes back a year ago
yesterday and says the same story, it kind of gives the lie to
what they've said. I guess that's what they're fearful of. I
think what they don't understand is that we do not wish to
destroy them. We wish them to recognize what they did to
us and not have that happen to our friends and family who
are there now.
Question: How important to you is the issue of
children being excluded, and how do you know that it still
happens today?
Ben Cavanna: I don't personally know that it
still happens today. I think there's strong evidence that they
probably do. And how much importance do I put on that? I
think that's probably the most damaging thing you can do to
a young person, to not allow them access to a third party
where they can do some reality testing about what is going
on in their lives. Growing up in the Bruderhof is like that.
You do not have any access to a third party who can give
you some information about whether what's happening to
you is right or wrong. And then on top of that, you exclude
that person, you shun them, within their own family and
social environment. What more mental cruelty can you pour
on a child than to say to them, "You will be here with us, but
we will pretend that you do not exist."
Jere Bruner to Rev. Howard Goeringer,
8/28/95:
I read with interest No. 37 of The Jesus Journal. Since
it came to me, I suppose it went to all the KIT subscribers,
and that's OK with me. I found what you said familiar from
my time in Primavera. This is pretty largely the doctrine as
I knew it, about what following Jesus means. How it calls for
giving up everything, the same challenge Jesus gave to the
rich young man, who had kept all the commandments, but
Jesus told him what he still had not done: sell all you have,
give the money to the poor, and come and follow me. You
made a very strong case for this following being what the
first Christians in Jerusalem did.
So I was expecting to hear you finish up with telling
everybody that this is what you had been seeking, that you
had received the call, and you were going to sell all you had,
and give the money -- in this case, to the Bruderhof -- and
go and take up vows to be a Bruderhofer for the rest of your
life. And what happens? You end up saying: "Few of us will
join the communal life of the Bruderhof. All of us will
mature in our consciousness of eternal life within the
community of the spirit." Now the old radical Anabaptists,
the martyred generation of Jakob Huter, men and women,
who "let it cost them something," they had a word for that:
Mouth-Christian. If you believe what you wrote, then you
have to put your money, and your body, and your own ego-
will, where your mouth is.
I spent 11 years in the Bruderhof, and in the end, I
failed of that utter surrender. And since that time I have
come to realize that the Bruderhof itself is not what it says it
is, and not what it can appear to a four-week guest. I would
never go back. If the Bruderhof were now what it says it is,
it would indeed be Heaven on Earth, or as we used to say, an
advance embassy of the Kingdom of God, Eden restored, the
City Foursquare. But I'm afraid what it is now is best
understood from a close reading of George Orwell's Animal
Farm. Like the horse, the Common Folk, slaving away on
short rations and a short leash, when there is a crisis,
faithfully respond with "I will work harder!" Until they are
worn out. And the Leadership, the Servants and the Elder,
like the pigs in animal farm, are less and less to be
distinguished from the World Churches, the Corporate CEOs,
and other Important People, and have come so far that now
they call on these Important People of the World to defend
them and to define them.
Keep seeking, man! Do put your heart, with all your
might, where your mouth is. It's action that counts. That,
and listening carefully for the still, small Voice. Wishing you
well,
Hilarion Braun to Rev. Goeringer, 8/30/95:
I am a Bruderhof child who was expelled at the age of 17
from Evergreen. My parents were also expelled in 1961
from Paraguay where they lived in abject poverty. My story
is in KIT, if you care to study the truth. As a one-month
visitor to the Bruderhof, you are hardly qualified to publish
when you did in your letter and The Jesus Journal...
Most of us who read KIT and contribute to it know far more
about the Bruderhof than you could possibly know, even
after years of study. You do no good service to anyone by
exposing your ignorance on this subject, and you invite
ridicule. I don't remember any visit by you, certainly not a
month-long visit that would justify your comments
regarding KIT. Ramon is not our leader, counselor or guru.
We are far too independent to let anyone lead or mislead us.
That's why we don't return to the Bruderhof or to any other
cult. Some of us are Christians; others like myself, agnostics.
I would have nothing to do with KIT if it were eager to do
harm to the Bruderhof or other cults. I believe in First
Amendment rights, even though much harm has come from
those whose nonsense speech is protected. If you wish to be
my friend, try to know the truth before you publish, not
afterward. Sincerely,
Blair Purcell to Rev. Goeringer, 9/11/95:
We had a brief phone conversation a month or so back ...
You may recall; I was still reeling from nearly 2000 calls,
including death threats, which had been received at the
number you called.
I understand you've stuck your neck out a bit on behalf
of the Bruderhof in regards to allowing yourself to be
quoted in support of their general religious bent. There is no
quarrel from me in regards to the religious perspective as
expressed (not practiced) by the Bruderhof. My single
biggest quarrel with their practice, however, is the coerced
abandonment of family ties in the pursuit of the Kingdom of
Heaven.
They claim this is a requirement of their Christian faith.
My contention is any group that makes harassing phone
calls is not Christian. Any group which places a wiretap in a
former members home is not Christian. Nor are they
Christian if they attempt to wiretap a telephone in a
neighboring church through the use of undercover agents.
A Christian group would not send two unknown
members, at night, to the home of a former Bruderhofer and
her daughter who were alone at the time. When discovered
outside the house, these two men fled and one attempted to
prevent his identification by concealing his face from his
pursuer. The woman and her child are my wife and
daughter. I was the pursuer (they were spotted by me when
I returned home).
I was later told by these men, neither of whom my wife
or I had met previously, that they had come to visit and to
express concerns to us about things I had written but
realized "at the last minute" they had not called ahead. This
harassment took place last December 14th. My office was
broken into two days later and while there may be no
connection at all, you can understand my concern.
During the Children of the Bruderhof press conference in
July (in Kingston), these same two told a reporter they were
searching for a fugitive from justice whom they had reason
to believe was in our home. Who are these people? Bounty
hunters? It was at this same conference COB learned of the
alleged wiretap of the telephone in our host church (where
we had hired a hall in which to meet). The interlopers had
been "found out" by the woman minister and traced by the
police to the Bruderhof.
Fluorescent pink stickers were found at National airport
(also reported from many other places) reading:
SWEET TALK 24 HOURS A DAY - 7 DAYS JOELLE &
KAREN 1-800-XXX-XXX (our number)
In actuality, Joel is a former Bruderhofer and Karen is
his wife. Note how whomever is responsible for the stickers
feminized his name by adding a couple of letters, hence
"Joelle". What kind of people would invite the type of call
implied by these stickers into anyone's home, much less a
"child of the Bruderhof"? Their names appeared because Joel
& Karen were the first to take the "hot line".
By the way, I have evidence (not proof) that a high-
ranking Bruderhof member was at National Airport on the
day these stickers were recovered by the police. This
evidence has not been rebutted by the Bruderhof except by
the statement that the man in question was at Woodcrest
"all day".
I personally saw a wiretap in place in a former
member's home. The equipment described by the minister
of the Methodist Church in Kingston corresponds exactly to
the devices discovered in the home of the former minister in
question -- over a year earlier.
So, I ask you, can any group which carries out these
activities accurately describe itself as Christian? I think not.
And, if not, what other possible motivation could such a
group have for preventing contact between inside and
outside members of the same family? I submit that
separation of families is not a requirement of any
community as an article of Christian "faith" -- certainly not
here where the group in question does not otherwise behave
in anything like a Christian manner.
My personal opinion is the leaders must prevent such
contact because a majority of those families inside are just
as you believe them to be: hard-working, dedicated
Christians who have NO idea of the activities carried out in
their names. The leadership must prevent those on the
inside from finding out what's going on in order to prevent a
revolution from within. Should the revolution occur, then
the "Christian" leadership would no longer be able to
exercise the wonderful prerogatives of jetting around the
world while the common members work hours are extended
to meet the "need".
Nonetheless, those same common members must bear a
substantial responsibility for abrogating their inherent
personal responsibility to be fully aware of policies carried
out in God's name on their behalf. There is a price for
freedom, particularly religious freedom, which many
otherwise honorable, moral and ethical (not to say Christian)
members of the Bruderhof have never been willing to pay.
I have also recognized the apparent religious fervor of
some of those "caught out" in the un-Christian behavior
described. It is truly a contradiction of attitude difficult for
me to understand. I'm sure you would agree Christ would
never sit in a phone booth to make harassing calls and Christ
would never condone the preparation of stickers designed to
invite obscene callers into the homes of former members of
His church. Christ would never send thugs to capture a
former member wanted (I think) for violation of probation.
By the way, it has been implied to me by certain New York
authorities that this individual is better off where he is
(they seem to know) than being returned to Ulster County to
face punishment for probation violation. His story (I only
know a little of it) would be deeply embarrassing to the
leadership; those officials seemed to feel he would be safer
where he is.
How else can all these things they do be explained
except as a means to preserve power?
Let me suggest that many have been misled into
believing something when they have not had access to
contrary evidence. I am able to provide specific evidence
and testimony to support the following allegations -- if you
have any interest:
1. Discovery of two men outside my home on
December 14th, 1995.
2. The break-in at my office two days later.
3. A copy of the phone bill for our 800 line showing
the pattern of harassment.
4. A copy of the police report from National Airport
detailing the death threats and recovery of the fluorescent
stickers.
5. Evidence that a high ranking Bruderhofer was at the
airport on the same day the threats were received and the
stickers recovered.
6. Copies of articles (also in most recent issue of KIT)
describing the apparent attempted "bugging" of the Trinity
Methodist Church in Kingston in the week prior to our
press conference.
A few individuals have expressed concerns about
physical safety for themselves and their families in regards
to what they know. Therefore, further evidence (about other
allegations I've previously stated) is not available at this
time. Intimidation, as a technique, still works on many
former members.
You may wonder how I became so deeply involved in
these events.
My wife, born in Paraguay, grew up in the Bruderhof
and left under relatively pleasant circumstances over 30
years ago. As KIT began to evolve (you know the history),
she was attracted because of the opportunity to share
experiences (many good ones) and meet friends and
relatives not seen, in some cases, since childhood. The
immediate response to these activities from Bruderhof
leadership was to cut off contact with her family -
something barely allowed before! That's outrageous when
done in the name of God by those whose heartbreaking
behavior is so absurdly un-Christian. Particularly when my
wife is one of the sweetest, most loving of daughters you
could possibly imagine.
We would not allow our freedom of association to be
controlled or coerced by a bunch of religious bullies.
Intimidation simply will not work with us. To deny one
former member access to relatives within (as far as we are
concerned) is to deny "the least of us" without.
If one acts out of conscience, that really gets 'em mad up
there at Woodcrest! And, that's why they're mad at us,
because we exercise our consciences. And that is ineluctably
sad for all involved.
NOTE: Blair Purcell originally filed a
complaint with the Howard County Police Department
concerning the harassment and threatening phone calls.
Once he was able to determine to his satisfaction who had
been responsible, he recently asked Detective Luther
Johnson to suspend his investigation inasmuch as Johnson's
efforts had resulted in the cessation of the calls.
Oakie and Yosemite Sam, Dave Ostrom's
up-the-holler pals, 9/24/95: Oakie an' H&H done come out
the back woods ta jaw wit' Yosam las' week. Now Oakie, he
was a wonderin' 'bout the 'sponse o' lots a dem peoples.
Oakie an' H&H was a-wonderin' if'n de 'ffense peoples done
took was 'cause we-alls not as lernt as some o' ya'll or if'n
'twas ya' ll had to admit y'all knowed us people's some ya'll
call red-necks o' whatevah.
H&H opined ol' Rev Goeringer or 'twas that Go-ringer?
Well anyways, H&H, 'e was tinken maybe ol' Rev. was one
dem good ole boys dat bein' silver-tongued, harangued us
po' sinners ever' Sunday 'bout wot we all was a- doin' wrong
whilst he was a-pickin' our pockets. Yosam done showed us
a letter from dat ol' Rev. and dat Rev, he done try an' tell
Yosam dat he was jus' one o' us commoners. T'was kinda
intrestin' tho, when he was a-talkin' to a good man up dere
at a school, he was a-goin' on 'bout how ed-i-cated he was.
Now, to us dumb rednecks, dat sounds alike he was bein' a
mite hip-o-crittercal, like we say'n, the Rev, he silvered dem
words to fit de 'casion. Now, where I come from, dat way o'
doin' business, we call "lie'n'."
H&H 'an me, we got ta readin' an' tinkin' -- ya'll knowed
we could read a little -- wa'll we was a-readin dat letter
from 'ol Rev. an' we's got kinda wonderin' why de Rev, he
don' go join dat nest o' Cresters up on dat hill? He sho nuff
have 'enuff good say'n 'bout 'em, me an H&H's kinda cur-ee-
yuss why 'e don' hitch up? A 'ting 'bout hip-o-critters, easier
ta say words 'n 'tis ta do wot 'e claims.
Ya knows, 'ol' Rev, he done tryin' t' tear a strip off'n
Yosam cause Yosam was a tell'n 'im bout wot it was like
livin' at de Crest, not just a-visitin'. Rev, he was poundin' on
dat pulpit, spoutin' all nature a words out 'a the Good Book.
Wal, nature 'o Christianity is get two o' mo' learn't men to-
gader an tha'll cackle fer hours worse 'n bunch 'o hens at
layin' time. Lest' a ways, dem hens'll lay some eggs. Dem ed-
i-cated mens, dey won't come ta no end. Anyways, gettin'
back 'bout Rev. All dem words he was a-usin', a man could
argue 'bout. H&H an' me, we kinda read ol' Rev, he was a
short-handlin' Yosam. When an ed-i-cated man uses dem
dere fifty-dolla' words t' perlitely call a man a liar, e's short-
handlin' 'im. Ya'll Easterners, ya'll 's sayin' he was "gettin' in
Yosam's face."
Me, H&H an' Yosam, we 'llowed 't was ever' man's got
his sights. We-all has ta ans'er ta somun mo' powerful 'n us.
Ain't gonna be nobody but Him and de soul bein' judged.
Now, if'n Rev. truly an sho-nuf 'lieves 'is own line, he gonna
'ave ta talk to Him, not me or ya'll. In the time tween now
an den, if a critter is black wi' white stripes an a fluffy tail,
'ol Rev may call it a kitty cat, but if'n dat striped critter got a
bad smell on 'im, 'e's a skonk! Oakie for Yosam and all us
commoners
Hannah Goodwin Johnson, A Personal
Reaction about Howard's approach, 9/95: When I found
material in my mailbox with a print of hofnicks and their
polkadots, I was a little ashamed and had to proceed in
privacy. I felt confused as I examined the images on the
cover. Then I took the tape off and found a flyer that
seemed to be some kind of explanation. But the last few
paragraphs set me off arguing:
In his Journal, Howard claims, "I discovered a people
who have learned to relax..." He seems to have seen what
must have been an "OK time" in the Bruderhof crisis cycle.
Those who get thrown out are blamed for the delusion of
"work that is accomplished" in places where the quantity of
laborers (the Next Generation) allows management to
discriminate against God-given quality. Only archetypal
personality clashes make all work stop. Howard is
archetypically knowing better than to join those who may
silently meditate on the word "at joy-filled work" and attend
meetings to hear how "we need a life that is not guided by
our senses" (Arnold). If he feels that need, why doesn't he
join the happy laborers and help them explain that need to
Christoparche-architopf? I believe Howard likes his own
mission station. He visited the Hof Treck, having gained
enough confidence in mission control. Howard has not been
submerged in the so-called baptism of fire that is actually
baptism of the sea with a millstone around his neck. I doubt
I can be convinced about the safety of the Saline Solution
Process.
I would rather not argue about this anymore. It is very
tiresome to involve someone (who think he knows more
than KIT) in my soliloquy. Fighting the label 'Against The
Community' is wearing me out. Fighting labels anyway is
labelled reactionary. My needs didn't lead me to Howard. He
had to start with me about my needs and I now choose to
beg only one thing of him. Leave me alone, please! The 'hof
cannot be my God. Once upon a time, it was my place of
work. Go well and stay well,
Dear KIT, all this big flurry in public school about how
history could be better taught makes me wonder how
obvious it has to get to see who's talking? Every nation has
its own history that is mostly drilled into the students. This
is naturally part of every culture. A hofnick as freaky and
wayward as I was might be asked (in shock), "You don't
know about Hutter?" And then there are branches of the
different subjects with their processes written up in many
ages by various characters. I was far more interested in
Galileo than Hutter, but no one wanted me to discuss such
personal choices. I would have rather studied physics
instead of religions of the world, but then to make a 'free
choice' I went with religions. It's still beyond me to study
the math, but I try to make informed statements about my
choices in spiritual sharing.
Joel G. Clement to the Kingston Daily
Freeman: I thought your coverage of the Children of the
Bruderhof meetings was good. I was born and raised at the
Bruderhof and lived there for 22 years, including 15 at
Woodcrest. The question of power and how intentional
communities govern themselves is a topic of great concern
in the Communities movement. My father was banished
from the Bruderhof because he questioned the leadership. I
came home from school one day and he was gone. I did not
see him or talk to him for two years (I was allowed to write
to him). I hardly think there was a "town hall"-styled
meeting to decide to send him away. Rather, the elder and a
group of his henchmen did this on their own to squash a
voice of dissent. This happened to numerous other people
too. My only regret is that I didn't begin to rebel sooner
against this kind of tyranny at the Bruderhof.
Name Withheld, 9/12/95: I am sorry I
have not written sooner, I just received the latest copy of
KIT. The statement by Tommy Atkinson about the S.O.B.
putting themselves before Christ was right on the money. I
have tried calling in advance for visits but have been turned
down every time. Please send one copy of every book or
article available. I am especially interested in getting John
Stewart's "My Years in Woodcrest." That report is the best I
have read on what life is really like on the Bruderhof.
Brother Witless says, "The Bruderhof believes in Blumhardt
and Eberhard, but not in The Sacred Heart of Jesus." Yours in
Christ,
Rollerblading On The Bruderhof
by Mike Boller
When I was eleven I asked my father, "How does a
diesel engine work?" and he explained, "The engine does not
need a spark. The piston coming up compresses the fuel and
the fuel gets so hot (because of the compression) that it
ignites spontaneously and causes the power stroke."
I wanted to invent something, and this diesel engine
principle seemed as good a place as any to start. I took
paper and a blue pen and drew up an engine that ran on
water. The piston coming up compressed the water and the
water got so hot (because of the compression) that it turned
into steam and expanded and caused the power stroke.
When I showed Dad the drawing, he wasn't impressed. I
was stung, not immediately realizing my outrageous (and
tiresome) flouting of the laws of physics. I resolved to do
better.
The next idea I sketched out was "skates with fixed
casters instead of blades." You would take a hockey or figure
skate, cut off or otherwise remove the blade, and fasten two
fixed casters rigidly to the sole of the boot. The effect would
be a rollerskate that would have the dynamics of an ice
skate. You could skate all summer (on any floor or paved
surface) and conceivably do the same right and left
crossover curves, forward and backward, that you could on
ice skates. I pursued the idea vigorously up to the point that
I ran into "Have you any idea how much those casters cost?"
or "It would ruina perfectly good pair of skates!" I still
believed in the idea, and was glad when, some years later, a
company began to manufacture and market in-line roller
skates under the name of "Rollerblade".
It took me until December of last year to finally put
down $150 and bring home a pair of Rollerblade's
Bravoblade GL's. Compared to my crude 5th grader's vision,
these were marvels of engineering. Instead of two, there
were fourwheels on each boot. Each wheel had two sets of
ball bearings. Each boot had three "memory" closures that
you only needed to adjust once. You could pop into or out of
them in less than ten seconds.
The rollerblades' performance was everything I'd hoped
for, and more. Not only could they handle ice skating
maneuvers but you could also "ski" downhill with parallel
turns and do jumps and backwards slaloms. Blacktop could
be far more interesting than the predictable rink ice; even
the most innocuous looking path required respect. I'd heard,
"Step on a crack, break your mother's back," but hit a crack
wrong with rollerblades and you could well break your own.
Through practice and some scrapes and bruises I learned
enough of the complex mechanics of foot-mounted wheels to
enable me to stay out of trouble on most surfaces.
Some months ago one Sunday afternoon I rollerbladed
down to the pond at the Norfolk Bruderhof. I stood under
the pines on the north shore, the deep end, and watched
three canada geese paddling at the edge. This pond had been
central to my life for the nearly 18 years I had lived on the
Bruderhof. In summer I and my classmates swam in it--
there was the dock from which I learned to dive. I knew
what the pond looked like empty, when we school kids
helped scrape the mud into one corner where it could be
sucked out by a vacuum truck. I liked the cold spring water
coming up from the bottom, building its own sand bar of
yellow clay. When winter came and the pond surface froze,
we skated on it: I especially enjoyed the Captain Hook games
under the flood lights.
The sound of a latch clicking brought my mind back to
the present. Someone had come through the skatehouse gate
and was walking over to where I was standing. It was John
Hurdman. John was some years younger than I, about thirty,
and he seemed to have something other on his mind than
reminiscing about our childhood.
"What are you doing here?" he asked in clipped tones,
not looking at me.
"Watching the geese," I answered. "What are you
doing?"
He ignored the question. "Where are you parked?" he
asked.
I was a little taken aback. "Where am I parked?" I
asked. "Why on earth do you want to know where I am
parked?"
John looked uncomfortable. "Let's both walk to the edge
of the property." he suggested.
"You can if you want," I said. "I'm fine here."
"I'll call the cops and have you removed," he said.
"Go for it, pal. It'll be a lot of fun."
John appeared to reconsider. As he turned to go, he said,
"I'll have to make a phone call." He crossed the wooden
bridge over the stream running by the pond and headed
toward the Alm house where my family had lived for
several years. I wanted to do more looking around and
headed in the other direction, but bumped into Kevin
Fleischer who seemed to be interested in what was going on.
I explained to Kevin, "I'm here just minding my own
business and John Hurdman comes along and wants me to
leave. What do you think I should do?"
Kevin didn't have to think about it. "If John Hurdman
asked you to leave, then you should leave," he said.
Thanks, Kevin. I continued on the gravel road past the
old pottery room and the shed where we used to keep the
bikes and sleds. My wheels bumped along over the uneven
surface. There ahead was the paved hill leading up between
the brookside house and old school building. I tacked up the
hill, like a boat sailing into the wind. Two left crossovers,
two right crossovers. On my left in the old school was the
room where long ago Lydia Meier had awakened me, a
toddler of three, from my midday nap and led me up to the
Brookside House courtyard where a blue van had just
arrived. My parents were in the van, and my mother held
up a tiny baby to the window. The baby turned out to be my
brother Hans-Jorg.
I skated toward the lower main house, by the two
polished pink granite columns. I passed Mark Felder going
the other direction.
"Hey Mark," I said as I rolled by. I clumped down the
stone stairs onto the concrete path that led past the old
cobbler shop where my uncle Dave used to repair shoes and
where we would go to work on leather projects. Mark had
turned and was coming after me.
"Michael! Michael! Michael!" he said sternly. I had heard
this tone of voice before. Back when I was a highschooler, it
meant I had crossed a boundary and there would be dire
consequences. I could be shunned, confined to house arrest
for an indefinite time, have my meals delivered in small
stainless steel containers, and I would be expected to write
confessions of my transgressions without knowing what my
confiner was looking for.
"Mark! Mark! Mark!" I admonished in as serious a voice
as I could muster. I skated down the path by the big
crabapple tree I'd climbed as a kid. John Hurdman and Sam
Atcom were coming toward me from the other end of the
path. I turned around. Mark Felder, Jerry Johnson, and
Howard Sanders were coming the other way. Apparently
they wanted to talk to me. I stood back on my skates, hands
on my hips, six inches taller than any of them. Sam spoke.
"Michael, it will really hurt your mother when she hears
about this," he warned.
Great, I thought. Moving my mother to Europe wasn't
enough. "When my mother hears about what?" I asked.
"About your being here against our wishes."
"What makes you think I have any less right to be here
than you?" I retorted. "I consider this my home, this is
where I grew up. My grandfather financed the Rhon
Bruderhof purchase, from what I understand."
"Oh Michael," said Sam, "that was a long time ago."
Does that mean it didn't happen? I leaned forward and
addressed the five men. "You want me to go, but I don't feel
the need to go right now. What are you going to do? Call the
cops? Sure, call them. As I told John here, it'll be great fun.
We'll go to court, and everybody will get to see the policies
of this place examined under a microscope."
"We don't want to go to court," said Sam. "Who said
anything about court?"
"A few minutes ago John here told me he was going to
call the cops to have me removed. Okay, what ARE you going
to do? Do something! If you want me to go, then make me!
Otherwise, stop giving me crap!" I looked at the men around
me. Nobody made a move. Here we are, I thought, one on
one, make that five on one, and I'm not particularly
impressed. You're used to being obeyed, but when your
bluff is called, you don't know what to do. Suddenly I was
bored.
"See you guys later," I said, and in a few steps I was on
the blacktop again. None of the men made any move to
follow me; it would have been a sight to see them trying to
chase me down. In the old days Sam Atcom had been a
formidable chain-tag opponent, but now it was no contest.
Things might have been different, though. I don't know
if a patent existed for in-line skates in 1971, but if the
commune had jumped on the idea and begun developing it
at that time, today Sam Atcom could be cruising alongside
me on his Rare-Earth Servo-Power-Assist Regenerative-
ABS-Braking-Bruder-Blades. Athletic Jerry Johnson and
wiry Mark Felder, scorning auxiliary propulsion, would be
cutting figure-eights around me on their Full-Active-
Suspension Pebble-Jumper Magnetic-Deerspring models.
Howard Sanders might have been documenting it all with
his Dual-Video Toe-Cam Woody-Wheels, and John Hurdman
would have been in southern California collecting marketing
data.
At Regional #7 high school the commune kids, now
Roller-Sobs, would possess cutting edge technology and be
feared and respected for their prowess on half-pipes, curbs,
and railings.
The commune mother, balancing a family supper tray
on one hand and leading a centipede-like train of wheeled
kids with the other would be busy turning away nosy
Cosmopolitan reporters eager to learn the secret of those
svelt thighs and tight abs.
I skated up through the horsebarn courtyard, waved to
a child or two, and continued down the babyhouse hill
where I'd worn out many a go-cart wheel. Behind the
swamp shed I saw a lonely-looking golden retriever in a box
with a caged front, and I sat down and kept it company as I
looked over the field where as school children we'd picked
beans and brussel sprouts and thrown rotten tomatoes at
each other at the end of the growing season.
I checked my watch. It was time to go. I got to my feet,
tacked up the old entrance hill and rolled back down West
Side Road in the direction of the playing field in Norfolk
where I had parked my vehicle. I caught up with the Albert
and Ida Schmidt family who were walking toward the
crossroads. As I passed them, I hopped into a backwards
crouch and waved. Several of the girls smiled and waved
back, but Albert maintained a stern demeanor and showed
no recognition. Joe Clabberd, a cousin of my mother, was
following some distance behind on a bicycle. Joe seemed
relaxed.
At the crossroads I turned right onto Mountain Road,
hummed by several sections of zigzag rail fence and
chattered into the gravel parking lot of the playing field. I
waved to the three guys batting balls around. They waved
back. I sat on my truck tailgate and took off my rollerblades
while Joe stood close by, hands on his handlebars. He looked
at the three guys.
"Are these also people from the Bruderhof?" he asked.
I laughed. "No, Joe. I just met them an hour ago when I
parked here. Friendly, aren't they?"
Nadine Moonje Pleil, 9/14/95: Thursday,
September 7, I spoke to a group of women predominantly
German. My book Free from Bondage was the subject of
discussion. I was asked by several women why I was not so
much more angry about the commune. I told then that at
first I was very angry, very bitter, but then resigned myself
to the fact that I was not going to change their way of
thinking in any way. I told myself that it was a waste of
time and energy to continue to be angry and bitter. I knew I
had to get on with my life. I had eight children, six of whom
were with us at the time. My husband and I had an
awesome task on our hands. We were responsible to see that
these children were sent on their way with an education. I
realized that there were things I had to do. I had to grit my
teeth and get on with the job. I had no time to be angry or
bitter about what the commune had done to me, how my life
had been messed up.
Writing my book has been very, very good therapy for
me. It is as if a great and very heavy burden has been lifted
from my heart and shoulders. Of course the forgetting part
is not easy. I will never forget, and the pain which has been
inflicted will never go away. The pain remains, however I
think I am more able to cope with it as I grow older. Maybe
things have come full circle. Some healing has come from
having been able to talk to my brother, from having been
able to feel that he, too, went though a lot of heart's anguish
due to the very long separation which took place so early on
in our lives. In talking with my brother, I have been able to
realize how much he too suffered by our parents' divorce
and because of the fact that we were denied the possibility
of growing up together. All through the years of separation,
we still held on to each other and therefore the bond
between us was strengthened.
Very soon after our expulsion from the commune I
realized that I personally could not and would not ever
return. After all that had happened during forty long years,
I simply felt incapable of ever submitting to such a lifestyle
again. I could not again watch my husband and children be
treated with such disrespect. I vowed I would not ever
subject my family to such hurt and pain again.
I have to admit that it does upset me when I hear how,
for instance, Andrew Bazeley is threatened and then is told
to tell the truth about his life. Why should any of us want to
lie about our experiences is beyond me! I extend my
heartfelt sympathy to you, Andrew, for what happened
during your childhood and especially for what took place on
the day you went to say your final farewell to your mother.
At least on that day you should have been shown some
courtesy and respect! It deeply pains me to have to hear
that we are lying, whereas it seems to be exactly the other
way around.
I have had some thoughts about the name for COB. I
have also wondered if it excludes those who were children
in the commune but were not born there. I personally feel
KIT is enough for me to absorb and cope with. Is it
necessary to have another group? Is it not getting a little
complicated to have two groups? However, maybe I do not
see or know all the reasons, whys and wherefores.
I would also like to comment on the stickers found at
National Airport, and to what Christian Domer said: "We
have good friends." What kind of friends does the Commune
have or does Christian Domer have?! Also, who instigates the
obscene phone calls? The commune has definitely changed
in the 15 years since our family lived there, or did I, for
instance, just not know what was going on? Was I not
informed as to what went on? The Aug-Sept KIT was good.
Thanks to those who have been able to share so openly
about your life. Greetings,
Bette Bohlken-Zumpe, 9/24/95: ...I had a
letter from Gabriele von Borries (an ex-member from
Wheathill days.) She told me more about Margarethe
Boning's death, which upset me greatly. The last time I
phoned Margarethe was around Christmas last year. She was
so fanatical about my seeing her point of view that I
stopped phoning, as she had a bad heart condition. Shortly
after that, the news reached her that her daughter Neckie
died (committed suicide) and she was upset. The religious
community she belonged to felt she was "much too
earthbound," so they brought her to an old people's home
near the Sinntal B'hof where she died very lonesome and
alone! If Gabriele had told me earlier that Margarethe had
left the "Christusstaat," then Hans and I would have gone to
her and helped her as much as we could. As it is, we are too
late to do anything at all.
9/29/95: First, I would like to thank the KIT
staff for all the work and effort that went into making Aug-
Sept KIT issue so very interesting and varied. For us who
missed the KIT gathering at Friendly Crossways, many
things are difficult to understand. I am referring to all the
letters about the Kingston COB meeting and the last
Bruderhof actions towards their children who have chosen a
different way. There is no love, no compassion, no warmth,
no truth, but instead lies, threats, criminal behavior!
Somewhere deep inside me I never quite lost the hope that
we could find a basis for a better understanding with the
Community, but it seems clear that they will not listen to us.
I was shocked by the report from Johanna Patrick Homann.
This harsh and evil approach toward her and Andrew, who
most probably saw his mum for the last time, is something I
can hardly believe or understand. When I think of how we
felt and experienced death as children as a uniting factor
with those who grieved, when I think of all the songs we
used to sing at a time like that -- that somehow you felt the
closeness of eternity -- then I must come to the conclusion
that the Bruderhof really is not what we believed it was,
and that hurts! I have just heard that my own mother is
doing very poorly, same as my sister Heidi. They will not
accept mail from me, so there is absolutely no way to
communicate at this time -- and that hurts!
The second item in KIT regards J. Christoph Arnold, his
family and friends flying to Rome in their own Gulfstream
jet to make the Pope repent for deeds done to the Hutterites
two centuries ago -- and reading from Revelations in the
Vatican! This is really too stupid for words! How can they be
so blind to their own sins??? I was always taught, "First
make peace in your own heart, then with those around you,
the family you live in, then the bigger circle in the school,
then the whole community, and you will bring a witness of
love!" I am very glad that Rev. Sam Waldner gave such a
clear witness for the Hutterites, stating simply that JCA does
not represent the Hutterite Church. I have no idea what
prompted the Bruderhof to go to Rome unless it was an
effort to gain the Hutterites' respect. But then it is clear that
the Bruderhof does not understand the first thing about the
Hutterites and their forefathers, who willingly accepted the
mockery of the world to give witness to the living Christ.
This most certainly is a step against the Hutterites and
against everything they stand and stood for! And the whole
discussion about loans or gifts to the Bruderhof is clear proof
of the Bruderhof's money-minded attitude today!
The news about a 'Bruderhof House' in Nigeria is stupid
too! Why don't they just accept that their arrogance is no
longer wanted and needed in Nigeria? All the money that
they fund-raised to invest in Nigeria was well worthwhile as
assistance to an African country. Why should the Bruderhof
now want back what was once given? Does the Bible not say,
"Let your right hand not know what your left hand is
giving?" All of us pay for the underdeveloped countries and
we never make a big deal about it. It makes me think of my
attorney uncle Thurman Arnold in Washington when my
Uncle Hardy came to him once again to beg money "for the
poor war orphans we are going to help." Thurman said, "You
took in ten war orphans and make expensive trips to the
States to ask people to help financially for ten children???
Many a family has ten children and they cope in silence, but
you want special treatment because you took in ten little
children?" Poor Hardy felt so ashamed! But he had been sent
on Werbung for the Primavera communities and just tried to
put forward a 'worthy cause' that people would give their
money for!
The articles in the local Kingston newspapers were good,
and at this point I would like to thank Margot and Blair
especially for their clear and level-headed talks and
writings to the Press, as well as to Joe Keiderling and C.
Domer. It is wonderful that you got yourself so involved,
Blair. I do know that it is for Margot and Emily especially,
but it also helps others like my husband Hans who never
were Bruderhofers to take a clear stand towards them -- or
shall I say against their attitudes and acts! What really
shocks me is the statement from Domer, in connection with
the obscene stickers, "We have good friends"???! This
sounds like a religious Mafia, where the 'goodies' ask the
'baddies' to do their dirty work for them. What else do they
ask from their 'friends'?? Thank you, Joel, Ramon, Dave and
Blair, for your very good letters to the Press!
Dear Loy: Although I do not know you -- I think we met
only once at the KIT 1991 Conference -- your letter gave me
plenty of things to think about. Most certainly, I do not feel
that I have suffered more or less than all the Bruderhof
children who were put through the mincer and then kicked
out into a world they did not -- and could not -- understand.
I was a baptized member, not because my dad was a Big
Shot on the Bruderhof, but because I really believed that
our love for God would bring us love, unity, peace of heart
and joy in the living of His will on earth! Once such as strong
belief is broken by the people you love and trust, it will
bring you a deep, unsettling fear for your future until you
find your feet once more. I do believe that Eberhard Arnold
did not start -- as you put it -- community life with a "self-
serving fanatical zeal," but that he was searching, like many
theologians after World War I, for a life of Christianity
where God alone was the father and we little men, brothers
and sisters! He did not want to be famous or a big leader. He
did not even want to be the founder of just another "way of
life." That is why he united with the Hutterites. He felt that
they truly had the experience he lacked to make such a life
commitment possible. I believe, though, that men who are
not really gripped by a personal faith will always want a
leader and make their leaders bigger and bigger until they
lose all proportion and see themselves as little gods on
earth. This happened to my father -- and that is why he fell
so deeply.
I will tell you a little story. The Servants always got
something extra, like wine, sausages and cigarettes for the
week. This was "out of love for those who work so hard!!"
We children felt ashamed, but could not do anything about
it. Friday night Ullu Keiderling, the storekeeper, was in
charge of all these little specialties -- this was March, 1959.
Saturday my dad was excluded by Heini and left the
Brotherhood meeting with a bent head. After the meeting,
there was a knock at our door and there was Ullu.
"I've come for the sausage and wine," he said. "You dad
will no longer need that, and I want to bring it to Heini's
room."
I gave him the stuff, but felt that if someone needed
anything extra at this time, it was not Heini!
It makes me sad that you and your family still suffer
from the "life of love" your parents joined, and I do wish
you peace of heart. Digging around in the emotions of the
past only will make us depressed and sad. Please do not
think that I or anyone who is related to the Arnolds have a
better viewpoint, got better treatment or are listened to
more! This just is not so. All of us are basically the same and
the hurt will sting just as hard, no matter what a person's
name!! At least you have, as far as I know, no one in the
Community! It is hard when your mother is old and sick and
most probably dying and there is no way to contact her at
all!
I wish you much joy for your future and maybe there
are just a few things about your childhood in Primavera that
are worth remembering, and that might give you the feeling
of being special -- being loved! That is something to hold
onto. I cannot imagine my dad not having listened to your
mom and asking the husbands to "use a firmer hand on the
women," but much wrong did happen due to the way the
leaders were hero-worshipped by the Brotherhood, and that
really gets to me with Johann Christoph nowadays, because
the hero-worship is much, much worse than in our times!
I am glad Dieter and Susanna managed to write another
little bit for KIT. And dear Hilarion, I am always happy to
read your contribution, and liked the letter to "Dick at
Woodcrest." Honest letters like that should go to the
Bruderhof daily until they might just open their eyes a little
bit. To Name Withheld: I am glad you read KIT and that you
also read my book. I have a copy of Brothers Unite as well
and read in it often, as I am sure that, on the deepest level,
the Bruderhof and the Hutterites were in unity once. All this
got lost due to personal pride and personal self-importance.
Only if we keep our eyes fixed on the Cross will we find a
way to love those who hurt us most and hope for a new
understanding in the future.
At least two articles in the last KIT I did not see as a
wise step. We all are free to write in the forum we call KIT,
and therefore I am also free to give my opinion. Whereas
Ramon's story is both courageous and personal, I feel that
the difficulty we all have about the Bruderhof sex education
should not be aired in this manner. If we want to create a
forum that will be heard in the world -- the churches, the
Hutterites and the Bruderhof -- and find a better
relationship with our families on the Bruderhof, then we
should refrain from elaborating on sexual feelings and
sexual experiences. It will make us losers in every sense of
the word!
As to "Ethan Martin's" story, his first contribution in KIT,
I cannot help but feel a little sorry and ashamed for him.
Naturally I find it quite disgusting that the Bruderhof youth
have to confess to "personal sin" openly on a telephone
hook-up with all the Bruderhofe, but I cannot help feeling
that the unraveling of this particular problem is not Problem
Number One at the moment. There is so much at stake and
we do not want to lose our credibility. Whereas sex is openly
discussed on TV, in magazines, and sexologists try to blame
every inability to adjust in life on sexual traumas, I think
we are not sexologists and we do not need to dig ourselves
deeper and deeper into this particular problem.
Personally, I feel that if this issue was brought forward
as the fruit of the overconcentration of power in the
leadership rather than of personal humiliation, a medieval
approach to sex education, it would be more easily discussed
and resolved than as an emotional humiliation story. Surely
we need to reveal the rotten root in Bruderhof life, and
these sexual issues have caused so much misery also in very
young children who never understood what they were
accused of. But let us tread carefully on grounds as tender as
these so as not to cause more pain, more misunderstanding,
more grief to those who were Bruderhof victims or are
caught up in the system! I feel that a story like Ethan
Martin's has no strength in it to help any person, nor do I
feel that a battle for life -- future -- wife and child -- faith
or idealism is won. But then, I have no understanding for
psychological treatments, Co-Counseling, or any form of
therapy other than getting myself out of the mud.
I am happy that this KIT newsletter forum is here to
give us a chance to air our feelings and find support and
understanding. Personally, I love to look up at the stars and
wonder what is behind them, the sun, the moon. Let us all
try and look up and forward rather then sit around in the
dust and mud and lose the little we have by doing so. Love,
------ Poetry ------
can you predict which way
a gladsome dog might dart while
running leashless on a lonesome
river bank?
can you pretend to say while in
a foggy dark what stunning beaches
just beyond your vision lay?
do you know the span 'twixt spoken
word and honest phrase?
have you ever felt that tender Benediction
resting on some common day?
hasn't deadness sometimes
gripped your prideful bones with
unknown qualms and frozen once
spontaneous life... killing the calm?
and weren't you then somehow revived
when seeing puppies play?
maybe we're not so smart after all.
"Bill," July 17, '95
Love Meals and Camping Trips and other
Reminiscences of the Bruderhof
by Joel G. Clement
One November day at Woodcrest I was walking along
the gravel road between the baby house and the farm
house. Milton and some other grown-ups were standing
outside talking. The mood was very somber. President
Kennedy had just been assassinated in Dallas. Milton looked
worried -- Milton very often looked worried. I think that
was one of the qualifications of being a Servant of the Word:
be able to look worried. Of course Milton was also the
community doctor in addition to being a Servant of the
Word. He had two offices: an "up" office and a "down" office
as his children referred to them. The "up" office was his
Servant office and the "down" office was the medical office.
The medical office in Woodcrest when I was there was
contained in what had been a porch on the farm house. They
had enclosed the porch and that was the medical office.
There was an examining table, a light, a desk, some
instruments and an autoclave to sterilize the instruments.
The scales to weigh people were in a tiny bathroom down
the hall.
The community usually had a Love Meal on November
22nd to remember the death of their founder Eberhard
Arnold. Now there was this added sadness of the
assassination of President Kennedy. Eberhard was a revered
figure whom we knew from hearing his writings read at
household meetings and from photographs. The photograph
which my parents had on the wall of their bedroom
portrayed Eberhard as stern, wise and unsmiling with old-
fashioned round spectacles on.
Every Thursday at rest-time under the watchful eye of
Eberhard Arnold I would try to make up for a week of
neglecting to practice my recorder. I felt very guilty for not
practicing through the week. Recorder lessons for our class
were held every Thursday afternoon with Maureen
Hasenberg. Maureen was nice but she always wanted to
know how often we had practiced. For this reason I dreaded
recorder lessons worse than anything. Recorder lessons, like
just about everything else at the community, were
compulsory. I hated the recorder and to this day I cringe
whenever I hear the sound of that instrument. Many former
Bruderhof people feel that way about certain songs which
were sung at the Bruderhof or certain religious celebrations.
I also still hate anything compulsory. The whole week was a
build up of guilt to Thursday afternoon recorder lesson. I
was a day-dreamy free spirit and the discipline of practicing
a musical instrument somehow "sat crossways" with my
young soul. Yet my feelings of guilt for not practicing grew
to an unbearable level as Thursday afternoon approached.
After the lesson was over I felt as if a sentence of death had
just been lifted. I wasn't very good at recorder but this was
my first crack at reading music. We started group lessons on
the recorder in the first grade and it was a prerequisite for
any other more advanced musical instrument. Music has
almost the status of doctrine within the Bruderhof because
of the part it played in the early days and in the Youth
Movement. It is almost a holy part of the life of the Church.
Another picture which my parents had on the wall of
their bedroom was a Hummel -- a painting of a grown-up
angel walking along holding the hand of a small child. The
angel, who is carrying a large staff, is guiding the child past
a menacing-looking serpent on the ground. Another picture
was a painting of what looked like God and some other
figures in Heaven above and some kind of a "great divide"
separating Heaven from Hell or perhaps Heaven from the
Earth. It looked like something from off of the Sistine
Chapel. Of the three wall hangings, that one needed the most
explaining to a young mind who should have been practicing
his recorder. So while the Bruderhof may have been lacking
in overt expressions of religion such as the use of religious
language in everyday conversation, there existed plenty of
other religious symbology -- at least in my parent's
bedroom. I bet that Hummel picture is worth thousands of
dollars. I think it has been in the family for awhile. I think it
came from my mother's side of the family.
The first Love Meal which I had ever attended would
have been one year earlier in Oak Lake and was also to
commemorate the death of Eberhard. One of the other
children came up to me and said: "There is a love meal
tonight and it is first grade up." I was in first grade. Younger
grades usually ate supper with their groups at what was
called "children's supper" and only the older grades ate with
the grown-ups. For special meals or Love Meals they
sometimes allowed younger children to attend also. I was
quite excited to go to a Love Meal for the first time. At the
Love Meal they expressed a great deal of thankfulness and
adoration for Eberhard. He was a man of special vision who,
even though he died "before his time" had managed to start
the Bruderhof communal way of life. That's what I got out of
the Love Meal. Love Meals lasted a lot longer than regular
meals. You had to sit quietly and listen to reports or
readings. When we visited years later my wife-from-the-
world was amazed at how small children sit so quietly
through Love Meals. If the Love Meal was for a happy
occasion such as an engagement or a wedding or the send-
off of a family to another hof then there usually would be
music -- string groups, choirs or folk dancing. There was a
difference between Special Meals and Love Meals.
A Special Meal packed a little less punch than a Love
Meal. For instance when Art Rosenblum finally left on his
motorcycle after his famous sit-in of 1967 we had a Special
Meal -- it didn't quite warrant a Love Meal. I knew it was a
Special Meal because Dick Mommsen, a Witness Brother,
"had" the meal and we had ice cream. The only thing that
was said during the meal was near the end when Dick
Mommsen reported dryly: "The ice cream is to celebrate the
departure of the motorcycle." Everyone knew what he
meant. Normally there weren't the outward "trappings" at a
Special Meal that there would be at a Love Meal such as
table cloths and special centerpieces at each table and
candles. At Love Meals the overhead lights were usually
turned off in favor of wall lamps or hanging lamps and
candles to create a more introspective mood. The Hutterites
were never very happy with Bruderhof Love Meals
especially the use of candles. Hutterite custom avoids the
use of candles because of their association with Roman
Catholicism. One of the most common uses for a love meal
was a "welcome" Love Meal or a "farewell" Love Meal for a
family that was moving from one 'hof to another. There
were love meals to suit just about every occasion, from the
somber remembrance love Meal after someone had died to
the rowdy engagement Love Meals which always included a
skit of some kind.
The first wedding which I attended was the wedding of
Dave Maendel and Maria Arnold, known also as Annali
Arnold. I think it was in 1964 and I was in the 4th grade.
Our grade was invited to the wedding ceremony itself
because Annali had been our first grade teacher. Normally
wedding ceremonies were 6th grade up. Around the same
time there was the wedding of Dan Maendel and Hanni
Meier and also Jake Maendel and Irenie Hasenberg in
Evergreen. Jake and Dan were brothers who had run away
from a Hutterite colony as young people in the '50s. Jake,
the older of the two had been baptized in the Hutterites and
Dan hadn't. That meant that Jake had to go through Church
Discipline as part of the reuniting with the Hutterites in
1974 as did all the baptized former Hutterites who had been
taken in to Woodcrest in the 50s. I'll cover the reuniting of
1974 more at a later time.
The first all-day-trip which our group made was when I
was in the first grade. That would have been in the Summer
of 1962. We hiked to the Thruway tunnel which was out by
the power lines. I think Maureen Hasenberg was our
teacher. She must have been a recent transplant from
Paraguay. Many young people especially appeared from
other communities. They all seemed to know German and
sometimes talked among themselves in German so that we
children would not know what they were saying. The
German language sounded funny to us and we would
sometimes try to imitate our teachers. During one of these
summers Klaus and Irene Meier were up from Paraguay --
Klaus to work with Milton in the medical office. There was a
joke in Maple Lane, the Woodcrest School yearly
magazine which said: Question: What is Milton and Klaus?
Answer: A paradox. (i.e. a pair of Docs). To get to the
Thruway tunnel you had to walk up past the greenhouse
and through the garden then through the woods to a
clearing by the power lines. In the woods there were some
large white pines which were ideal for climbing because the
branches were numerous and evenly spaced up the trunk
and started near the ground. Betsy Zimmerman fell off of
one of the lower branches and broke her arm. That was the
first casualty. She missed part of the trip as a result but
rejoined us later.
Then we walked further to the Thruway tunnel, a large
culvert underneath the New York State Thruway about 5
feet tall. It was quite a distance to the other end. There was
usually six inches or so of running water in the tunnel and
goodness knows what kind of wildlife in there. Barefoot and
laughing our group made it's way through the tunnel,
wading in the stream, being careful not to slip on the algae
which covered the curved bottom of the culvert. Squeals and
laughter were greatly amplified and echoed strangely in the
concrete tunnel. We finally got to the sunlight at the other
end and waited to regroup for the return trip back through
the tunnel. I looked down and noticed I was bleeding from
my right ankle. I hadn't felt anything sharp in the tunnel
but there was quite a bit of shale in the stream and there
might have been some broken glass in there also. Whatever
it was made a couple of nice cuts right on the anklebone.
That was casualty number 2. I was escorted back to the
medical office and got my first stitches ever. I still have the
scars and will be happy to show them to you if you don't
believe it. I had to wear shoes and socks and take it easy for
the rest of the day.
In the Summer of 1964 our school group made our
famous camping trip to Hunter Mountain. It was famous
because so many exciting things happened and a few things
went wrong. That was also a big presidential election year
which makes it easy to remember. Jonathan had a small
transistor radio along. In the boy's tent late in the evening
we listened to the late-breaking news from the presidential
convention floor. It looked like Johnson would be running
against Goldwater. The grown-ups seemed worried about
Goldwater. I was in 3rd grade and our group was the 3rd
and 4th grades. Our teachers were Glenn Swinger and my
Dad and my brother Jonathan and Maureen Hasenberg. I
don't remember if there were any other teachers along -- it
seems to me that there might have been another woman
teacher -- I can't remember. Perhaps Dorli Alberts was
there as well or Marlys Swinger, Glenn's wife.
Hunter is one of the highest of the Catskill mountains
and one of the least "civilized" was my impression. It is also
one of the northernmost of the Catskills and to drive there
meant getting back into the hinterland of rural New York
State. We had all of our gear in the old school bus in addition
to teachers and children. As we approached the mountain
the roads turned to dirt and got narrower. They were
basically farm roads. There were several bridges which
looked very rickety. We weren't sure they would hold a bus.
Glenn and Dad and Jonathan consulted and decided that for
safety's sake everyone should get out of the bus and walk
across the bridge. Then Glenn would drive across and we
would reload on the other side. I think there were several
such bridges. That was just the beginning of the excitement.
We arrived at the base of the mountain and parked the bus
at the point where a jeep trail began up the mountain. We
unloaded our gear and hiked in a mile or two to the
campsite where there was a lean-to. This was sort of a base
camp for us. From this point on the trail up the mountain got
a lot steeper. It was very woodsy and there was a stream
nearby. There was a circle of logs to sit on around a fireplace
in a bit of a clearing. It was all quite primitive but very
exciting.
The annual camping trip was always the high point of
the summer for us kids particularly the fact that we were
camping out overnight. Off to one side we put up a tent for
the boys and the girls used the lean-to. The Bruderhof made
their own tents out of clear poly plastic sheeting material. It
wasn't very expensive and you could make a big tent that
way. The other gear was mostly a hodgepodge of equipment
and sleeping bags that people had brought when they joined
the community. The community also went to government
surplus sales and got equipment there. We spent the first
day setting up camp. The girls got huge armfuls of these
huge ferns to put on the ground in the lean-to to make the
ground softer to lay on. When the big day came to hike up to
the top of the mountain Glenn made an announcement at
breakfast. He said that he had selected a group of "scouts" as
he called them to start the long hike ahead of the rest of the
group. He would take the "scouts" and make sure the trail
was clear and frighten off any bears and that kind of thing.
The handful of boys and girls selected were very excited. I
was not selected to be a scout and was very envious. The
boys in our group were quite interested in the Boy Scouts
and not to be selected a "scout" was a big disappointment.
The scouts started up the mountain and the rest of us
cleaned up after breakfast and tidied up camp. About an
hour after the departure of the "scouts" the rest of us
started hiking up the mountain. About three-quarters of the
way up the mountain we caught up with Glenn and
the"scouts. They hadn't seen any bears. We hiked the rest of
the way to the peak together. When we finally got to the top
we took a long rest and enjoyed the view. The top of the
mountain was rocky and windblown with hardly any trees
on it -- mostly just scraggly little bushes. Jonathan found a
firecracker and put it under a tin can and lit it off. The can
flew a little ways into the air. Before too long whom should
appear but another school group from Woodcrest with
George Burleson. They had hiked up the mountain from the
other direction. This was a surprise to everyone except
perhaps Glenn. They were the 5th and 6th grade out on an
all-day trip. We joined forces for lunch. We provided stick-
bread and they had brought with them ice cream in a back
pack. Stick-bread is dough wrapped around a stick and
baked over a fire. Dad said that he noticed that the long-
term campers -- the 3rd and 4th graders -- went for the ice
cream and the all-day trippers -- the 5th and 6th graders --
went for the more novel camp food, stick bread. It was
characteristic of my Dad to notice such things. Soon we
parted ways and went down our respective sides of the
mountain.
One night we were sitting around the campfire and
some young men on horseback came galloping up. Some of
the girls were frightened enough to start crying. These guys
had flashlights and looked pretty wild and excited. They
said they were looking for a lost horse and wondered if we
had seen one. We told them we hadn't seen a horse. They
went on up the trail a ways and then came zooming back
through the campsite without stopping. It was like
something out of Medieval times or the Wild West. We kids
were understandably excited by the whole episode. Actually
I think the lost horse was just a story they had made up and
that these guys were local fellows who had seen the school
bus and wanted to check out who was in the area. But we
were all a little spooked. Another story Dad likes to tell is
the night I went to the boy's tent by myself to get
something and got about half way there and turned around
and came back to the campfire. I had seen "someone" with a
light in the tent and everyone was at the camp fire. Dad
went back with me and the light turned out to be just the
reflection of the moon shining on the plastic tent. He never
forgot that and teased me about it in later years. That
camping trip was the most talked-about camping trip in my
career at the Bruderhof and one of my favorites. We
reminisced about it many times over the years. But it wasn't
over yet -- we still had to get home.
We pulled up camp around noon of the 3rd day and
headed back to where the bus was parked. We had planned
to go by Kaaterskill for a swim on our way back to
Woodcrest since there was no place to swim at camp. When
we got to the bus we found that one of the front tires had
been slashed with a knife and was flat. We never knew for
sure, but suspected that it might have had something to do
with the wild horse men. So now the bus had a flat tire. The
men busied themselves with changing the tire while the
kids played in the stream nearby. There was a spare tire in
the bus but no lug wrench to change the tire. Now we were
really in a fix. Someone set off walking to the nearest farm
house for help. The nearest farm was quite a ways off. The
farmer had a huge old Cadillac with those rubber bumpers
on the front. He showed us how the raccoons had chewed on
the rubber and left teeth marks. He was friendly and
talkative and had tools that would work to change the tire.
He went out of his way to help us -- I remember riding in
his old Cadillac. I'm not sure but what we didn't have
trouble jacking the front of the bus up to change the tire and
I'm not sure the spare tire had any air in it. From that day
on my dad took it upon himself to make sure that the school
bus always had the necessary emergency equipment on
board -- especially a lug wrench. Dad was not very often
caught unprepared like this.
Needless to say we didn't get our swim at Kaaterskill
and we arrived home later than planned and rather in need
of showers. The grown-ups reported about our camping trip
in the dining room as was customary at the Bruderhof. In
addition to the adventure with the flat tire and the horses
Glenn reported about a dream he had on the camping trip.
He dreamed that he was in a motor boat on a lake and as he
approached the shore he tried to turn the engine off but it
wouldn't turn off. In somewhat of a panic he woke up only
to discover that the motor was my dad snoring! Some years
later I also found out the real story about the "scouts". The
"scouts" were actually a select group of the slower hikers.
This was Glenn's ingenious plan to keep the hike on
schedule. None of us kids were the wiser...
Johnson defeated Goldwater that November and
Jonathan has probably been back to Hunter Mountain a
dozen times since the summer of 1964. He leads hikes in the
Catskills and the Adirondack mountains. Some day I will
return as well to retrace my steps and relive a childhood
memory. I'll listen for the hoofbeats of a lost horse that
probably didn't exist and wonder again at the unsolved
mystery of the slashed school bus tire.
My Family Joins The Bruderhof
by Dave Ostrom
We arrived at Rifton late one afternoon in 1955. We had
driven by the Woodcrest entrance, and Mom and Dad had
discussed whether they should call first before going in to
Woodcrest. When Dad phoned from Rifton, he was told to
find a place and wait there in town and someone would
come get us the next day. There was a sort of
motel/campgrounds on the west side of Rifton where we
rented a cabin. The next morning, some Brothers came and
met us and we went back to Woodcrest.
Beginning with Dad's call to Woodcrest from Rifton, I
had a feeling things were not as they appeared. This was the
first time that we had gone somewhere, especially three
thousand miles across the U.S. to visit/live and had to call
and make arrangements to actually enter the premises of
where we were to visit! I was curious why, as the Vigars,
Stanley Fletcher and Bruce Sumner had been quite free at
our house, we had to check in like servants at the back gate?
When the Brothers and Sisters visited us in California, they
came and left with complete freedom, we did not lock the
house and sometimes would return home to find the tea pot
on the kitchen sideboard. Mom would say, " Oh we missed
the ----'s", whichever Brother or Sister had been in the area.
We the Ostrom family did in fact extend an open door policy
to guests, similar to the much written about open door
policy of the Rohn and other Bruderhofs. Why then, when
arriving at Woodcrest did we have to wait for permission to
enter?
It is interesting, as mentioned earlier, there was no
mention of me in the Ostrom / S.O.B. correspondence other
than a cryptic statement by Gertrude Vigar ,"....Dave and the
boy ...." Until my parents met the Brothers and Sisters from
Paraguay, I had been able to sense where my place was in
the family and as a family how we fit with the community
where we lived. My older sisters, Anna Jean and Virginia,
seemed to me to be very popular, Anna Jean had several
friends who came and spent the weekend with us, Virginia
was a member of several social and school activities, serving
in executive positions. The only social/school activities I
participated in were Boy Scouts and the school band. The
rest of my time was spent working on the farm or working
with Dad. The boys in my peer group ranked acceptance of
the "new kid on the block" by the responsibility given him
by his parents and by what he himself could do. A boy knew
he was accepted when he was invited to participate in
discussions or activities.
My feelings about going to Woodcrest were ambivalent,
I looked forward to being in a group where we were not
considered outsiders or persecuted for seeking a communal
form of living. I personally had not decided either way. My
parents went, so I had to go. The idea or concept of a
Christian community where all was shared sounded like a
good idea. The question was, would it work? Why would
Woodcrest be any different from any other group with a
hierarchy of bosses and workers? The perception I had at
the time was if you did not/could not be a part of the in-
group, you were at the mercy and whims of the majority.
There had been a noticeable lack of including us children in
the talk of going to the S.O.B. My expectation was that Mom
and Dad and maybe Virginia would be accepted into the
group, I would not. This was based on the fact the Brothers
and Sisters spent a lot of time talking with Virginia. There
was an effort made to have some of the girls from
Primavera write to her. For me, nothing, nada. The
message already was loud and clear: you are not one of us.
I was confused on many points; one was not supposed to
fight (Mom's admonition reinforced by Dad). Yet if I did not
fight, I was in trouble with my peers. The lesson learned at
Salida was, if you are to be accepted, be ready and able to
be the meanest, baddest character in the valley. Respect is
fear of the person. On the one hand, I trusted adults, my
parents and family friends. Yet why couldn't they see what
was happening to us children? In later years, I posed this
question to some of those involved. The response was, "Oh
my! We didn't know that was going on!" ??
Now we were going to a place where the rules I had
learned did not apply. It was supposed to be a community of
brotherly love. I knew Don and Marilyn Noble and George
and Vonnie Burleson who went to Woodcrest before us.
They were OK people. Stanley, Vonnie's' younger brother,
and I were friends. Somehow, from what I had experienced
of people, what the S.O.B. claimed did not agree with what
was happening. One, if it was brotherly love, how come I
was ignored? Two, if it were truly community, why did we
have to "wait at the gates" like servants at the back door?
It was with this frame of reference that I went with my
parents to Woodcrest. Memories of the first few weeks at
Woodcrest are like a kaleidoscope, mental pictures flash
disjointed images. Unloading the trailer, the Housemother
directing what went where; items I treasured were
summarily tossed away or dispensed with without so much
as a by-your-leave! When I did question or protest, I was
accused of being selfish and uncooperative. I talked with
Christoph about my friends in California, what we did and
where we went; Christoph was very reticent about
Paraguay. I thought going to Paraguay would be an
adventure, a challenge. Christoph avoided the subject, as if
he were ashamed of Paraguay. I found communication with
Christoph was almost a monologue -- mine. He would ask
questions, but would not respond if I asked any. I talked
with Christoph about the group I was with at Salida, a mixed
group of boys and girls. We went places together and talked
to each other. Bad mistake -- this was to come back later.
A Trip to Ship Bottom with
Other Young People and a
Disastrous Confrontation with Dick Domer
The way the trip to the beach at Ship Bottom was
presented to me before we went was as an annual event
that the Highschoolers attended. We each were given a few
dollars to spend as we wished for the week we were there.
Virginia and I had worked and earned spending money as
we grew up. When we went to town or on trips, the money
was ours to spend as we wanted, not as our parents or
'elders' thought best. The Ship Bottom experience was
reinforcement of my confusion and doubts about what was
going on. It seems I didn't have the 'right spirit' about
spending money. Ramon asked me to clarify this paragraph,
but I am as confused now as I was then about what the
right spirit is/was. All I know was that it was the basis for
Dick's peeling a strip of hide off me about it.
Enrolling at Kingston High, at the rally, nominating
Rosewith for School Office. The rationale was, "If we are to
be different, let's get somebody of our team in the Student
body Government." A wrestling match with Jim Dunlop on
the lawn in front of the School House and breaking my
ankle. All the kids standing around, doing nothing, looking
like, "Gee this is interesting!" "Does it hurt?"
Shortly after we arrived at Woodcrest, I was assigned to
work in the shop. For a time I worked in the spray booth,
spraying lacquer on the toys and blocks. Until the Dunlops
arrived, Christoph was the only boy my age at Woodcrest.
After the first few days Christoph avoided me like the
plague. I reverted to my "Salida survival mode", that is,
don't associate with the other kids, that is just asking for
trouble. I sought association with Don Noble and George
Burleson as they had been old family friends.
The Burlesons lived across the hall from us on the top
floor of the "School House". One evening I met George in the
hall and as we talked he made the observation, I would
have to change if I was to get along, things were different
here. This added to my confusion as I didn't know what he
meant and didn't know how to phrase a question to get
clarification. Virginia and Martha seemed to be accepted into
their respective groups, I definitely was not accepted. I
realize now, at the time I was thirteen years old and stood
over six foot three inches and weighed about one hundred
eighty pounds. Most people perceived me, and expected me
to act, as an adult but I was just barely a teenager.
After our return from Ship Bottom, Dick Domer had a
talk with me. At the time I didn't know what was
happening. I sensed I was in some sort of trouble or
disgrace, I didn't know for what or why. Dick wanted to
know what I planed to do with my life. I had considered
many things, working with Dad, going into farming with him,
mechanical work, and more recently electronics. At the time
I had been reading a lot about the sea and thought about
trying for the Maritime Academy and going to sea. So I told
Dick about my thoughts of going to sea and why I thought
that way. Dick immediately took the offensive and told me
my ideas were all wrong, impossible and in general did a
good job of putting me down. I argued with him, I still
thought this was a friendly discussion about what I, an
adolescent, was thinking. From later information, I gather
the way Dick saw it was I didn't immediately fall on my
knees and profess to be a true believer in "The Life" and
pledge my undying gratitude for and devotion to the
Arnolds. Hence, I was against the community!
I found Paul Pappas, Bob Greenwood and Merrill Mow
more understanding and friendly. I have memories of doing
kitchen duty (washing dishes) with Bob, Paul, Merrill and
Will and some lively discussions. To me, it was a part of
learning. I did not know if I wanted to live in the
community or not. I didn't even know what I wanted really,
other than to be accepted. I remember discussions about
free will, choices and what people saw as right and wrong.
Part of the mistrust was I had met several people while
at Salida and Escalon who appeared to be friendly and
talkative. What I found later was these people would find
out what I thought, and if it differed substantially from
their opinion, I was in trouble. I did not feel I could really
be open and truthful with the people I met at Woodcrest,
not at least until they proved trustworthy.
Having come from open society, I had friends of both
sexes and did not think anything about it. If a girl was
interesting, I would talk to her just as I would a boy. This is
a difficult idea for people who were born and raised in the
Bruderhof. I was not aware that for an adolescent to openly
address another of the opposite sex was considered one of
the most flagrant violations possible. No one ever told me
this or any of the other "rules" that existed. The adults just
condemned me as a rude, crude dude and left it at that. The
other youth found this amusing, there was someone else to
get in trouble and take the heat off them for a while. In
later years I have talked with a few of these youth and
asked their opinion. In their polite, reserved way, they
observed I "was different" and "You were from the 'outside',
you were neither in or out, you were like a fixture, there!"
Another person I asked responded, "You were huge and
awesome. We were somewhat afraid of you. This is
interesting as I was barely a teenager and viewed adults,
even those smaller physically than me, as big people. The
other youth I viewed as the same as me. Conflicts of
perceptions!
In letters from the Vigars and the Owens to our family,
recommending things to bring or do, I got the idea that we
would continue to have "our home" be it an apartment,
house, flat or whatever. Also, we would continue to have our
personal belongings that we would share or not as we felt
appropriate. I did not understand the housemothers'
irritation with me as she and Mom disposed of my things. No
one took the time to say in one syllable words, "You don't
have," "You are not!" I continued to respond to others as if
they had their home and belongings (good attitude on my
part) and I had a home and belongings (bad attitude on my
part). The I, the me, kept getting in the way. The nearest I
can explain it is, the second day of boot camp at Lackland
Air Force Base, the drill instructor barked to the flight, "Send
your souls home to Momma 'cause I got your Ass!".
Unknown to me at the time, in the community, children
were not to have any self-awareness, any concern about
who they were and how they fit into the society around
them. In short, to survive in the community, one had no
feelings, no thoughts, no initiative unless directed to do so
by a Brother!
An illustration of this was an incident that occurred in
the first two months at Woodcrest. I enjoyed building model
airplanes and ships. I had become rather proficient at
constructing sail boats in what is known as "bread and
butter" method. That is, one takes thin pieces of wood the
length and width desired. The pieces are nailed together in a
stack, then the shape is drawn and cut through all the stack.
The hull is then shaped with a small hand plane, to the
desired shape. The nails are pulled, the individual pieces
have the center cut out and then the pieces are all glued
together again resulting in a "hollow" hull. In my spare time,
I found there were tools in the Carriage House basement. I
scrounged around and found the wood and had the shape
done and was working on the final shape of the hull. One of
the young boys, about six or eight years old came to the
shop and was watching me. He asked what I was doing and I
told him, "building a boat". He responded, "You can't do
that!" I didn't respond as I had the hull in my hand. I
thought he meant I was unable to do it. What he meant was
I didn't have permission, I was doing something on my own
initiative, I was not being a "team player" waiting for one of
the adults to tell me what I could or could not do! Bad
attitude!
Complicating matters were discrepancies I saw at school.
In California, there were always the school-yard differences.
Any time there was a fight, every one would gather in a
circle and the two with a difference fought it out on a one to
one and then went about their business. In New York, you
either belonged to a gang or got your heini kicked. In the
Woodcrest school group there were the girls and Christoph
Arnold, Tim Johnson, Jim Dunlop and myself. The Arnolds,
Johnsons and Virginia received money for lunch. I and I
think Jim worked in the cafeteria for our lunch. Some of the
other cafeteria workers decided it was fair game for
"California queers." I wasn't sure what was meant, but I
tried to avoid trouble and get through school. I had been
told that Woodcrest was pacifist and that meant no fighting.
There seemed to be some sort of understanding at the
school, the "Woodcrest Boys" were left alone. Woodcrest
Boys being those who spoke with an accent. I don't know
how Jim coped, I put up with a lot of ribbing about being
"different". I knew I was different, I didn't speak German,
didn't belong to one of the school gangs, was not allowed to
participate in sports, was not in the youth group at
Woodcrest.
Jim Dunlop and I began to spend time together. We
explored the old house below the shop and found a cider
press. We decided to make apple cider. As we were making
it we got to thinking about how to make apple jack. We got
the juice, bottled it and were waiting for it to ferment.
Somehow, Heini found out about it and cornered us in the
kitchen one afternoon. After chewing us out for some time
for being disrespectful, ungrateful, all around bad dudes, he
confiscated the jack. I heard rumors later that he enjoyed
the fruits (juice) of our labor!
Sometime in late October, Mom and Dad told us the
Brothers had decided to send us on to Forest River, the
explanation given was they needed a mechanic there and I
knew Dad was a good mechanic, it made sense, sounded
reasonable. He went to Forest River before us. Mom, Virginia
and Marty went by train with the Johnson family. I went
with Hans Uli and Bob Greenwood by truck.
Traveling East to Friendly Crossways,
'95
In which the Patient Reader can actually find Something
about Charlie's trip
near the End of the article
by Charlie Lamar
Motion itself is the part of travel I most enjoy, be it in
old familiar ways or newer, faster ones. Dog sleds, trucks, or
rockets ships, the modes of transportation mirror
civilization's age, which I'd call adolescent now. I enjoy the
open highway, as I enjoy the rocking cradle of a train. Train
conductors with their big bellies and bad haircuts seem
sentimental about the old fashioned work they do. I like
airplanes even more than trains. The bigger and faster the
airplanes, the more I like them. Flight is my paradigm of
immortality -- terrestrial escape. I am moved to tears when
the giant, obedient engines catch command and rocket safely
down the runway. The air-safety chaperones of the
traveling public are like movie stars. Pioneers of the frontier
of our age, wizened from the radiation of space, they spend
their working lives essentially outside the terrestrial
atmosphere.
I enjoy the passengers as much as I enjoy the view. This
time I got hit in the head with Galileo's Euclid when I saw a
young man with others on a business trip come down the
aisle. The pillars of his neck were like a wrestler's. He had
widely set brown eyes, the calm, blank look of the
mathematically gifted, large chestnut curls, nose straight as
a ruler, a smile like a horse that swallowed a piano and
many charming muscular contours so complex that
calculating their outlines and volume would tax Leibnitz and
Newton. Oh! And blue jeans and cowboy boots. I am entirely
confident in the ultimate triumph of our species, but it is
nice to be reminded now and then. So when I looked out the
window, once again tears ran down my face but this time
"the tears on (my) cheeks were (partly) from laughter."
I was in a bad mood when I prepared to travel east this
year. Through a domino effect of psychic displacements I
have become annoyed with "liberals" lately. By liberal I
mean most of the political spectrum to which I am daily
exposed in San Francisco.
I suppose no matter where you live you are going to be
up to your eyeballs in the foolishness of well-intentioned
people who merely parrot some newspaper with their
opinions. If I lived somewhere else I might be exercised in
another fashion, but in San Francisco all I hear are left-wing
views on abortion, the death penalty, capitalism, racism,
sexism, classism, ageism, looksism, sizeism and a growing
parade of other 'isms' all to be eliminated in Utopia. It seems
to be a religion, although an entirely negative, one. How
about couplism, a prejudice for monogamy!
We were given a good elementary education in the
Bruderhof. By the fifth grade we had been taught the
scientific method, philosophic objectivity and the meaning of
religious tolerance. It was in the Bruderhof context that I
first made the discovery of personal spiritual experience for
myself as well. Because of that spiritual experience and good
Bruderhof education, I always thought my own thoughts
regarding science, religion and philosophy. So when one of
my Bruderhof mentors actually came right out and told me
not to think but to let others do it for me, I turned away and
never really looked back.
But it has been a lonely life. For one thing, my good
education has isolated me. I was born and bred to be a
ruthless, intransigent, fanatic intellectual. Weren't we all
supposed to be willing to die for our faith? I can upset a
cocktail party at fifty paces. I've had to learn to control my
mouth. But since this is in writing, I'm going to let my
tongue hang out a little. You don't have to read any more
than you want to.
A post-Bruderhof perspective enables me to see how to
dynamite the logjam of modern political philosophy. At the
heart of the problem lies a failure to distinguish between
the basic facts of social science and certain spiritual realities
of ethical relationships -- truth.
It has been long, well and clearly established in all the
sciences that no two material phenomena ever occur in
exactly the same way. No two pebbles, stars, leaves of grass,
cornflakes, worms; no pair of any kind, celestial or
terrestrial, are ever exactly the same or equal. It is equally
well established in all the sciences that no two categorical
groups, either living or non-living, are ever equal
either. And that, of course, includes groups of people. But
nowadays social theorists of any "progressive" pretension
are all hell bent on denying the obvious as these findings
apply to the study of human beings, to psychology and
sociology. The reason for this rigor mortis of denial lies
in an enormous movement in social philosophy, a swing of
the pendulum dialectic that has taken several hundred
years.
Time was, in the European Middle Ages, one's place in
society was believed to be properly determined by birth,
sex and birth order Ð primogeniture. The eldest son of the
royal family became king, and so on down the social
hierarchy. There was also a supporting myth, and a very
powerful, glamorous, ancient, instinctive myth it was, still
very much alive and well in many quarters, that values and
virtue correlated with birth and wealth. However it so
happened, unfortunately, that in the "Glorious Revolution"
and "Enlightenment" by which birth and primogeniture were
overthrown as foundations of society, it was not
meritocracy or equality of opportunity that came to
replace the supposed nobility of birth and wealth, but
another prejudicial myth, less glamorous perhaps, but
powerful for another reason, the idea of human
equality. "Liberty, Equality and Fraternity." has become
the battle cry of the "progressive" ever since. This entirely
false idea has served to give expression to the deepest
spiritual instincts of a dozen agnostic generations.
Personalities are equal, but in just one spiritual aspect;
not in any material connection whatsoever. "God is no
respecter of persons," He loves his children equally
regardless of material differences, cultural capacity or
disparities of spiritual attainment. But aside from the
intrinsically personal consideration of who each one of us
is, as opposed to what each one of us is like, there
is no other equality between any two of us.
The confusion of this myth of equality between people
with the truth of the equality of personality per se in the
eyes of God was a signal failure of eighteenth century
intellectual vision. This equality myth has distorted
"progressive" social values ever since the eighteenth century
just as much as the myth that values and virtue correlated
with birth and wealth distorted traditional society in former
times.
If people were equal, it would follow that their
potentials, abilities, values and moral performances must be
equal also. But no eighteenth century philosopher ever
would have taken that position. Eighteenth century
philosophers had to respond to a social situation supposedly
sanctioned by God which had choice, freedom, autonomy and
power all concentrated solely at the top of an hereditary
social hierarchy, with slavish obedience the duty of all
below. Meanwhile they had before them the bad results of
pedigree and primogeniture whereby a degenerate runt
could inherit rank and title. Very often they could see
greater ability and merit in the "common" people, for even a
genius could not call himself the social equal of an aristocrat
in the feudal social system. Though this unjust situation
inclined them to look at people in a new way, according to
different social class criteria and with new political goals in
mind, no eighteenth century philosopher, even the Marquis
de Sade, would have ever been inclined to posit a non-
hierarchical universe. They would be more than astonished
to see how far many of their twentieth century descendants
are willing to go in rationalizing so absurd a notion.
Personal values, ultimately, are spiritual realities.
Values should not be confused with things which may
have value. The spiritual realities are the values
themselves. Since people manifestly all have different
personal values, and are distinguished by different value
reactions such as optimism and pessimism, a universe where
people were equal would be a universe without any values
at all. Obviously we don't live in that kind of universe. We
live in a hierarchical universe, a universe where spirit is
real.
Values and virtue don't correlate with any of the
political or material conditions that may chance to configure
human lives. Values and virtue don't correlate with qualities
of human skin, bone, racial ancestry, social class, wealth,
poverty, brains or education. Values and virtue correlate
with spirituality, when, where and however it is found. All
that an attempt to make values and virtue appear to
correlate with anything but spirituality can ever engender is
prejudice and social stereotypes. But ever since the thesis of
human equality was advanced, well-intentioned people have
sought to correlate values and virtue with social oppression.
For they reason that if people are innately equal, disparities
of human performance and conduct must result either from
the force of oppressive circumstances or from moral faults,
discrepancies in the exercise of individual free will.
Eighteenth century philosophers had good reason to
believe in the efficacy of hereditary social class oppression.
It became their legitimate purpose to break down the
hereditary class system and for the most part, at least in the
United States, their efforts have succeeded. There is now,
has been and will continue to be, enormous class migration
throughout American society. And so a different problem
arises.
Nowadays, the poor remain poor by virtue of a negative
or culturally incompetent relation to their material
circumstances, rather than by means of the enforced
hereditary deprivation and slavery of the medieval feudal
system. But it remains the liberal position to propose class
oppression of the poor as the explanation of this negative
relationship, and of degeneracy and crime whenever the
poor are degenerate and criminal. Liberals still call the rich
'wicked' and the poor 'good.' Nowadays, the rich remain rich
by virtue of the cultural and technological mastery of their
material circumstances, rather than by means of the
security of unassailable hereditary rank and privilege.
Modern fortunes are easily lost. It has become the
conservative position to propose personal skill and
willpower as the explanation of how rich people maintain
their wealth. Modern conservatives credit the wealthy and
blame the poor for their respective circumstances in a way
no eighteenth century aristocrat would ever have done.
Conservatives today take the innate differences in human
abilities, talent, for granted. Liberals ("All men are created
equal") usually try to deny that talent even exists.
Liberals have their reasons for so stubbornly trying to
deny the obvious. They fear that if innate differences in
cultural capacity between people or between races, classes
or groups of people were ever recognized there would be no
reason to treat people other than according to their social
class or status. They fear that there would be no reason to
treat poor people with anything but cruelty and oppression,
and they have a logical basis for reasoning in this fashion.
Not only do they remember the old hereditary class
distinctions and the more recent practice of overt race
discrimination, but having repeated the ancient mistake of
identifying noble values with a certain class or group, they
continue to think in stereotypes. They well know that
bloody class warfare has been fomented on the basis of
these stereotypes, and they know it could happen again. The
blood of millions upon millions shed in violent revolution
must be laid at the door of humanistic equalitarianists, even
more than by the Western Colonial Imperialists, and all
because of misguided spiritual instincts. Nor have any of
these societies been improved by these violent revolutions
more than they would have been had they followed the
English model of gradual social evolution rather than the
bloody model of the French.
Another and even more important reason liberals fear
the perception and admission of human differences is that
having rejected the system of religious thought which once
sponsored the hereditary class system they have toppled,
they remain agnostic -- if not entirely Godless, somewhat
embarrassed in faith. Since they aren't sure about eternal
life, they concentrate all striving after value, justice,
ambition, altruism and achievement in mortal life alone.
They make politics their religion. Their intuition of human
brotherhood, of the equal spiritual worth of human beings,
leads them to push towards a mirage of the elimination of
the whole phenomenon of class in human society. So they
deny and discredit the differences between people, and
attack any perception of differences as prejudice. The "seven
deadly sins" in the canons of the left is their list of
proscribed prejudices or isms -- racism, sexism and so
on. These are defined not just as problems of fairness, but as
perceptions of difference.
When I first came to San Francisco twenty-two years
ago, I saw a group of retarded people sitting on a bench in
Golden Gate Park. A voter registration worker with
clipboard, pen and pencils was headed in their direction. I
didn't stay to see how many new Democrats were made that
day. Safe bet, there were no Republicans.
Differences between people are necessary for social
evolution. "Republicans" and "Democrats" are necessary for
social evolution. Flexible, shifting social classes are
necessary. Options of success and failure are necessary. Rich
and poor are necessary. Political dialogue is necessary. And
political correctness is an oxymoron, for the political
dialogue must compose interests that legitimately conflict.
Human dialogue is not between angels and devils, but it is
only by human dialogue that the angels and devils are
illuminated. For it is only in the context of human
differences that values can be perceived.
It is useless to try to fight one prejudice with another.
Prejudice in society, whether of class, race or any other kind,
is more a problem of good will than of statistical thinking.
Stereotypes or generalities about a group may or may not
apply in any given case, may or may not even have any
basis in fact. But the only real reason not to respond
according to stereotypes, whether valid or invalid, when
confronted with an individual who may chance to belong to
some identifiable class or group is the possession of a
constructive attitude of spiritual good will. And the only real
source for that good will is conscious or unconscious
personal contact with God. The creation of good will in
society is a religious, not a political problem.
One way of looking at the Bruderhof is that originally it
was an attempt to address the problem of good will in
society in the context of some very liberal politics. Certainly
most of the people coming out of the Bruderhof are more or
less liberal. Not all, but most.
I have certainly heard the thought expressed before --
in Reevaluation Counseling, by forensic psychiatrists and
students of A Course in Miracles -- but at the Friendly
Crossways conference I heard someone again assert what
surely must be the final, most astounding liberal notion. She
insisted that "no one is evil."
What could she be driving at? Was her point merely
that personality per se is a level of deitized reality? If so,
why bring it up at all? Or was it her intention finally to pry
all moral responsibility off the individual human being and
nail it once and for all on society and circumstance? Was it
her intention to flatten out all individual moral values,
consideration, question, judgment and choice? Was it her
intention to claim that moralism is the last ism to
be eliminated prior to Utopia? If so, the position represents
an all-out assault on the reality or even the possibility of
personal spirituality and growth.
The topic of human evil came up at Friendly Crossways
in the context of discussions about the death penalty. One
hears the death penalty spoken of by its opponents as
"absolute." But although a mortal mistake cannot be
rectified, death is not absolute. There are issues of greater
importance than mortal longevity, no matter when, how or
why the individual meets death. In the Middle Ages
everyone understood this. Then everyone fully believed in
the reality and meaning of life after death. Since the
eighteenth century many good people aren't so sure.
I have heard of several prisoners on death row since
Gary Gilmore who dismissed their lawyers or instructed
them to stop trying to block their execution. Sometimes
there seems to have been a spiritual conversion, sometimes
not. Sometimes the gesture seems suicidal, as in the case of
Gary Gilmore, sometimes it does not. Recently one such
prisoner in San Quentin, David Mason, very thoughtfully
rejected all the psychoanalytic and circumstantial reasoning
adduced by his lawyers to explain why he had committed so
many murders, took personal responsibility for his crimes
and insisted that his death sentence be carried out. His
demeanor in the TV interview was radiantly spiritual. The
court appointed psychiatrist found him to be sane. He
explained that he had to be true to his feelings, "all of them,"
and the only way he could do that was to disassociate
himself from arguments he knew to be irrelevant and let
the legal sentence of the court embodying the political will
of the people of California be carried out. But even after he
was dead his lawyer still denied the validity of the course
David Mason had chosen. The lawyer still insisted that the
truth of the matter of David Mason's crimes lay within
psychoanalytic and circumstantial explanations about what
had been done to him as a child, and of course horrible
things had been done to David Mason as a child.
This seemed to me to be tragic, not so much that David
Mason lived a short brutal life and was then deliberately
put to death, but that even after he was dead someone as
close to him as his own lawyer continued to try to deny the
dignity of his moral choice. That choice was the only way
that David Mason could find to make sense of his own life.
There have been a number of cases like David Mason's.
Terrible social problems result when moral
responsibility is supposedly shifted away from the
individual and onto the "system", some nebulous entity of
"society" or on some particular group. The poor do not
become more capable. Couples don't stay together longer
and raise children to be good citizens. Degenerates don't take
responsibility and become socially constructive.
The scourge of failure is a natural and wholly essential
feature of human evolution. If anything is done to alter the
circumstances of living in an altruistic attempt to remove
this painful scourge without the development of personal
moral responsibility, nothing improves. Political systems
that do not buffer or dissociate results from the causes
associated with the moral behavior of the individual citizen
are kinder, in the long run, and result in a better society.
The business of government is to set limits to human
behavior, not to condition it, to protect society from
wrongdoers, not to exalt the rights of criminals over those of
law-abiding citizens, to take the unfairness out of
competition, not to attempt the destruction of social
competition by legislating away the results of human failure.
On the other hand the business of religion is to modify
and progressively improve human behavior -- according to
traditional mores and by means of the ritual imposition of
traditional moral technique in the case of primitive religion.,
and according to a progressing likeness of "the image of God"
through the inspiration of human nature through contact
with the divine in the case of revealed religion. But religion
as we have it today is not doing its job. It is in a sorry state,
an embarrassed and discredited combination of the
primitive and the revealed, disastrously entangled in politics
and corruption both on the left and on the right. Religion
needs to see a rebirth of its simplest and most basic spiritual
truths: love, brotherhood, forgiveness and tolerance as
personal attitudes, the experience of the personal presence
of God.
I thank God that ordinary people don't look at
everything through ideological lenses, and that they seem to
have a measure of common sense. Ordinary people
understand that although abortion most certainly is murder,
like war it must sometimes be permitted. Ordinary people
understand that while discrimination is unfair, "affirmative
action" is actually racist or sexist. Ordinary people
understand that children need fathers as well as mothers.
They understand that the cultural integration of the males
in a family determines the overall societal outcome. They
don't need George Gilder to tell them that men should have a
preferential access to the marketplace and employment vis-
a-vis women in order to stabilize the family. They don't
need Camille Paglia to tell them that the cultural
preeminence of men in society is natural and necessary to
balance out the preeminent biologic contribution of women
to society and to the home. Ordinary people realize that the
Equal Rights Amendment should never pass because women
and men most certainly are not equal. Ordinary people
understand that equal means the same. Ordinary
people probably would be willing to trade the death penalty
for life sentences that really were life sentences if they did
not feel that behind the death penalty abolitionist's motives
is the desire to absolve everyone of all personal
responsibility for everything. They realize that the idea of
gun control goes hand-in-hand with the tolerance of a
degraded citizenry. Ordinary people realize that to try to
politicize the equality of persons, to try arbitrarily to
materialize it, is to deny its spiritual implications. They
realize that equality is a feature of spiritual
brotherhood, while the domain of political brotherhood is
the domain of attempted fairness, as opposed to equality.
They realize that fairness connotes the recognition of real
human differences both acquired and innate.
Now that at least in the United States social class is in
fact no longer hereditary, now that it has been shown
possible among all races for individuals either to rise or fall
in social standing according to talent, character and
application or the lack thereof, liberals have won their last
legitimate victory until they address the terrible problems
which their own measures have caused.
We are a species in evolution. Like all evolutionary
species we compete individually to survive collectively in
naturally oppressive and selective circumstances. Natural
selection and a differential of biologic failure and success
among individuals are essential features of our evolutionary
progress. The purpose of the instinctively and naively
spiritual liberal altruists has been to try and mitigate the
naturally oppressive circumstances of human life. This
would be all well and good were it not that reproductive
behavior is disastrously affected. All the liberal social
measures have been counter-productive in their genetic
impact. Every step toward a guaranteed personal income,
universal health care, multigenerational, non emergency
welfare has been a step in the wrong direction as far as
long-range planetary interests are concerned because the
natural correlation between cultural achievement and the
birthrate has been broken. This is worse than any fiscal
deficit, as bad as global warming or the depletion of the
ozone. It multiplies the harvest of social problems for
generations yet to come.
Forget Nazi ideas about breeding supermen. But slowly
and patiently, every generation needs to circumscribe
degeneracy." Starvation, disease and slaughter are the
natural and traditional methods of birth control having
eliminated whole societies. And those who would mitigate
the human condition must understand that nature will
reassert control with her inexorable but haphazard methods
unless we replace them by conscious and intelligent
discrimination. A crisis in human genetic evolution is
at the heart of the ecological problem facing the planet. It is
not just a quantitative problem of overpopulation but a
qualitative one of cultural capacity. And nature will
eventually force our hand. Sooner or later there will be a
license required for making babies.
But liberals remain in the untenable position of trying to
advance legitimate goals and values while having "cut
away," as Smiley says, "the ground on which [they] stand."
They seek to save endangered species and preserve the rain
forest while they equate whales with human beings. Having
supported generations on welfare with handouts of the
taxpayer's money, thereby devastating inner city families
by making fathers culturally and economically irrelevant,
(Men Are Just Dessert) having seen the horrible results
reported on television daily, having listened to Rap music
that expresses it so very well, they cluck their tongues,
vaguely aware that something is wrong but without a clue
that their own well-intended charity contributes directly to
the astounding degeneracy they see before them. Yet they
stubbornly refuse to make value judgments. They refuse to
admit that the family is the only institution that can be
relied upon to transmit culture from one generation to
another. They speak of a complexity of factors, the
feminization of poverty and cite the public institutions of
society, law enforcement, television and the schools. In the
meantime there are specific individual crimes being
committed everywhere in society, high and low, that we
should recognize as crimes, stop, and punish, if we want a
world we can live in.
The blame game of materialistic determinism played by
liberal thinkers may identify a temporary scapegoat for our
troubles, now in the "system," now in "western imperialism,"
now in the "patriarchy," now in "capital monopolists," now in
"white racists," now in whatever, until those groups also
learn how to raise their own psychoanalytic whine to a pitch
of equal fervor. But it all leads nowhere. For in an agnostic,
equalitarian, multicultural, humanistic perspective there is
no basis whatsoever except the shifting sands of fashion
upon which to establish values. The hierarchy of values is a
religious problem. Retrograde, politically motivated religious
notions such as goddess worship and pantheism or the
worship of nature will not help. At best nature is a qualified,
partial, unfinished result. God is cause.
But all that conservatives have been able to offer to
counter the powerful equalitarian myth is some sort of
traditionalism or fundamentalism, and one sort of
fundamentalism is much like another. Conservatives must
do more than try to stop time. Fundamentalism is a reliance
on the record of the spiritual experience of other
generations. Individual fundamentalists may enjoy personal
spiritual experience but an evolving fundamentalism is a
contradiction in terms. Living spiritual experience must be
joined with free, rigorous, contemporary thought.
To rebuke the equalitarian thesis, conservatives must
take it upon themselves to remove all vestiges of unfairness
in social competition. Liberals must learn that mortal failure
is not necessarily cosmic failure, return religion to its proper
arena of individual moral self-determination, and judgment
to the public sphere. Moral arrogance on any side bespeaks
concealed self doubt and harms the dialectic process.
Conservatives have long been told they are hateful, that
they are unreasonable, by the educated pretentiously
intellectual elements of society because of their common
sense perceptions and because they are inclined to deny
that reactions of prejudice are the sole cause of the results
when the lower class in general and that of one race in
particular have been so horribly debauched by destructive
"progressive" measures. Conservatives are very angry and
this is not good. No one, either liberal or conservative, can
make any real contribution to discourse in the body politic
who is not willing to master respectfully the entire
intellectual landscape including the territory of his
opponents. In the final analysis, altruism and wisdom are
generated by religious loyalty, spiritual experience,
advancement in scientific knowledge and critically
corrective philosophy.
Anyway, that's what was on my mind in the airplane as
I traveled East this year to Friendly Crossways.
I had made a few calls about where I might visit but
kept my itinerary open, not being certain whether or not I
would go to the COB festivities in Kingston. I first stayed for
a few days with Geert Burger, who has been very hospitable
to me on several trips. Then on to DC to visit Wendy and
David Dorsey and their big handful of kids. In DC I also met
up with Ben and Joanie, which meeting clarified some things
about COB, and I decided I would go to Kingston. Next to
Alan and Ena's in Philadelphia whose totally architecturally
digested house is the prettiest of any KIT people's I have
seen, either here or in England. Then to Mike Boller's and his
redoubtable landlady Camille, a woman who I would like to
see someday at Friendly Crossways.
Kingston was exciting and dramatic as expected and
thoroughly covered in the local TV news; the lead story at
both ten and eleven o'clock. "HOLY WAR", ...voice over the
organ pipes. "Children of the Bruderhof, ..." Somewhere there
is a videotape. I spent the night at Ebo and Annelisa's. Ebo
appeared to me as one well suited to calm a horse, of which
there were two very beautiful ones and a cat who fell
ignominiously into the fishtank. Then I had a nice long drive
with Kathy Brookshire to Friendly Crossways.
I missed certain late night energy. Where were some of
the younger folks this time, the party animals?
Now we have this fledgling entity of COB. Will it
represent an attempt to compose the interests of all who
comprise the ex-Bruderhof readership of KIT? Is it more
specifically to be focused on those who grew up in the
Bruderhof, or is it to be inclusive of all who once lived there
if only as adults? How will it coordinate the functions of
support and healing with the need to deal with intransigent
opposition from both inside and outside the Bruderhof to
what must be said in pursuit of that personal growth and
healing. How will it be organized? Will there be local
geographic groupings or groupings for specific interests?
(Wheathill Girls Group for instance) What specific methods
of communication to keep confidentiality and avoid
inconvenient differentials of telephone, e-mail, and
computer bulletin board access will COB use? All this
remains undecided. Please send your thoughts on these and
any other considerations to Ben Cavanna, Mike LeBlanc, Kore
Loy McWhirter, Margot Wegner Purcell, Joanie Pavitt Taylor,
Faith Tsukroff, or to me.
I stayed on at Friendly Crossways a day or two after the
conference. So did Ben and Joanie. It was a magical two
days, swimming in Walden Pond, co-counseling, seeing the
wonderful old graveyard, that strange parade and then me
catching my train in the dark without our knowing where
the train was supposed to be with just forty perfect seconds
to spare. I don't know if Ben and Joanie realize it, but all the
time we were together both in DC and in Massachusetts, all
the trains were cosmically coordinated to appear at the
platform at just the perfect time for us to step on.
The commuter train took me back to Geert's for a day.
Then I flew back home again. All through the trip I pictured
in my mind's eye, enormous engines silent, waiting on the
runway, engines larger than any I have ever seen, engines
of the Creator Son for terrestrial departure, engines of
universe ascension waiting for command.
A Break for Joel
Give me a break.
Give me a break!
Break me off a piece of that KIT
'Cause that's the way I like it.
I't's my community.
That my community
'Should be where I belong.
In my little KIT family
'This is a song.
Hannah Goodwin Johnson
NOTE: Ben Zablocki has generously
allowed us to offer for sale spiral-bound 8-1/2 x 11
copies of his definitive account of the Bruderhof,The
Joyful Community. 230 pages, $20 US/$25 Canada,
postpaid.
Torches Extinguished, by Bette Bohlken-Zumpe
Free From Bondage by Nadine Moonje Pleil
Each $17 postpaid U.S./Canada, $20 Overseas
KIT Annuals: 1989-1990: $17 $20 Overseas
All in larger type 1991 $25 $30 Overseas
spiral-bound 1992 $25 $30 Overseas
spiral-bound 1993 $25 $30 Overseas
spiral-bound 1994 $25 $30 Overseas
Open Letter To The Hutterian Church, by Samuel
Kleinsasser, with added articles, 85 pages $5 / $8
Our Broken Relationship With The Society of Brothers,
by S. Kleinsasser, 16 pps $1/$3 each
My Years In Woodcrest 1988-1990,
by John Stewart (reprint from KIT April '95) $3/$5
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